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I was disappointed my first game as the Dragon clan. I'm probably still getting a feel for the clan, but my initial impression of them definitely wasn't good. Most other clans get some way to boost their economy, Dragon gets nothing except slaves. You're tempted to throw the slaves to the fire or suffer a HUGE happiness debuff, but slaves are expensive. Especially early game. So you can't get rid of the expendable units, you need to place them on buildings to get whatever meager production bonus you can from them. You're then left with sacrificing clan members for a very temporary stall on the timer. This more or less means you're forced to go for the Recruitment tech first simply because you're burning so many villagers for kindling.
And then there's the military. A damage buff when alone seems counterproductive in the long run. Good for clearing (kindof, not really). Terrible for nearly everything else. You don't send a single Dragonkin to fight your opponent, not unless you've become a master at attacking a lot of different territories with just one guy. Most maps make that a difficult task at best.
So, in short, they don't have a great economy, and they don't have that good of a military either. I'm not sure how to develop a strategy for these guys, I just know I must be doing it wrong right now.
The doom meter runs down to fast and i can not keep up with early expansion and resources.
Don't get me wrong, I actually love the idea of a Clan having their own unique units, to my opinion each clans should have, at least, one unit only belonging to them (For example Wolf Clan could have Wolfskin bearer vikings, quite famous in the nordic stories and legends. Bear Clan could have Bear riders, first cavalery unit of the game, this is just example but I think it could increase their uniqueness a lot, increase the differences between clans further than just by the bonuses they have/get and so add diversity to fights). But in the case of the Dragon Clan, they have just this single unit, and the building itself, when not upgraded, only give +1 to Warband, meaning this clan isn't made for massive armies. The thing is, the Dragonkins aren't made for facing massive armies neither, and it is here that stand the problem. Small army only made of units made for not being together and not able to wistand large armies = They can't compete other Clans, even more in late game.
My opinion is they either should have access to the other basic units OR should have more than just the Dragonkins. I mean, let's be honest, it's really not the options that are lacking. Small dragons, Dragonriders, Half-Dragon warriors, Fire archers, there's a tons of possibilities.
On the economic side, for those getting lost with the sacrifice and all, I don't had any real problem with this personally. But I admit it is kind of shooting ourself an arrow in the knee actually. Other Clans have lots of possibilities to increase their economy without counterpart, while the Dragon Clan have to kill a part of its production source for gaining a small and temporary bonus. If at least the bar wasn't moving, so had fix bonuses, it could get better, starting with a food bonus, than wood, gold, knowledge, fame and finally the others. But as it change continuously, sometimes you have bonus like "10% attacks for all units" when you're in a peaceful situation but have a lack of food/wood and winter is coming.
The way I dealed with the sacrifice and all (tho I won't pretend to be an expert nor to have the perfect solution, so guys don't buy it as such), was to switch between sacrificing villagers and thralls. Until mid/late game (depending how fast you go for the economic researches) you can only put one thrall per production building, so buying new ones for sacrificing them is a good way to quickly boost the bar. You can also choose to sacrifice villagers when you already have enough for production, having unused villagers that only gather food on the floor isn't very necessary with this Clan since its population don't raise as fast as the others due to the sacrifices, meaning they consume food and wood in a lower quantity. Focus on building production buildings on strategic points, fill them with max villagers and thrall, and when you have more than two villagers, throw the others in the flames. Also, as the thralls can only be bought with the shipyard, which is a gold income building, you can buy new ones sort of rapidly, even more if you can have more than one shipyard. You only need one for buying thralls, but having more mean more sailors and so more income. Also, pay attention to the bonuses given by the sacrifice bar. The goal isn't to always keep it max filled, but to catch the bonus(es) that are interesting for you. No need to burn someone if it's for getting the 10% attack bonus when you're not under attack. Useless to try to get the passive dragonkin healing when you have a healing hut/no dragonkin wounded. The goal is to don't let it get empty, not to keep it at max all the time, so depending of the bonuses, it is a choice to do if you'll fill it more or not. Also, keep one important thing in mind : Only the last bonus of the bar is active. So if you have three bonuses on the bar, sacrifice someone and get a fourth one, it is this one that will become the active bonus, all others are unactive until the bar reach them, so sacrifice units only when you want to get a specific bonus, or let it drop down if you aim for a bonus that is lower on the bar. The bonuses don't stack up, it is only the one shown on the circle at the left side of the bar that is active, meaning you can only have one bonus active at the time, so don't waste your sacrifice just because you're afraid to see it drop to zero, better saving a few unactive civils/thralls for boosting it when it's close to zero and/or when you see a bonus better or more useful than the current active one. Finally, focusing your ships on gathering fame instead of knowledge will make you reach new levels faster, which will increase the size of the bar at each new fame rank, so giving more time before it turns empty.
