How to play as Lion

[Wolfschadow]

So I have tried to play the conquest of the new lion kingdom and I just can't manage to beat it. Every single time I lack resources and just mass starve in a winter. The kingdom is just so frustrating to play because I just can't get myself ever to the point of steamrolling and I just feel with how slow the pops are generated, if I just send sentries into other territory to get use out of surplus pops, I fall behind. The first mission seems to not be one where the kingdoms perks shine like in many other first conquest missions but it seems to be actively working against it. I'm just out of ideas how to play this clan.

[GeminiEclipse]

You don't want to send out too many pathfinders because subjects don't use up food or wood during summer. Having regular subjects isn't that bad of a thing compared to other clans.

You can build food gathering in any spot, you just can't upgrade them. So if you're real desperate for food you can do that. Stone is incredibly easy to get with the Emporia knowledge to upgrade the Anchorage to a Seaport. Getting an upgraded food building by the end of year 1 isn't that difficult. You definitely want one early in year 2 if you don't have it by then.

Focus one type of thing per zone and try to reach 8 livability for food. Upgraded house, military camp, barroom, adjacent hostelries, vow of obedience, and develop zone are all ways to do that.

You can share zones if it's something you don't need 8 of. But food you definitely want one tile by itself.

Also you can use multiple subjects to build things faster.

[小张飞走啦]

Use upgraded taverns to increase livability, if you build an upgraded tavern in every district you can have a lot of people spawning in one district. Upgraded houses can also increase livability, and ports can produce stone. It's best for an area to only produce one resource, and sometimes I only need one food area to feed dozens of people. On the contrary I think Lion is too powerful because they can produce a lot of soldiers without affecting the economy, northern clans don't even stand a chance when facing lion.

[小张飞走啦]

Also, you can build the happiness Relic (the book) early and produce a huge number of monks, which can make your population grow very fast and you can have nearly a hundred villagers in a few years. Lions don't need the chief in early games, you can turn wounded soldiers back into villagers in the town hall and they will heal themselves without consuming food. There's no need to build a castle, it's pretty useless since the lord dies instantly if the castle is destroyed. If other resources are sufficient, it is best to have many sailors, they will bring back stones to upgrade your buildings, and can also produce food to support the army when you attack.

[GeminiEclipse]

Originally posted by 小张飞走啦:

Also, you can build the happiness Relic (the book) early and produce a huge number of monks, which can make your population grow very fast and you can have nearly a hundred villagers in a few years. Lions don't need the chief in early games, you can turn wounded soldiers back into villagers in the town hall and they will heal themselves without consuming food. There's no need to build a castle, it's pretty useless since the lord dies instantly if the castle is destroyed. If other resources are sufficient, it is best to have many sailors, they will bring back stones to upgrade your buildings, and can also produce food to support the army when you attack.

The relic was just nerfed with the latest patch. You only get 30% of faith as happiness instead of 100%.

[Troo]

Do not underestimate the power of destroying buildings and re-building them in better zones once you've expanded beyond your starting tiles. Lion is all about maximising and stacking all those delicious bonuses (upgraded taverns, smithies, etc) so optimal placing is extremely important.

Don't forget also you can forage for food on ANY tile, and don't require silos to store all your food. Until your food producers are on the right tiles and massively upgraded to provide food for your whole clan, you can slap a foraging building on literally every tile, then in winter pull everyone off every other job and make them forage.

After winter, you can send everyone who is injured to your chapel and while they're healing they'll consume none of your food. Free healing AND free food!

Once you hit your first 6 lores, pick the 20% food reduction one (bottom left, I forget the name, Vow of Chastity IIRC?) to boost your over-winter survival even more. But late-game it's super easy to survive on a single specialised fish/deer building with 6 or more workers in it (upgrade taverns, upgrade the tile itself, put a smithy on it, put a house on it, and you're laughing).

[Hobgoblinbutter]

I also had trouble when first playing this clan, but I think the key to playing them is understanding how Livability works which isn't that bad once you get the hang of it. Your goal is to get Livability on every tile to 8 because then you start getting a crazy 30% bonus to all production there. To do that you can use a combination of:
spend 100 gold to improve a tile (+1 livability)
build upgrade houses (+1 livability per, and it can stack)
build upgraded taverns (+2 per)
take the Lore bonus that gives +1 livability in all tiles if you want to stop spamming upgraded houses
in some cases, military camps (NOT forts) grant +1 livability. I found this wasn't always active in Campaign.
lastly, the Hotel upgrade to the tavern gives all adjacent spaces +1 livability. This means that you need 1 fewer upgrade House on each space, but this one tile will have a harder time hitting 8 livability, so it may not be worth it.

