Dealing damage as Industrious/Materium heavy

[AstroCat♥]

What are some good strategies to get more damage output as an Industrious society with heavy focus on Materium tomes?

I tried to grab unit/culture enchants that added a bit of spice to damage, but by late game I found myself having to rely on very expensive t4 units to deal any damage and was very much struggling to win fights more than other games I’ve played with different setups.

I play on Easy and Normal while learning the game.

[TyborPL]

Gargoyle should be a nice addition early, later I would use Zephyr Archers. Industrious itself lacks a decent damage dealer. If you have the money, you can rely on Bastions as they do not go down easily and will kill... eventually.

[AstroCat♥]

Originally posted by TyborPL:

Gargoyle should be a nice addition early, later I would use Zephyr Archers. Industrious itself lacks a decent damage dealer. If you have the money, you can rely on Bastions as they do not go down easily and will kill... eventually.

Thanks, I’ll give it a try next time I take that route

[сын мясника]

Zephyr Archer is bad unit. Try this
https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=35:48:43,22,6,59,54,4f,70,9a:bb:84:a4:86:98:89:83:96,000000

[TirAsleen]

If you want to use the T3 culture industrious units - Bastion - take for the race, dire bear mounts and bullwark for big synergies.(defense sweep, defensive mode: shield wall with bullwark + overwhelm + 10 hp and high mounted movement for Bastion)

Now, it needs the mandatory Tome of Enchantment, for higher production in cities and most importantly Sundering Blades enchantment, it will reduce the defense rating of enemy units and increase your physcial melee dmg. This also works very well in auto-combat.

The other Tomes are subjective, i usually take a bunch of Shadow and Astral Tomes to fill up their imperium skill trees.

I take runsmiths and something else, in this case i would take Scions of Evil, since ranking up is slower with Wizard and Dragon ruler and i like more imperium, it works in all situations, if you take a T3 Culture unit approach that is melee related.

Most importantly, if you take the wizard king leader type, something you really should, since the Bastions are doing the heavy melee lifting already, i recommend for end game things, the T4 Materium Tome of the Crucible, its all fire themed. Lava Burst is the spell you want to research asap, it does 90 damage with overchannel and amplification and 24 lingering damage with burning + it will slow everyone, thats the most effcient area dmg spell for the mana cost.

Also take the Tome of Amplification, that gives your wizard ruler and other heroes spell amplification, it will increase Lava Burst and other huge tactical spells by 50% in damage.

Like Tome of Enchantment, Tome of Amplification is kinda mandatory, if you want to research some astral, because amplified mind gives you 20 research / city.

Keep in mind some tomes are strictly better than other Tomes, those that give a huge economic output, but also huge damage in combat.

T5 should be Tome of the Creator you can replace Lava Burst with Tectonic shatter, if the opponent is not celestial and has high defense ratings, otherwise Lava Burst will remain useful till the game is finished and yo may summon T5 units in combat, in my expierence, only Astral T5 can really compete with this T5 Materium Tome in terms of (burst)dmg output.

If, you want to create an immortal Bastion army, rather invest into Order or Shadow Tomes, i focus entirely on damage.

[Cindeerella]

If you want deal damage as materium just spam Bastions , get support who can give Strengthening easily, build that Hero Item Forge and craft tier 4 Heavy Magelock gun, swap it for Sword&Pistol when you unlock Killing momentum.

But jokes aside, with tome of enchantments your sturdy bastions can rip enemy units to allow your hero do one-shot kills with Spell spam pretty easily while still surviving. Prospecting really synergies well with this idea.

Overall I love focusing on Heroes and Spells when playing Industrial.

[Goblin]

I like taking tome of warding and grabbing the support enhancement that gives all support unit abilities 2x bolstered resistance and then tome of faith that gives all supports a free heal action. Then you can either use the industrial spell that gives strengthened and fortune for each stack of bolstered res/def removed or use their support healing ability that just gives them strengthened. That will give you up to 50% increased damage and 30% crit chance.

[Midas]

I wouldn't go pure materium with industrious. Too much skew towards defenses, not enough offense focused units or enhancements.

Race can help a bit sometimes. I've found poisonous industrous units pretty amusing due to how much poison they can force the other side to stack up.

[Blanch Warren]

I don't understand the question, there's additional high damage dealing arches on t1, throw in the Alchemy tome or a mage or some.

[Pantagruel]

The general focus of industrial is defense, not offense; rather than one-shotting units, you just endure through the enemy damage and grind away at them. That said, materium has two excellent melee unit buffs (enchantment/sundering blades and artificing/artisan armaments) and bronze golems (evolve from copper golems) are actually pretty dangerous because so many high tier units are large or cavalry.

[revjwh]

I get Skalds and field 5 Bastions and 1 Skald - with unit enchantments focused on the Bastions (so weapon enhancements for criticals, damage etc.) - they not only become really strong defensively but I often hit 3 times for 20-30 pts per hit. The Skald buffs them up on the battlefield and off they go. I play on Brutal and have zero problems. Turn them into demonkin or draconians and given them the demonic onslaught and watch them mince 99% of enemies......

[Toddasaurus Rex]

Strong+Tough racial traits make industrious units very beefy and Arbalests are your friend, and later, zephyr archers. Bastions are absolute dumptruck walls, use them to screen for your ranged units while they brawl for days. I recently did a playthrough with an industrial culture focusing on Ice and morale manipulation. Ice weapons+joy siphoners and the skald trait and frostling with overgrowth make for a good synergy, especially if your blasting ice terrain everywhere, sapping morale and getting fat crits with slowdown debuffs feels great. Your opponents hit less and makes that tank go the extra mile while adding nice beefy crits to the mix.