I feel stuck to one strategy because it's so strong.

[Fantasy Fan]

i've been playing with custom leader and faction based on maximizing initiative. Wanderlust, Quick, Master Scouts, No Ranged Weapons, Lucky. Air Apprentice, Life Apprentice, Brilliant, Tactician, Procipinee's Crown, Scholar profession, Scarred + Regeneration Enchantment on sovereign to negate the scarred penalty. I often kill the other army without taking damage, and to negate the damage I do take, I get heal at level 3 on my sovereign, hopefully find the +50% healing accessory, and take compassion in the mage tree for +50% to heals. I also work toward the -1 casting time trait so i can spam wellspring healing my entire army every turn with a maxed initiative hasted leader. I normally take a water apprentice second hero and give Mantle of Oceans to my leader for -40% tactical spells cost too. Cloud Walk is a priority so I can defend my entire kingdom with 1 or 2 uber stacks.

I am hesitant to do anything differently because of how strong maxed initiative is. I don't see anything else being anywhere near as powerful as this. Does anyone have some ideas on other, different styles of play that are very strong? I like the idea of using The Decalon and possibly Enchanters, but it seems to sacrifice too much potency. Maybe I'm doing it wrong? Any tips would help. Thanks.

[strigvir]

Power players must suffer.

[Serris]

My favorite strategy centers on a custom Undead faction with Death Worship and a penalty of one's personal preference. I chose Rebels because I like big maps with lots of shards, and that makes it very easy to virtually erase all unrest with this strategy. The only cheating I do is that I regenerate the first turn until I find a tile with 3 essence, or 4 if I'm incredibly lucky. I use Corrupt on every single shard that I get. One will enable Morrigan's Call, and every successive one will further increase growth. Without relying on crops, growth never diminishes based on surpluses, and gets better and better. Getting Level 5 settlements is easy, and 3 Fortresses with Obsidian Thrones and Prisons will work wonders for unrest. Towns are virtually worthless, so Fortresses are abundant for fast, aggressive games, and Conclaves are abundant for magical, research based games. No wages means huge armies are as feasible as your production pipeline. Get a fire mage, air mage, and earth mage if you want to empower your troops, but try to get as many Death magicians as possible. Making and eating Death Shards will drive Wither's power through the roof. It's a cheap, cast anywhere visible spell that can be used on settlements and neuters the kind of big armies that most other players field. Make every military unit a custom design with the one that adds one to your unit with every kill like Butchermen. Early game, it allows full 6 person units right out of the gate. Late game, it literally halves the resource requirements of late game gear, allowing double the production. As wither grows stupefyingly good and your mana ratchets up (which it definitely will, as wither/Ceresea's Dirge/Armies will do most of the heaviest lifting), summon skeleton armies to nab far-away outposts or weakly defended settlements. Or summon several and throw them at better fortified ones.

[Diamondeye]

There are many strategies for this game. I think that is its best feature. Different play styles favor different strategies.

My current approach is to out produce everyone, It is the "Snowball overpower approach".

I use Mancers to get a faster start then everyone else. And then aggressivly scout the city positions and use roadbuilders to get settlers to spots the AI would have taken. I build around 5-6 Fortresses so I can take atleast 4 to the Prison improvement. That takes care of unrest in my Kingdom. I then build about 7 armies of buffed up soldiers and do what I want the rest of the game. Mancers' armies on horses travel five squares per turn, and 20 on the roads. With all the Shards I have I can cast Stategic Spells on anything that is threatening.

So, for me, taming the map is the game, not defeating the AI factions.

I like these kinds of posts because I want to see and try what others have found successful.

[StarFishon]

i back after short break(couple of months) and all the balance is great(no crushes too)

so what you build first guys? city or fortresess? in most of the time i start with city...

[BlackSmokeDMax]

For me it all depends on number of Essence available in first city. High number in first city= fortress, none=town, 1 or 2= depends on other numbers as to what it'll be, either town on conclave.

[casezulu]

I usually start with a Fortress for the big boost to early production, 2-3 essence is best so I can add Enchanted Hammers, Arcane Forge and Set in Stone.

