Best lizardmen lord?

[al_ric]

going to try this game on very hard

[Kaaz]

Nakai for freedom.
Kroq gar for safety.
Gor Rok for unstopable.
Mazdamundi for magic.

Tiqtac for a different style of lizardmen.
Tenehauin is the hardest afaik.

[franz]

once you get rolling with tehenuain , you can build everywhere free and give units 25% ward saves , id argue he is the strongest faction.

My personal fav is Tic tac 2 pac with 19 rippadycalycas.

[my dude]

I'm partial to Kroq B'gawk as he has one of the safest starting locations in the game right now, and it's easy to get the Legendary Hero Slann (don't remember his name) from where they start. Nakai is very tough to excel with, as his faction income is 100% reliant on vassal income and raiding. Raising an extra army is out of the question until his vassal can get at least 5+ settlements and actually defend them.

[Cat®]

I quite like Kroq'Gar; he is very versatile and has a lot of good generic buffs. Horrible start-position for trading on Mortal Empires, though. Gor Rok is basic and very strong. For VH I'd avoid the skink-lords; I love them to bits but they just don't have the same level of machine efficiency. But pretty much all the others are solid and have a good time of it; bonuses based on preference is pretty much the deciding factor.

[Threetails]

I dunno, I actually think Tiq'Taq'To is the strongest LM faction simply because you can get a stealth skink chief and then 18 Terradons and the AI simply doesn't bring enough ranged to down your terradons as long as you focus their ranged, and can't apply leadership debuff because the AI can't find the stealth skink. The AI basically just stands there and lets you pound down their entire army from the sky with ranged attacks and drop rocks. Your armies will be able to pretty much wipe every AI army that comes their way without taking more than 4-5 casualties. 95% of the time army losses hits before you run out of ammo, and even when it doesn't, their army is so shattered you can win just by sending in your skink and Tiq'Taq.

Tiq-Taq is simply overwhelmingly strong with Terradon spam, but Tehenhauin, while in my opinion, not as oppressive in battles, still buffs Red-Crested Skinks to an absurd degree. Once you get them to gold rank and fully buffed up, they'll be fighting and killing Loremasters in a 1 v 1 which is just nuts given their cost, speed, and the fact that they have poison. I would say that in general, while Tehenhauin's buffs don't produce units that make battles ridiculously onesided like Tiq'Taq's, Tehenhauin still provides you with what is in my opinion the most cost effective infantry choice in the game.

Gor'Rok and Kroq'Gar aren't bad, but they don't do anything with their units that make their units perform absurdly well like the other two do. They just have Saurus. There's no insane mechanic that gives them an absurdly overwhelming advantage by playing around it. Don't get me wrong, Kroak is good, but at the end of the day he's just a really good mage. Their real benefit is that their starts are in pretty good locations that allow you to shore up your economy and defenses before having to tackle any truly threatening enemies.

Mazda is slightly harder than Gor'Rok and Kroq'Gar, simply because his start is hard and to the immediate north you've got Dark elves who hate your ass but are on territory which is uninhabitable, making war against them not very profitable for you, yielding crap provinces. Ideally, you'll treaty them and expand south, but often you can't pull it off without getting pulled into war with the dark elves. The High Elves might not like you either, and you're not very insulated against them either, so they can be problem too. Overall, I don't feel like Mazda is a weaker faction than Gor'Rok or Kroq'gar, but his start position makes his life a lot harder than theirs.

And Lastly, you've got Nakai. I think Nakai is pretty weak. His buffs for his special units, Kroxigors, are hardly better than a Kroxigor ancient's, and honestly, Kroxigors aren't even that good. His actual faction mechanics prohibit him from getting more than 2-3 armies, and overall he's unable to field strong armies easily, which makes his campaign quite rough.

But that's just my experiences in the Lizardmen campaigns. I tried to rank them from most campaign power to least campaign power. Obviously, there's a bit of contention as to where the different lords should be. I'm sure other people have thoughts as well.

[lPaladinl]

I don't know about best, but they're all pretty good. Tiq-Taq is the only one I haven't really played much.

Gor-Rok doesn't give you much for your faction but he's one of the tankiest units in the game and gives you easy early access to Lord Korak, who is one of the more powerful Wizards in the game.

Kroq Gar is your more balanced lord with decent buffs for your core units and is a good fighter. It's easy to break auto-resolve with him.

Nakai is great if you want to use Kroxigors. The only drawback for him is that he's a horde faction.

Mazdamundi is a balanced wizard with more focus on buffing, you can cheese the game a lot with defensive spells making units invincible for long periods of time.

Tenehauin is more of a challenge for a start but is nice for using units you might otherwise skip or use sparingly with other lords.

