What's you favorite culture?

[Wandering Mania]

So like the title asks; What's you favorite culture?

Because I have noticed a lot of people going straight for the 'Industrious' type; When I personally prefer the following, in the said order:
1: Feudal
2: Dark/High (Evil/Good faction dependent)
3: Mystic
And I haven't played Industrious or Barbarian yet.

[Winterwolf]

Originally posted by Midas:

Originally posted by Winterwolf:

Dark culture... bad?!?

Well first.. my favorites are Dark and Barbarian.

Dark is insanely busted, the fact you get shock troops at T1 with less entities than in shield/Polearm units meaning you suffer quite a bit less casualty penalties when they get low on health. And the fact you can get regen by popping off weakening spells and just whacking the enemy that can't fight back because you Cancel Defensive mode and Retaliations.. Idk.. that's pretty nice to me lol. Also you can negate Provincial Negatives instead of having to worry about stability, you can ignore it with buildings lol.

Trust me, you learn how they play proper, they are an absolute beast to play.

Yeah, Dark I think can be counter-intuitive to people because they're so offense-oriented, but their tricks support it so well. Dark + cannibal is my go to for a vampire themed faction and it works so well. Heavy theme of aggression and wielding that aggression to keep your units alive.

Definitely more of an aggressive play-style, I think that's why a lot of peeps pick Industrious cause it thrives off defensive play.

Barbarian is like a cross between Industrious and Dark, that middle ground of Offense and Defense.. Kinda? Or maybe Feudal fits that role better lol.

But Dark is just full on aggression. Slap out your weakening abilities, hell take Overwhelm tactics as a racial and pile on the damage from your Dark Warriors. One of the best T1 units I personally think you can get in the game.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Winterwolf:

Originally posted by Midas:

Yeah, Dark I think can be counter-intuitive to people because they're so offense-oriented, but their tricks support it so well. Dark + cannibal is my go to for a vampire themed faction and it works so well. Heavy theme of aggression and wielding that aggression to keep your units alive.

Definitely more of an aggressive play-style, I think that's why a lot of peeps pick Industrious cause it thrives off defensive play.

Barbarian is like a cross between Industrious and Dark, that middle ground of Offense and Defense.. Kinda? Or maybe Feudal fits that role better lol.

But Dark is just full on aggression. Slap out your weakening abilities, hell take Overwhelm tactics as a racial and pile on the damage from your Dark Warriors. One of the best T1 units I personally think you can get in the game.

I feel like High, Industrious and Feudal are the most defense oriented, while Dark, Barbarian, and Mystic are the most offense-oriented.

Or maybe Industrious and Feudal are most defensive, Mystic and Dark are most offensive, and Barbarian and High are somewhere in the middle.

[Winterwolf]

Originally posted by Midas:

Originally posted by Winterwolf:

Definitely more of an aggressive play-style, I think that's why a lot of peeps pick Industrious cause it thrives off defensive play.

Barbarian is like a cross between Industrious and Dark, that middle ground of Offense and Defense.. Kinda? Or maybe Feudal fits that role better lol.

But Dark is just full on aggression. Slap out your weakening abilities, hell take Overwhelm tactics as a racial and pile on the damage from your Dark Warriors. One of the best T1 units I personally think you can get in the game.

I feel like High, Industrious and Feudal are the most defense oriented, while Dark, Barbarian, and Mystic are the most offense-oriented.

Or maybe Industrious and Feudal are most defensive, Mystic and Dark are most offensive, and Barbarian and High are somewhere in the middle.

Going off base units I'mma say Barbarian is definitely middleground at least, between offense and defense. I mainly say this because Shield units in general are a defensive playstyle, so them having shield units at T1, already pushes them in that direction. You get no bonus damage for charging at the enemy across the field and whacking em 1x unlike Dark Warriors. Better to let the enemy close the gap with you first and then thwack em with your 3 hit combo to their 1 hit and you still get the benefit of your Primal strike on that hit.

[Seswatha]

1. Neutral High (potentially converting to Evil High in the lategame). Arguably the strongest unit lineup accounting for Awaken and great flat food & prod boost so long as you stay Neutral.

2. Mystic. 20% cheaper spells from just having a Soother is great, especially when stacked with other discounts. Spellshields are great and Spellbreakers outright break a number of enemy strategies including a number of other culture gimmicks, such as Bolster, Awaken, Steadfast Berserkers, you name it. They also wipe the floor with magic origin units. Collecting echoes gives you an upper hand in research.