Decalon, Scouts and Enchanters so every city can have at least one essence which starts as Ench Hammers and can change later on. Hero is usually Beastmaster with weak deficit and Brilliant, Attunement and Wealthy positives. I always pick Life and add other schools thru Decalon which doesn't offer the Life book.

[StarFishon]

for me its like this:
4-5 material is fortress
4-5 - food is city
all else are research citys...
as for essence:
1 - buid +1 enchanted hammers
2 - mana +prer essence(in some cases city grow)
3 - money + per essence

[Brewskin]

Copied from an old post, had a lot of fun with this build:

Custom Faction: The Lords of Cheese

This custom faction build is designed to abuse the available XP in the game, and may cause violent gastric distress in those allergic to dairy products.


Kingdom of Mighty Heroes, aka The Lords of Cheese



Race: Altar(Rush, 10% XP bonus, Henchmen). The Altar give you the two best abilities to go with this build, hands down. The 10% bonus doesn't seem like a lot, but you have it from the beginning of the game, so it adds up, and as for Henchmen, they are the Swiss Army Knife of Elemental, they can do it all. Well, almost all, they can't gain access to the full Life school, but via spellbooks, they can learn any spells from the other 4 schools. Rush helps with getting in that often crucial first strike, or in position for an impale. IMO, the best rounded race in the game.


Faction Traits:

Strengths - Heroic(double XP from quests), Wanderlust(quest maps), Warrior Caste(+1 level for trained units). Heroic and Wanderlust feed off of each other quite nicely, particularly once you get some extra coin on hand. Simply spam quest maps until you have everyone at whatever level blows your dress up. Warrior Caste ensures your Henchmen start out useful; though some don't like the trait, it's worth the point for this build. I personally thought Heroic was overcosted at 2 points, but with this build I'm not so sure of that.


Weakness - Rebels(+10% unrest). The extra unrest can be easily dealt with by many factors, from buildings to good city placement, and once you get Henchmen, by your own custom Administrators.


Sovereign:

This build is for a Mage or Commander path, and can definitely be tinkered with. The Air school(for Tutelage), General and Brilliant are the key parts. For a Commander build, I'd suggest possibly switching Attunement out for Wealthy, to purchase some early Quest Maps.

Attributes - Air Disciple. This gives you immediate use of the Tutelage enchantment, which you should cast before doing anything that might gain you XP. It also grants you Haste, Evade(which should be cast before your first fight, and might help you survive an early Bacco encounter), Aura of Grace for your troop center, and Propaganda, to get that gildar flowing.

Profession - General. (25% more XP) Still more XP abuse, the smell of cheese hangs in the air.

Talents - Attunement(+2 mana per season), Brilliant(+10% xp, +2 spell mastery per level), Tactician(+1 to army's initiative) Bonus mana from the beginning of the game is a good thing, and going first is a very good thing. Brilliant's Spell Mastery is a bonus itself, would be worth taking for the XP boost alone.

Equipment - Procipinee's Crown(no upkeep for enchantments) Free enchantments leaves a lot of mana for blowing stuff up.

Weakness - Clumsy(occasionally smacks the ♥♥♥♥ out of his buddies if adjacent) Stay out of combat, and if you have to fight, don't get next to your own dudes. Rarely has this ever caused me a problem.


Comments:


If you prefer the one mighty demigod like hero, go the Mage path, and concentrate on building Henchmen. You'll need to steal spellbooks from champions, or purchase them from a friendly faction with the Decalon. A Commander path will mean more XP for the rest of your party, so is more suitable for those who want to group their heroes together.

You'll want to grab all of the XP boosting traits first, and don't forget to grab Knowledge if you are playing as a Mage. After that it's all up to your style of buttkicking.

Don't stop fighting, but try not to clear every lair you come across. Those spawns are good training for new heroes/henchmen, wait to clear them when you have to settle the area, or the AI is going to. I play with Dense everything as settings, so rarely run out of critters too early. Of course, the larger the map, the more stuff to slay.

Try to fight enemies a level higher than your army, as you'll recieve a significantly larger amount of XP; thus the higher the world difficulty, the more XP you'll receive from fights.

Typically, I research the first two tiers of the Civ line, grab Leather and Drills from War, then beeline Henchmen. After that it's really about your play style. but the teleport spells Call of the Titans and Cloud Walk, Tireless March, as well as the Destiny spells can be very useful, and should be gotten sooner rather than later. As you already are schooled in Air magic, getting Air Archmage for Tornado is a gamebreaker.