As this Clan rely on this sacrifice system, it is not played like the others, so early massive expansion isn't the way they must be played contrary to other Clans. Their happiness meter don't get malus from low expansion as fast as the others, so instead of trying to get as much area as possible, only get those you need, focus on building and upgrading them, fill them with villagers and thrall, and when all are full, expand to a new area and repeat. The Clan have no point to possess ten areas early game while they can only deal with three or four at once, it is just wasted food and space. This Clan, to me, is sort of the "Turtle strategy" one. A strategy that those used to RTS probably know. Slow expansion, focus on building>upgrade>gathering>army, in this order. Having one or two dragonkins is more than enough during early or even mid game for protecting your territory and cleaning new places, so interest in focusing on building a large army so soon. The idea of turtle strategy is basically to stay in your small little corner, to let the other Clans deal with their life as much as you deal with yours, to stay ignored, and once you have a good and effective economy, you slowly spread across the map, one or two tiles at the time.
Finally, the bonus for Dragonkin fighting alone isn't that great, I agreed on this, tho it can be used for attacking several areas at once. Enemies armies tend on focus on the first place you attack (when fighting IA), and players aren't used to be forced to spread their armies over several places too, so sending one attacking alone a place and sending other dragonkins attacking other places right after is a way to use this passive to full potent. Also, when doing this, if you attack places with almost no defenses (like just a tower), you can send more than just one Dragonkin in it, as the bonus won't be this useful or needed here, but will allow a faster cleaning of the place and a good defense in case the enemy try to get back the area. You can either choose to let the first Dragonkin (the one alone against the army) to die, or to make it retreat before dying, as it's goal is mostly to do as much damage on the enemy army as possible and to act as a distraction for letting your other kins attacking, so the choice is up to you.
As said, it was my way to go with this Clan, I won't say it is THE way to go, and I'm sure others more experienced with the game will soon or late find a greater way to play them, but at least it worked for me, so until an expert come with the perfect walkthrough, it's worth a shot to try what I said.
Finally, I do hope the devs also saw what I said about their lack of units, the negative aspect of their army, and also the idea of more unique units for each Clans, as I really think it could be a massive and very good and strong addition to the game. Just like the squirmishers has been once the Snake Clan came out.
Sacrifice your wounded villagers instead (and don't waste time healing them). Or an enslaved Kobold. "Uh-oh".
That's why it is the first military lore - you can't skip it. It's an initial boost to clear the territories you haven't cleared with your villagers already.
They have an insane economy and they have an insane military as well. The only thing putting them back to the line with other clans are constant sacrifices, lowering their population. But you can work with it.
I'm still learning as well.
The bonus depends on the amount of sacrificed souls. It was YOUR choice to gain attack bonus when there was no need of it.
Well, so you know it after all :)
It has been my experience that this is not a great buff to their economy. Yes, slaves can be sent to any building (only one in the early game), but the output they grant you is half a villager. And you get about 4-7 of them for a large portion of the early game. The Sacrifice bonus is akin to what one extra villager would give you (and you're spending at least one villager to get it). A mere +2-4. Mid-late game (500 fame), it's akin to what two villagers with some tools would give you (+8). This is not a substantial bonus for what you're giving to it. Stag can get a +8 to their food production with two upgraded silos without needing 500 fame or throwing away villagers. And you want to build silos in the first place. Goat's sheep food is entirely using an animal that would otherwise just give you 80 food. The Dragon's only benefit is that their bonus can be placed where you want/need it (sometimes). In play, it's mostly just wherever the first bonus is so you can avoid the happiness debuff.
