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vs human brains: play 'balance' mods OR do humans, promoted to knights, cavalry rush.
You may try frostlings, 1 mamoth raider per turn rush as well
in all cases - learn to kill the 1st opponent by turn 15-20, then join the battlefield website
always get Fire spec, only research mana baterry, the fly_ing scout, mana abilities and units, build armies of any tier3 units, prefer Necromancers, Arch Druids, Rogues and ArchDruids
Early game you are stuck with your racial units. Pick a strong race for the early game.
-Draconian have great racial governance bonus. Those regrowth cruchers/charges, + 10 Casting Points and eventually the peak of the forefathers gets you another medal on produced units.. so one medal from master guild for machines and another from racial governance and you have uber machines. Also flamer and elders 100% combo with unstable mana core.
-Tigran work nice with those mystic/sungards, the temple gets extra medal to produced units. The sphinx option is a nice to have if you are late on the T3 race.
-Frostling royal guard/witch combo
Or just go Dwarves.
Thats kind of snarky isnt it? He said he was playing the AI and having problems.
One synergy I think works well with dread is air spec to get seeker. Seeker and cannons will just roll up lots of armies and is great for blasting your way into even a well defended town.
I like Human dreadnoughts.
It's a strong combo.
For specialisations, I really like Grey Guard mastery. Cardinal Culling is just amazing when you have a battery of cannons. Shield of Dispassion and Scales of Fortune both benefit ranged attackers, unlike the upgrades from other specialisations. (Albeit not as much in the case of Scales, because it's hard to boost machines' morale.) And extra gold from all cities helps your strong economy even further.
For the third choice, Air, Fire and Wild magic are all appropriate. Seeker on cannons is amazing, though in practice I find I'm usually casting Cardinal Culling in the later game instead.
As for army composition: in the late game, I like to field machine armies. One of each, plus engineers/heroes. Not 100% optimised, but a lot of fun to use, and very effective against the AI. (Keep builders from a Master Guild, so with Repair Machine, behind these stacks to fix them up if they get damaged.)
Early on, I rely on a mix of racial units (preferably cavalry) and musketeers. As human, priests are a priority and I like to have 2 in each stack. (Or 1 and a hero.)
Well the problem vs the AI isn't losing against them, since you can always pay them off to prevent war. More a lack of concept how to properly advance your empire and armies, it just seems by far the least fun and effective class. I always abandoned the map after realizing how far i was behind compared to where i get with other classes at turn 20, 30 etc. just counting the number of towns and armies.
I take it that there is no way to build a self-sufficient army like everyone else, where you put a Hero with healing skills/items and 1-2 supports to keep everyone topped up each turn?
Engineers are just awful, T1 with 30hp that need elite rank before they can even repair anything.
Then there is the army composition, basically i would want something like this:
1x Juggernaut
2x Cannon
3x Golem / Flame Tank / Hero
and uuhm... 5-6 Engineers to reload and repair? ^ ^
Also, how do you guys use the pistols on cavalry effectively? Point of the cavalry is to engage enemy units so your ranged units can do their work, but if you don't engage them in melee they just run your ranged units over. Only situation i can think of if you don't have enough movement points for a charge attack and you're really desperate to get that 1 shot in.
Welcome!
You don't need that many engineers. In my 1 juggernaut/1 cannon/1 flame tank/1 golem/ 2 engineer stacks, you can reload the flame cannon and the juggernaut on the first turn (if needed), reload the cannon and the juggernaut on the second turn, and so shoot every machine every turn.
For repairing, there are the builders I mentioned. They get Repair Machine straight away. And build roads. You need roads. Mobility is your achilles heel, until the Mobilisation ultimate spell.
Engineers aren't awful. They're very versatile and effective units. As long as you remember to keep them FAR out of harm's way. Because boy does the AI love squishing them.
But their Flashbangs are great, their blunderbusses (used very, very carefully) are good for finishing off injured enemies, and Human engineers even get throw net, which is a nice safe way to level them.
