What's your favorite culture for a race with mounts ?

[Aeon]

Right now I don't see good reasons to play with a mounted race.

Before the naga and gloom transformations I had fun with mounted industrial, mounted dark and mounted high although even then there were better racial traits.

What's your experience ?

[Balekai]

Mount racial traits work very well for any culture's support unit(s) that can be converted to cavalry.

My personal favourite and a perfect example of their usefulness, while being perfect cheese (and thematic too lol). is the Primal Wolf + White Wolf Mount combo. Something like this:

https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=32:19:20,e7,e,5a,ce,4f,125,bc:ac:e2:92:91:a9:a5:ef:87,000000,119:11b,138,h,n:r

Your stack composition is basically the same from turn 1 to turn 100 and you can start making copies of it once you gain access to T2 Town Hall for building Animists. It's a support leader + 2 T2 animists + 3 T1 Protections. Easy.

You get all the extra goodies for a Pack Hunter build + HP + Howling Weakness AoE cold damage and everything is mounted with forest walk. In that specific build they also camp out on Cleansing Fire Hazards all grouped up, very anti-retaliation and anti attack of opportunity w/ Elusive. +43 extra HP from Gaia's Chosen, Hardy, Supergrowth + White Wolf Mounts. +6 to base Status Resist making it a lot harder to inflict status effects on them (again with Cleansing Fire what lands isn't going to stay for long). That above build destroys Arcalot on Hard mode. Quick, efficient, lots of AoE damage, tough, and cheap.

Some other neat things are Swiftfoot Raptor Mounts. These guys when combined with mounted support units will allow them to escape all melee without any opportunity attacks (Slippery +5 HP). A great alternative to the Hardy+Elusive combo to make your backline support units more sturdier. In unison with Staff attacks they can move undamaged to max range and get off their attacks, possibly being out of reach for a pursuer to catch up in one turn, because their movement is Very Fast Movement now. Lastly you can set up flanks from melee basically at will. Very good when using fast skirmish frontline, or floating summons etc. etc. already.

Nightmare Mounts can be used to make super cheese morale killing builds etc etc.


Essentially mounts are better when all the units you're going to use are going to be Mounted, or at least have Fast Movement, and there's specific things the Mount passives and abilities do for your faction build that you won't get with any other form of fast movement upgrades.

Mounts become lackluster when you have other means of Fast Moevement, or varying units of slower movement speeds, and don't benefit from any of the Mount special buffs/abilities. Or you're going to be transforming your race and all stack units into Flying creatures, Naga units or whatever.

In that case you're better off waiting for your transforms, or waiting to unlock Advanced Logistics (second last General Affinity tree trait), which honestly doesn't take too long to get if you have good research pace. It gives Very Fast Movement on the World Map to all units period.

[KellyR]

Mystic + either Raptors or Beetles. Make it impossible to pin your battlemages and keep them from wrecking everything. And you get a mounted T3 Battlemage.

[Aeon]

I usually play with something like this: https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=20:48:36,25,24,cf,57,50,de,bb,000000,s,13d,h,n:r

Hardy: +8hp, Tough: +2 Defense, Resitant: +2 Resistance and either go for Naga or Gloom. Naga comes with water walking, Gloom with flying so I'm getting quite a powerful mobility pack/

This way most of my units have 40 movement speed (except units that were very fast before transformation, those keep their 48 movement speed) and I can combine whatever culture or tome units I feel like.

[KellyR]

Originally posted by Aeon:

I usually play with something like this: https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=20:48:36,25,24,cf,57,50,de,bb,000000,s,13d,h,n:r

Hardy: +8hp, Tough: +2 Defense, Resitant: +2 Resistance and either go for Naga or Gloom. Naga comes with water walking, Gloom with flying so I'm getting quite a powerful mobility pack/

This way most of my units have 40 movement speed (except units that were very fast before transformation, those keep their 48 movement speed) and I can combine whatever culture or tome units I feel like.

Since you're not taking a mount trait, this doesn't really fit the parameters of the OP's question.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Aeon:

I usually play with something like this: https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=20:48:36,25,24,cf,57,50,de,bb,000000,s,13d,h,n:r

Hardy: +8hp, Tough: +2 Defense, Resitant: +2 Resistance and either go for Naga or Gloom. Naga comes with water walking, Gloom with flying so I'm getting quite a powerful mobility pack/

This way most of my units have 40 movement speed (except units that were very fast before transformation, those keep their 48 movement speed) and I can combine whatever culture or tome units I feel like.

Naga and Gloom Strider are honestly traps IMO. I like them for RP, but they are not great compared to other major transformations. If there are specific units you like to use that aren't optional cavalry, you can boost them that way. Using cavalry stacks though with like dire bear knights you get much better mobility and other bonuses and can benefit from the full effect of another major transformation, like Gaia's Chosen, so your cavalry now has +30 health, +3 stat res, and overwhelm. Compared to like Naga, which is just, "almost mounted at the cost of leg and mount slots." Slip Away and Curse Eater are situationally nice, but don't compare to the full power of other major transformations.

With Barbarian or Primal there might be a better argument for Naga, since their mainline T3s are not cavalry or optional cavalry, but at the same time they are both Nature and have easy access to Tome of Glades for mounted Gladerunners, T3 archers on like Raptors is very nice. Every other culture can have their T3 on a mount for better mobility and power than Naga/Gloom.

