Leader Builds: The Orc Warlord

[Guardin' Gnome Security]

The most effective class builds I've come across are as follows:
Orc Warlord with a specialization in Shadowborn Adept and two levels of either Destruction or Fire. The Orc is pretty much tailor-made for warlord because of the high health and extra melee damage, not to mention their Tier III unit, the Orc Shock Trooper, is one of the most powerful units in the game. By playing with a Shadowborn Adept specialization, they can also gain Life Steal, a valuable ability for any melee unit and if you decide to go for Shadowborn Mastery, you can use the Embraced by Shadows spell to give them an increased attack and resistence. Best way to take full advantage is to build them in a city with access to a Crystal Tree, Lich's Castle, and Dungeon; the Crystal Tree adds +2 Defense and +1 Resistence to all armored units, one of which is the shock trooper, the Lich's Castle gives all infantry (and monsters) fear strike enabling them to discourage attackers or break defensive formations, particularly since they have the Guard Breaker and Overbear abilities. Lastly, a Dungeon adds significant damage to all infantry and, if you have not cast the Warlord's Global Assault, gives your Shock Troopers Killing Momentum, allowing them to attack two units per round if they kill the first unit succesfully. The main disadvantage with this strategy is if they face a heavily spell based faction, particularly Sorcerers, who have shield spells. The Static Shield is probably the best counter to this strategy as Orc Shock Troopers have relativly low Resistence and Static Shield has a good chance of stunning them, preventing them from retaliating or attacking.
Another viable strategy with the Orc Warlord is the Phalanx, particularly if they are built in a city with the aforementioned Crystal Tree and access to Ancient Ruins and a Temple of the Sphinx. Ancient Ruins unlocks the Pillar of the Stylites which gives all pikemen units Projectile Resistance and +2 Spirit Damage and the Temple of the Sphinx unlocks the Solar Spire granting all pikemen units Blinding Aura and +2 Defense. Once again you run into the problem with the Static Shield, but otherwise you have a highly armores army that's good against almost everything. Their major disadvantage is that, unlike the Shock Trooper, they don't have either Killing Momentum, or the ability to climb walls. The best strategy to use with them is to walk up to enemy units and put them in guard so that the enemy has to either attack, or run away and take retaliation.
As far as Specializations go, I have already stated the use of the Shadowborn skills, but there are other skills to take into consideration. Destruction is useful largely due to the Wreck spell (100% Weakness to Blight and Physical damage vs target boat, machine, or undead) and Disintegrate (A physical damage based instant kill spell). However, fire is also useful due to the Hellfire Spell (All units on map take fire damage) and Skin of Oil which lowers enemy unit's Moral, Defense, and Resistance to fire. In addition to this, Tropical Empire spreads Tropical terrain which Orcs take no moral penalties on, unlike Frostling, Goblins, Elves, etc. It could be benficial to play as a Grey Guard, particularly because of the Shield spell which increases all unit's Defense and Resistancee and the Scales of Fortune spell which doubles the chances of Critical Strikes, but I personally enjoy Shadowborn more.

Note: This is based entirely upon my experience and opinion, I do not claim any expertise in this matter and would welcome any input.

[Ekimmak]

If I were facing large armies like this, I'd hide behind city walls, use Twisting Roots to slow down the approaching army, and pummel them with as many ranged attacks as I can fit into the battlements. Aside from disjuncting the spell, how would you deal with that?

[Black Hammer]

He'd probably roll with the Projectile Resistance Phalanxes, then.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

First.
Please structure your post better, please.
I must have reread the same part three times(it is hard to tell where one part end and the other begin)
Second: warlord being overpowered is nothing new.
The reason for that is that age of wonders 3 focuses on armies at the expense of everything else.
So natural the class that boost armies is strongest.
(i am based)
Third.
I see two counters to your stratagy:

1: hit your economy, moral, cities etc.
Yes your troops are powerfull but both rogue and archdruid will just outmanuver you.
Dreadnought has the best defendsive in the game and can simple park there musketeers and cannons on walls turning your units into swiss cheece.
Sorceror in theory could chain lighting you you to death but in pratice chain lighting doesnt hurt that much and is unspammable do to his high cost.
Sorceror will probley stun lock you indefinityl.

2:The biggest weakness i can find in your stratagy is that it relies on numbers.
Numbers mean alot of upkeep.
Take away the means to pay troops seem to be the best way to deal with this.

