Broken Lords

This guide will give you a sense of general direction on how to play the Broken Lords
There are also tips and guidelines on Strategy, Military and Economy for you to consider.
I hope this guide gives you a deeper understanding and many victories while playing the Broken Lords.

Broken Lords

DIFFICULTY:

Broken Lords (or maybe better known as Dust Lords) are set up for expanding, meaning it's easier to achieve the expansion victory compared to the rest. To achieve an expansion victory you are required to capture 80% of the map. This guide will focus on what the race is designed to accomplish. If you find other uses for the race, please share in the comments below!

TRAITS

Traits of the Broken Lords make the expansion victory an easy achievement as they are set up to expand quickly without the need of food. The amount of dust during the whole game is enough to make cities within an instant and you will still have anough to capture areas with an impressive army



These traits grant your rush capabilities, within no time you can have a larger population and better equiped armies. You have one resource less to worry about as food has been replaced by dust. Broken Lord heroes can be used to provide cities with bonuses to receive more dust. But they're also effective while sieging, meaning you'll have to make important decisions when to buy and where to use your heroes.

Strategy

Expand to high dust areas > Main Quest 1/3 > Upgrade current cities > Expand > Main Quest 2/3 > Upgrade current cities> Expand > Main Quest Finished > Expand

Early Game
Start by setting up your first cities. The areas should contain lots of tiles with dust. Once you have expanded, focus on building up a dust economy so you can later sum up an even stronger army. If you follow your main quest line you'll be rewarded with research only available to the Broken Lords. Later on in the quest you'll gain more rewards leaning towards expansion. The only thing required early game is that you invest your population in science.


Mid Game
Here comes the moment when you will meet other players and run out of space to expand. If you keep investing in science and mainly for new weapons and armor you'll be ahead with military power. Because you're expanding so much you should have enough resources to buy them for your army. By this time you should also be swimming in dust, and with it you can buyout almost anything for your cities or army. Now is the time to put dust on overdrive and steal as much land as possible.

End Game
While aproaching the end you should have surpassed the 50% land owned. From this point on you should be snowballing into an unstoppable force. Make sure you know who you're fighting and upgrade the necessary equipment for your units. By this time you'll be stretched out and the players that have managed to stay alive will try and take land away from you. As long as you keep an overview of the world map and have your main armies pushing while upgrading cities you should be oke.

Please keep in mind that these are general directions. Each game will bring new challenges to overcome. The key to success is focusing on your end goal and not getting distracted by too many issues around you.

Military

As a rule of thumb I use 0 as the lowest possible stat and 50 as highest stat, without including HP and Speed

The Broken Lords army isn't as specialized as other races. The only thing to notice is that the units have overall high durability, meaning the Broken Lord units won't die as often as others. You will have a strong starting game but past mid-game you will start to lose the advantage because their main stats won't hold up. The unit composition also doesn't grant any unique tactics. The advantage of the Broken Lords army is that you can buy your units out and create a massive army within no time.

The way to go with the Dust Lords is to quickly pump out a large army that is focussed to destroy a specific opponent. Example: While fighting the Wild Walkers you'd want to use the Ryder unit as it can close the distance fast and take out their rangers. Your racial traits will grant you the ability to easily buyout units. Furthermore you'll be more effective during mid and end-game if you make use of the researchable weapons and armor. Luckily for you resources will be abundant as you're going to expand all over the map gaining access to them.

As the basic unit they are only effective early game. Beyond that you'll need to give them new weapons and armor to make any difference during a battle. Everything except for their health and armor is below avarage and will make them struggle. Use them to start off with expanding, later in the game you can use them as defenders of more valuable units and cities or just plain cannon fodder.
















The Ryder unit is a more versatile unit depending on what weapons you give it. It's main role is to quickly close the gap and disrupt the enemy units untill the main army arives to deal the damage. Though its use is plain to see, it's stats don't compliment it. Helping them gain a higher initiative and battle movement will make them a greater asset.

















I think it's safe to say that you'll be needing this one. The Dust Bishop is a healer plain and simple. The Stalwarts and Ryder Hitpoints and defense can only take them so far. With the Dust Bishops help they will be able to reach and stay at the front to actually deal some damage. You can use exhaustion to lower the enemy defenses and help your army use it's weak attack for the greater good.















Tactics
Stats and ability wise our most usefull unit will be the Ryder, second to that the Dust Bishop and finally our Stalwarts. But we shouldn't approach each battle with just these units and their positioning in mind. As the Broken Lords we have dust on our side and are able to drain our opponent while we keep pumping more units and heal them up at the same time. You should take advantage of your massive army as it is good at sieging. Chip at their units bit by bit and eventaully you'll overrun them with endless waves.

If we would think of a basic tactic to use during all of our battles it would look something like this:

Front
We must make sure that the Ryders close the gap to the enemy and use their stun ability to keep them at their starting location. This will make sure that not all reinforcements are able to enter the field. Focus on the main damage dealers and the units standing on the reinforcement spawns.

Middle
Our midfield should consist out of Dust Bishops so they're able to heal up our Ryders as they keep the enemy back.