3. Dark. Really good at applying tons of debuffs and then reaping benefits from that. Can sustain rampant pop growth without worrying about stability buildings while running Awakened Tools & Amplified Minds making for a strong midgame eco boom. Dark Knights probably either the 2nd best or the best t3 culture unit.

4. Barbarian. No specific eco boosts, but scouts building outposts is nice. Zerkers are a pain in the butt to deal with without the right counter but can be hardcountered really bad if the enemy does have one. The unit lineup is alright but at the same time nothing too wild, stun on warriors probably takes the cake. Cultural combat ability favours melee heavily, which isn't great. What makes them stand out to me is Ritual of Alacrity which makes spamming outposts with their scouts a great strategy and allows you to heal and get around the map much faster.

5. Feudal. Probably the most "vanilla" culture. Great eco boosts from lords that can be tailored to your playstyle. Cultural unit ability is generally useful for all unit types under most circumstances and scales well throughout the game. The unit lineup is very basic though, with most units missing special abilities compared to other factions or having weak ones, though Bannermen are one of the better supports as an exception.

6. Industrious. Generally my least liked culture though you can still do fun stuff with them. (read: Industrious culture, not Materium tomes, a lot of Materium tomes are very good). Anvil guard hits like a wet noodle, though Taunt is interesting. Arbalests are good but don't scale as well as multi shot archers. Halberdiers are great and one of the highlights of the roster imo, give them lifesteal & more retaliations + magic damage reflection and they're a pain to deal with. Bastions lack the oomph for a t3 unit a bit imo, though they do have great defensive stats and you can make them incredibly tanky with the right enchants. Prospecting is actually very good and allows you to bootstrap your economy and armies fast.

[Tzyder]

feudal is the only one ive played..part of that is the order/nature attunement..

[Wandering Mania]

Originally posted by Winterwolf:

Barbarian is like a cross between Industrious and Dark, that middle ground of Offense and Defense.. Kinda? Or maybe Feudal fits that role better lol.

I would argue that Feudal is highly defensive, with most offense being put onto the ranged units shoulders. Like I mentioned before with the standard 'Line formation' usage.

Form 'em up, then wait for the enemy to come to you, while casting at them, and buffing your troops.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Winterwolf:

Originally posted by Midas:

I feel like High, Industrious and Feudal are the most defense oriented, while Dark, Barbarian, and Mystic are the most offense-oriented.

Or maybe Industrious and Feudal are most defensive, Mystic and Dark are most offensive, and Barbarian and High are somewhere in the middle.

Going off base units I'mma say Barbarian is definitely middleground at least, between offense and defense. I mainly say this because Shield units in general are a defensive playstyle, so them having shield units at T1, already pushes them in that direction. You get no bonus damage for charging at the enemy across the field and whacking em 1x unlike Dark Warriors. Better to let the enemy close the gap with you first and then thwack em with your 3 hit combo to their 1 hit and you still get the benefit of your Primal strike on that hit.

The shield unit is one of the main reasons I think they'd be in the middle or on the offense side, because they're very atypical for a shield unit. They want to rush up to something aggressively like an offensive unit, but instead of killing it, they stun it, then next turn unload on it with all their attacks + primal strike for an unexpectedly high amount of damage for a shield unit. It's a defensive unit that rewards aggressive play.

[MrLuckless]

Originally posted by Midas:

Originally posted by Winterwolf:

Definitely more of an aggressive play-style, I think that's why a lot of peeps pick Industrious cause it thrives off defensive play.

Barbarian is like a cross between Industrious and Dark, that middle ground of Offense and Defense.. Kinda? Or maybe Feudal fits that role better lol.

But Dark is just full on aggression. Slap out your weakening abilities, hell take Overwhelm tactics as a racial and pile on the damage from your Dark Warriors. One of the best T1 units I personally think you can get in the game.

I feel like High, Industrious and Feudal are the most defense oriented, while Dark, Barbarian, and Mystic are the most offense-oriented.

Or maybe Industrious and Feudal are most defensive, Mystic and Dark are most offensive, and Barbarian and High are somewhere in the middle.

High is ranged offense more then defense. The awaken buffs for shield and polearm units are cute, but they aren't the parts that win you battles. 20% accuracy buff along with a +1 range is HUGE, and you get in on all your archer and battlemage units encouraging a strong range game from High. T1 Dusk Hunters are insanely good with just simple buff that can be applied with a spell, 2 units, or just being pure evil. Between just the T1 Archer and the T3 Battlemage, High is more offense then defense minded.

