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The main advantage comes in the ease of production due to upgrade paths. One temple of Lunord lets you convert as many Cutthroats as you want into Assassins. Training a Rogue, then upgrading it twice, results in you paying 800 for a unit that would otherwise cost 700 and which can be built practically anywhere in only two turns. Even if the Monsters or Undead get a variety of temples up, you're still stuck with training your Paladins of Life at the city with a temple to Agrela or upgrading your Court Werewolves, paying 1300 to produce the unit in whichever town you have that can produce Court Werewolves. If you scrimp on infrastructure and just build Noble Werewolves and upgrade them twice, you can train them in more towns but end up paying 1495 gold and taking four turns to train them. Humans can do this for a lot less money, and have a lot easier time generating the cash necessary to use this strategy on a large scale.

Actually the Ratman line upgrades to Paladins of Life and works pretty much the same way as the Rogue->Assassin line (cheap, hired by gold income buildings), and the Goblin Archer line upgrades into Champions of Grum-Gog. Werewolves are expensive yes, they are also ridiculously powerful.

The Healer hate is because they are bad. Really, that's it. They cost too much for what they do. For the cost of three Healers (1500) you could get two temple units (700 each) and stick a couple of upgrades on them. Or if you want to compare them to lower end units, a single Healer costs you as much as three Rangers with Silver Weapon upgrades, or three Mages. Even upgrading them to Priestesses of Agrela isn't a very good move, since you pay 500 for the Healer and then another 700 on top of that to upgrade them. The good upgrade paths start with cheap units and then convert to expensive ones so you only pay a small premium over the normal cost of the expensive unit, but Healers to Priestesses is expensive to start with, so you pay a 500 gold premium every time you upgrade. The infrastructure to build Clerics isn't very common anyway, and Healers are even harder to build, so in addition to being exorbitantly expensive your production capabilities of these units is still going to be quite low.

I'm not really sure how 500 is a lot, considering it costs like 1500 to perk out most units anyway, and ideally you aren't building lots of units, you are building a few, perking them out and buffing them as fast as possible, then wrecking things with them. With humans I can't spend my gold fast enough anyway.

I think you're drastically overstating the typical level of resistances to other damage types. The majority of units don't even have armor at all, and six of the fourteen Monster units take bonus damage from Missile attacks. Fire Elementals have less than 75% reduction from physical attacks of all kinds, and they are the only thing I can think of that gets even that high. Gold Dragons have somewhere in the vicinity of 55% damage reduction against missiles, and they're definitely more resistant than most enemies you'll face. Once you add Silver Weapons for a 20% Spirit damage bonus on all of your Fighter and Ranged type units, the moderate Spirit damage done by Healers really doesn't stack up well.

There are very few enemies that are highly resistant to both physical and elemental attacks. If you have a mix of decent units you can kill enemies by exploiting their resistance holes with higher damage units, rather than using a more expensive, lower damage unit that works on everything. There's nothing a Healer can kill that you couldn't kill with two Mages and an upgraded Veteran.

Are you playing on impossible? Every single enemy unit by mid-game is loaded with perks and sometimes buffs, with temple units in their ranks that have ridiculous resists just like your own. A fully buffed up unit (+100 death damage, +75% elemental, +50% life) with a few +20% perks from leveling and whatever weapon perks you can get, still can't kill many of these units that quickly. A couple healers can. It really is that impressive.

Besides that, the most common powerful units type in the game happen to be highly resistant to physical and elemental attacks, as well as being immune to death damage... elementals. Clerics in small groups can start taking out greater fire elementals very early in the game giving you early access to temple sites. Without chaos shield and jewelry very few mid game melee units can even approach a greater fire elemental, and any missile or elemental ranged unit is just going to plink at it for nominal damage. Clerics will hit them for full damage, four of them can kill one before it can retaliate. 2000 gold for a temple site on turn 30 is well worth it, and they continue to excel in doing damage to otherwise highly resistant units throughout the game.

