OP Strategies Master Thread!

[Vick'sVelmaRub]

I love learning some of the powerful/overpowered strategies for a game to use in higher difficulty levels, so I suppose I'll kick off the list with a ridiculously powerful swordsman build:

Best Kingdom: Altar, air hero helps
Idea: Attack power and initiative
Equipment: All leather, except give them Soldier's boots, for initiative, best sword + shield, a Belt of Speed, and an Amulet of Haste, later.
Traits: Speed, finesse, and charge.

These are just about the only units you'll ever need. Unless, perhaps, you're fighting a dragon. With the kingdom of Altar, they can use rush to get an extra move, and even without Charge these units will always go first in combat. Huge damage to enemies and just the fact that they all usually go at the same time means that you can surround whatever your target is and win in about 2 turns at most. They have higher initiative than most enemies, especially if you use an Air spell to enchant your fortresses for higher initiative.

The icing on the cake is, if, somehow, the enemies survive, they have to deal with the ridiculous number of counterattacks that Altarian swords permit. It is worth noting that swarm bonus also applies to counterattacks. I haven't done it personally, but I suppose you could also run a cloak of shadows with them for additional dodge, but you shouldn't need to. I don't go that far up the Magic tree with Altar, usually.

All types of strategy welcome, guys! :D

[mltnschroeder]

Magnar:
Make sovereign a Mage and have him learn Prodigy 1+2 then Geomancy. Cast Pull of the Earth in combat to perma-knockdown large swarm of enemies (affects 9 tiles and has no cooldown, your Mastery will be impossible to resist). Then work on getting to Death Archmage, so as to be able to cast Sacrifice on select "mana farm" cities that produce lots of pop/turn (Deorcnysse is perfect for this, if you can capture it).

For troops use Slaves only (no upkeep). Arm them however you want according to available resources. Just make sure they at least have a decent weapon: if you are spamming Pull of the Earth in battle, the enemy is never going to hit back anyways (until you learn Geomancy, compensate the slave low initiative penalty with appropriate skills/equipment). Just keep recruiting slaves non-stop from two or more Fortresses enchanted with Heart of Fire. Even if you take some casualties who cares? You have so many troops. Recover Mana by casting Cull the Weak on a few units near the end of battle. There are plenty more where they came from.

Make your second hero also a Mage, then go for Summon 1 then Necromancy and Greater Necromancy. Look for opportunities to attack weak enemy stacks. Go in with a small force, then cast Raise Skeletal Horde in battle and Cull the Weak on all the summoned skellies to replentish your Mana pool.

Unlimited troops, unlimited mana. You win.

[biogoo]

Kingdom of Pariden, Procipine or custom hero (with +exp and -spell cost, otherwise mostly same stuff as Procipine)

Settle on a spot with 3 essences (minimum 2) and go Conclave. Cast Meditation and Growth for mana and quick level 2 city. On city level-ups, choose bonuses that are not related to research (extra essence, free crystal per turn, fire power etc.)
Start research in green to get some extra food (you will need it soon with the growth) and then red for basic armor to upgrade you units. Afterwards, go mostly blue for new spells and huge mana bonuses from alchemy, combined with a green for food here and there.
Procipine is to become a mage. L2 - mage. L3 - +exp from mage tree. L4 - air magic for +exp from enchantment (btw have all enchantments on her from the start, they are free to maintain!), L5 - +exp from general tree, after that go for spell mastery into faster casting into spell damage and take cheaper casting on the way. If you are lucky, you will find an armor with reduced mana cost (may be on a spellcasting hero you can recruit - strip them and then soul steal:)). A custom hero with +exp and -spell cost adds even more power to this, up to the point of free tactical spells (yes, it is completely possible).
Army: you will fight only with Procipine and units, no other heroes. The other heroes will be either stationed in towns or killed for magical traits. There are wery few exceptions to this rule, one of the is the Gallowman, whos mana giving attack is simply OP (spell mastery to avoid resists), not even talking about the undead horde summon. But more than 2 heroes are not a good idea - you need your levels quickly, at least untill you get the spell traits you want, then you can add more heroes. For Procipines stats, stack mostly initiative (sword/dagger, warg). There is almost no need to recruit any units until very later, but keep upgrading your old ones. You can recruit some custom units for the traits though.
Combat: at the start go melee Procipine with your units, few level later just cast fireball (or heal) every turn - you will have the spells from enchantments, no need to learn the skills:)
Strategy: spam Arcane monolith spell to claim territories quickly and efficiently. That way you can realy boost your city and spellcasting ability very quickly without the production and population cost of a pioneer unit.

[forrestomintero]

Necroing hard, but custom faction:
-Altarian race for henchmen
-Trade wanderlust for decalon (aka purchasable spell paths) and get the trait for questmaps
-Get rebel disadvantage to use warriors blood (all trained units get +1 level)

-make whatever kind of sovereign, but give them life magic since you can buy all the other kinds anyway.

-make 1 fort, 1 cloister (mostly for iru elixir) and a lot of towns that all have the almshouse +1 fame generation

-You can now spam henchmen. Always give them the +1 level trait for obvious reasons.

Most useful outcomes of this:
-1. Cheap city administration.
You can crank your taxes up to maximum, and spam your henchmen as city administrators to offset the unrest.more importantly, using them this way means you can have each one invest in the path of either free income or research. Since you are set up to spam henchmen you can infinitely boost your economy without building any cities.

-2: mages
Since decalon works on henchmen you can make them into mages, and they'll be just as strong as any hero. Make a horde of summoners if you want to go pillage the world ;)

-3: trainers
Give them the +10% army experience trait, then get as far up the commander tree as you can until you get the commander xp bonuses. You'll only be able to get a couple of them from free levels, but once he levels up a couple times, he's giving everyone 50% bonus XP. (On top of 10% from altarian blood, 25% from the xp boosting trait in unit design, and 25% from the tutelage spell.) These guys stack, so if you get a few of them, you can gather them all with someone you want to level, and cast destinies insight (the XP spell) for several hundred percent more xp than normal.

[Vick'sVelmaRub]

Actually, thanks for the necro. I totally forgot about this game, but apparently I loved it back in 2014. Now I'm gonna go relearn it and try that strategy :D :D :D