They're squishy, though. Mercenary camps and Crystal Trees are a priority. Grey Guard mastery and all the defense boosts Shield of Dispassion gives also helps.
(Did I mention Crystal Trees yet? Hoard these things as dreadnought. All your units except the cannon benefit. Flowrock Quarries are also nice, but those Crystal Trees make a huge difference in keeping your machines alive.)
Actually, pistols can be used even when you're engaged. So you can walk the cavalry right up to the enemy and hit them with a pistol. It's like getting a retaliation-free attack.
It's indeed also helpful when you're just too far away to hit an injured unit, or engaged in a siege or something. Or when you only have 1 action point left after tanking a bunch of attacks in the enemy turn.
Well, being human helps. Cheap settlers + great production on outposts means your expansion is much easier than it is for other races, whilst having Priests and their Healing really helps speed up your initial armies. Musketeer/priest/cavalry stacks, like I mentioned, do great in the early game.
But in general Dreadnoughts do have one of the tougher early games. (Which is why they suffer in competitive multiplayer. That and you can't keep engineers alive there.)
What compensates is that if you tough it out until you get cannons, the game really changes. Cannons give amazing battlefield control, (because you can decide when and where to fight, as the enemy NEEDS to get to your cannons) and it only gets better as you get even more advanced units. By the midgame, Dreadnoughts take fewer casualties than anyone else, because of the sheer power of your ranged attacks.
More than any other race, battles with a dreadnought army feel like a careful fencing match. You only get one good strike before the enemy hits your lines, so you need to make sure they get in just the right place where you can unleash your firepower to maximum effect. And at the same time you need to make sure you will survive the inevitable counterattack by the crippled survivors, whilst you withdraw and reload.
Then, when you get a bunch of Dread stacks together, it can just become hilarious how the enemy tries to charge your lines, only to get blasted to shreds. (If you move your cannons right before firing, you can destroy the closest enemy whilst the farther-away supporting stacks need more time to walk across the battlefield.)
And sieges are amazing fun. Where Warlords might dread having to go up against well-defended walls, you get to turn those "defenses" into death-traps. It's not terribly sporting versus the AI, but I do enjoy watching them spill out of the gates, desperately trying to get to grips with my artillery before they're blasted to smithereens, only to discover that their formation now fits perfectly under a flame tanks' area of effect.
On, and don't forget about your immunities either. Your very presence essentially no-sells Theocrats and Necromancers, and to a lesser extent Goblins. Poison? Spirit damage? Ghouls? Mind control? What are these things of which you speak?
Meanwhile, you don't have many weaknesses outside the already mentioned lack of repairs and slower early game. Cardinal Culling makes sure that "not many" becomes "virtually none" as even wraiths and reapers start to feel the pain of a cannon ball in the face.
I love playing dreadnought. It's not the easiest class, but it's definitely the flashiest. (Flash-bangiest? Okay, that's terrible.)
expansionist and master wind are the specialisations.
start underground and use dwarf miners to get a little extra gold by sending them to rubble piles.
I rely strongly at musketiers and the fire priests at start for town defense, later i sprinkle some cannons in the town defenses, together with a golem or 2 or Firstborns.
My first priority is to seek out good settlement spots with crystal trees, tomes of wisdom and first above all the stonecliffs for better machine units.
For the repair thing i ignore engeniers completly. i depend on the heros with there big toolkit and on masterguild build builders (one per offensive army stack)
At offensiv army stacks i bring in 2 Firstborn and 2 Big battletanks, and the alredy named builder. last slot is for a hero or something that seems most fit. depending on enemys sometimes its one 1 fristborn and 3 Biggys.
speaking about heroes, when my dreadnought heros lead an offensive army they are the only heroes i dont use mainly to decimate the enemy directly but to support the hell out of my units with rapid reload and to repair or even reconstruct my units in battle.
So in a machine-focused army they just take up a valuable spot for a (squishy) Engineer. Which leaves them with the organic armies made up from race and dwelling units, who get absolutely no empire bonuses except the +1 def to armored units.