I would go so far as to say Priestesses of Agrella are the best units in the game, with Ordained Shaman and Healers right behind. Spirit damage really is that important when playing late game on impossible (and eventually multiplayer). The only other thing that comes close to comparing are units with ranged AoEs, like Champions of Grum-Gog and Court Werewolves (not Helias), followed by Liches and Paladins of Dauros since they are totally ineffective against certain races.
 
It seems I lack permissions to post attachments, otherwise I'd have my spreadsheet up in a new thread by now. It'll take some time to format everything to include the contents in a regular post. If there's a moderator who can grant me permission, it'd save me a lot of time and effort.

You might lack permission because you didn't register your game on the forums. You can go here to do that! Just check Steam for your key.

(And I have the information on Agrela's Avatar if you need it.)
 
I didn't know that Ratmen upgraded to Paladins of Life. That's handy, and makes a mixed race approach from a Human start more viable (since an upgrade strategy is gold-intensive, Humans will be better at this). Humans still produce about a third more gold than Monsters do, and while the Monsters have some decent temple units, Assassins are better.

Besides that, the most common powerful units type in the game happen to be highly resistant to physical and elemental attacks, as well as being immune to death damage... elementals.
Greater Fire Elementals have 25 Elemental damage resistance. Earth Elementals have 40 Melee resistance. Fire Elementals are by far the more dangerous of the two, and they go down easily to elemental damage attacks. Three Mages (not even Magisters) can drop a Greater Fire Elemental with their spells from three tiles away for 525 gold, but if you can do it with four Healers for nearly four times the cost, I guess that's good too. Oh, and if the Elemental somehow survives the initial volley of spells, it's movement is dropped to 1 by the bane effect so the three Mages can approach and fire off another volley without the Elemental being able to move into range and retaliate after the initial attack.
 
In my current game I kind of stumbled into the dauros/agrela/helia human strat. Just now reading this makes me want to try the fervus/lunord one. I wonder how krolm/helia/krypta would work out.

Though the temple units really didn't matter much this game, I stomped all over my enemies by playing the diplomacy card and staying out of border wars until I had a small force of minotaurs from one of my early cities.
 
You might lack permission because you didn't register your game on the forums. You can go here to do that! Just check Steam for your key.

(And I have the information on Agrela's Avatar if you need it.)

Thanks. The forum doesn't accept the .ods (Open Office spreadsheet) format so I'm trying to convert it to PDF via some shady online service that might not work and will probably sell my decoy email address to the Communists/Mafia/Aliens.

The Agrela's Avatar info would be good. I can stash it and update the spreadsheet once I've caught them all. I've got to, you know. I want my spreadsheet to be the very best, like no spreadsheet ever was.

EDIT: Got the converted PDF but the format's borked. I'll just .rar it and attach that.

EDIT 2: Spreadsheet is up: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...ction-Buildable-Units&p=13827414#post13827414
 
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Greater Fire Elementals have 25 Elemental damage resistance. Earth Elementals have 40 Melee resistance.

For some reason I was thinking greater fire elementals were more like 35 or 55 or something. I guess mages would work ok too then. 40 melee resists is still nearly half damage and since warriors do so little damage that's a big deal, clerics will massively out damage them on earth elementals.

Three Mages (not even Magisters) can drop a Greater Fire Elemental with their spells from three tiles away for 525 gold, but if you can do it with four Healers for nearly four times the cost, I guess that's good too.

Brain fart on my part, clerics don't cost 500 each. It's 160 IIRC, and you could probably do it with 3 of them too since the elemental would retreat to heal after being wounded so badly, which would be cheaper. I forgot fire elementals weren't that strong against elemental damage though so it's not as big a deal.
 
For some reason I was thinking greater fire elementals were more like 35 or 55 or something. I guess mages would work ok too then. 40 melee resists is still nearly half damage and since warriors do so little damage that's a big deal, clerics will massively out damage them on earth elementals.
I just ran some numbers, and confirmed it in a test game. Resistance of 25 means a 30% reduction in incoming damage. A level 1 Mage with no upgrades does 21.25 damage on average with his spell, averaging 14.875 against a Greater Fire Elemental's resistance. After the first spell, the Greater Fire Elemental's resistance is 5, or -7% damage. The second spell averages about 19.75 damage. At this point the Greater Fire Elemental has six hit points, give or take a couple due to damage randomization. Two Mages at level 1 with no upgrades can handle a Greater Fire Elemental with ease. Their first level gets them +20% Elemental damage, so the next time they have to fight a Greater Fire Elemental it won't even survive the initial attack. You could probably get away with just casting one spell, waiting a turn while it moves one square closer, and then attacking it normally without casting the second spell at all.