Cast Tutelage on anyone you want to advance a wee bit faster if you can afford the mana, especially good to get those henchmen up to Trainer 4.

Henchmen are your own customisable heroes. I make at least one Commander with the trainer path for every army, and give them the Veteran(+1 level), Potential(+25% XP) and Bard(+10% to army's XP) traits at creation, take the 3 general Potential traits(+60% XP), then beeline them down the Trainer branch for an additional 40% to the army's xp. Cheese oozes from their pores.

Other henchmen can be focused as administrators, and crush any shred of unrest you may still have, or be designated for road building. If you have access to spellbooks, make your own mages, without wasting a trait slot on the lesser spellbooks available in unit design.

Remember, Henchmen can be equipped just as any champion, so no need to be lugging all that extra loot around, pass it on to them. They won't say thank you, but you'll appreciate it. Also, keep in mind that they do cost fame, but odds are you'll be swimming in it. With Warrior Caste and Veteran, they'll start at least 2 levels higher, from a fully developed fortress that's level 6 from the start.

Outside of the traits and spells outlined here, there are also a few items that increase XP gain, make sure they go where most needed if you get lucky and find one of them.

Building the Adventurer's Guild and the War College should also be priorities, for still more XP gain, though very slow, it adds up.

For a final, heaping helping of cheesy goodness, build a custom AI faction with The Decalon and Wanderlust, and buy what you need from them. This allows you to switch the point in faction creation from Wanderlust to something different, maybe add a Fire staff to your Sovereign. Downside is you'll have to protect them, and wait until they research the appropriate techs, so this isn't really optimal. Just really cheesy.

Plenty of room for other tinkering with this build, faction traits and sovereign's as well. Other races may not have Henchmen, but the Mancer's +1 to movement means more fights per turn, which translates to quicker advancement, while the Wraith's dodge bonus can seriously increase your survivability. Combining other traits with some of the key elements listed here, you should be able to adapt this to fit any choice of profession, race or playstyle.

Hope ya'll enjoyed reading this, and that someone finds it useful, even folks who don't like cheese.

[Fugitive Unknown]

Another funny thing about the undead is that you don't HAVE to give them death magic, or make them undead.

If you don't take the undead trait, you get regular growth, but you still get their excelent troop abilities (terror, spectral for females, and of course, recruit when you kill).

A Noble Kingdom of Undead with sovereign's call can expand to two or three cities very, VERY fast, and then start concentrating on throwing out an army of them.

[kevinrochelle1]

There are a myriad of ways to play the game, especially at the lower difficulties. On insane/insane I have found a few combos that are very powerful:

1) Beastlord + anything. Beastlord is by far the most powerful profession, as most maps are filled with cave bears (primo), harridans/giant rock spiders (also primo), and lots of regular bears as needed. Most effective strategy with bear (maul) armies is to start 2 air, get titans breath pronto. prone+maul can kill deadly armies with a couple bears if you stick with man-sized enemies. But its pretty broken. It allows you to run on zero tax rate until the late midgame as you generally only need a few mages/archers to that point. Beastlord also pretty much invalidates insane world difficulty, I do not use it anymore fun as it is to have 2-3 full stacks of bears/spiders on turn 50.

2) Flesh covered Tome/Decalon The FCT is an incredibly powerful pick, one I only skip if I am playing a melee Sov. For a mage w raise skeleton it is +20 mana every battle, PLUS if you take the decalon as well (the best combo in my opinion) - you get to basically have emergency mana AS NEEDED. Just spam scouts early (you should anyway), and any time you need mana...arcane monolith some far away spot with a node and consume it for 200...so 150 profit. Arcane monolith, especially once you get roads to outposts, is a very powerful spell - as good as the spellbooks themselves (you only need Earth 1 and Fire 2 so champs can cover that - and you can eat champions for the air and water books which you need on Sov personally). Without the decalon, I would rate the spellbooks thusly:

Life is the most powerful school, there is really no replacement for healing, especially with compassion+wellspring later on - I have had some laughable battles I never should have won just by rotating units on a webbed or slowed uber mob then wellspringing them all after the massive splash hit. The second (heal) and third (shrink) life books are extremely good, and call to arms is a fantastic way to turn mana into troops instead of crappy summoned creatures. Good choice for Sov.