Back
Our massive army of stalwarts will start pouring in as reinforcements and deal some chip damage once they reach the enemy troops. The Dust Bishops can use exhauste to help the Stalwarts out.



The unit balance of your army and weapon choice should be something like this:

You'll need to make use of the advanced alloys research to gain acces to new weapons and armor. This will grant you the ability to specialize in specific stats and bridge the gap that the Broken Lords stats already have established.

• Ryder - 60% - Invest in initiative and movement speed so they can get close to the enemy as soon as possibel.
  
• Dust Bishop - 40% - Give them more health and Defense so they can keep healing as much as possible. Upgrade the weapons to max out the exhaustion ability.
  
• Stalwarts - 100% (separate army) Use them as reinforcements and adjust their weapons and armor depending on the enemy that you're fighting.

Economy

The Broken Lords have easy access to- and great use for dust. Their heroes increase dust gain and can help out with expanding lands. They are better governors but their army sort of forces them to be used as stat support to even out the odds.

You will start out in a desert area and should expand to such areas aswell. Dust is something that you need to maximise by using the land you can find or heroes that increase dust gain. The reason for this is that you're going to need your population to gain other resources such as science and influence.

A final note to consider is that the Broken Lords are also neatly set up to gain the economic victory. Though this may be the case, if you do not expand far enough you won't be able to abuse the dust you gain on a snowballing army. Instead you'll be waiting it out with an army that is already weak by itself.

Economoy Priority

- You will need science to research alloys for more powerfull weapons and armor.
- For Emipre plan bonuses but also diplomacy as you'll be at war most of the time.
- Though most things will be bought out, you'll need it when you cant spare any dust.
- You should have plenty of this by default.
- Broken lords don't eat.

Resources

As you expand you gain more access to Luxurious and Strategic resources. And these two will be up the priority list with science. Because when you expand, approval drops and luxury resources can help you with that. Strategic resources on the other hand will be used to buy all those fancy weapons and armor that you've researched.

Here are some resources to look out for during expansion (prioritized):

Era I
Gold

• +5Approval on cities.
  
• -50% Dust on city upkeep. You can never have enough dust.

Wine

• +30 Approval on cities. Very useful during rapid expansion.

Emeralds

• +5 Approval on cities.
  
• +100% Dust on city trade routes.

Era III
Blood Crystal

• +10 Approval on cities
  
• +25% Attack on units

Era IV
Dust Orchid

• +10 Approval on Cities.
  
• +25% FIDS on cities.

Dust Water

• +10 Approval on cities
  
• +50% Dust on cities

Thank you for reading, I hope this guide helps you in your future games. If you have any questions or comments I'll try to answer as soon as I can.

[Zlorfik [CH/BY]]

(1/2) Despite being outdated, the combat still pretty much works like it was back when you wrote it. And i disagree with you.

Stalwarts excel at defense. And they are good at this until the end of the game. Ryders have a niche use imho.

Generally, i play on maps with lots of cliffs since it makes battles more interesting and flying units more useful. With that in mind, a battle map usually has a few chokepoints. I go the roman way: i make a defense line and let the enemy come to me. A line of stalwarts with dust bishops healing them is unstoppable. Yes fights take longer and yes, sometimes you need multiple fights to win, but you have time. Time to sit, buyout your wounds and watch your enemy run himself to death on your shield wall.

[Zlorfik [CH/BY]]

(2/2) Since Stalwarts are also fast, they have the same default battle movement as ryders. While ryders have charge and a higher initiative, they drop like flies against a good archer enemy. It is in my opinion better to advance shields raised towards the archers than to use ryders to try and break their lines.

Stalwarts' healing is also far superior to ryders' life leech since stalwarts heal a percentage of their health while ryders' life leech scales off levels. Especially when you get access to dust armour & equipment, you can boost your stalwarts' health into oblivion, making them practically impossible to kill while they get huge amounts of health from kills.

[<™[-=> Cookiez <=-]™>]

Don't forget assimilation bonuses, +5% dust per pacified Delvers village on cities.

[DimensiO]

@Ash: I can't say as I havent played the game in a long while. Keep in mind these guides are outdated.

[Ash]

How fast do you usually win like this? I find it very easy to win economic victory as soon as turn 130 with this faction, i find it hard to believe you can get the expansion faster, as you need to secure ecnomony in the first 2-3 eras with this faction.

[DimensiO]

<™[-=> Cookiez <=-]™> : Sure, whatever you like.

[<™[-=> Cookiez <=-]™>]

Detrimental? You mean beneficial in the long term?

[DimensiO]

@<™[-=> Cookiez <=-]™> : In the strategy chapter I quickly line out the things you should be focussing on and the quest is a part of it. The main quest is usefull for all factions as they gradually give rewards that can be detremental for the factions long term success.

[<™[-=> Cookiez <=-]™>]

Wow... I like the presentation a lot.... You didn't mention anything about the Broken Lords Faction Quest where they make you research 10 Era I technologies.... Do you go for that one?

[DimensiO]

@Quercus Alba: It could be outdated information. I havent played the expansions.