I just do not believe for a second that it's a strong boost. Their happiness is tough to manage as well, since they're one of the only clans that doesn't get any tech related happiness boosts, so some of those slaves are going to work in a brewery. And you can't just aim for the sacrifice happiness buff every time, it's not feasible. Also, the moment you start enslaving Jotun or other beings, you stop being able to sacrifice slaves. The ones you have are already working buildings you need resources from, and the Jotun/Myrkalfir put you way over slave cap with just one, usually.
Yes, that's more or less the only way to keep up with that unhappiness bar. I don't think it's a great mechanic. Heck, I even throw heavily wounded Dragonkin in there just to keep the bar running. Almost never slaves (and it's really rare to get a kobold slave for me, I guess that's just luck).
Literally every other clan's first military tech stays with them all game. Usually it equals a +2 on their warriors. Dragon clan becomes outdated rather fast, which is why I don't like it. Sending in a single military unit is almost always a bad decision. Especially when the opponent can just build a tower and negate that advantage. Dragon clan doesn't strike me as a skirmishing force.
I just have a lot of problems with them at the moment, but I will need to get some more games in. Especially with friends, as they can help work through what I think about them.
On the plus side, an AI dragon clan is an easy kill right now.
Yes of course, I was just explaining things in details, for those that might not have understood how the bar and bonuses were working. As said on my edit, the bonus you get depend on where the bar is, so no need to do more sacrifice if you don't aim for a bonus you look for. ^^
Edit : A good addition, or actually a modification, that could be at the same time useful and clearer would be to show the number of workers and thralls working in each building separately when using the Info interface. Because actually they are both mixed together (for example, farm show 4/6 workers), but shown like this, you can't know if the two missing ones are civils or thralls unless if you select the farm and look at how many civils and thralls are working on. Not something hard to do I agree, but the info interface is made for not having to select each building one by one for seeing if you miss workers on it, so it's kind of going against the concept if we need to click on each building for checking what kind of worker is missing. Maybe showing it as "3(+1)/6" or "3/3-0/3" would make it clearer, showing the number of civils on one side and number of thralls on the other.
Absolutely! They are wandering all around the territory, it's really hard to track where they were assigned. Or just shorten their chains ;)
Selecting the farm won't help, if you have e.g. 4 thralls there, 3 assigned to the farm and you want to send the unassigned one elsewhere, you have 1:4 chance you select the right one.
In the last game I put all the slaves in economy - and skilled that way - because even in the long run I had only two food tiles. In short: I worked pretty good but only after struggling for 3 years until I got enough slaves togeher.
So here are my critic points.
- Biggest first: The essence meter. Why does it have to be so complex? So the only point to put more than three points into it is, that I can "choose" the bonus but the downside is I have to sacrafice a whole bunch of villagers and/or thralls. The other effect is just, that i don't have to care for it a little longer. So it's just a mirco managing bonus.
The first time I saw it, without knowing what it exactly does, I was pretty sure I would get every blessing I unlocked. But that isn't even the case. I just get one blessing at a time. So in the end, this whole thing might be their signature feature but it needs a lot mirco and ressources (villagers/thralls) to maintain to get a little bonus and don't get a drawback.
That's just... not a good signature feature for a clan!
- Thralls are way too valuable. They are way to hard to get in the early game and you essentially need them for everything.
- Too many requiered techs. You need hard labour, you need capture and you need a good income to buy thralls, so some points in the trading tree would be good too.
- The first military tech. A mandatory tech that effects date out is... discouraging.
- The three "warfare" choices. (I don't know how they are called right now.)
Tactican: good solid choice the defensive boost ist very nice.
The defensive one: seems to be the best, even tho the army itself don't really get anything from it. You get a bigger warband size. That's it. All other bonusses just buff your villagers that you don't have to split you small army. But call to arms is even double edged because you buff your villagers and put your valuable thralls to risk because they are now the weakest units on the tiles.
The offensive one: you have a warband of maybe your chief and 3-4 dragonkin. The last thing you want is to sacrafice your units for a damage boost.
My final thought - this far - is that the clan is way to complex to handle to be nice and fun. It's overly complicated and the whole time pressure of the essece meter doesn't make it any better...
It's not that this clan is unplayable but imo it really needs some adjustments in more than a few places.
How do we get Jötnar using thralls ? Where should click with 5 thralls ? Do i have to be friend with Jötunns first ?