Against Earth Elementals you've got a couple of options. You can alternate your spells so the duration of the debuff never lapses, and kite the Earth Elementals who now have a movement speed of 1. This works on any terrain except for swamps and lava. Or, if you've got a bunch of Warriors and you're impatient, you can just debuff the Earth Elemental to drop its Melee Resistance down to 20 and slug it out in melee while your Wizards contribute their five or so damage per hit at range. You'll probably lose a Warrior, or maybe two.
 
Was playing my first game when I saw this thread. Started with humans/agrela heal and conjuror for mage traits. I have to say, the priestesses totally destroy things when they get perked/leveled. If only they had an aoe attack since they never have to heal anyway, just set them down and let the mobs charge, 16 points of regen per turn will keep them quite hale. Also really like the court werewolves and paladins of dauros.
 
I agree that humans are best at producing lots of cheap units.
Mages are key, elven archers are also great if you can get them.

For quick city breaking later dwarves are perfect, but hard to find.
Also, they are good at research.
 
Really nice post, i like your humor comments, i LOL-ed a lot.

I play mainly as humans, but i found the rogues totally squishy just like hunters, could be cause I,m playing against AI opponent, early start of the game they seem to be the first unit to die, even though i don't send them to suicide missions.

The working tactic so far has been veterans front line rangers and mages behind them, and there is nothing that has been able to withstand that.

I even tried assassins, could be it was wrong situation but give me paladins and archers of helia anytime instead of assassins.
They could be useful in PVP if they have stealth (but that is mostly for utility).
 
Brilliant and informative OP, thanks :)

Assassins: Lunord's temple unit is, in my opinion, the best temple unit available to any race or any god. They have a stronger attack than any other temple unit (19 Melee, 19 Death) and have respectable armor (50 Melee resistance, 110 Ranged resistance, 100 Life resistance, 15 Elemental resistance) and decent health (55) along with very high movement (5) and inherent Invisibility when not adjacent to an enemy unit. They also have an ability that does 42.8 Death damage and drops an enemy's resistance to Death damage by 50, which means it takes twice as much damage from Death sources for two turns. Finally, you can upgrade Cutthroats to Assassins, and since you should have Cutthroats all over the place anyway, you should have plenty of high-level candidates as soon as you get a temple to Lunord. They aren't very good against most Undead since half of their damage is Death type, but with upgrades even that doesn't matter. If you add Silver Weapons it adds 3.8 Spirit damage and 3.8 Life damage, which translates into a little over nine extra damage once you take Undead vulnerability to Life into account. Without any upgrades other than that one, you're looking at 28 damage to Undead, which is enough to drop a Vampire about half the time. Further upgrades and level perks will have you killing Elder Vampires in a single hit. Against powerful non-Undead like Old Trolls (90 hit points, regeneration 20) you can pair up two Assassins to use their special ability in sequence. The first one does 40+ damage, and the second one gets the benefit of reduced Death resistance to do 80+ damage. Nothing survives this. Heck, even a one on one fight against a Blademaster that leads off with the special ability will drop him to less than half health and drop about 1/3 of your own health in the first round, and the second round kills the Blademaster while dropping your own health to about half. To sum up, Assassins are fast, hard to kill, invisible, easily upgradeable from the cheapest unit on your roster, and kill just about anything in no time flat, including most melee-specialized temple units.

I agree with this as far as it goes. But assassins are not all that the Temple of Lunord is about. You can also recruit the Adept of Lunord at the temple (at least in an undead city you can) I was playing as an undead and this temple was built in a captured undead city I guess it would be the same for a human player capturing this same city or if he used an undead settler on an empty holy ground.

I have not found any undead units that upgrade to the Adept of Lunord yet but they are a very interesting addition to the temple ability. They are undead and a bit stronger than an assassin but have to start at level 1 so a high level cutthroat might be stronger initially. Let's compare the basic level 1 Assassin with the level 1 Adept.

