Broad questions regarding builds

[Stagnetti]

I'll do my best to explain this...
tl;dr: It's long, don't read it unless you really like build discussions.

So as I've been trying out different builds and strategies, it seems like the most efficient way to play is to keep everything the same race, which kind of makes animals/magic origin units as well as conquered race units not very good, but I want to understand how to make those strategies work.

Here's what I mean by that: Say you're playing the High culture, OK cool so all of the units you produce in your cities have the dormant traits. And that bonus is free, there's no upkeep because it's baked into the unit via its culture. The units cost gold to maintain which is fine early on. Now say you've also chosen some traits that synergise well with your build, so maybe you've got Overwhelming Tactics.

OK, but I can't just build dusk hunters all game, once I get a good economy I need stronger units within my stacks. Well, high culture doesn't have a better archer at tier 2 or tier 3 so I'll need a tome unit for that role. And just note here that it's just an example, yes I could use awakeners but I've found it's best to have a balanced composition, so in this case I'd be running both battle mages and archers.

So I unlock the glade runner from the Tome of Glades. OK well, the glade runner will be produced in my city and it'll be my race, it'll also cost gold to maintain but it won't have my race's special (the dormant traits). But every culture tome has a unit enchantment which will grant those bonuses to units that aren't from that culture. OK cool, so my glade runners will essentially be better than my dusk hunters in every way, but I've also got to pay a premium to upkeep the culture enchantment.

Compare this with the industrious culture, which has a shield unit at tier 1 but also at tier 3. In this case, you don't really need to unlock another shield unit, because you have one available. But you'll run into the same issue with the Arbalest, so it seems like all cultures just HAVE to unlock tome units. OK cool well that's fine because it's balanced, every culture has to do it.

But now let's consider wildlife. For example, say you're continuing in nature, and you get the bonuses that give you random animals (Wild Expansion). Or, maybe you get the Tome of Beasts and you can Summon Wild Animals. Now it seems like their upkeep is mostly mana, so then you kinda have to invest into mana income buildings just to be able to keep these units. This seems a bit inefficient, because there are multipliers to gold income (e.g. Champion), so I'd rather being paying just gold for my upkeep since I'm not focusing on mana income. So the issue here is having to split my yield upkeep with one of the yields being more efficient than the other. I know there are mana multipliers as well, but there's always an opportunity cost with picking any bonus so it's more efficient to focus on one.

Aside from upkeep, the animals also don't get my culture bonus, so they need to have the culture enchantment. But this also extends to crappy Tier 1 animals, so why would I summon and pay extra for a Tier 1 animal when i can just build a Tier 1 racial unit from my city? And a side note, the culture enchantments only affect the unit types that the original bonus applies to, so for high culture it doesn't affect fighters, and a lot of animals are fighters. I understand this in particular is just bad synergy and it's not really the point I'm trying to make. What I mean here is why would I pick the Tome of Beasts in any culture when the animals are more expensive and worse than the units I can build from my city? Or have I incorrectly evaluated the power level of the animal units? It could be that they have slightly better stats as a trade-off but I haven't studied that too well.

Now there are bonuses that relate to animals, like I understand you can make a build around it. So you wouldn't really be building many city units at all, you'd do some sorta animal/cavalry strat where you'd have animals in your stacks along with a hero and a wildspeaker or something. But there's more to it than what I've gone over so far.

Even if you did that, then what about race transformations? Say you get leafskin. Cool. Oh, but I've gone this animal strat, so it doesn't affect 60% of my army. Or...again, have I misunderstood this, are you just not meant to pick racial transformations in that kind of build? It just seemed really odd because they're so powerful.

This whole thing sorta applies to magic origin units in the same way. It kinda makes more sense though because if you build around magic origin units then you're likely to be picking bonuses that give you more mana income.

