Are broken lords impossibly strong?

[Knight]

My first game with them i thought they were garbage because I didn't know how to play them.

Now I don't know how to play any other faction.

They only need to worry about dust, all other resources don't matter. Food isn't even an issue. You can defend a city against impossible odds with their infantry, you can basically warp in garrisons of units by the middle of the game, you have total control of population growth of your cities and never need to worry about starvation, you can instantly heal any damaged army at the cost of an action point... They don't even need to worry much about approval rating by the later stages of the middle of the game.

The only real weaknesses I've seen on these guys is how easily spying can disrupt them and hurt their population. Their infantry isn't fast I suppose, but they don't need to be, 7 infantry units charging at your army with a dust bishop will leave them no place to run. Although they're better at defensive wars, they can definitely crush opposing cities, heal, then move on to the next.

[Jakdo Nalds. 배론]

😊

[starrynite120]

They have a bad early game, that's their weakness. They're a late game powerhouse though.

[Gilmoy]

Yes, if you can nurse BL to their dust turn-on point (around Era III, with Dust Transmuters in every region), their economy becomes massively powerful, smoothly growing to 10k-20k dust per turn raw income + an extra 20-40k dust from Crematorium on every turn you win a couple of major battles. Then you instantly convert all of that dust into districts: click, click, click. Then you can, indeed, just buy out a full group-of-8 + hire a hero for it, in any city, in 1 turn, every turn.

No AI can withstand that. When the EL AI plays Broken Lords, it never gets close to that point, so BL AI is always weak, and is usually one of the first to die.

As a human, playing vs. other experienced humans, you might reassess after you pit a full 8+8(+ Neros) of BL infantry vs. the other guy's 8+8(+ Skoros), with both sides using smart tactics. It still comes down to winning initiative, setting up lines, juggling healing, and exploiting terrain better than the other guy. You'll grumble that Broken Lords should be immune to Disease (they aren't :), you'll rage at ranged, you'll gaze wistfully at Ardent Mage battle spells, and you'll complain that every faction('s hero) gets better unique weapons than yours (while they complain about your Shards). Oh yah, you'll really shed some tears when you meet all-archer groups led by a high-level Ranged hero, so they all have range 4 (and she has range 5), and all get +50 damage(!! -- that is not a typo) from her 3 levels of tier-5 +damage skill, so they're all at 170-220 damage each. With a human using smart targeting (i.e. everybody shoot the guy on the left), you'll watch 1-3 of your infantry pop like bubbles per round before you can even reach them to fight. BL click-to-heal works only if you survive, e-he-he.

Meanwhile, pancake some AIs. Play those other factions, and you'll see that they all get equally sick stuff in mid-to-late game. Who's really the strongest? For that, you'll have to essay the perils of multiplayer, which is a totally different league. Worst-case, everybody agrees with you that BL is strongest, and so ... they all team up to kill you first ;)

[Knight]

I can't imagine this whole "archers everywhere" can be a real problem. Palladium(?) weapons on melee are pretty tough, and the late game high level infantry with heroes can see 600+hp units with 700 defense. The only real fear I can see is the enemies using terrain based chokeholds with human targeting.

Use half dust bishops, half infantry. 25K+ a Turn essentially let's you win with numbers alone. Warp in 5 times the units... heck, use mercenaries and archer heroes if you want, you have almost nothing to fear as long as you charge quickly enough.. I usually do equip a mobility based accessory on my units so they get +3 movement in the lategame.

What are the real benefits to other factions mid-late game? I can't imagine they're nearly as good. Dust gives you any resource needed, heals armies, buys armies, buys anything for them including population and boroughs and whatnot. And when you have a faction created that can get anything within his/her grasp it's hard to lose.