[GloriouSin♪]

Originally posted by al_ric:

going to try this game on very hard

Kroq'Gar hands down. Powerful faction bonus and very easy start (early enemies are skaven and various flavours of boner fans, who are worthless against you till midgame = early steamroll), you can easily rush start area and safely build up if you want to do some particular weird playstyle like changing faction leader entirely to a Godlike Fire Slann (which Kroq's faction bonus also supplements since 10% cheaper everything just can't go wrong). You also get some early reliable punching bags, makes lord farming easy.
Also a Heaven skink Shaman on start, no kink without a skink. (Skinkdoctors are best Heroes in game since it's a Stegadon with an Arcane Conduit)

The only real "problem" early on is making the Aztec's worship you instead of a fat person on a flying wheelchair. And sometimes Emolord supreme Hammer Darksword will make a move on you but he is actually very shy and not as rapy as other Drow (yeah i called them that, come at me bros). If lord Aztec the Fat doesn't want to leave his hovel than just set an ambush and send a lord without an army on forced march behind the ambusher and watch as the AI in his greed falls into your well placed trap and lord Asstex gets sent to fat camp.

[al_ric]

to play on very hard you set both battle and camapign to very hard right?

[GloriouSin♪]

Originally posted by al_ric:

to play on very hard you set both battle and camapign to very hard right?

Campaign very hard means penalties like -public order everywhere etc, while battle very hard means about -12 to most stats of every unit you possess (melee attack, melee defense, leadership etc.). Both affect different things but TECHNICALLY very hard both is very hard proper.

Difficulty only gives you a... negative handicap? And a positive handicap to enemies. It does not affect AI behavior in any way.
For example the AI ignores 60%/70%/80%/90% attrition respectively on normal/hard/vh/legend.

[pin]

In terms of faction strength:

Tehenhuaum is best lord overall. His sacrifice system and skink buffs are good both for the short term and long term, with extremely good bonuses you won't get with other lords.

I would say Korq Gar is next with 50% saurus upkeep reduction and factionwide -10% upkeep, which is huge as it allows you to field a 2nd army very quickly, which I consider much better than Lord Kroak spell advantages.

Gor-rok starts with a reasonable saurus upkeep redu and lord kork, that makes it 3rd spot for strong single army and a quicker 2nd army.

4th is Tiq Tac. A very fun and unique terradon play style and as ppl pointed out is quiet strong, get a heavens spell caster skink priest early will make your early game terradon stack pretty much a late game doom stack.

5th is Mazdamundi. I mean...aside from his mount he's actually a worse caster than say a fire slann or life slann, which you can get with a easily accessible ritual. His faction buffs offers nothing really unique or fun.

6th is Nekai. Kroxigor stack is actually quiet strong but your faction mechanic means you will always field less armies and you need to find a good safe spot to grow your vassal settlements. You will have to do a lot of correct maneuvers early game or you face wiped out or cornered, and late game can still be a challenge due to limited armies you can field.

[zefyris]

It depends of what you mean by "best".

---
If it's "strongest at the start" then
---
-"strongest at the start" goes to Krok'gar(Last Defenders) no contest, as his faction and personal buffs are some of the best (if not the best)currently available in the game in early campaign, no matter the race. Being able to run around with only saurus without payuing them much is absurdly strong, and Kroq gar himself is very strong early game in battle.
->However after a while his faction and personal bbuff become waaaaaay less important. You won't run around with saurus in your main armies late game, and while the factiowide -10% for upkeep is economicaly good, it's not going to compensate for his lack of other buff.

Second "strongest at the start" would go to Gor'rok (Itza), as his unique rite making saurus unbreakable and boosting them, as wel las him starting with a 10 slot Itza + with the most broken character in the game ( Lord Kroak) which combined with his tankiness means that those two can duo most enemy armies after a few level up.
-> However after a while any other LM LL can get kroak, most of them either start witha 10 slot settlement or can get one relatively quickly, and while Gor'rok remains tanky it's not as important or as absolute late game. His lack of mount is also crippling last game against stroing mounted LL.

----
if it's "strongest mid game" then
-----
-"Strongest mid game" undeniably goes to Nakai. As soon as he starts getting access to Kroxigors and buffing them like crazy through different faction mechanics, passive, rites, and unique tech tree, he basically start walking around with absurdly strong krox AND he's the only LL to freely choose what blessed spawn he wants, which means that every army can receive for example 2 blessed carnosaurs (which have perfect vigour, one of the best attribute in the game) which means that he starts recruiting some of the strongest T5 monsters in the game (and have them with supplementary strong buff due to them being blessed spawns) when other factions around are barely reaching T4. And he pays so little for his krox that he can easily fit a few T5 units in his army for anti large without having problems with upkeep at all. Also, the 14 strong garrisons walled settlements he puts everywhere instantaneously are still very effective at this point in auto resolve.
Honnestly, mid game Nakai may have the strongest army possible in the game, regardless of the faction.
->However, late game he becomes limited for several reasons. While late game his armies are still very strong and can recruit at incredible speed anywhere in the world (he's the only one which has armies that can recruit even feral dread saurians in one turn and it's in global recruitement!!!), the 14 garrisons cannot be upgraded so they're now not strong enough to stop plenty of enemies, Nakai is limited in number of armies because each army comes from unlocking them in the tech tree, so while he remains fairly strong he's not the strongest anymore.