Now another way you get units is by capturing cities of a different race. So you can absorb the city into your empire or you can migrate it to your race, killing a few population in the process. If we go with the first option... I can't recruit any of my units. The city will have this random selection of units that don't have any synergy with my build. For example, I've got high units and my combat spells aren't undead related at all, but I captured a city which race has undead units. Well, I didn't go shadow, I don't have any tome units that can synergise well with undead units, why the hell would I build these? Why wouldn't I just migrate the city instead (yeah you take a small alignment and population penalty) and have the city be useful? The only reason I can think of is tempo, and maybe that matters more than I think. I don't play on brutal. But the tempo gain really doesn't seem worth it, especially when there are other options. You can also raze the city for a ton of gold (i.e. tempo) and then rebuild it as your own race.

This kind of relates to the animal summon discussion as well, I can see the value in getting an animal out quick or for free (Wild Expansion) but I would just end up disbanding it if I can't put the unit to use because I don't want to pay the upkeep.

More on the captured city scenario - those units also don't have my mind and body traits, so they're essentially random and probably don't synergise well with my build (I've found this to be the case most of the time). They also don't have my Overwhelming Tactics, they've got something else, so now I can't mix these stacks together at all. Well I could, but it would just be straight up worse. They also don't have my minor/major race transformations, so again why the hell would I build these...

I know you can transform other races once you become the keeper, but there are 2 issues with this. One, you can't do this until you take more of their cities and have enough of their population, so you're stuck without it for most of the game, and two, you've got to pay the casting points and mana again (I don't believe there's upkeep for transformations). So again... is this just for tempo?

Lastly, the rally of lieges. I really don't get this thing. It gets populated from various sources, and most of the units are worse than what you can build yourself (in terms of synergy). Like, why would I recruit a butcher ogre, fairy and hunter spider when none of these units have any synergy with my build? There are some high tier units available which can be a good tempo boost though. It also includes vassals, however, a lot of the vassals you get are not your race, like if you got them via conquering. So the units they contribute to the rally are not very useful. The vassals you create yourself do have your race and sometimes I will recruit those units to refill a stack but that's about it. And yes, the rally doesn't cut into your draft, but I don't think draft is that scarce, you're not literally building units in every city for every turn of the game. Again, I don't play on brutal, maybe it's different there, but if you're replacing units that often then you're probably losing the game anyway. And while it doesn't cut into your draft, you still pay gold for the unit (extra gold, if I'm not mistaken).

Now I know there's a bunch of bonuses in the order affinity around the rally of lieges and maybe that's all just a tempo thing and is kinda just a build in itself. I should experiment more with that.

But in the grand scheme of things, when you're given all of these decisions, it always seems more efficient to just stick to your own racial units. So if you read this far, I'd be keen to hear thoughts from more experienced players, and let me know more on what I'm missing with these other strategies. Thanks.

[Blanch Warren]

The advantage of animal units in the early game is generally considered to be low maintenance combined with the possibility of quick ranking for them.

[Azunai]

Each of the cultures has an early research option that adds their special culture mechanic to foreign units. In the case of high culture, there is an enchantment that adds the dormant trait and the added bonuses from awakening to tome units etc.

So glade runners or zephyr archers are a straight upgrade to dusk hunters and the only reason to continue building dusk hunters would ba a build that specifically tries to wirk with t1 (tome of the horde buffs + mighty neek from tome of beacon or something like that)

[Terrkas]

You could focus on enchantments. Those dont care for racial and enchantment all units of the type. If it is costly take that runesmith trait to reduce upkeep

[Zoggy]

I would say it depends on your play style and what your opponents are - different unit types are also very useful high for example doesn't have access to shock units early. charge attacks units are very strong if used right.

Some culture unit don't need to be replaced with higher tier tome units - Arbalest units are very strong t1 units particularly if using a racial mounts and right unit enchantments.

Any way back on topic -summons particularly elemental units are quite cost effective options for early high elemental damage and get better when/if evolved. lots of early units have high defence and lower resistance values.

The high culture with animal units is not optimal -you can make it work as has lots of low cost fighters and shock units which are useful for unit diversity- add the faithful enchantment for ultra cheap upkeep.