So do you just say "require another hero" for 100 turns until you got more than 1 Dreadnought ?
Well now i started with a Human DN + Grey Guard Master + Air, in the beginning it was the same like previous attempts. I think one of the reasons why everything is so slow, you have nothing to boost happiness. So you have to build public baths + hospitals everywhere and even then don't reach Cheerful. Grey Guard makes this even worse since you never get the temporary buffs for becoming more good/evil.
Also the Mana Fuel Cells are way too expensive, you need a Shrine + Temple just to pay the costs. And if you don't reach a breakpoint in production output, this doesn't even do anything.
For research you don't get any bonuses at all, so you have to build Library + Observatory in every town as well (or fall behind the AI).
You also have nothing to convert or summon troops out on the field, and you don't have cheap mass-able and specialized units like the Warlord has. So you have to produce all your units at home, but as mentioned it's really slow to build them due to lacking happiness in your cities.
And the class units you can build are, simply said, not very good. In particular the Golem can barely survive 1 turn while tanking some T3-4 units.
Meanwhile i built the first Juggernaut before turn 50. I still don't get it - it is fun to shoot into some T1-2 units, but even an unbuffed recruit Shock Trooper only takes 10-15 damage per shot. That is not even taking into account that you need a hero or engineer to reload each turn.
Cannons are great if you have room to kite, but the Juggernaut and Flame Tanks are just awful compared to other classes.
And the solution to rely more on racial units doesn't seem acceptable to me, because then any other class does a better job anyways.
Disagree.
The Flame Tank is the single most damaging unit in my armies, at least against enemies without fire resistance. If you position it right, it can just hit so many enemies at once, and it deals a huge chunk of fire damage. Many enemies have lower resistance than defence. Also, you can fire every turn (after the first) without needing engineers.
The Juggernaut, meanwhile, deals much more damage than the cannon with its mortar if you are at short range. It's less useful for sniping because the cannon doesn't get the range penalty, but when you can hit a number of enemies at once, it's devastating.
Well, no. An unbuffed shocktrooper at close range takes 27-41 damage from an unbuffed recruit juggernaut mortar. That hurts a 75 hitpoint unit.
More importantly, though, it's your tank. Not literally, I mean. But these things take a ton of effort to destroy. 15 defense, 110 hitpoints, and reinforced. And that's out of the box. With Shield of Dispassion, a city with a crystal tree and trained at bronze medal, it's 20 defense and 126 hitpoints. 136 if you also have a flowrock quarry. (In comparison: Manticores have 85 hitpoints, 100 with Thoroughbred Mounts, and 13 defence. With the same upgrades they'd get 16.)
So, what I do as the enemy closes in is: fire the cannons and flame tank, then move the juggernaut ahead of the rest so it can shoot its mortar at close range. Then, the enemy will inevitably gang up on the juggernauts. Which survives because of its huge defense. And then it unleashes the broadside. (Which, by itself, is rather underwhelming, but in these circumstances it can add up.)
What I like about the dreadnought army is that none of the machines invalidate one another. You can't replace the cannon with more juggernauts, or you'll lose long-range siege capability. You can't replace the Flame Tank with another cannon, or you'll lose the ability to deal with massed charges.
The other thing to note about the dreadnought's weapons is that they're really geared for massed firepower. 1 dreadnought stack against 1 enemy stack does okay, but will take damage as the enemy gets through the first barrage with some survivors.
But 2 stacks against 2 will start making the dreadnought's AoE attacks more effective, because more enemies will be clumped together, and by concentrating your firepower you can utterly annihilate the first line before the second group gets to you. With 3 against 3 stacks, even more so.
So in conclusion: Your units are specialised. Use them for what they are good at. Get the Juggernaut in close range, where it will deal big damage and stay alive thanks to its armour. Have the flame tank hit clumped enemies. Keep the cannon well back, sniping. And have the engineers take out life insurance.
