Strongest and Weakest Factions?

[Cymoric]

So at this point I've plunked down about 30-40 hours on this game in like a week. Mostly just played Easy Mode, so maybe balance is different in other modes (what's the difference in difficulty btw?).

What's the opinion on best and worst factions?

Here's my thoughts so far...

Fantastic

Musket - guns seem to cut through anything from incredible range making this faciton the master of kiting. They seem to lay out even tough leaders extremely quickly.
Their infantry seem to do the job of covering the guns well enough with self heal medic spell. Lars, Marguerite and Meghnad also share ranged skills with their respective front line squads allowing some tanky front liners to skirmish with enemy squishy ranged units.
I'd also assume as human they could maybe get a lot of roaming heroes to eventually join up?
Starting Position - a little too close for comfort to Knights of Cunitz, but a solid corner position. If you can use your guns to win siege battles over Cunitz you'll have a rich, defendable Northwest corner.

Crime - Speedy and strong front line that can also shoot, I easily rolled across the map with this faction. They also have a decent number of leaders and 2 support heroes that could buff 2 heroes for 50% stat boosts.
Starting Position - seems incredibly easy to defend and very rich starting you at highest income in the game with access to roll Gug before they get off the ground and get to 5k Value

Kingdom of Gug - Numerous kiting faction with solid back line mages and the ability to move easily on water/swamp terrain making it easy to defend various points that human factions struggle to traverse. Decent number of starting heroes and 3 more easily picked up. I believe Claudette allows you to start picking up human leaders as well?
Starting Position - you're all alone on an island with access to easily defendable sea routes. You can easily reach Zephyrian Peninsula and the rich Port Cities of Cydonia and Mesogaia and defend them at sea if needed. This should net you 2750 Value quite easily.

Alcatraz - Base recruitment is Pirates and Rogues, which both have solid water/swamp movement. Have numerous leaders of various races allowing you to recruit lizardmen, dwarves, light mages, elven archers, etc. Dina the Doctor has the Chemical Weapon skill that can do massive damage, poison and paralyze units and destroys fortress doors making sieges far easier, this also can protect a flank or be a sort of zone control skill. Wishbone's Basilisk Eye skill is also a solid skill that can turn a bunch of enemies to stone.
Their base infantry types can also both shoot which is great for kiting the enemy.
In my game as Alcatraz I rolled Dragon Knights of Fevnir and using water movement units quickly dispatched Gug, leaving me to easily swarm the Empire.
Starting Position - Although it seems to be relatively starved for resources your water move units can allow you to defend your flanks easily at Lake Ismenus and Zephyr Point/Sea of Acidalia and then fight Gug on equal footing. Holding off on taking Tholus Wasteland West can prevent you from having to fight the Empire, Apoitakara or Cunitz until you've gotten a bit richer.

Decent

Lion - Solid wasteland movement plus dog summons backed by solid mages and rock throwing infantry make this another solid kiting faction. Lvl 10 infantry units for this faction are only 500g, so if you rush to expand in the early game you'll have enough money to be replacing lvl 10 squads quite often. Not sure if this is a particularly good siege faction though, as they are extremely squishy and so-so at range.
Starting position - Surrounded by favorable terrain in desert and swamp if you can blitz the lizards you should have great control in the south. You're also on pretty decent footing fighting Castus to the North.

Reinald Empire - They are incredibly numerous with a variety of units including cavalry as a base type. They seem to be able to blitz Castle Arsia almost immediately by shear numbers and then have access to both the mountains and empire lands which have an insane 3850 value (over 2500 for the empire itself). They have a lot of commanders and Diethard has a pretty devastating area damage spell in Final Strike.
Starting position - despite being surrounded by enemies the imperial lands are so rich you'll have all the soliders you need as long as you don't try to attack into the elven forests until you're sure you'll win.

Knights of Cunitz - Great unit variety, cavalry, numerous leaders just like the Empire. They also have Arlette, whose nuke can just end several squads at once.
Starting position - too close to Musket and lands are not as plentiful as in the Empire, but enemies are more starved for resources as well. You'll have to deal with a Castus, Alcatraz and Musket most likely and none have a lot of money early.

