Runesmiths vs Artifact Hoarders

[yuzhonglu]

Which is better? Setting is 1v 8 AI (I'm by myself against 8 AI's on the same team). Considering how much fighting I'm going to do, won't artifact hoarders be better in the long run?

[Midas]

They're... completely different, so I'm not sure what is supposed to be 'better' without additional context. If you're planning to get a lot of tomes with enhancements, then Runesmiths.

Artifact Hoarders is only really good if you're going to have a ton of hero items just sitting around not being used. If you're often breaking them down to make new ones with an item forge, it's not very useful. On the flip-side, it's amazing with a dragon ruler.

edit: Also, culture choice matters here, because if you're playing industrious, you're going to be finding way more hero items, which means Artifact Hoarders will have a lot more mileage.

[Blanch Warren]

Artifact horders is purportedly good for mana, if it's the one I am thinking of, in the later game if you intend to actually the mana.

It's not, for instance, early gold that will become irrelevant without a full mobilization, or the research of hermit kingdom, but if you don't think you need anything else as much, what it will also do is save mana in the earlier-mid game when it's rarer, on enchantments, and more importantly move you down the materium tree faster.

Astral affinity is definitely something to pick up, but in the earlier game, materium does make sense.

[yuzhonglu]

I'm already getting 20 mana per turn from Artifact Hoarders on turn 14. Artifact hoarder is stronger if you're playing 1v 8 AI all on the same team.

Ai heroes spawn in on brutal difficulty with extra items, which works perfectly with artifact hoarder....

[Fendelphi]

Artifact Hoarder can be very good. A Dragon Ruler with an Industrious Culture and respawning infestations in a mountainous realm, will get A LOT of value.

But Runesmiths have benefits as well. It is less dependent on the ruler, culture and realm combo. It speeds up research if you want to focus on enchantments. And it provides an extra early unit and unit rank for certain types.
It is great for multi-enchanting and spamming low tier units and can potentially outscale Artifact Hoarder with very large armies.

[DesertRose92]

It depends on how heavily you use heroes, like 6+. Artifact Hoarders gives you more chances to get more powerful items for your heroes. The mana you get is mostly just a nice bonus. It's especially strong with Industrious as they get even more items to fuel the mana generation.

Runesmiths is strong if you mostly choose Tomes that have 2-3 Enchantments as it speeds up the research of Enchantments and thus your overall research speed. The reduced upkeep is not that impactful. However if you spam Tier 1 units it becomes very effective as it can bypass the -50% upkeep restriction.

[Midas]

Originally posted by yuzhonglu:

I'm already getting 20 mana per turn from Artifact Hoarders on turn 14. Artifact hoarder is stronger if you're playing 1v 8 AI all on the same team.

Ai heroes spawn in on brutal difficulty with extra items, which works perfectly with artifact hoarder....

Dragon Hoards can be pretty massive.

This is turn 150-ish with both dragon ruler and artifact hoarders. The dragon is basically providing the bulk of my economy at this point.

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