Lion is really good economically once you get rolling, but they are slow the first year. One of their strengths is that they can build food foragers on any tile, so there's no reason to starve the first winter. I find that they have an insane rate of creating new villagers because you can choose to assign excess pop to taverns to massively boost happiness and there's no waste if you move the pops from them later to make a dedicated tavern tile. I strongly recommend making Ports that can generate free stone or iron resources on any beach tiles you can. There's a good Lore that gives you a free Port upgrade so literally no reason not to.

[Wolfschadow]

Originally posted by Troo:

Do not underestimate the power of destroying buildings and re-building them in better zones once you've expanded beyond your starting tiles. Lion is all about maximising and stacking all those delicious bonuses (upgraded taverns, smithies, etc) so optimal placing is extremely important.

Don't forget also you can forage for food on ANY tile, and don't require silos to store all your food. Until your food producers are on the right tiles and massively upgraded to provide food for your whole clan, you can slap a foraging building on literally every tile, then in winter pull everyone off every other job and make them forage.

After winter, you can send everyone who is injured to your chapel and while they're healing they'll consume none of your food. Free healing AND free food!

Once you hit your first 6 lores, pick the 20% food reduction one (bottom left, I forget the name, Vow of Chastity IIRC?) to boost your over-winter survival even more. But late-game it's super easy to survive on a single specialised fish/deer building with 6 or more workers in it (upgrade taverns, upgrade the tile itself, put a smithy on it, put a house on it, and you're laughing).

My specific problem with the clan is to get out of the starting tiles. I think I just don't play aggressive enough. But those Eldthursar just look like such an impossible task to tackle.

[Troo]

Originally posted by Wolfschadow :3 uwu Eep >~<:

My specific problem with the clan is to get out of the starting tiles. I think I just don't play aggressive enough. But those Eldthursar just look like such an impossible task to tackle.

Rush for iron. If you have to throw a couple of sentries at a wolf, do it. Sentries are weak but they can handle a wolf. Two wolves? Three sentries. Three wolves? Four sentries, etc. Throw sentries at your wolf problem until you have 5 iron then get your warchief out. She can clear the rest of the tiles around you pretty easily, and she's much faster and more powerful than throwing sentries out into the wild.

If you've got Eldthursar right next to you you are going to have to push for Ost (for the free building upgrade) and support her with archers. Let her tank while they do the damage from a safe distance.

[Sildraug]

For the map scenario in question, Eldthursar will never spawn in a tile bordering an HQ, but they'll be in every tile at a distance of 2 or more.

Troo's recommendation is still valid. To expand on it a little more, Eldthursar go down hard to archers, especially if an archer is given enough time over target without being harassed. Kill everything with a high movement speed or reach in the tile you want cleared (wolves, bears, valkyries, ranged draugar) in a normal tanking setup. Then if you want to conserve HP, say, if you don't have a monastery up yet, kite the eldthursar / remaining draugar with your warchief while your archers clean house.

The conquest bonus for the first map gives you a huge HP restore when your warchief participates in an Eldthurs kill, and a decent amount of HP for other targets. Use that to keep your momentum up.

[Sildraug]

I mean, I saw it, and saw that you wanted a ton of changes to it. I can give my first impressions of those opinions, if you want, but if you're wanting Shiro to see it, you should probably put it on their Discord.

[Ravagexe]

I was expecting to have an army of badass Knights escorted by crossbowmen, instead I got some half as***ed peasants getting starved to death at the first sight of snow. even thou I have +25 food sources.

I guess the main problem is overpopulation. NEVER build a house before you are completely sure that you can support them or they drain the place. Screw the Livability it just complicates things, TWO per building is more than enough.

[Fauxsteel]

Originally posted by Hollow:

Bump.

lol sad.

[Storrmcloud]

Figured i post this here just in-case. They pushed out a mini-update to the clan of the Lion so hopefully this will help me finish my Extreme Conquest that i been slowly trudging through. I am fully expecting some major revisions that we're used to seeing over the next 2 months but at least they're making some progress with it.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/466560/discussions/1/1640927348813671792/?ctp=9