Dragon Knights of Fevnir - Yet again a faction with decent variety but now with even less access to resources. Their dragon knights' nukes seem to help make them some of the best leaders in the game, but Fevnir don't have as many leaders as Empire or Cunitz. Scarlette, Bradley, Selina and any other dragons you can find should make a solid core.
Starting position - pretty bad, but if you can beat Alcatraz you should have a decent starting core area with 1500-1800 value, let's hope Gug isn't rolling the map by then.

Seems Bad

Alfheim - You do great in the forest and can kite enemies all day. Problem is you're surrounded by not forest. Seems like the only way to prosper with this faction is either somehow rush the lizards immediately, or more likely wait for the Empire to overplay and feed you experience then swarm into their territory when they look weak.
I guess there's a thing about using the mushrooms to disable people, but any time you don't have that leader you will probably lose in even fights.
Starting Position - great defensively, but you've got a growing threat to the west that you can't really dash out to kill in Lizards, a rich and numerous Empire that hates you to the north, and a happily expanding Gug in the east.

Makan - Some of the best infantry in the game with leaders that buff them solidly backed up by...a mage type...with no mage leaders to strengthen them at all. They seem quite solid, but will be outkited hard by quicker factions. They also have a few strong leaders, but again few and can't seem to recruit many more being lizards...and everyone is lizard racist in this game.
Skelar gives bow attacks to his infantry allowing you to have some chance to deal with some kiting enemies, very useful early game against some NPC groups or vs stubborn enemies that won't come to you. Allows you to kite in early game in favorable terrain.
Hissssa also has a skill that does area damage.
Starting Position - better than the elves, you can expand quickly with strong infantry in swamps and roll Lion easily in his home terrain. Eventually you can probably walk in and butcher the elves as well. However, in my game Lion escaped to take Castus' deserts and that became a nightmare where I was constantly kited and had to fight summons in desert terrain vs wasteland movement units. Seems like where lizards can't catch the enemy they lose hard.

Apoitakara - This race literally seems to be broken, as 9/10 times I play this race I'm invaded on turn 2 by 2 to 3 times my STR of empire units. I've fought this fight numerous times and I've only rarely been able to barely survive. 1/10 times I play this race I'm invaded on turn 3 by the Empire and die just as quickly.
If you can survive or manage to make friends with the Empire in time to stop this dwarf genocide you have leaders and infantry even stronger than Makan with back line mages that seem just as useless.
The Empire will likely be suffering to a combination of Cunitz, Gug and Alfheim if they've spent all their efforts on you, but you'll probably not be in a great position to take advantage of this and scoop up that land as you'll have a few very elite troops that can't both defend your fronts and advance and also siege imperial capitals. You also have a fat 0 relations with Alfheim if the empire falls you'll have to deal with rich elves kiting you if you want to expand. At least maybe an alliance with Cunitz could protect your hills in the north and Port Hesperia while Eridania Forest seems to defend itself quite well for a long time.
Maybe their leader skills will allow them to win sieges in the lategame? Otherwise it seems like their troops will beoutranged and pushed back by superior casters during sieges.
Starting Position - Assuming you survive the first few turns, you have easy access to about 1300 value in Hills. Further expansion into the empire is possible, but you'll probably be competing with richer and more numerous factions that will snowball while you're trying to get off the ground. In my game for example I was able to expand to Hesperia Port and Libua, but by then Gug had taken the Capital, Krease, Mesogaia and Valtir and Alcatraz had the entire north.

[Jung Sik]

you forgot Sin

[Case]

nice list

[jerkyboy7256]

I mostly disagree with this assessment. The strongest faction ingame is Dragon Knights of Fevnir. It sucks if it is controlled by AI since it has rather mediocre armies. But in human hands, dragon knights cannot lose the game ever. The next strongest are Sin and Apoitakara. Sin is OP mostly due to Tycho's ICBM holy nuke. But that can be used only once per battle and angels cannot kite around crazy like dragons do. Still, high Lvl angels have AOE ranged attacks that can decimate a large number of armies quickly. Apoitakara is the 3rd strongest faction because it doesn't have any apparent weaknesses. Besides Chromium and Titan are one of the most OP heroes in this game as if dwarven armies weren't already strong enough. The 4th and 5th would be either Kingdom of Gug or Lion(OP greatly underestimates earth mages).

