Loth Tips

[Quillithe]

I got this not too long ago and have been finding it great - but I seem to always struggle in AI skirmishes whenever I try out Loth. What am I missing? (I think I'm trying to use some bad units, honestly)

Anyway, here's my opinions of each unit to get some better input:

Rats - I should use these more, they seem pretty dangerous - but they are going to take losses. Pretty sad essence too.

Oathbound - Seem like a core unit to basically just spam.

Toxicologists - Also seem pretty core, shame about the short range. I guess you can aim while moving up with the upgrades.

Cultists - Sadly expensive for musicians AND with less points of essence than the other similar ones. It can be okay to take some to buff, but mostly not impressed over more oathbound. Guess they do move faster and make undead on death.

Aurelian Scholars - I want this unit to be useful, but it's just not. Their ranged damage and health are terrible before the upgrade, and afterwards if you use them for essence they don't get to shoot anyway. Add to that no retaliation and enemy heroes almost always having magic resist, and they just don't do damage either way. I guess you could throw them 1/slot to save money, but I don't think it's worth the building.

Extra sad because the other essence battery unit is so much better.

Scavanged bones - seems like a decent guy to walk in and retaliate, kinda uninspired and weak to archers for the cost. Also terrible essence, the magic in this faction is incredibly weak.

Spectres - The upgrade ability is good on lower tier units (rats) I guess, but they seem pretty frail for the cost otherwise and without wait to help out. Actually good for spellcasting at least.

Legions - honestly not sure, are they good?


I guess I should just mass undead and rats, but they seem pretty weak compared to the other factions with far better magic and special abilities

[Erdnussbutterbaum]

I have the problem the other way round. I usually play Arleon, sometimes Rana.
And Loth, especially with their huge rat hordes, often cause me the biggest losses. In my opinion, the rats are too strong.

[Quillithe]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Erdnussbutterbaum:

I have the problem the other way round. I usually play Arleon, sometimes Rana.
And Loth, especially with their huge rat hordes, often cause me the biggest losses. In my opinion, the rats are too strong.

Rats are pretty strong (though not good against neutrals because they attrition pretty hard).

As Arleon I'd try to get them in archer deadly range, insect swarm their initiative lower than yours and beserk them, and just unload arrows. Some earth blocks can work too.

Or hit them with any other expendable unit first and then fay ragers can just tear them up. Just make sure you never hit them first with a serious unit when they're undamaged.

As Rana you can try to entangle them if there's a huge stack, and then just melt them with shamans. Or just rush Chelun Elders and spam earth block at them because it's a very fair spell.

[chefcook90]

Ursprungligen skrivet av pi73r:

Loth has the best essence generation together with rana so idk what you are talking about. If you don't wanna go magic you could go mass rats on smaller maps.

That's questionable considering Loth uses Order / Arcane / Destruction with a heavy focus on Destruction. Their spell list kinda blows tbh - like the OP pointed out, it's way too easy to get spell resistance in this game, on top of the already low damage output of destruction magic when not HEAVILY invested with the requisite skills (and if you're up against a commander who went with max Command instead, you're definitely gonna get you're ass handed to you)

Arleon can spam all the really fun spells, like Swap, Invigorate, Rejuvenation, Onslaught, Clouded Vision, etc.

Barya might have relatively lousy essence production, but they're Barya - their units make up for it by being mechanically nutty.

Rana basically does the same thing as Loth, but better.

[Quillithe]

Ursprungligen skrivet av chefcook90:

Barya might have relatively lousy essence production, but they're Barya - their units make up for it by being mechanically nutty.

Agreed that Barya seems to be behind on essence - but giving extra attacks to your reloading ranged units is absurd fun and both spells that do it are in Barya's natural essence types too.

Obviously overkill, but boosting a Hellroar to do 320-400 damage PER UNIT by casting level 3 onslaught on it in deadly range (which you can chaos step it into or out of melee) tends to end fights fast. Especially if you can hit anyone in AOE.


Also for Arleon, I just realized Pacify stacks. Almost never worth it, but it is pretty funny to just completely disable one unit. Just a strong set of control/disable/buff spells too. I know the AI is bad, but I've beat the AI with literally just stacks of single troubadours because your side has massive defense and magic resist and they can't use ranged attacks or move.

[chefcook90]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Quillithe:

Ursprungligen skrivet av chefcook90:

Barya might have relatively lousy essence production, but they're Barya - their units make up for it by being mechanically nutty.

Agreed that Barya seems to be behind on essence - but giving extra attacks to your reloading ranged units is absurd fun and both spells that do it are in Barya's natural essence types too.

Obviously overkill, but boosting a Hellroar to do 320-400 damage PER UNIT by casting level 3 onslaught on it in deadly range (which you can chaos step it into or out of melee) tends to end fights fast. Especially if you can hit anyone in AOE.


Also for Arleon, I just realized Pacify stacks. Almost never worth it, but it is pretty funny to just completely disable one unit. Just a strong set of control/disable/buff spells too. I know the AI is bad, but I've beat the AI with literally just stacks of single troubadours because your side has massive defense and magic resist and they can't use ranged attacks or move.

