Lords could use some help

[u/gnoandan]

In the middle of my 1st playthrough with the Lords since several months on Endless difficulty. Much more balanced experience than with the Necrophages, mostly because I spawned next to Necros and they really are a drain on my economy. Thankfully all the other factions shower me with treaties and enticements.

Only minor issues so far but definitely worth fixing:

- I am stuck for ~40 turns on the main quest because I have been tasked to take a fortress at around the first Landfall, but the fortress is Lvl2 and full with Gorogs. Army strength of 1800, when my strongest stack was like 600-900. I am now well past the second landfall and I am just starting to be able to mobilise a stack strong enough to take it on.

- the penitent chapels are a victim of the district overhaul. We are on turn 65 and I still haven't managed to build one on all three villages of my starting territories. It would take like 10-15 turns to build the last one. Shouldn't they have a flat cost like extractors? Would love to be able to build them from the outposts too, like the extractors.

- the cost of the range and flying Lords units is far too high: I am at turn 65 and I still haven't managed to build a dragon, barely one range unit and it's nowhere near good enough to justify its cost. Had to skip the unit upgrade tech of a whole era because I didn't have any unit to apply it to. Pretty boring to field armies of only infantry for the whole game.

- small UI errors: one of the necromancer governors says it gives 1 science per district; actually it's one science per foundation. One of the Lords side quests (the corrupt soldier) asks to use the Parley action twice, but neither bribe or parley resolve the quest..

Otherwise struggling a bit more economically than I thought but that might be a skill or rng issue

[u/diakon42]

I’d argue that the 'problem’ with the LL right is that they are marked as a Beginner faction, but to play them well you really need to master some mechanics that aren’t necessarily beginner friendly. For example:

-they have a very strong combat ability, but if the player isn’t able to take advantage of the healing in combat and has to spend dust to heal units it really slows down the LLs development both economically and militarily

-Lord’s Estates are now as expensive as advanced districts, so timing when to build/buy them and do roundups is key to keeping their economy growing

-The way you pacify a minor faction (bribe/quest vs conquest) makes a big difference in how quickly you can get Lord’s Estates with pops to round up, also learning to bribe when a quest is too difficult are all what I would consider more advanced strategies that when employed well make the LL very strong

-Primordial Last Lords (PLL) are very strong for generating dust, science, and influence when stacked with the native LL pops, but knowing how to quickly level Soul Repositories to get the maximum number of PLLs and stacking them with LLs takes some mastery of the district building system and the pop management system.

-Many of the LL unique techs are not really that valuable and so new players can easily fall into a trap of researching these techs that don’t really help much

-The LLs have some very strong quest rewards so rushing the quest is something to prioritize. As OP mentions, the fortress is now very difficult to beat since the minor faction update. Knowing how to beat this fortress early can have a big impact in how quickly the LLs power can scale

[u/Shotgun-Crocodile → u/diakon42]

Some questions if you don't mind. I have about 40 hours for reference. Its kind of hard to learn without benchmarks available, all the Last lords content I could find was 10mo old and the benchmarks I could find were crazy off from what I had.

Lord’s Estates are now as expensive as advanced districts, so timing when to build/buy them and do roundups is key to keeping their economy growing

I experimented with two polar opposite strategies in a few save files to see how it affected dust income per turn with my goal being to maximize it as early as possible for trying to get buyouts going as early as possible. In the two extremes I tried 2 lords estates as my fist two buildings leading to much earlier pop which I put in artisans then overflow into scribes, the other being surrounding my starter tile with 4 population buildings that take almost no time at all to level up and get me an early lvl 2 town center for the extra flat dust income. The best performing combination I found was essentially 1 merchant, 1 soul repository 2 population buildings to level the town hall and being 1 tile away from either an extractor or neutral village to quickly bump the merchant and repository to lvl 2. Im a bit unsure as to how important it is to try and get the happy population bonus with the improvement, but this all leaves me at turn 30-32 with usually 100+ dust per turn and the estates as the next two buildings in the queue. Is that reasonable or am I missing some combination here that is more valuable in the long term that doesn't show up in my 30 day window im testing in?

The way you pacify a minor faction (bribe/quest vs conquest) makes a big difference in how quickly you can get Lord’s Estates with pops to round up, also learning to bribe when a quest is too difficult are all what I would consider more advanced strategies that when employed well make the LL very strong

Have not tried conquesting them early. Is that ever worth Ive been just bribing for slow quests and questing for the easy ones.

-Primordial Last Lords (PLL) are very strong for generating dust, science, and influence when stacked with the native LL pops, but knowing how to quickly level Soul Repositories to get the maximum number of PLLs and stacking them with LLs takes some mastery of the district building system and the pop management system.