Human kingdoms such as Musket, Knights of Cunitz, or Reinald Empire are hard to assess (though I spent the greatest amount of time playing them) because they are all decent and don't seem to be particularly stronger than the other. Castus, Alfheim, Alcatraz and Abyss follow as bottom tiers due to their lack of versatility. Crime is also decent and they are just as strong as any human kingdom. I would say Lizardmen are also pretty decent too considering that their army is ridiculously strong. Though it is frustrating that Lizardmen have hard time recruiting heroes. (BTW you shouldn't feel bad for lizardmen because they eat humans, elves, dwarves and any other races. You are insane if you think humans or elves can ever live amongst lizardmen.They are luddite dumbasses who will never bring lasting peace to the continent anyway)

In the end though, your game difficulty is ultimately decided by a variety of factors such as diplomacy, a list of available heroes for recruitment(RNG), and which faction dies out early at the beginning of the game(also RNG).

[Doctor Laugh]

Hi. Can you give me some hints about Alcatraz? I played them a few times and to me they are the hardest faction of them all. Weak in close combat, daggers arent very strong and they feel slow to me and they die quick. I seldom have matches with water and even then I get outplayed from cavalry and mages and knights with their shieldbearers and magic lances.
I often use the special abilitys like the gun, but it seems to make no big difference. The stun spell seldom is helpfull to me and the poisonbomb often hurt my own units a lot more then the enemy. Please give me some advice cuz you all say they are so versatile, so I need some hints about. I mostly of the time give up my castles and countrys to fight battles I can win but even then I level very slow. Slower then the Npc of course. So everytime I get into real danger, I cant win my fights and thats a bit frustrating. Great game anyways. I love the factions but somehow I like to master this one in particular cuz it really is a competition for me to get better with them.
And last but not least if I attack and get attacked after, I cant send reinforcements. If the enemy does it he can send reinforcements after. Which is odd.
But there is more to it. Even crime is able to do allies. Alcatraz isnt. They corner and seperate you till the moment they can take you out in a 100k Team. Thats not that great. As Alcatraz somehow everybody hunts you. Each an every Archenemy is allying up against you. Alcatraz doom is the peacebringer for the whole Lords World. Gosh I really need a solid strategy.^^

[Saintsinna74]

To me Alfhiem only sucks in the early game cause you are stuck defending your forest against very strong enemies and have very little chance to expand. However I found that if you ally with the Kingdom of Gug and just maintain that alliance, its not hard to just turtle up and let the Lizardmen and Empire hopelessly beat themselves against your walls...err...trees. You can easily keep beating them with near 0 losses and just wait for another faction to capitalize and destroy the Empire. That then gives you access to fire mages, which lets you destroy Makan, which then gives you access to the Fairies and Lizardmen. From then Lizards make up your offense/acceptible losses backed up by the Faries and Mages, while Elves and mushrooms keep your lands safe from attack. Just gotta hope the Empire doesn't start allying with everyone around them and focusing on you...then you end up fighting on two fronts, and are screwed...

Another good strategy that makes Alfhiem easier is letting the empire take the north then east or west Ausonia forest if Agnes is leading the charge, cut her off by retaking the north and finish her/instantly destroy the Empire. But I do agree that you need heroes for any type of offense and at higher levels defense as well. The elves are hard, and very dependant on getting non-elves as quickly as possible, but once you do not that hard at all.

[Doctor Laugh]

Yeah thank you m8 but as Alcatraz you cant have an ally. Even crime is allyin up with everybody against me. ^^
I took out Dragonsknights first and meanwhile Knights of Cuniz allready are to powerfull. At my other borders Frogs and Empire allready wait their legs up to hunt me. Sheesh. Playing defensive is no option aswell cuz they soon overwhelm me with sheer numbers. I allready tried a lot. Another match I killed Frogs early but Knights and Dragonknights follow me instead of fighting others. Not to forget Empire is around if Frogs wont hinder em anymore.
Guess what after that I played some more Dwarfs. No idea but are they even doing damage?

[Roger-6]

Originally posted by Saintsinna74:

To me Alfhiem only sucks in the early game cause you are stuck defending your forest against very strong enemies and have very little chance to expand. However I found that if you ally with the Kingdom of Gug and just maintain that alliance, its not hard to just turtle up and let the Lizardmen and Empire hopelessly beat themselves against your walls...err...trees. You can easily keep beating them with near 0 losses and just wait for another faction to capitalize and destroy the Empire. That then gives you access to fire mages, which lets you destroy Makan, which then gives you access to the Fairies and Lizardmen. From then Lizards make up your offense/acceptible losses backed up by the Faries and Mages, while Elves and mushrooms keep your lands safe from attack. Just gotta hope the Empire doesn't start allying with everyone around them and focusing on you...then you end up fighting on two fronts, and are screwed...