If you become friend with Jötnar first, you can't attack them later.
The Clan of the Dragon does have its boons, however. Being able to send any and all of their units into neutral territory in accordance with their units' gathering and production being unaffected by injury are two substantial benefits that come with the clan. If a player capitalizes on both of these advantages in the early game, they can quickly and effortlessly colonize a few territories with their villagers and slaves without suffering any gathering and production penalties due to injuries.
The Dragonkin are very strong military units, but they are most efficient when you can use them in accordance with the military upgrades that affect them. They can recieve an upgrade that allows them to deal more damage when they are unsupported by allies, but I still found them to be highly effective when grouped up. After you upgrade the Dragonkin via the tools section, they gain the ability to perform a whirlwind AoE attack every so often, which makes them excellent when pitted against numerous enemies. Unfortunately, each military building only grants you +1 to your warband unit cap. Furthermore, converting a villager to a Dragonkin requires quite a bit of essence. As the Dragonkin is not 200% stronger than the rest of the melee combatants from the other clans, building an army with the Clan of the Dragon isn't as efficient. Some of this inefficiency is offset by their whirlwind upgrade and the additional bonuses you can acquire via essence buffs. Lastly, concerning their military, their Warchief is unfortunately generic and doesn't have any special attributes.
When it comes to sacrifices and how one wishes to use the clan in general, I find that a player needs to decide on whether they want to focus on maximizing their number of slaves, using them in accordance with the Lore upgrades that affect them, or whether they want to instead use the slaves as fodder for sacrifices. If I am remembering this correctly, slaves only consume 33% as much food as standard villagers but gather and produce 50% of the resources that villagers can. This means that slaves are more efficient than unupgraded villagers; 3 slaves will consume as much food as one villager, but the 3 slaves will end up producing 50% more resources than the one villager. In my personal opinion, I am finding that maximizing my number of slaves is working out better for me in my games. I have played a few games where I dedicated my slaves to being sacrifices – just to see how I would fare – and I ended up having to sink a massive, unecessary amount of currency into purchasing slaves every so often (the cost of which increases with every purchase). It felt extremely inefficient and set my economy back. Thus, I have decided to stick with sacrificing villagers; only sacrificing slaves when I can purchase additional slaves at a very cheap price.
That's all from me, for now. Don't forget: these are just my initial impressions. I definitely plan on sinking more time into the Clan of the Dragon in order to refine my opinion(s).
One way to counter this restrictive limit of small warband cap is to choose the defender military tree. Not the most efficient for this Clan however, at least not all the time, but if you play on map with Special victory condition, it have its advantage. Tower increase unit damages, including Dragonkins, and each tower increase your warband size by +1 for unupgraded tower and +2 for upgraded one, and you gain one free tower upgrade each year, so it's a good way to progressively build an army of dragonkins while playing defensively. I personally don't recommand the aggressive tree (don't remember the correct name, but the last one on the right) because the bonus granted for Dragonkins is only reducing the conquest time of an area by 5% per Dragonkin, which isn't the best bonus of all. Tactician is also a good one, the 10% to nullify damage can often save the life of one of your Dragonkin. Tho I definitely accord that the bonus about "Dragonkin being more powerful" alone is only useful in early game for fast cleaning, but that's all. Send one dragonkin alone against five Draugrs and its life will melt like ice under the sun so you'd forcibly end up using them in group, which than desactivate this bonus so it have no use. I personally think that an opposed bonus would do miracles. Instead of "being alone = more damage", changing it by "The more Dragonkins are on the same area, the stronger they get". It is even lore-like, each of them are sort of granted the power of the dragon, so the more they are, the more dragon power is assembled in the same place, improving each others like if they were forming "one single dragon". Also, a defense buff would be maybe good for them because they quite look like some kind of Berserkers, strong damage, low defense. Plus, one Dragonkin alone, with whirlwild and alone bonus make the unit still far from being able to match against a small army leaded by an enemy Leader, as Leader (or Clan chiefs) are too strong and too resistant for that, which only confirm that this bonus is made for cleaning area from weak neutral enemies in small numbers or by doing some kitting (attacking, doing as much damage as possible, retreat, heal, attack again, and so on) which is more efforts than other clans have to do for cleaning an area with a small warband.