What is actually the point in playing as Order?

[Moo (Watch 'Ongezellig')]

Ive basically tried playing as them for at least seven times and ended up losing the first six times since I had to rely on using cheats for the last time JUST TO SURVIVE. ON EASY MODE AT THAT.

So it had me wondering, Is Order actually not meant to invade other faiths because I have to depend on the other faiths to defeat Balkoth? Ive spent most of my time holding off marauding parties and upgrading my buildings to level three, to which I therefore build large standing armies that included Gargoyles, Wizards, Knights , paladins, as well the THE Lancelot of the Lake. BUT whenever I DID get to that point, they were useless. For THREE major reasons.

A. Pegasus riders (as a group) raid and destroy my army.
B. Chaos or Fire ends up conquering other faiths and then decides to conquer me with several large armies due to having more economic leverage, to which they destroy my army.
C. Balkoth and his super powered lackeys invade and then destroy my army...

See the picture? So I ask you dear reader, What is even the point?

[GreyHuntr]

I often find Order one of the easier faiths to play. Some tips:

Use a paladin to defend himself in battle. He has high armor and survive a lot of hits. Have your other units kill whoever is attacking him.

Use defensive spells. Order has really it good buffing spells for units. Their offensive magic is somewhat less effective.

Find the patch the prevents pegasus from generating in lvl 1 villages. It is a bug, they are supposed to be brownies.

I usually wait to upgrade to level 3 buildings until after I have liberated another faith or two. They are super expensive and you will want that extra income first.

Don't use large armies to defend your capital. The upkeep is too much. Have a small force of calvary with 1 champion. They can hunt down minor raiders. If a bigger army comes,hire mercenaries for 1 or 2 turns and then disband them.

[Vital_Moustache]

Order is actually across the board pretty-good. They don't have any one unit powerful enough to build an army around but that's also their strength. Knights are the most powerful cavalry in the game but not as fast as other faiths. Imo the main keys to playing as Order are the buffs from Wizards, the defensive strength of Infantry and Crossbowmen, and the attacking power of Knights and Paladins.
As a side note, magical units outside of spellcasters are pretty useless once you have melee and ranged units that are trained to level 2-3.

[Gilmoy]

"Large standing armies" is surely the wrong idea already. Defense costs too much; ergo, you should go attack sooner.

- You don't need much defense vs. marauders. (Dirty/leet meta-knowledge: marauders don't attack any occupied building, so 1 lowly Seagull in a town or tower suffices to prevent them from walking in.)

- Soon after you free your Great Temple, assemble one big group (of 2-3 heroes + 6 or so troops, you can fill in the rest later) and go on a walking tour. You know from reading the start-of-game scrolling blurb exactly which faiths are "strong" (start the game owning their Great Temples, with their tier-3 monster already in it, for free), and which are still neutral. Go liberate every Great Temple that isn't strong. Usually, this is Water, Life, Fire, and one of Air or Earth. (Death and your opposing faith, here Chaos, are always strong.) If Fire (or Earth) are unfriendly to you when you get there, just trade them enough breweries and such to make them flip to favorable, then liberate their Great Temple (in the same turn if you can reach it), and poof, you instantly get all of your breweries back.

Heck, I rely on doing all of that just to get enough cash to upgrade some of my buildings to level 3. I dunno how you'd ever get to tier 3 anything without owning about 4 capitals. (And even with 4 capitals, you don't have lots of cash.)

- You do need some defense in case you antagonize a faith. If you kill a faith's Great Lord, that faith instantly goes kamikaze-berserk to kill your capital. This means that every army of that faith immediately beelines directly to your capital, and attacks it. If it's a "strong" faith, you can expect that its entire Great Temple-guarding force will show up, including that tier-3 monster. (Tyro lesson: Do Not Antagonize Strong Fire. You will laugh for 25 turns, and then a freaking Dragon will show up, and then you lose. It's totally fair, you knew it was coming. If you didn't, you do now.)

Rule of thumb: When you meet a naked Great Lord on the road early on, don't just kill it. If it's a weak faith, you need it alive so that you can ally it later. If it's a strong faith, you don't want that showdown fight yet.

If you think you're ready for that fight, you can kill off a Great Lord, then either hire, have, or race your main army back to your capital, and sit in it until you've wiped out all of that faith's surviving armies. This might be easy if it's a weak faith (never owned its Great Temple).