Another good strategy that makes Alfhiem easier is letting the empire take the north then east or west Ausonia forest if Agnes is leading the charge, cut her off by retaking the north and finish her/instantly destroy the Empire. But I do agree that you need heroes for any type of offense and at higher levels defense as well. The elves are hard, and very dependant on getting non-elves as quickly as possible, but once you do not that hard at all.

agree. this is the same strategy I used and allied with Gug early on

[Fii]

I just won a Hard mode game playing Alfhiem... and found it ridiculously easy.

The key here is to abuse the grinding/kiting potential of elves against Fort Margaritifer. Provided you act before Reinald Empire does, you can actually take the fort on the first turn with minimal losses.

1st turn, shift/exchange new archers into Ephemeral's stack for the training bonus. Recruit new archers (and 1 swordself stack) into Ausonia Forest - North but don't move the rest.
2nd turn, take everything you have and attack Margaritifer.

The key is that Margaritifer's south entrance is covered by about 50% forest. The Empire troops sit happily in their fort until you provoke them so you have time to set a trap. Using Meinrad's mushroom some distance outside the entrance (about 1 squad's width away from the moat), then positioning your troops in Group mode behind the mushrooms, you can provoke them by summoning Leadre's Wind Spirits and maybe a squad of swordselves.

Once the Empire troops start coming out, weather the first waves of cavalry using the mushroom's confuse while kiting them with archers. Kite backwards into the forest area where the rest of their troops move very slowly.

Good micro is needed during the kiting; bow shooting causes your archers to pause for a moment, allowing Empire troops to catch them even in forest. Select lagging troops and right click the bow skills to deactivate shooting until they manage to run away. When the cavalry are all dead and only the heavy infantry / mages are left, focus fire your swordselves onto the squishy mages to kill them with wind magic.


The aftermath is that I took Fort Margaritifer against 24 stacks of defenders only losing 3 archers and 1 swordself. About 50% of my army reached level 10, the others being somewhere between 7 to 9.
Leaving the Empire with depleted troops that are low level against your partially tier 2 army.

Using the same strategy, you can take the Imperial Capital on turn 3 and they're practically dead.


While leaving the lizards alone might seem like a bad idea, they usually attack north to Cebrenia Marsh first, giving you a nice 4-5 turn buffer before you have to worry about them. By this time, I've usually killed the Empire and have deployed all my mages south to kill the lizards.

Frog have 0 ranged resistance on warriors and -40 on mages. Just take Moab Plains and be sure to fight them out of water so you can actually kite.


If you bring only longbow capable units against dwarves (plus Ephemeral), you can abuse the AI's tendency to linger behind castle gates to focus fire on their army without destroying the gate and letting them out.

I got there around turn 11-12, by this time, the frogs are down to 1-2 territories, I have Nilokeras Marsh and Port Hesperia is heavily defended against Fevnir and Cunitz.

After killing frogs and lizards, you have lizard marshes (contested with Lion), Empire land, dwarf mountains and frog island, you have the economic advantage to just hole up and recruit armies of level 1 troops to train before you can just swarm the enemies with your armies of leveled troops.



Not difficult. Just need a good micro on the first turn with decent understanding of how the elf unit abilities work. Plus abuse of AI.

[Cymoric]

I've played a lot since making this post.

Knights of Cunitz - I think this is my favorite and maybe easiest faction. Moontide Blade alone makes many fights a cakewalk. Musket can generally be killed in 2-3 turns and then you've got fantastic leaders, fantastic leader skills, and great unit variety along with great income. Their front line seems a little weak with only Franz as a decent tanky infantry leader. But their cav leaders are fantastic. I've got all the map accept for Crime on turn 17 on Hard with them so I think they are pretty fast to clear the map too.

Dragon Knights are better than I gave them credit for. But even better is the fun of playing as an independent dragon leader and founding your own faction. This allows you to make squads of dragon riders, which each have the same nuke. If you can manage the early phase these dragon knight squads are insane OP and a lot of fun :) Long live faction Cedric. Lol at faction Gonnosuke.

Makan - I need to play them more and I see people saying I underestimate their mages, but I think one problem I had with them was that thei infantry would get most of the experience so those mages really didn't level. This leaves them a little more difficult to play with than maybe fire or snow mages, as the exp gain balance didn't seem to be great.

