Efficient Ways to Build a Dragon Army as a Dragon Lord?

[Sergares]

Hi everyone,

In my current game, I'm playing as a Dragon Lord, and naturally, I want an army of dragons. However, the process of building such an army has been quite frustrating. To get them, I need to recruit young dragons and level them up to legendary tier. Even with experience buffs, it takes forever — it took me over 30 turns to get my first Tier 5 dragon. On top of that, I have to be extremely careful not to lose any of my young dragons during battles which is kind of hard.

Meanwhile, I’ve been spamming Golden Golems for a while now. I can even recruit them at elite tier at my capital, whereas adult dragons start from scratch. Losing a Golden Golem doesn’t bother me too much because I can easily replace them, but if I were to lose a dragon that I’ve spent so much time and effort raising, it would really hurt.

So, my question is: is there a simpler way to get adult dragons? Is there a method I’m missing to make them evolve faster or recruit them directly? Babysitting a unit for dozens of turns is tedious, especially when I can consistently get units like Golden Golems, Balors, or Reapers much more efficiently.

[GetUrAssToMars]

Just got done with a dragon build, and nope I don't think its possible? Unless through rallies?

Anyhow, once I got the right setup going they were evolving into adult dragons within 10 turns or so with consistent fighting.

Tome of EVO get rapid evolution enchantment +20% xp gain

Tome of Revelry get the Revels of Carnage spell and keep that going into every fight +30% xp gain.

Make sure leadership takes Experienced Leader trait for +2 xp points every turn.

Once you get a full stack of these things you are basically armed with nuclear. It shouldn't really be easy to get imo

[Gundalf]

Pick tome of prosperity or calamity and directly summon the cheap asian knockoff dragons.

[Pantagruel]

Well, you can evolve stacks by getting the Tome of Exaltation for Ascended Warriors.

[Supay]

Originally posted by Sergares:

Hi everyone,

In my current game, I'm playing as a Dragon Lord, and naturally, I want an army of dragons. However, the process of building such an army has been quite frustrating. To get them, I need to recruit young dragons and level them up to legendary tier. Even with experience buffs, it takes forever — it took me over 30 turns to get my first Tier 5 dragon. On top of that, I have to be extremely careful not to lose any of my young dragons during battles which is kind of hard.

Meanwhile, I’ve been spamming Golden Golems for a while now. I can even recruit them at elite tier at my capital, whereas adult dragons start from scratch. Losing a Golden Golem doesn’t bother me too much because I can easily replace them, but if I were to lose a dragon that I’ve spent so much time and effort raising, it would really hurt.

So, my question is: is there a simpler way to get adult dragons? Is there a method I’m missing to make them evolve faster or recruit them directly? Babysitting a unit for dozens of turns is tedious, especially when I can consistently get units like Golden Golems, Balors, or Reapers much more efficiently.

You can use RAPID EVOLUTION ENCHANTMENT from tome of Evolution.
You can use REVELS OF CARNAGE from the tome of Revelry
You can Snag the race trait Adaptable

These are generally what you want for dragon builds. You can get resurrect spells and buffs that when they take a fatal blow they teleport away. Druids are great for Resurrecting.

So that is exp buffs and spells/buffs to prevent death or come back from it.

[Azunai]

The new prosperity and calamity dragons are summoned as adults (tier 5)

And you can get the t4 order tome with the strategic spell that boosts non-hero units by 1 level for every cast.

[Aurumworks]

Also a trainer ambition and a recruiting governor in a city with smith's guild.

[CrUsHeR]

Conquer / Annex a Dragon Dwelling, build them yourself




...Well that's what you would do in AOW3, at least.

[CrUsHeR]

You can Snag the race trait Adaptable

That only works for the racial non-hero units

[✧Starshadow Melody✧]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Conquer / Annex a Dragon Dwelling, build them yourself




...Well that's what you would do in AOW3, at least.

Dwellings were neat. Can't tell if they became Ancient Wonders or Free Cities in 4. I think aspects bled into both.

[Ananym]

You can stack everything that gives ranks to produced t3 units to get a significant head start.

But, yes, even with maximum cheese there there's no way to make dragon builds viable against the other strong options.

[Humble]

Full of dragon cost lot of golds, and long time to level up, depend if you aren't fighting that much, and they do die even full adult dragon in auto combat, (strange white dragon is one last longer, then red, then at least gold die easy, but not sure black dragon where your faction had to be evil.

[Godsheal Powerloader]

Evolution builds are cool, but not terribly viable even when you get all of it's stuff up. Simply go tome of exaltation and that's it.

[Supay]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

You can Snag the race trait Adaptable

That only works for the racial non-hero units

DoH! you are right!, forgot it it's only good for some units.

[Pantagruel]

Originally posted by Ananym:

But, yes, even with maximum cheese there there's no way to make dragon builds viable against the other strong options.

That's mostly an issue of dragons being somewhat underwhelming.

[SomeGuy1]

some of the hero Ambitions also increase xp gain of units.