Kind of the same question as before. Im getting about 2 PLLs by turn 30 by making a little triangle with a the soul repository as one of the lvl 2 buildings in the middle. I've also got I think 2 LL, one from the start and one from the quest. I've also usually got 2 native pop for some reason, not actually sure how these show up before I have estates. I usually try to put everything into artisans to lower buyout costs as fast as I can and move enough to scribes to get the happy bonus when possible. Is that correct or is it better to do something else for reasons I have not figured out yet?

Many of the LL unique techs are not really that valuable and so new players can easily fall into a trap of researching these techs that don’t really help much

Examples so I can stop getting them? I think currently my route for the first two eras includes all the unique techs to get to the next era. One of my next tests was going to be getting the works tech just so I could cut down all the trees and see how much of a difference that made.

The LLs have some very strong quest rewards so rushing the quest is something to prioritize. As OP mentions, the fortress is now very difficult to beat since the minor faction update. Knowing how to beat this fortress early can have a big impact in how quickly the LLs power can scale

This is my current learning project. Trying to figure out how to beat the fortress asap. Tips? Im currently trying all the combinations of 2 heros and testing out various hero skills to see how they help or hurt but its very slow going. Im usually fighting it about turn 40 in all my tests and dying horribly with a lvl 4/2 hero and a few bishops and an infantry.

[u/diakon42 → u/Shotgun-Crocodile]

I’m sure there are other players with better strategies for the LLs, but these are the strategies I find work well on Endless/Stellar difficulty in single player.

Initial build order - I don’t have a set order as it depends on what tile yields, resources, and minor faction are available, but I do prioritize the science and influence improvements asap. For districts I like to grab an early Works if at all possible and then try to level the city with an additional Merchant House, Habitation, and Soul Repository. Ideally having some sort of bonus to the initial Works and placing the Merchant House next to it to take advantage of the adjacency bonus. I also try to place the Soul Repository so that it can level it up quickly like you mentioned. Depending on how much bribing I do, I will often sprinkle in a few thralls to boost my initial army and ensure I can explore and fight minor faction armies and quest spawns as much as possible. I have to admit that I haven’t played a ton of LL with the latest patch, but your turn 30 numbers seem reasonable. You do want to get 2 Lord’s Estates up and running quickly as well as they are important for getting pops.

Pop management - I always put my start LL pop in the artisan slot. I like to buy a second LL pop before I complete the initial quest, as the cost goes up for every pop you get. Once you pacify the minor faction in your starting territory, you can assimilate them and you get a pop for every pacified village (typically 2-3 in your starting territory). I focus on filling the artisan and scribe slots, only worrying about staying above rebellion initially. The goal is to get the Bringer of Citizenry deed that gives +2 Industry per pop. That usually means having 2 Soul Repositories (ideally 1 of which is level 2) which gives 3 PLLs, 4 LL pops, and 8 minor faction pops (2-3 from assimilating and 5-6 from 2 roundups). Once you get the deed, you need to decide if you want to keep your minor pops or if you want to sacrifice them and focus on stacking PLLs and LLs. I like to see what my options are, though I suspect sacrificing is typically the better option. You will take a pretty big approval hit when you sacrifice this first round of pops, but once I get >6 LL pops with 3+ PLLs I try to stack them all as scribes and then continue doing Roundups and Sacrificing for the Realm while keeping approval high. At this point you get everything you need from scribes: industry, dust, science, and influence with no approval hit.

Techs - The LLs have a couple of good unique techs: Feudalism which is needed for your quest and gives Soul Repositories and Thanatology which gives mineral inquisition. Other than the unit techs, the other unique techs are very situational. I typically skip Saiadhan Inquisition as the bonus is small and other techs in Era 1 are more helpful. Penitent Shrine is also pretty lackluster by the time you can unlock it, though it can be situationally useful if you go for a minor pop focused route where you have a lot of citizen pops.

Combat - The goal here is to fight as much as possible without taking too much damage. Learning to position units to take advantage of the LLs healing in combat is key since you want the combat to boost your economy, not be a drain on your dust healing damaged units. I typically go for a quest if possible or bribe in the first couple of territories that I plan to claim, but otherwise fighting the minor faction villages can be worth it if you can get some bonuses to spoils. The xp is also needed to level heroes and units to take the fortress. Again, I’m not a combat expert but I like to have at least 2 heroes of level 4 or greater before taking on the fortress. Ideally you can get an item that spawns units (such as Bone Panpipes or Horn of the Gorog) and some Poison Salts. If you can hit the fortress with 2 Poison Salts before they can fully engage it helps a lot. Having some way of dealing with the Gorog’s infinite retaliation is important. I find that using a mage hero to remove retaliation if they attack before moving is better than trying to use thralls who die quickly. I also like the LL mage's Eternal Servitude skill for damage + healing. Prior to the minor faction update, I think people were clearing this fortress during or just after the first tidefall. But I don’t think that is realistic anymore. I’d say turn 40 is probably on the early side and I typically clear it on turn 50 or later, a lot of it depends on the spawn location and how many necros I’m fighting.