[Midas]

Originally posted by MrLuckless:

Originally posted by Midas:

I feel like High, Industrious and Feudal are the most defense oriented, while Dark, Barbarian, and Mystic are the most offense-oriented.

Or maybe Industrious and Feudal are most defensive, Mystic and Dark are most offensive, and Barbarian and High are somewhere in the middle.

High is ranged offense more then defense. The awaken buffs for shield and polearm units are cute, but they aren't the parts that win you battles. 20% accuracy buff along with a +1 range is HUGE, and you get in on all your archer and battlemage units encouraging a strong range game from High. T1 Dusk Hunters are insanely good with just simple buff that can be applied with a spell, 2 units, or just being pure evil. Between just the T1 Archer and the T3 Battlemage, High is more offense then defense minded.

They're as much defensive as offense to me because they're also heavily healing-focused, with both efficient healing on their support unit, and a cultural tactical heal spell on top of that. That combined with their defensive units getting more defensive bonuses when awakened gives them a lot of staying power while their ranged units shoot things.

Also, their ranged units being heavily action-point reliant also feeds into a general playstyle of making the enemy come to you, rather than going to them like you would with some of the other cultures.

[Wandering Mania]

Originally posted by Midas:

Also, their ranged units being heavily action-point reliant also feeds into a general playstyle of making the enemy come to you, rather than going to them like you would with some of the other cultures.

That's pretty much the same thing with the Feudal units. Because you want to keep that formation bonus.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Wandering Mania:

Originally posted by Midas:

Also, their ranged units being heavily action-point reliant also feeds into a general playstyle of making the enemy come to you, rather than going to them like you would with some of the other cultures.

That's pretty much the same thing with the Feudal units. Because you want to keep that formation bonus.

Feudal units generally want to stay that way though, and don't want to spread out. High culture doesn't really care about clustering, they don't have any tactical effects that are proximity-oriented besides Twin Awakening, and even that's fairly generous.

[Seswatha]

High is definitely the supreme long range dakka culture. Favours archers and battlemages.

Barbs are primarily melee swarmers since Primal Strike is melee only, meaning they have to be aggressive since they're most likely not outshooting anyone. Favours melee and shock units in particular for big alpha strikes.

Mystic leans towards dakka but can be surprisingly decent in melee with spellshields. Favours multi attack units of any kind.

Feudal is honestly the most flexible and can do whatever reasonably well.

Dark is based entirely around gimmicks atm imo but these gimmicks are really strong, like the Dark Knight aoe vs debuffed units.

Industrial mostly seems to be based around getting beat up and refusing to die and then hammering the enemy with steelfury chant once they have enough bolster x stacks.

[Seswatha]

Originally posted by Midas:

Originally posted by Wandering Mania:

That's pretty much the same thing with the Feudal units. Because you want to keep that formation bonus.

Feudal units generally want to stay that way though, and don't want to spread out. High culture doesn't really care about clustering, they don't have any tactical effects that are proximity-oriented besides Twin Awakening, and even that's fairly generous.

Faudal units generally want to operate in pairs imo, cluster more than that against a player and it's a death sentence from AoE. You don't need to play defensively to move units in pairs.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Seswatha:

Originally posted by Midas:

Feudal units generally want to stay that way though, and don't want to spread out. High culture doesn't really care about clustering, they don't have any tactical effects that are proximity-oriented besides Twin Awakening, and even that's fairly generous.

Faudal units generally want to operate in pairs imo, cluster more than that against a player and it's a death sentence from AoE. You don't need to play defensively to move units in pairs.

The bannermen definitely want you in more than pairs to get good mileage out of their heal. In fact they seem to be built around the same idea as Oathbound where it's like "Yeah, I know you're going to nuke me with AoEs if I cluster up, but I'm going to do it anyways, survive, and then heal it all off with one action."

[Seswatha]

Originally posted by Midas:

Originally posted by Seswatha:

Faudal units generally want to operate in pairs imo, cluster more than that against a player and it's a death sentence from AoE. You don't need to play defensively to move units in pairs.

The bannermen definitely want you in more than pairs to get good mileage out of their heal. In fact they seem to be built around the same idea as Oathbound where it's like "Yeah, I know you're going to nuke me with AoEs if I cluster up, but I'm going to do it anyways, survive, and then heal it all off with one action."

Oathbound also don't really like to cluster in groups of more than 3 that max out their +armour oath.

You don't have to stand next to bannermen and the end of your turn. You can move in to surround it, cast a buff and then fan out. No amount of bannerman healing/resistance boosting is going to overcome proper aoe nuking.