Assassin: HP 55, Damage 19 melee, 19 death; resistances 50, 110, 100, 0, 0, 15 and has a special called Death Poison.

Adept: HP 55, Damage 30 melee; resistances 0, 35, -25, immune, 0, 15 and has a special called Curse of Death.

The specials are interesting and the Assassins are definitely strong against living things with Death Poison giving 85 death damage and a cooldown of 2 turns. I presume this is an adjacent attack as no range is given. The special damage above was already increased by 30% using Dwarven Strength and Drill perks, but they are available and obvious at the time you build a Temple of Lunord

Curse of Death affects a healer and reduces the power of their healing spells and is an incurable bane. I haven't tested it so I'm not sure how useful it would be against a healer, I would normally kill them if they were causing a problem, but maybe it's something to use on a Paladin of Life when the Adept is too damaged to attack ? I'm not sure. :happy:

The Adepts do a lot more melee damage (30) and this means that all the perks like silver weapons, and frost weapon are considerably better than when applied to an Assassin with its base damage of only 19. Immunity to death damage makes them very useful for taking out Vampires and Ghosts or Undead magical towers all of which do only death damage. Invisibility means that only adjacent units can damage both the Adept or the Assassin.

So I recommend using both Assassins and Adepts depending on the nature of the threat.


P.S I think there is a similar duality between the Druid and the Beastman for the temple of Fervus. The Druid is the unit recruited in the temple and the Beastman is the upgraded unit. But I'll post more on that later.
 
Hey there,

I just bought the game this weekend and now stumbled over this thread. Very informative, thank you very much for that :)

I've got a typical newbie question here. I've played around with the basic units in 2 or 3 test games with humans, and I found the damage of the rogues very impressive (as long as I didnt attack undead). But they were so squishy, and then I decided I'd give them all the defensive perks when leveling up. After a while, I was able to get access to all the armor upgrades the different buildings provide, and now I thought that having all the armors and the defensive perks would be a little overkill. So, in short, would you recommend going the defensive perks for the rogues, to deal with their early game squishyness, or get the offensive/utility ones as you can upgrade their armor defensive stats in mid game with a couple buildings/spells?

Cheers
 
I agree with this as far as it goes. But assassins are not all that the Temple of Lunord is about. You can also recruit the Adept of Lunord at the temple (at least in an undead city you can) I was playing as an undead and this temple was built in a captured undead city I guess it would be the same for a human player capturing this same city or if he used an undead settler on an empty holy ground.

That's right, other races build different units from temples. The Adept of Lunord is a pretty good unit too; more damage of a single type and no reliance upon Death damage makes them take buffs better and hit certain types of enemies more effectively. The Undead have some other good temple unit options with Paladins of Death (Dauros) and Ancient Liches (Krypta), along with the generally awful Krolm's Housecarls.

I have not found any undead units that upgrade to the Adept of Lunord yet but they are a very interesting addition to the temple ability. They are undead and a bit stronger than an assassin but have to start at level 1 so a high level cutthroat might be stronger initially. Let's compare the basic level 1 Assassin with the level 1 Adept.

Assassin: HP 55, Damage 19 melee, 19 death; resistances 50, 110, 100, 0, 0, 15 and has a special called Death Poison.

Adept: HP 55, Damage 30 melee; resistances 0, 35, -25, immune, 0, 15 and has a special called Curse of Death.

The specials are interesting and the Assassins are definitely strong against living things with Death Poison giving 85 death damage and a cooldown of 2 turns. I presume this is an adjacent attack as no range is given. The special damage above was already increased by 30% using Dwarven Strength and Drill perks, but they are available and obvious at the time you build a Temple of Lunord

The damage done by Death Poison gets boosted with anything that increases your unit's Power (not just Melee Attack). They start at about 43 and go up from there, and the abilities for Assassins and Adepts of Lunord both only work on adjacent enemies, and they do get to counterattack when you use them.