Air is the next most powerful school, and the best at endgame. It is pretty average until book 4 and 5 but those are game-changing books. Teleport + titans breath is the best book 4 for sure, and tornado is just stupid good and really should not even be in the game. This is the I-win-the-endgame-always school of magic. Good choice for Sov.

Death is just not as good as life, but still very useful and supreme at killing high-defense mobs like guardian statues, troll warriors, dragons, etc. It is very synergized with archery (mages have no use for curse and remember archers are cheap compared to crystal for mages) and has some excellent battlefield debuffs (mass curse,wither). However, the death faction traits have generally superior spells to the death spellbooks and if you play empire it seems half of the heroes have death spellbooks so...when I go empire these days I never waste picks on death books, I usually will get wealth/brilliant and 2air+ a water or 2

Water is a curious school, because most of it is fairly useless but it has some real gems. Mantle of Oceans is the best buff in game - 40% off tactical spell costs is huge. Slow is a very good spell for the mana, as is freeze. Blizzard can make quite a few fights trivial as well. I always get 3 water for Mantle at some point, and hardly ever get the 4th (titans breath or fireball + another turn almost always beats blizzard). A pretty good pick for Sov due to slow and the fact that if you are a mage, you have to get mantle at some point.

Fire is the direct damage school of course, and is notable for being high mana cost and low effectiveness UNTIL you get a bunch of fire shards. Then it is murder on wheels with fireball spam, and all of your units are getting crazy attack bonuses from heart of fire. It sucks at the start, I never start with it but it DOES let you easily nuke troops once you get aclarity (blizzard still takes a turn even with aclarity). I generally decide after scouting the map and seeing how many fire nodes I can get whether I will bother with fire books (hardly ever). Like earth magic, champs can handle the strategic spells. Remember you can put a buff on any champ/sov to be able to cast fireball.

Earth is the support school. Has great unit buffs (natures cloak and stoneskin) and the almighty city production spells. You can make a case for starting every game with 1 earth book on Sov for hammers - it makes that much of a difference. I just always pick the first earth champion I see, since I do not have much use for the rest of the school and just need hammers usually. However the raise/lower land spells on a champion come in VERY handy sometimes for getting "around" the units of an ally, or connecting 2 land masses (at 5 mana per you can send a few pioneers and build a hell of a bridge if you want). Still - earth is weak, never get 2 books at start if you get it at all.



3) Ability builds. The initative build mentioned above is one - another is Ironeer + every hp bonus trait + infirmaries + life magic = melees with just retarded ass hp - you can hang with the insane double hp AI units.

General things: Ranged units are far superior 90% of the time for the production cost. The best starting tech is almost always going to be Training--->Mounted Warfare then Shard Harvesting then the Civ tree for roads to cities. With a huge map, the first 50 turns should be scouts+pioneers+picking up free ♥♥♥♥ to sell for gold and get treaties/horses. Scout carefully and you can often avoid contact until you have a better kingdom rating (which all diplo is based off). Spam pioneers HARD from whichever city you need to keep small to avoid releasing a stack of dragons. Get caravans asap for the free roads, and use the roads to immediately scout the other guy, then settle/outpost to block him in as tight as you can. Keep lots of scouts everywhere - not only for recon, but they are useful as hell to eat that first turn damage instead of a valuable unit and after you do not need them for recon you can use them to "block off" chokepoints from allies so they cannot settle/steal the goodies. For example in a usual game I will meet my first AI, and immediately swerve my entire empire to that side to gobble all the goodies and slap cities and outposts right up to his front door as I get a sheaf of treaties from him. Preferably with my outposts choking the road off he built for me so he cannot expand in MY direction. Whenever possible I will arcane monolith BEHIND his border with me and consume his nodes, etc. Point being - do not settle in a tight little area around your cap - you will be able to get those easy villages later. At the start go right at your neighbors and aggressively (with NA pacts of course) box them in with pioneers. Defend cities with exactly 1 scout to keep wandering monsters from beelining, no more are needed as the AI players are derpily obvious with troop movements and it is easy to tremor/freeze them until you can swing over and intercept.