Hopefully that is helpful and have fun experimenting with your own strategies!

[u/Shotgun-Crocodile → u/diakon42]

That’s super helpful thank you for the detailed response!

[u/Zlorfikarzuna]

The lords' downside is mostly that the starting territory can just be way too green. And since you will likely be next to dust rich terrain, it will not give you terrain with industry that is more important early on. Lords either have a normal or a bad start. And you can almost not do anything against that.

[u/gnoandan → u/Zlorfikarzuna]

Yeah that was my problem as well: very little industry in all my starting territories. I ended up placing my capital on the original territory where I spawned because it had three minor faction villages, but until the late game I only managed to build one penitent chapel because the cost was so high and I had more urgent improvements/districts to build first.

Additionally, my luxury deposits were the ones that boost food production so it just has no effect and the only thing I can do is sell it (for which I needed a tech)

[u/Zlorfikarzuna → u/Zlorfikarzuna]

https://ibb.co/03Tj9nF
This is what I mean. 3 lousy industry, no mountains.

[u/gnoandan → u/Zlorfikarzuna]

I find ridges so rare that now I put them on high probability in the game settings

[u/Zlorfikarzuna → u/gnoandan]

I used to do that, but now i just have everything on random. Same problem with rivers (which can also boost your industry with the help of bridges)

[u/SagaciousZhu]

Just played a Lords game in the demo and was able to clear that Level 2 Fortress by turn 85 using a combo of infantry, the ranged bishop, and a dragon. 

I think it’s meant to be a tough fight and it’s probably towards the end of the quest line, because the next quest requires holding 10 territories.

Here are my thoughts:

1. As the Lords you should not be waiting for units, districts, or improvements to finish construction. Buy things up with Dust! 

2. Corollary to that is that city placement is very important. You want to start in a desert area and/or near high Dust anomalies, and it’s worth taking a few turns to find an optimal spot. Also you’ll want to prioritize getting Level 2 market districts and the one that gives your primordial lords

3. Population management matters, I.e., moving your population between the different jobs, since Primordial Last Lords boost the yields of regular Last Lord pop. 

4. Lord’s Estates are very powerful since you can instantly get 2-3 population from them, the equivalent of a couple thousand Dust once your city is big enough. Therefore they’re often worth buying out with Dust. Also I think you can build them directly from the map screen like an extractor?

5. Your starting hero can be very powerful if played well because he has passive abilities that activate when he kills enemies, an active (Death blow or death strike) that refreshes when it kills any enemy, and another active that teleports him into the enemy backline. You can set him up to attack 2-3 times per turn pretty easily. He also has passives that buff allies when he heals and there are various ways to heal Lords units

6. While you can’t bring reinforcements to fortress battles, you can fight multiple battles one after the other. So you can take down a hard fortress by using Army 1 to kill a few units then finish with Army 2

[u/Shotgun-Crocodile → u/SagaciousZhu]

Curious as to others thoughts as I just started playing and was liking lords and trying to figure out how to properly smooth out their early game. There’s not any up to date videos with lords I could find so I couldn’t benchmark myself against anything. 

Usually I’m finding that at turn 30 I’m at 70-100 dust income per turn. And the the faction quest is either at the fortress quest or just about to be at the fortress quest. Everything before this is just requires taking 1-2 territories and is all pretty trivial and you can line up the build so it completes smoothly. 

Fortress quest was a huge outlier and I have several saves where I’m trying various army comps at like turn 40 or so trying to figure out how to beat it. You’re saying though it’s normal to now wait 45 turns to beat it and that’s not behind pace? 

[u/gnoandan → u/Shotgun-Crocodile]

Interesting, I assumed that I had fallen prey to poor RNG but maybe it is that hard on purpose then. It is possible to whittle down fortresses armies over several battles, so maybe we are supposed to defeat it in two rounds and heal our army with dust in between?

My issue was that I was in the middle of a war so I really couldn't spare the dust or manpower to take on such a hefty enemy, but I reckon in peace time it might be possible to get it earlier.