-Secong "strongest mid game" is probably a toss between Tiqtak'to(Tlaqua) and Tehenhauin(Cult of Sotek). Tiktaq'to's buffed flying troops are extremely good in that rang. They start to fall down when the enemy can field top of the line troops however.
As for Tehenhahuin, it's the point where he's free of the cripling debuff he had early time and his really starting to roll on everything by accumulating factionwide buffs through his repeated sacrifices, and he can go around with armies that are very cheap buff still effective, which helps him recovering from his long start.

-----
if it's late game then
-----
-"Strongest late game" is Tehenhauin (cult of Sotek) hand down.
While he's the weakest starter, and that due to that he takes a lot of time before being able to expand and so despite having very good power mid game he's playing catch up economically and in territory so he isn't the strongest LM around, late game he has caught up , has added even more factionwide buffs by having finished all the step of his journey that adds up to all of his armies being permanently under 5-6 sacrifice different buffs, which makes his faction the second sturdiest out there (first on this point is still Nakai but he has other limitations late game unfortunately).

In the end, what matters late game is how much faction wide buff you can stack combined with how many armies you can field, and for the former it's Nakai > Tehenhauin >> * and for the later it's * > Nakai.
That's because Nakai and Tehenhauin are the only LM lords in the six with unique faction mechanics providing faction buffs adding up to the lizardmen general mechanics, and like always, having that or not makes a MAJOR difference in how strong a faction is compared to its pair. It's not for nothing that the strongest skaven factions are the two with unique strong factionwide mechanics, and so on.


Last, if we're talking about most fun to play imo it's Nakai on vortex followed by Tehenhauin vortex (Tiqtak'to's army is super fun but you can confed him and have that with anyone else since it's mostly his own army rather than faction as a whole) imo, but that's a very subjective type of ranking obviously.

Originally posted by Threetails:

I

And Lastly, you've got Nakai. I think Nakai is pretty weak. His buffs for his special units, Kroxigors, are hardly better than a Kroxigor ancient's, and honestly, Kroxigors aren't even that good. His actual faction mechanics prohibit him from getting more than 2-3 armies, and overall he's unable to field strong armies easily, which makes his campaign quite rough.
.

Nakai krox's buffs affect ancient krox. Running around with the ancient krox on steroid from NAkai is a very fun experience imo. Those things will bully even the best infantry out there.
He can get to around 10 armies late game I believe, so it's not as bad as you say, especially considering how strong each of those armies are, but yeah it's still limitating late game. BEfore late game you don't really feel a limitation on that point imo.

[fmalfeas]

Gor-Rok is probably the best in my opinion. Just remember that Gor-Rok himself is best used in /holding/ areas, not taking them. His army gets serious buffs when in your territory.

So you send your other lords out to take things, and Gor-Rok is used to make sure you never lose them.

[zefyris]

Originally posted by fmalfeas:

Gor-Rok is probably the best in my opinion. Just remember that Gor-Rok himself is best used in /holding/ areas, not taking them. His army gets serious buffs when in your territory.

So you send your other lords out to take things, and Gor-Rok is used to make sure you never lose them.

LM armies are slow AF. If you keep your LL in defense in Lustria, you'll waste most of his turns just running after armies that can move way faster than you (Skavens, dwarves, or even vampire coast) or to try to be in time for the next revolt as the opposite side of your territory.
The simple fact that you use Gor'rok in such a wasteful manner for a LL kinds of points out how Gor'rok is not that good of a LL. Not even counting that his faction buff are mostly wasted late game.

[fmalfeas]

Opposite side? No, no. You misunderstand. Gor-Rok's army follows your offensive forces. When you seize a new area, he parks his scaly butt there while you sweep on with the offensive forces to finish securing the area, preventing the enemy from just rushing up to take it back. Trying to dislodge him is a difficult thing, after all. Even if they bring lots of stuff, odds are good they'll fail if he's on defense in territory you control. Meanwhile, your assault forces are cleaning up their other armies and taking the rest of the territory (while Gor holds whatever the most vital strategic position is).

Gor-Rok is the anchoring bolt that keeps you from being pushed back.

[pin]

You guys are seriously underestimating Tehen. As soon as you get him to rank 12 (and saved 2 skill points to take the 2 skink buff skills he unlocks at 12), his CHEAP red crested skinks army becomes an end game army that can take on pretty much any army AI can field 1v1, even late game. For me this happens at around turn 20-30 most of the time. Even more so if you use the rite he has to buff his skins further

The things Tehen can pump out of his sacrifice system is insane. Faction wide buffs, all army replenish, all army spells, legendary lords, insane followers and banners that buffs your units, army, and economy etc. Even just getting 1 of the (many) right follower/banner early on will mean a HUGE advantage.

The only thing any other lizard lord possibly has over tehen is a safer 1st 11 lord levels. After that Tehen immediately takes over strongest hands down no questions asked.