Then, when you mass your stacks together, the effectiveness of your firepower starts to multiply, until you can flatten entire armies in one massed salvo. Wait until you can see the whites of their eyes!
Unless the enemy has stacks of Global Assaulting Tigran Manticore Riders, in which case you had better dial the tow-truck. Still, that's what they invented Cardinal Culling for.
Well i only just built the first Juggernaut, cleared some leftover camps in my domain with it. Gonna see how it goes in legendary/mythical dungeons and other players after that.
Still the issue that everything takes *forever* to build and walk/roll to the frontlines, so much easier for other classes who can either summon - or at least fly with - their high-end units ;-)
True. That's the big dreadnought weakness, really.
Two things help: Firstly, all those builders you have to keep your guys repaired can also put down roads everywhere. Infrastructure is a must for dreadnought.
Secondly, the Great Mobilisation ultimate. Suddenly, it feels as if your units are racing instead of crawling to the front lines. Sure, it comes late. But when you get it, that +8 moves, + 2 def, res & damage makes a really big difference. Combined with the Logistics research, that's 18 hexes a turn over your roads.
Also, though this isn't really a solution per se, it also helps to produce units continually from those cities that have the good mystic city upgrades. That way, even if it takes 5 turns for your units to reach the front line, after 5 turns you'll be getting 1 unit a turn just as if you summoned them. It doesn't allow for quick reaction to attacks from unexpected angles, but it certainly helps to steamroll the opposition.
If at all possible, I like to set my empire up so that a cluster of 3-4 cities can produce a full 6 stack of upgraded units every 2 turns or so. I set rally points so they gather in one spot. Then, I'll have a full stack arriving at the front lines every other turn. This also works great for Warlords and Theocrats or even Necromancers who haven't broken their economy yet by ghouling everything. It even limits the need for garrisons, because with all these stacks of reinforcements marching continuously through my territory, it's the easiest thing in the world to diverge a stack or two to a trouble spot.
Of course, this is another late-game solution. Before turn 50 I won't be producing nearly enough units due to lack of infrastructure and gold.
1x Juggernaut
2x Cannon
1x Engineer
1x DN hero
1x Golem
Wizard Tower with two Horrors was really easy - they died from 1 cannon shot each, mortar in the face and broadside. Didn't understand that the mortar also reloads itself after 1 turn, so you don't have to sit around like the Musketeers. And using him as an offensive tank does actually work pretty good.
The Golem is a wasted slot, just unlocked the Cthonic Guardian who might do a better job as 2nd tank.
Well thanks Iguana for helping me to understand the class better ;-)
Also thanks for the other replies, didn't really get to answer everything.
Well the Dwarves look like pretty good Dreadnoughts, that's the race i tried to play before switching to Human. But since their units (including the Settler) cost 10% more, i definitely would put them after Humans. That and the missing +20 production bonus does really slow down your expansion.
Still great if you can absorb them and boost their Governance, although due to Suppress Nature you don't have to worry about climate types anyways (like building Underground is identical to Temperate).
The golem is definitely an optional unit. I sometimes replace it with a second flame-tank or cannon.
Still, don't underestimate buffed golems. That Chthonic Guardian? A golem can and will kick its feathery behind, nevermind that it's tier 2 versus tier 4.
With all the upgrade structures in place, you can build gold medal golems in human cities. With the aformentioned upgrades in place, they have 90 hitpoints, 21 defence and 12 resistance fresh from the production lines. That' comparable to an upgraded Juggernaut.
More importantly, they have Tireless, Guard Breaker and Defender. That means that in guard mode, your freshly produced golem goes up to 29 defence and 16 resistance, if I'm doing my calculations correctly. (Don't have a savegame with such elite golems handy, sadly. Not sure how rounding works with defender, so it might be he gets more resistance.)
That makes them very, very good defenders in the late game. Even tier 4 units won't punch through those stats.
Now, admittedly it might be more important to bolster your firepower even further, but sometimes it is very helpful to have a tough melee unit locking down an enemy or two.