All that said, mobility quickly becomes a non-issue in the game with teleporters and advanced logistics. You only need to move across the map once, with a single stack, if that, setting up teleporter outposts along the way or jumping ahead using ally teleporters. So at the end of the day, I just pick what "fits my theme."

[The Big Brzezinski]

Feudal cavalry is my standby. Racial tome units are mostly back liners, while Feudal culture offers two mounted front liners. It's easy to back them up with mounted tome DPS, like evokers or Glade Runners, and Wildspeakers with a Staves of Mending or Mist enchantment for heals. Nature also has some pretty good buffs that effect cavalry in the Beasts, Vigor, and Nature Goddess tomes, both in the form of combat enchantments and hero skills. If you want to combine Force of Nature with major transformations like Dragon Transformation or Astral Attunement, sticking them on mounts is how you can do this.

On White Wolf Mounts, your whole army has Fast Movement and Pack Tactics to stack with Feudal's Stand Together buff. This combo can be further augmented with Overwhelm or Defensive tactics to give your troops three different adjacency buffs, all right from the start, none of which are transformations or enchants.

With Swiftfoot Raptors, enjoy your entire military for having 48 movement points. Such mobility makes it possible to absolutely bedevil enemies on the operational level. Or stick them all on Eagles and go full air force.

You could also stick them on Nightmares and take the Merciless Slavers trait. Now your mounted troops have their own unit capturing mechanic. Combine with a healthy mana supply and the Doomherald and possibly Subjugation tomes for best results.


Also worth noting is Reavers with Dread Spider mounts. This combo lets your Overseer support troops do the entire Reaver capture mechanic themselves. Mystic's mounted shield and battle mage troops leave room for shenanigans as well, but I haven't tried it much myself.

[👁]

Originally posted by Aeon:

Right now I don't see good reasons to play with a mounted race.

Before the naga and gloom transformations I had fun with mounted industrial, mounted dark and mounted high although even then there were better racial traits.

What's your experience ?

Feudal and Dark go really well with special mounts, there's also a trait to give mounts to units that don't normally have mounts but you can't use special mounts with it.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by 👁:

Feudal and Dark go really well with special mounts, there's also a trait to give mounts to units that don't normally have mounts but you can't use special mounts with it.

All special mount traits add mounts to units that don't normally have mounts. The 1 point trait that adds a normal mount to those units is just a cheaper way to get those units mounted without the other bonuses, mostly if you specifically want to use one of the normal mounts like zebras or lions (it's otherwise a pretty bad value).

[Aeon]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Naga and Gloom Strider are honestly traps IMO. I like them for RP, but they are not great compared to other major transformations. If there are specific units you like to use that aren't optional cavalry, you can boost them that way. Using cavalry stacks though with like dire bear knights you get much better mobility and other bonuses and can benefit from the full effect of another major transformation, like Gaia's Chosen, so your cavalry now has +30 health, +3 stat res, and overwhelm. Compared to like Naga, which is just, "almost mounted at the cost of leg and mount slots." Slip Away and Curse Eater are situationally nice, but don't compare to the full power of other major transformations.

With Barbarian or Primal there might be a better argument for Naga, since their mainline T3s are not cavalry or optional cavalry, but at the same time they are both Nature and have easy access to Tome of Glades for mounted Gladerunners, T3 archers on like Raptors is very nice. Every other culture can have their T3 on a mount for better mobility and power than Naga/Gloom.

All that said, mobility quickly becomes a non-issue in the game with teleporters and advanced logistics. You only need to move across the map once, with a single stack, if that, setting up teleporter outposts along the way or jumping ahead using ally teleporters. So at the end of the day, I just pick what "fits my theme."

I like Naga and Gloom more than the other major transformations.

Naga brings 40 movement speed, slip away a sort of immortality in auto combat, amphibious that besides granting water movement and sea combat bonuses also grants wet immunity which combos quite well with downpour which heavily debuffs all armies in a province plus some useful lightning and blight resistances

Gloom brings 40 movement speed, floating another movement buff, immunity to umbral malady, curse eater a handy self dispell, + 2 defense that is quite useful, usually worth the reduction to spirit and fire resistances.

Losing a regular mount doesn't affect the mounted units in any way, they still have their original 48 movement speed.

Losing the mount and the leg equipment slots it's not a problem for heroes, the weapons I favor disable those 2 slots anyway, the musket and greataxe are worth the sacrifice of the other slots and make fully gearing multiple heroes much easier.

Losing the cavalry related army perks allows me to pick more fighting perks.

[Astasia]

The thing is the cavalry related perks include combat perks at a better rate than otherwise. Dire bears for example, +10 health and overwhelm for 3 points. Overwhelm is normally 2 points, hardy is 1 point for +8 health, so the Dire bear is more powerful than the normal perks for the same amount of points, as long as you use cavalry units, but there are a good number of tome units and a culture unit per culture that get upgraded to the faster speed and gain those buffs. The mount upgrade is basically "free" and you don't have to spend a major transformation to get the increased mobility.

[Charlando[SunsOfStmChrts]]

Dark with Nightmare Mounts and Glade Runners

[Pantagruel]

special mounts don't scale your heroes well, but the mount masters cultural trait is handy for the extra mobility. It's probably best for high culture -- use dawn defenders for early game map clearing, use awakeners for mid/late game power.