IKR? I don't know why people think massed rats is allegedly "good" when massed Troubadours gives you +90 defense and 90% spell reduction by doing literally nothing but standing in place strumming the lute all day long lmao

Anyway, like you said, Legionaries are pretty much your bread and butter - they get SUPER tanky once you do all the undead upgrades.
I once had a single stack of Legionaries and several split groups of single-digit cultists successfully defend a city from an army of musketeers and dire dreaths

Rats are honestly a dead end - they don't benefit from any of the human or undead general tech upgrades, they don't revive as risen like the other living Loth units do, their gimmick increases their damage every time they get hit, but not their offense rating, AND they take casualties faster than you can replenish them.

Maybe if you got 8 rats per turn instead of just 4 they would be good, but having only 4 per turn when Arleon can pull 3 Sappers per turn is super underwhelming.

[chefcook90]

...So I just learned that Strengthen Essense stacks with itself, and Repel will trigger attacks of opportunity :B

Loth's destruction magic might suck, but they've got Aegis spam and shielded Legionaries to tank ranged damage, and Repel for free damage against melee units.

Was playing Defeat Thy Neighbor, and I just slaughtered all the Barya CPUs armies and captured their city by turn 45 by using nothing but massed Legionaries, and split stacks of cultists that I picked up from camps :P

EDIT: whelp the one weilder the the CPU had left wasn't able to capture a settlement in time, so I won on turn 49 :D

[Quillithe]

Ursprungligen skrivet av chefcook90:

...So I just learned that Strengthen Essense stacks with itself, and Repel will trigger attacks of opportunity :B

Loth's destruction magic might suck, but they've got Aegis spam and shielded Legionaries to tank ranged damage, and Repel for free damage against melee units.

Was playing Defeat Thy Neighbor, and I just slaughtered all the Barya CPUs armies and captured their city by turn 45 by using nothing but massed Legionaries, and split stacks of cultists that I picked up from camps :P

EDIT: whelp the one weilder the the CPU had left wasn't able to capture a settlement in time, so I won on turn 49 :D

Sadly Strengthen Essence only stacks with itself once, so you can't go full nuclear.

Repel for attacks of opportunity is pretty fun, but I still prefer the Rana approach of pushing enemies backwards through acid clouds.

Certainly solid, but still think they're less broken vs AI and neutrals than a single stack of Dire Dreaths or six troubadours. Earth wall is just a completely busted spell.

[chefcook90]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Quillithe:

Ursprungligen skrivet av chefcook90:

...So I just learned that Strengthen Essense stacks with itself, and Repel will trigger attacks of opportunity :B

Loth's destruction magic might suck, but they've got Aegis spam and shielded Legionaries to tank ranged damage, and Repel for free damage against melee units.

Was playing Defeat Thy Neighbor, and I just slaughtered all the Barya CPUs armies and captured their city by turn 45 by using nothing but massed Legionaries, and split stacks of cultists that I picked up from camps :P

EDIT: whelp the one weilder the the CPU had left wasn't able to capture a settlement in time, so I won on turn 49 :D

Sadly Strengthen Essence only stacks with itself once, so you can't go full nuclear.

Repel for attacks of opportunity is pretty fun, but I still prefer the Rana approach of pushing enemies backwards through acid clouds.

Certainly solid, but still think they're less broken vs AI and neutrals than a single stack of Dire Dreaths or six troubadours. Earth wall is just a completely busted spell.

So I'm playing Rana vs Loth, and I had a bit of an embarrassing moment where I lost a large settlement to ~80-ish Oathsingers.

Admittedly I had gotten pretty cocky since I stole their one expansion out from under them, completely flattened them in in like 6 different battles, and pushed all the way to their capital city by turn 50 with minimal casualties.

All they had left was an army of 80 Oathsingers and I was like "Eh, my settlement has 3 watchtowers - I my garrison should be enough to handle them"

Round one, they cast Quicken on a stack of Oathsingers, have them run right up to my 40 Hunters from the garrsion, and kill half of them with a shank to the face :B

Round two, they took out both my balistae with Psychic spears

Eventually it devolved into my shamans stalling with Ethereal scales, but they ended up getting overwhehlmed.

After that, I was like, "Ok, that was definitely their last army and all they have should have left is like 50 Oathsingers and 30 Risen, I'll just send out a fresh Wielder from my capital with a full stack of Storm Guards and two stacks of Sages and hunt them down."

They show up at my doorstep with 50 Oathsingers, 30 Risen, 70 Rats, and 20 Banes.

Ok, I get that they could have picked up the rats from a neutral Rat Warren, but where did they get the Banes?!

I ended up losing that fight too, but all they had left afterwards was like, 3 Oathsingers and some risen, so I killed them off immediately afterwards.

I finished burning down their capital and got my main army to the outpost they stole, and here's what I find:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2967309561

FR tho, where did they get those 20 Banes from!?

[chefcook90]

Ok, somewhat offtopic, but can confirm that 1) the AI does in fact know to demolish buildings they don't need and replace them with ones they do, and 2) the AI ignores unit production when purchasing units.

I left them alone for 10 turns. They spent 2 of those turns building a Labratory to start up Bane poduction.

Labs produce 2 Banes per turn.

2 x 8 = 16.

They showed up at my base with 70 of them.