Making a custom Sov/faction:
Mancers are overall the best race because 1 extra move is way better than any other racial, period. Ironeers are powerful but the 50% on spellcasting means they are for a melee sov only but excel at that. The only other one that jumps out is the one that gets +1 initative per fire shard as that can easily be 7-8-10 on a huge map, but on smaller maps I do not like the odds. Trogs and Juggernauts are another option, but I get bored with an entire race geared toward one unit that is a pain in the ass to keep alive. I generally go mancers with caster sov and either hp or initiative race for a melee. 10% xp is not enough to give up the other racials and I dislike using the quest maps. Best faction traits are Master Scout, FCT, Decalon. On a huge map Enchanters is also very strong pick, as good as those 3. I personally will take magic vulnerability always for a weakness if I take one (the tactical AI tends to be clumsy with spellcasting offensively). For your Sov traits (aside from beastlord of course), the best professions are definitely scholar and noble (about the same - one is all research and one is half research half production), and your weakness should probably be clumsy (mage sov) or again, vulnerable to magic (melee Sov who will get a ton of free resist on armor). Never ever take unrest as a weakness. Unless you take the decalon, I would get mostly spellbooks with picks. The sov abilities suck, pretty much. Wealth is definitely the best one (horses, treaties, and most importantly no taxes for a long time), with Might and Brilliant coming in strong as well. Both of the trinkets are awesome (crown and token). The token is a MUST if you have a kingdom melee Sov (only way to get curse as kingdom). The crown is also a must for a melee IMO, and a good deal for a mage but certainly skippable. When I do a warrior/defender I will typically take might/wealth/both items and 1 life/1 air/magic vulnerable (getting the second life immediately) - this basically lets you solo up to medium armies with just your sov very early. But for a mage-type I never get the items, the level 2 spellbooks for 1 point are just too good of a deal. If you start 2 water 2 air - you can be casting at 40% less mana cost and teleporting around the map harvesting easy xp (wildlands) like turn 40, while everyone else is still settling and scouting. Its pretty much easy diplo until turn 100, then it all goes to hell so keep that in mind - you need your NA pacts to run out before turn 100 so you can get new ones around 98-99, get another 50 turns.

As far as the start, I ctrl-N until I have either a 3 essence or a 2 essence + clay pit. Your first city on insane/insane has to have serious production just to stay in the race. I always build the Tower first to get first champion, then build scouts until the city is level 2 fortress then alternate spamming pioneers as much as possible with militia and more scouts. My home city stays level 2 a long time, and I rarely build any decent units until much later, and only ranged units usually until I have war college weaponry. Weak melee units are a waste of time you might as well use scouts. As long as you start with wealth (500g) and settle rapidly enough to keep your kingdom rating up, you should easily avoid conflict until turn 150 or so and if you stay moving killing things you can keep taxes at zero or low at worst until then. - but once it starts on insane difficulty you generally have to focus on war with your heroes, as even just 1 or 2 insane AI units can easily take a stock garrison, and they like to send lots of little stacks. And your troops without heroes to cast spells or tank tend to get raped on insane - in fact you generally want to fight either with a full stack+ hero or defending a city - you simply cannot win stack-on-stack fights with just your troops until the very end if even then due to their massive hp and warfare tech advantage.

[kevinrochelle1]

One more thing - the quest maps (wanderlust) are pretty broken, another thing I skip along with beastlord. Once you get enough mana to cloud walk once a turn, you can quest map up basically unlimited xp and nothing is going to stand vs a 9 stack of mostly level 20+ heroes. Its basically a free win once you live past the midgame, but I find the endgame pretty easy as it is due to the strategic spells (tornado,freeze,tremor, etc). Plus my Sov always ends up the same - some level 34 assclown with every spellbook and almost the entire trait tree filled out. I have grown to much prefer the limited xp without maps, it keeps my heroes reasonably leveled and distinct from another plus it adds the strategic decision of who gets the xp. With quest maps it is just too easy to roll a stack of pure heroes on horses around all game moving at 5-6 and leveling like crazy, even getting basically nothing for the combats themselves.
I am about to give up the FCT/decalon as well, it just trivializes mana concerns...