(Please keep in mind that i am based.)

[Noble Ten]

Well Orcs were kinda made for Melee, so its not suprising. A thing of note tho. Shock Troopers get a fear strike from the Orc Military tree. I only recall fighting an AI Ord Warlord once as warlord, and when I siege him with my own Philanxs,T2 Cavalry and 1or 2 nuetral angels, a battle I felt I should of won, I lost to his Shock troops and Philanxs because just about all my troops got feared and ran away giving flank attacks for free. Luckily it wasnt my main armies, otherwise my T3 knights with strong will would of had no problem. I'd imagen Garrisons Honour was helping him out too in that situation.

But I find mysellf Human Warlord as my favourit class. Its an alrounder race, and doesnt suffer from any particular weakness. Its military tree works suprising well for Knight armies (cavalry 50% to exp, All human cav units including heros get +2 damage, all human units get +1 to almost all stats as the final skill on the tree.). So finding an area taht has Enchanted army and grove is awesome. Gives them Fast healing, Free movement and High moral. High moral is very benifical combinded with Scales of Fortune. As I play Grey Guard Master and Expansion which sees my cities grow quick (with a further added farm growth bonus from Greyguard).

I can use the fast growing cities to produce early on plenty of Civic guard defenders, that all come with nets thanks to the Human military tree. That holds me early game until I can get the knights pumping out. If I am low on coin, I just pump out the T2 Cavalry, since they are alot cheaper and faster to build (keeps it at 1 turn) and they evolve later on. If I got the coin to spurge, its straight to T3 Knights. Tho sometimes its worth just mass producing Cavalry while having the wealthy empire bonus counting to Scales of Fortune. Draft, High moral and wealthy empire, thats 500 moral right there. T4 angel buffs another +300, or hero with a bard item is another +300. Sorta get the picture how my T3 knights can even handle T4 ^_~

[Guardin' Gnome Security]

Well turns out that a theocrat can do a number even against superior numbers. The Word of God spell is...devestating to say the least, particulalry if you're playing Orcs. I now remember why I typically played with two levels of Destruction, the Wreck spell is one of the few effective countermeasures to the Ark of Smiting unless you have really, REALLY powerful ranged units. Turns out the Ark can get static shield without a spell in place so melee units are screwed.

In response to Ekinmak: The Pillar of the Stylites gives Projectile Resistence but if you had Horned Gods, the Twisting Roots strtegy would work pretty well. Just use a whole lot of Call Lightning.

In response to Malaficus Shaikan: Yes, a Dreadnought on defense with musketeers and cannons would be an incredibly effective strategy. Best way I can think of to break through would be to send a wall of arbredd in first as damage sponges so that the musketeers and cannons are forced to reload and then move my soldiers (those with wall climbing) up onto the walls. fyou had an army of engineers backing your musketters and cannon up thugh, this strategy would be pretty inefficient. Druid would easily defend their cities and could probably beat most attacks beacuse of their defensive spells, particularly if they had chosen Earth adept and had a Flowstone Quarry and/or Crypt nearby. Sorcerer as a stated before could use static shield on any number of their units and if they summoned Eldritch Horrors, well things could easily get ugly for the Warlord.

In response to Noble Tenshi: The Knight Strategy would work well against pretty much every group except for the Phalanx. You could probably solve this by throwing in some Elite ranked Longswordsman with their Guardbreaker ability.

[Ekimmak]

Oh, yes. Horned Gods + Twisting Roots.

I just took on a 54 - 6 army invading my lands, and won, because I got twisting roots, and a few Horned Gods. I'd have gotten through with zero casualties if not for the jerk getting a critical disjunction, preventing me from healing my men, but that said, the lack of wall-climbing on phalanxes makes them very easy to bottleneck.

[Black Hammer]

The complication of dealing with a warlord usually comes down to their ability to produce both more AND higher ranked troops than the other classes.

Which is why Shadow Stalkers are not OP. Compared to other units in isolation, they are OP. Compared to the synergies available to other classes, well, Rogue needs something to compete.

[Nabeghlavi]

Any thoughts on Tigran Warlords? I've been trying them out and so far have enjoyed it. They get a bonus to gold production with a warlord's already strong economy. Their units won't have as many hp as orcs but berserkers get the pounce ability which is pretty nasty. They also climb walls really well and that can elimate the need for slow siege engines. While not warlord exclusive, giving their prowler units nets (early racial upgrade) can give you some versatility and they're pretty cheap to produce. Their sphinx gives you a solid of range attack with lesser flying.

