Blood of Aenarion or Defender of Ulthuan?

[H3avy]

What do you normally chose for Tyrion? As far as I can tell, its a choice of having a unkillable lord at the cost of some happiness to having a more efficent economy as well as faster renforcements via global recruitment.

[Aenarion]

Defender everytime. He's so much of a beast anyway that the further buffs are oversaturation, plus the campaign buffs are great.

[Lampros]

Do you have to choose one over the other?

[Kblocks]

no , lampros , some people just can't think for themselves , you're supossed to take all three options

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Kblocks:

no , lampros , some people just can't think for themselves , you're supossed to take all three options

I asked because I wasn't that high level yet, and I didn't know whether you have to choose the Defender or the Blood line. I figured you had to choose, because so many folks are asking about this on the forum...

[Vacca]

Yes, picking the defender of ulthuan line locks the blood of aenarion one.

Imho pick blood. The defender buffs are nice, but facetanking an entire army and not giving a fùck is better. HE troops are good enough without leadership buffs anyways, and the public order penalty is useless later in the game.

[Purin]

Defender 100% of time just for the recruitment time -1. This is absolutely critical. Nobody cares about Tyrion getting slightly stronger. He is already OP. It is better to get skills that speed up your game. The diplomacy helps confederating and vassalizing all other elves and the recruitment meants most low to high tier units aka your meats will be recruited in 1 turn. Just imagine how much time you save while you conquer the map.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Vacca:

Yes, picking the defender of ulthuan line locks the blood of aenarion one.

Imho pick blood. The defender buffs are nice, but facetanking an entire army and not giving a fùck is better. HE troops are good enough without leadership buffs anyways, and the public order penalty is useless later in the game.

Thanks for the clarification.

And I tend to agree with you on taking the combat skills.

[Macros]

Personally, Defender. As was said, the -1 recruitment turn is crazy good on the campaign map, especially when it comes to global recruitment. The -10% global upkeep is nothing to sneeze at either. And since that doesn't prevent him from racking hundreds of kills in battle...

[Kayeka]

Defender is probably better in the sense that Tyrion doesn't need the Bloodline skills to be awesome. He also can't be everywhere at the same time, and I generally end up fighting most battles with non-legendary lords anyway.

Bloodline wins battles. Defender wins wars.

[Lampros]

I think both answers are viable, and there is no clear superior path here. I prefer the combat lord route simply because of 1) role-play concerns, and 2) I like to use a few strong characters/units and minimize micro-management.

But the bigger question concerning Tyrion for me is: What units accompany him? More specifically, is it worth using low-tier units like Spearmen and Silver Helms with him due to the character-specific boni? Or go all elites?

[Nano]

Shame Blood of Aenarion doesn't change the model to have Widowmaker. That would be neat.

[TaurusBully]

Endgame defender would be better, however since you unlock those skills at lvl 12, those global, upkeep and etc bonuses mean way less than being able to win without casualties your battles since he is a beast.

[Red Bat]

A few things... Sunfang will deal with the public order side effect of Bloodline. Bloodline's buff is probably the biggest lord buff you can get for just a few perk points, increasing both his damage and surviability while also giving him a fear aura. In some cases Tyrion will be able to come pretty close to soloing an entire enemy army, only being held back by the fact that Tyrion only hits like 2 guys at once. Tyrion will also go from being able to solo any enemy lord, to being able to fight several lords and heroes at once, making Tyrion far far better at Queeks role of simply chasing down enemy lords and killing them to give the enemy army a huge morale penalty.

That said... It wasn't worth passing up on Defender of Ulthuan in the vortex campaign. ME is much bigger and Tyrion can't be everywhere at once. The 10% reduced upkeep might be a bit boring, but it's one of the biggest faction buffs you can get. However if being practical isn't your thing, Bloodline is arguably a heck of a lot more fun.

[mustachewarfare]

Blood of Aenarion sure makes Tyrion into a power house but

Defender is better because of all that eco bonus just makes high elves faction into a power house. Tyrion doesn't have infinite campaign map movement. Thus, as campaign goes on and your province expand, impact of Tyrion's combat effectiveness will diminishes.