High culture has better options like using the rally of lieges mechanic for good wonder units or other summons.
Rally's are generally a lot better with a wonder capture strategy than with vassals. High tier wonders have better units. ( fairy unit are probably the best bronze tier wonder unit for high as they are good support/battlemage units and can use the awakened/ strengthen buff with the high unit enchantments)

Vassals are strong for economic reasons with order empires traits but for recruiting at rallies wonder units are better( unless you need a full stack right now) you kind have to go all in for a rally strategy or just dip in for the extra odd unit. For high culture released cities as bound vassals can be really useful economically.

Back to summons for high -zealots are a useful early tool for high to fill out additional stacks so you can fight more things earlier. (also use gold for upkeep) light bringers are mind controlling battle mage summons, even a couple can be quite disruptive.

For animal strategies -feudal, dark or primal cultures with something like pack tactics trait or additional mounted units is the way to go- taking advantage of faster or mobile physically based units, the aim is to stack damage buffs + use the additional mobility to flank/ move around quickly.
( Tip- the province improvement from tome of beasts allows you to build/draft low level animals which use gold for upkeep)

For example try feudal units, animals and chaplains- ( stand together + pack tactics+ bless) + add animal kingship transformation. buffs from wild speakers. its pretty powerful combo for a pure animal damage build. ( if using pack tactics rite of guardian spirit is great)
I find that animal units are mostly cheap strong -mobile damage units with additional mobility and tricks ( status effects - unit with pack tactics buff-spiders with jump and web.)

I have run entire dark culture spider mounted -spider recruiting underground empire which was fun and reasonably competitive.
Undead High culture with shadow tomes is also surprisingly doable.

I would recommend try to playing around with a mystic culture for your next play through with a focus on astral tomes using a mix of astral / elemental summons ( storm or stone) + unit enchantments.
Try going about 50/50 in terms of stack composition -Between culture units and and summons - use the arcane guard unit to sunder resistances. (also watchers are great units)
You might be pleasantly surprised how good magical origin units are in a dedicated build.

[MrWayne]

u're addressing 100 topics at the same time, so its impossible to respond to them all, so i pick the very first one: efficient way to play and synergies that work well together. despite some serious nerfs since the very first days of release, archers build still works very well, dusk hunters for the early game, getting replaced by zephyr archers from tier 2 tome are perfect, because they can be built in ur cities and count as racial units, u can stack them with all the minor transformations turning them into high range, high damage units, that can still take a lot of beating. i've been using almost identical stacks of: hero, 2 zephyr archers, 2 support units (sun priest + chaplain) + phantasm warrior and/or basic shield unit. sadly there's no racial t3 shield unit from a tome (at least i'm not aware of any), so some shieldbearers have to be replaced, since they dont have enough hp in mid to late game to survive a round when multiple units focus them.
long story short: stacking tons of minor transformations might not be the most fun, but certainly the most efficient way to play. high culture is great for this, because it offers +1 range on archers, distraction on support units and even more survivability for the shield units +some on-hit damage on top, but it works basically on any other culture as well.

[Azunai]

Originally posted by MrWayne:

sadly there's no racial t3 shield unit from a tome (at least i'm not aware of any)

the exemplar (formerly known as eagle rider before eagles became a mount option) is a racial shield unit. it comes pretty late (order t4) and it's a t4 unit so it's quite expensive.

iron golems and stone spirtis are very decent tank units even though they don't get the race transformations. bronze golems are also quite tough. many of the really powerful buffs for tanks are enchantments (keepers mark for example) so they also affect units that aren't of your race.

[MrWayne]

indeed, exemplar is, but by the time i can build him, i've already won the game twice xD
i personally prefer to stick to phantasm warriors or generic racial shield units. phantasm warrior counts (for whatever reason) as a racial unit, so it benefits from transformations. its also cheap to summon and can be replaced everywhere, so it can be replaced on the way.

[Stagnetti]

Thanks all for the replies.