[Guardin' Gnome Security]

Tigran Warlord are pretty good, especially if you go Grey Guard. The Tigran Deity racial Governance is a 100% increase in critical strike chances, the Grey Guard scales of fortune spellngives an additional 100% bonus. If you stack the draft on top of that and keep your soldiers happy, you should be able to keep getting criticals on a relativly consistent basis. Aslo, Tigran Beserkers are probably the best in the game; they can inflict bleeding wounds like other beserkers, but they also are Bloodthirsty and do additional damage against bleeding units, plus they have pounce and improved wall climbing.

[Rafein]

I like running Human Dreadnaughts.

Love Human's Knights, and Dreads make them cheaper, more armor, and gives them Guns to pick off the Pikemen at range. THen grab Human's Racial Governence +50% and +2 damage to Calv, and it's fun.

THen Spice in the Machines, with their awsome resistances, to handle Seiges/Morale Debuffers, and it's GG

[CmdrJohnGimbal@EliteDangerous]

In reference to Warlord Class specifically, Orc was my favorite because the Spearmen are really good and ofcourse the Knights. I stopped playing Orc though for Dwarf. The reason being that the Dwarf get fire priests which are really good for early game against the environment. Orcs are stuck with blight which is often negated or useless in dungeons. The Dwarves also have resistance and strange terrain tolerance. I was also partial to the amount of damage Dwarf Archers get at their maximum movement range. Maybe Orcs are better now with the War Cry thing but I'm finding priests to be really important and I'm avoiding a race like Draconian because there's too much fire dependence.

I was watching gameplay of the Tigrans because I don't have the expansion and they look especially strong. Do they have any significant tradeoffs or are they still being balanced?

[Nabeghlavi]

Originally posted by NewYokosukaHarborForkliftRacer:

I was watching gameplay of the Tigrans because I don't have the expansion and they look especially strong. Do they have any significant tradeoffs or are they still being balanced?

There's some drawbacks to the Tigrans. I would say they're pretty balanced and not overpowered. The main thing I noticed was that their racial units are a bit more fragile than most. You need to hit hard and strike fast, hopefully killing the enemy before they get to strike back. While pounce helps, that isn't always a realistic strategy, especially for big fights. The AI also seems to do a rather poor job in auto-combat with them, often losing more units than it seems it should. The race as a whole gets +5 gold per city, but -1 resistance and they get a 40% spirit resistance, -20% frost weakness.

Also, their T3 is not my favorite. It's versatile, but it's just not as deadly or fearsome as some of the other races' T3s. It starts with only 60 hp and the ranged attack shoots only in direct lines every second turn with a short range. It's useful, but not as durable or deadly as say, human knights, dwarven firstborn, or orc shocktroopers.

[Guardin' Gnome Security]

"Also, their T3 is not my favorite. It's versatile, but it's just not as deadly or fearsome as some of the other races' T3s. It starts with only 60 hp and the ranged attack shoots only in direct lines every second turn with a short range. It's useful, but not as durable or deadly as say, human knights, dwarven firstborn, or orc shocktroopers. "-Submarine Argument

While the Sphinx isn't as powerful in a strait up fight as say a Shock Trooper or Knight, they do have advantages. Their strait line attack is devestating against a tight group of infantry, particularly if you use it to flank them. They're irregulars, not infantry or cavalry and are best if used to eaken an enemy for your main force.

[DJTron]

I like goblin Necros a lot. the strategy revolves around butchers a lot for early game. (if you have shadowborn your butchers can have life drain) They can even shred through manticore riders, one of the best tier 4s in the game. and even if one dies you just ressurect it with your reanimators. I've won battles where I should have normally lost units but won with hardly any damage taken. I really recomend you try it if you have eternal lords

[Guardin' Gnome Security]

I have done the goblin necro with Shadowborn; you're right, they are fun, especially since the butchers can get three levels of lifedrain stacked and can get built witha promotion to expert. I'd recomend building them in a city with access to Ancient Ruins and the Temple of the Sphinx in order to get increased defense and a good counter to other undead (ancient ruins grants pillar of stalites which equals spirit damage!).