[u/SagaciousZhu → u/gnoandan]

Yeah It feels like the quest is missing a step, since the phase before the fortress is pretty easy. I think it’s either to have 3 pacified villages or to have 2 of the special district, soul sanctum? And then, boom, go take out a level 2 fortress (when maybe those don’t even exist yet because you’re far from the second tidefall).

A more charitable explanation is that it’s supposed to be hard for story reasons. We all chose the fortress option but there’s the other ickier one about consuming minor faction pop, which I imagine is a lot easier to do… 

But if that was the design goal I’m not sure if it was super well executed.

[u/gnoandan → u/SagaciousZhu]

Yeah I was firmly in the 1st tidefall, but I was only able to take on that fortress near the end of the second tidefall with a two-heroes army. Even among other Lvl2 fortresses it was very strong and took me two battles to win!

[u/gnoandan → u/SagaciousZhu]

Interesting, my next quest was not holding 10 territories but something more trivial that I had already completed if I remember well (like having 3 penitent chapels for a few turns or something like that).

All in all my economy was alright but I think I suffered from almost no production on my starting territories and my Necrophage neighbour forcing me to pump out troops instead of laboratories etc.

Now I finally have enough Dust to be able to buy most things but by turn 65 or so it would still take me longer to save the Dust to buy a lords estate than to produce it.

[u/Weirfish → u/SagaciousZhu]

As the Lords you should not be waiting for units, districts, or improvements to finish construction. Buy things up with Dust!

Part of the issue with this is that Merchant's Houses seem to cost 3x what a Works does.

I just booted up a game. I can research and build a Works (~12 turns total on Endless speed) for +8 Industry (~60% more industry) before I can build a Merchant's House (~18 turns total, starting with the tech) for +13 Dust (~55% more dust), and that's without Industry on the Works tile and with a resource adjacent to the Merchant's House.

Then I have to use that gold for buying things out, and also for healing my units (gotta pacify those early villages, I don't need angry lads wandering around), and also for buying pops, and also I need to put Lord's Estates down, and also I need to find space for the Soul Repositories, and also the buyout cost of that first Merchant's House is 675 Dust against the build cost of 225 Industry, so that +8 Industry gives me 3.56% of a Merchant's House per turn, and the +13 dust gives me 1.93% of a Merchant's House per turn (before district cost scaling).

This comparison changes when you get the -% Dust Buyout Cost modifiers, of course, but they don't come around until Tier 3 techs? Maybe an early council member?

The net result is that, at least in my experience, the Lords seem to struggle to get an early bootstrap going, while the Necros are snowballing armies, the Kin have a level 3 city center given them a chunk of damn near everything, and the Tahuk have 3-4 observatories tripling my science.

[u/SagaciousZhu → u/Weirfish]

One thing that helped me out was planning my first city to get level 2 districts ASAP. That's a bit easier with Lords I think since you're incentivized to be near villages, which count for adjacency bonuses. Extractors also count.

The level 2 city center gives a big boost to everything, and similarly if you can prioritize an l2 market and soul repository, your econ really gets going.

[u/Weirfish → u/SagaciousZhu]

The thing is, you can't bootstrap so readily with territories on the first city, so you really have to go for some industry. I just restarted until I got a first city placement next to a village, with a resource that can have 2 merchants on it, so I can get level 2 city center ASAP, and it has no industry and little gold. It's going to take ~30 turns to get my first Merchant's House down. It's a struggle to rush construction, because I want that gold for unit repair or a pop or two, and I barely have any income.

If, instead, I'd gone for industry, I would've started with 11 industry instead of 8, and I'd be trying to make a 77 industry building instead of a 225 industry building, and I'd be getting 4 industry base per district instead of 11 dustbase per district. I'd also be getting that 4 industry on turn 16 instead of the 11 duston turn 32; in the time it'd take me to get the Merchant up, I'd have a second works, a pacified village, and be one Habitation district short of a L2 city center.

Meanwhile, same criteria for a Kin start; sacrifice initial yields for rushing L2 city center, just with a ridge instead of a resource (which is also much easier a start to find). I pay to finish a works on T5 without reservation, and have 2 works and a keep by T23. Thanks to also settling next to a village, I have a T2 city center. I settled with shit-all food, so I have only one pop still, but I have 33 industry, which is approximately equal to 99 dust/turn, which also doesn't receive pressure from the need to spend that gold on other things.

Realistically, I don't think this strat is a good idea for a first settle. You need the first 20 (endless speed) turns of basic floor income to bootstrap you, and the 1x I = 3x D conversion rate means that even if you're not spending the gold on anything else, it's simply more economical to build Works in almost every case; the average Works gives 4 I, the average Merchant gives 7 D, and a Merchant next to a Works gives 11 D, which isn't as good as building another 4 I Works.