Curse of Death affects a healer and reduces the power of their healing spells and is an incurable bane. I haven't tested it so I'm not sure how useful it would be against a healer, I would normally kill them if they were causing a problem, but maybe it's something to use on a Paladin of Life when the Adept is too damaged to attack ? I'm not sure. :happy:

It reduces the healing received by the unit, not the power of healing spells cast (unless they cast a heal on themselves). I haven't tested it against regeneration effects, but I'm assuming it reduces those too. Handy for taking on Old Trolls or units with Fervus' ridiculous regeneration spell on them.

The Adepts do a lot more melee damage (30) and this means that all the perks like silver weapons, and frost weapon are considerably better than when applied to an Assassin with its base damage of only 19. Immunity to death damage makes them very useful for taking out Vampires and Ghosts or Undead magical towers all of which do only death damage. Invisibility means that only adjacent units can damage both the Adept or the Assassin.

So I recommend using both Assassins and Adepts depending on the nature of the threat.

This is true. Adepts of Lunord are much better suited to taking on the Undead. Their hit and run ability is nice as well; it's like the Frenzy ability that Minotaurs get, except you don't have to kill the enemy to move after attacking.

P.S I think there is a similar duality between the Druid and the Beastman for the temple of Fervus. The Druid is the unit recruited in the temple and the Beastman is the upgraded unit. But I'll post more on that later.

The Druid is a Monster temple unit, while the Beastmaster is the Human temple unit. Same with Wolves of Helia and Archers of Helia, and Paladins of Life and Priestesses of Agrela.
 
Hey there,

I just bought the game this weekend and now stumbled over this thread. Very informative, thank you very much for that :)

I've got a typical newbie question here. I've played around with the basic units in 2 or 3 test games with humans, and I found the damage of the rogues very impressive (as long as I didnt attack undead). But they were so squishy, and then I decided I'd give them all the defensive perks when leveling up. After a while, I was able to get access to all the armor upgrades the different buildings provide, and now I thought that having all the armors and the defensive perks would be a little overkill. So, in short, would you recommend going the defensive perks for the rogues, to deal with their early game squishyness, or get the offensive/utility ones as you can upgrade their armor defensive stats in mid game with a couple buildings/spells?

Cheers

You're welcome. The thing about defensive bonuses is that they are multiplicative, while offensive bonuses are additive. If you had a perk that added +100% melee damage and another upgrade that added +100% melee damage, your total melee damage would only be 300% of its original value. If you had a perk that added +50 melee resistance it would cut your incoming damage by half, while another upgrade that added another +50 melee resistance would cut your incoming damage by half again, for a total damage reduction of 75%. You'd need to take 400% of your original value before dying. When a lot of bonuses start stacking up, adding more defensive bonuses improves survivability as much as it always did, while adding more offensive bonuses has a relatively smaller effect.

For Rogues in particular, I prefer the defensive perks first. At level 2 you are given the choice between +20% melee damage or +30 melee resistance. The +20% melee damage only increases the Melee component of your Rogue's damage, not the accompanying Death damage. It doesn't help you take on enemies doing non-Melee damage, but Melee damage is quite common and the difference it makes is a lot bigger than the difference that +20% melee damage makes for a unit who relies on an alternate damage source for a third of their damage. Following is a series of fights showing how Rogues match up against Warriors with various level 1 perks. If both units have some basic defensive upgrades, it swings the balance in favor of the Rogue, who otherwise has a tough time.

Code:
First Fight: Unupgraded level 1 Warrior vs Rogue

Warrior: 9 Melee, 25 HP, -30% melee damage, -0% Death damage
Rogue: 8 Melee, 4 Death, 19 HP, -0% Melee damage
Warrior does 9 damage (kills in 2.11 turns)
Rogue does 5.6 + 4 = 9.6 damage (kills in 2.60 turns)
Result: Warrior wins by a decent margin

Second Fight: Both have +20% Melee

Warrior with +20% melee: 10.8 Melee, 25 HP, -30% melee damage received, -0% death damage received
Rogue with +20% melee: 9.6 Melee, 4 Death, 19 HP, -0% melee damage received
Warrior does 10.8 damage (kills in 1.76 turns)
Rogue does 6.72 + 4 = 10.72 damage (kills in 2.33 turns)
Result: Still not even close. Warrior does more damage and still has more hit points

Third Fight: Both have +30 Melee resistance

Warrior with +30 melee resistance: 9 Melee, 25 HP, -54% melee damage received, -0% death damage received
Rogue with +30 melee resistance: 8 Melee, 4 death, 19 HP, -35% melee damage received
Warrior does 5.85 damage (kills in 3.24 turns)
Rogue does 3.68 + 4 = 7.68 damage (kills in 3.25 turns)
Result: This is about as close as fights get. Could go either way.