Anyways, all of this is totally under your control. Playing Order on Hard, I prefer to leave all Great Lords alive, ally every non-strong faith until I own at least 5 of the 8 capitals (I've owned all 8 before, including Death's), and then make 1 uber-group to hunt down Balkoth. I never get around to attacking those L10 or L11 Keeps, so they must not be necessary to win. You might need 2 uber-groups to attack Balkoth twice in a row to attrition him down, although I didn't bother.

- Order's tier-3 Warrior Spirit is kind of blah (because it spends all of its time throwing javelins, instead of fighting in melee). Lancelot is kind of blah, too: he's awesome for a hero, but he's just another hero. Don't wait too long for them; just churn out L6 Knights and Crossbowmen, fill up 1-2 groups of them, and attrition Balkoth's group down.

[JODEGAFUN]

Originally posted by Gilmoy:

"Large standing armies" is surely the wrong idea already. Defense costs too much; ergo, you should go attack sooner.

- You don't need much defense vs. marauders. (Dirty/leet meta-knowledge: marauders don't attack any occupied building, so 1 lowly Seagull in a town or tower suffices to prevent them from walking in.)

- Soon after you free your Great Temple, assemble one big group (of 2-3 heroes + 6 or so troops, you can fill in the rest later) and go on a walking tour. You know from reading the start-of-game scrolling blurb exactly which faiths are "strong" (start the game owning their Great Temples, with their tier-3 monster already in it, for free), and which are still neutral. Go liberate every Great Temple that isn't strong. Usually, this is Water, Life, Fire, and one of Air or Earth. (Death and your opposing faith, here Chaos, are always strong.) If Fire (or Earth) are unfriendly to you when you get there, just trade them enough breweries and such to make them flip to favorable, then liberate their Great Temple (in the same turn if you can reach it), and poof, you instantly get all of your breweries back.

Heck, I rely on doing all of that just to get enough cash to upgrade some of my buildings to level 3. I dunno how you'd ever get to tier 3 anything without owning about 4 capitals. (And even with 4 capitals, you don't have lots of cash.)

- You do need some defense in case you antagonize a faith. If you kill a faith's Great Lord, that faith instantly goes kamikaze-berserk to kill your capital. This means that every army of that faith immediately beelines directly to your capital, and attacks it. If it's a "strong" faith, you can expect that its entire Great Temple-guarding force will show up, including that tier-3 monster. (Tyro lesson: Do Not Antagonize Strong Fire. You will laugh for 25 turns, and then a freaking Dragon will show up, and then you lose. It's totally fair, you knew it was coming. If you didn't, you do now.)

Rule of thumb: When you meet a naked Great Lord on the road early on, don't just kill it. If it's a weak faith, you need it alive so that you can ally it later. If it's a strong faith, you don't want that showdown fight yet.

If you think you're ready for that fight, you can kill off a Great Lord, then either hire, have, or race your main army back to your capital, and sit in it until you've wiped out all of that faith's surviving armies. This might be easy if it's a weak faith (never owned its Great Temple).

Anyways, all of this is totally under your control. Playing Order on Hard, I prefer to leave all Great Lords alive, ally every non-strong faith until I own at least 5 of the 8 capitals (I've owned all 8 before, including Death's), and then make 1 uber-group to hunt down Balkoth. I never get around to attacking those L10 or L11 Keeps, so they must not be necessary to win. You might need 2 uber-groups to attack Balkoth twice in a row to attrition him down, although I didn't bother.

- Order's tier-3 Warrior Spirit is kind of blah (because it spends all of its time throwing javelins, instead of fighting in melee). Lancelot is kind of blah, too: he's awesome for a hero, but he's just another hero. Don't wait too long for them; just churn out L6 Knights and Crossbowmen, fill up 1-2 groups of them, and attrition Balkoth's group down.

Actually i had one single lord+hero of chaos go to me and start parley. They demand that i give them my phoenix (legendary life creature), which i of course refuse. They attack me and the full army with the two heroes and lose of course, after that 2-3 turns later, several chaos armies attack me in a suicide. Really often that you find a single lord alone ore only with one unit who simply is easy to kill, with the effect that you can not get him and get more to fight.
I just saw a socceror lord get killed by a death thieve because he runs unguarde around in another game.

[The Real Henri]

I remember the Order Mage having a nice multi attack spell, Justice? Judgement? Been years... but a few casts of it took care of most things.