Apoitakara - I found I could survive the early assault of the empire by massing in the northwest tower area where their fire mages can't really hit me. Once you win this fight you should be pretty tough and experienced. If you can't manage to win that fight though Apoitakara could be very frustrating. After this if you're careful you'll amass some of the toughest troops in the game albeit not as varied as some other factions. They also have those two nuker leaders especially Chromedome, who levels like a baws.

Alfheim - I haven't played them much, but I seem to recall a game I was able to blitz Makan early, and another game where that failed badly. Since they do start with a value 50 home base I'd guess there must be a strat where at least using mushrooms you could manage to win and knock them out almost immediately. They simply don't have ANY resources til they start expanding.

"Hi. Can you give me some hints about Alcatraz? I played them a few times and to me they are the hardest faction of them all. Weak in close combat, daggers arent very strong and they feel slow to me and they die quick. I seldom have matches with water and even then I get outplayed from cavalry and mages and knights with their shieldbearers and magic lances.
I often use the special abilitys like the gun, but it seems to make no big difference. The stun spell seldom is helpfull to me and the poisonbomb often hurt my own units a lot more then the enemy. Please give me some advice cuz you all say they are so versatile, so I need some hints about. I mostly of the time give up my castles and countrys to fight battles I can win but even then I level very slow. Slower then the Npc of course. So everytime I get into real danger, I cant win my fights and thats a bit frustrating. Great game anyways. I love the factions but somehow I like to master this one in particular cuz it really is a competition for me to get better with them.
And last but not least if I attack and get attacked after, I cant send reinforcements. If the enemy does it he can send reinforcements after. Which is odd.
But there is more to it. Even crime is able to do allies. Alcatraz isnt. They corner and seperate you till the moment they can take you out in a 100k Team. Thats not that great. As Alcatraz somehow everybody hunts you. Each an every Archenemy is allying up against you. Alcatraz doom is the peacebringer for the whole Lords World. Gosh I really need a solid strategy.^^"

It's been awhile since I played Alcatraz, and your results might vary based on difficulty lvl but...
1. You can probably swarm dragon knights early before they get powerful, maybe even recruit them if their faction is destroyed. This should net you control of all the north, for a decent cash start. Your several leader abilities should help with this. Don't forget you can left click to target an area of the map so you can choose where you drop the chemical weapon or who you shoot with your six shooter, etc. Double click to cancel a targetting position. Pause if you have to to ensure you carefully control unit placement and don't hit your own and chemical weapon should absolutely melt a clumped enemy army, leaving you to mop up lone dragon knights. Spreading your units will also probably help take less damage from dragon knight nukes.
2. Use the terrain to your advantage. You have a lake to your west that can cover that approach, a sea to the southeast and multiple ports, all of which allow you to kite pretty much anyone but Guge with your thieves and pirates. If you have to retreat you can invade later and you'll again be on water. If you are careful about your borders it should limit how many enemies you have since you can't be diplomatic.
3. Guge starts kinda slow from what I've seen, they are fighting neutrals early and thus probably not getting much experience, so you might be able to beat them early through momentum by having more experienced units, otherwise chemical weapon might be a game changer there.
4. Alcatraz has leaders of all sorts, so they have a much easier time recruiting new, varied leaders than other races, so you may have access to more variety and more buffed stacks than other nations. As the game progresses you may be fielding experienced dwarven infantry, lizard men and self-healing mercenaries, with elven archers, light mage healers and sonic mages. This in addition to your pretty effective kiters in pirates and thieves.
5. Retreat if you have to. It's better to give ground than lose entire armies and give the enemy a bunch of experience. I think experience is the real currency of the game, and starving the enemy of any kills while they extend their lines by simply retreating can be an effective tactic. Keep in mind you need open slots to retreat into and lay your armies out accordingly.
6. If you kill Guge you can recruit most of the frog leaders if you recruit Claudette, who originally resides in Pavonis Castle or who will otherwise be with the frog armies and wander when they are defeated.
7. Bait out enemy skills. The AI seems to be very dumb about when to use their skills, even on higher difficulty levels and I can generally sent one poor sod forward to eat a Final Strike or Moontide Blade, turning a likely defeat into a pretty easy win. It's awkward but a single person can be selected and moved forward while their squad is stationary.