Fourth Fight: Warrior has +20% melee damage, Rogue has +30 Melee resistance

Warrior with +20% melee: 10.8 Melee, 25 HP, -30% melee damage received, -0% death damage received
Rogue with +30 melee resistance: 8 Melee, 4 death, 19 HP, -35% melee damage received
Warrior does 7.02 damage (kills in 2.71 turns)
Rogue does 9.6 damage (kills in 2.60 turns)
Result: Rogue wins a fairly close fight

What we see from this is that the defensive bonuses are the better choice when facing enemies that rely on melee for most of their damage. Kind of a no-brainer, but it's better to have things mathematically demonstrated instead of just assumed. I prefer the defensive bonus for Rogues, while taking the offensive bonus for Warriors. The offensive bonus leads to City Fighter later, which lets you beat on Cities more effectively and take less damage in your own cities. Warriors are better suited for garrison duty and city assaults, so I usually upgrade them with their role in mind. Rogues need the survivability and a good chunk of their damage isn't affected by the melee perk, so I give them defensive bonuses instead. I switch up my Warrior upgrades if I'm going for an early Mage build though; in that case it's better to have a stronger meatshield up front while your back row dishes out the damage.
 
Thanks for the math stuff, I had no clue how the defensive bonuses work when you stack them.

Though I think you got one thing wrong with the warrior and the city fighter perk. I always took the defensive bonuses for them, and at lvl 4 (I think) I always could pick city fighter for them. So I don't really think it's a good choice to go the offensive route with them when the defensive path is in general so much better :)

Cheers
 
Thanks for the math stuff, I had no clue how the defensive bonuses work when you stack them.

Though I think you got one thing wrong with the warrior and the city fighter perk. I always took the defensive bonuses for them, and at lvl 4 (I think) I always could pick city fighter for them. So I don't really think it's a good choice to go the offensive route with them when the defensive path is in general so much better :)

Cheers
Oh? Ok, guess I missed that earlier. Time to test this stuff and figure out how perks really work. I'll post findings.
 
A good guide. And basically what it comes down to is the only good Human units before temples is Rogues/Cutthroats and Mages. I consider it a bit of a balance issue because access to a Holy Ground is not guaranteed. In my current game I started boxed in on both sides by two Monster AI's, and a Undead. The Undead's Vampires can pound for pound kill anything in my army no problem I was just lucky I attacked early enough that the AI only had one of them. My Hunters got one shotted though when they stepped out of fog of war. So I had nothing that could fight all the bats. Just had to ignore them an zerg the capital with my Veterans/Cutthroats an Ghost Wolves while the AI continued to spam more Bats an its own Ghost Wolves. At least Bats are balanced by having melee damage though if the AI had true intelligence it could have just used them to create a wall my melee units couldn't get through. If it had two Vampires I think it would have been game over.
 
You know what is funny. That I pretty much ignored Rogue line in my human game, due to bad armor. And that I early got into exploring other world, where death attack is more often useless then useful. Higher hp from warriors just matters more to keep units alive.

Also, what is interesting is that I was ignoring hunters too, but using goblin archers from one monster city I conquered early (extra hp and armor matters). Later I teched to military grounds, upgrading both troops to veterans and seasoned goblin archers, and adding donkey cavalry into the mix. Later also some priests to help against the monsters.
 
yea, I really love that donkey cavalry too. And the halbardiers of course, but donkey cav are plain awesome. I did the same in my first human game... ignored rogues due to bad armor. But in following games I realised that rogues are alot better than warriors when facing humans and monsters, especially cutthroats tear those living opponents apart :)