[Gilmoy]

You're right. Therefore, everybody will gang up on you in Era II or III, before you get that far :)

Enemy archers of that era will also have ~500 hp, ~800+ attack, and do damage roughly outpacing your hp. (Palladium bows get exactly the same +damage as palladium swords; in fact, all weapons are equivalent that way.) Generally, your hp and damage scale up throughout the game just enough that you need 2-4 standard hits to kill your mirror image. Ergo, 2-4 enemy archers will kill any 1 of your guys. Dust Bishops are formidable, but they have lousy attack rating, so they're always on the worst-case half-or-fumble hit table, and almost never hit for full damage. The one big advantage your infantry heroes have over a ranged hero is reinforcement flags: you can bring in help at 4 per round, while a ranged hero can bring only 2 per round.

Look at how studly your units are, and just assume that enemy units of similar era will be equally strong. The AI won't seriously challenge you, but humans are different. Probably an even worse case for you is an enemy infantry hero with a defensive line of slow tanks (Harmonites or Rumblers) with claws (Sweep Strike Back 4), who then brings in archers behind that line at 4 per round, and plays defense instead of the AI's suicidal banzai rush. (To be honest, I've never seen such a fight, either; I imagine both players would feel the pain.)

Vaulters/Mezari: More science, and +1 resource extraction, means they'll outrace you to palladium. They can turtle for a science win, and teleport troops into a sieged city, which means they can still outnumber you locally, even if you outnumber them over the map. In combat, they can have range-5 hero + range-4 Marines, Titan tank walls, and/or Dawn Officer pinning your flags. (Dawn Officer is Cavalry = battle movement 4, and is the only unit in the game with Fast 2 = +2 battle movement, so give him any shoes and he's battle speed 7. That's good to hit some flags for a couple of rounds early on (before they run back for healing), and then suddenly you're behind in the reinforcement battle.)

Cultist: Midgame weenie swarm with dozens of free merc units, backed up by Nameless Guard archer units with Order of Isiver. This can outrace Broken Lords' economy. (Cultist has the problem that human players will ruthlessly kill off its converted villages, because they fear its late-game power, too.)

I haven't learned the other factions yet. I'm learning Ardent Mages now, and my 2nd-ever game with them is an assured win (on Endless difficulty, Normal speed, no mods) that just needs mopping up, but I dislike how ... non-mage-y it feels. In fact, I joke that my style has amounted to "Broken Mages", as I replicated the buyout economy exactly as for Broken Lords, and in Era V it's finally turning on. The bottleneck is that AM still uses food to grow, and cannot rush that, so all my cities are puny -- I basically need to spam the food pillar in 3-5 cities just so they grow enough for +1 district in the pillar's 10-turn duration, then rotate to 3-5 other cities. I may well win this game without ever getting a spell to level 2, nor ever casting a spell in combat. There's gotta be some synergy in here somewhere, but I have yet to figure it out. Well, I can always play them a third time :)

I dunno what Ardent Mages looks like late-game.

[Nefrogitis]

The strongest faction is the Necrophages. No other faction can come close to them military-wise. Next are the Drakkens of course. Third are the Broken Lords and Vaulters. Fourth is the Ardent Mages and the Clans. Fifth are hands-down the Cultists and the Forgotten.
Of course there are many variables that could boost your chances in winning the game, like starting next to four anomalies or succeeding in taming one of the strongest lesser factions to join your empire early on, but if you didn't get a good start, you better be playing as the Necrophages or the Drakkens.

[QuantumArtist]

I did a custom Broken Lords base faction with conversion and romped all over the map. Converted villages also ignore food and produce dust. Use influence to convert, then take the extra dust and buy more citizens. You can also found more than one city. I was leading in all regards by turn 50 and won by elimination by 200. The BL faction units are strong, but you also have gobs of villager units to swarm the enemy with as well.

[Scribbled]

Having beaten the game on endless with the Broken lords, I just reinstalled with the DLCs and am getting my arse kicked as the Fishmen. Am I playing it very wrong or are they just more difficult than the others?

[Charlando[SunsOfStmChrts]]

Sorry to necro this thread, but why the obsession with palladium weapons?