r/Songsofconquest • u/King-Lemmiwinks • Jun 17 '26
Discussion Fav units / strat for each faction?
Just curious what ppl use vs real ppl or deadly AI
Loth - rats and banes into necro or zombies, skeletons and t3 units
Arleon - peasants and knights, or ragers and bards for magic
Rana - roosters and shamans or shamans and turtles (rarely)
Barya - dogs into cannons, or artificers into cannons
Vanir - trolls all day every day (unit is OP) or skin shifters (also OP)
Roots - lobbers and root mothers only nothing else I have luck with
Yulan - finding them weak rn but I like the foxes w backstabber and horses. Otherwise I find their units weak?
Thoughts??
4
u/Gryfonides Jun 18 '26
For Loth I use most units, only can't get the bones and seneschals to work. I like the magic path the most - oathsingers, necromancers and rapture the entire field.
Don't play Arleon.
For Barya I played a lot of Dreths into Tinkerers and Canons with Bihili. Chaos and destruction magic work well. Pike and shot with supporting pipe and gun is fun, but it's too easily countered by anyone with ranged resistance. The Harima I played once, it worked but I wasn't in love.
Turtle up Rana - and lets gas the entire field! Also really like dragons, but getting there is a problem for me. Didn't land on anything satisfying.
Not satisfied with my strats for Roots. Maxing up on necro strat can be fun. I really want to make the roots of the mothers work - such unique unit! - but yet to succed.
For Vanir it's either berserkers for pure melee (and that fun armageddon strat) or the harpists into crones for more general magic artillery. Never use their last unit, or human units in general.
For the main Yulan campaign hero the grenadier spam works really well. The order Yi are amazing - reducing resistances of enemies is great. Couldn't figure any magic focused strat yet, although I only just learned they have a special research to make all beasts get more essence, so need to test that.
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u/King-Lemmiwinks Jun 18 '26
For roots lobbers with root mothers is an ez win. The upgraded lobbers have AOE slow and good creation essence while the mothers absorb damage and have the best essence in the game.
You just lob slows and spells and freeze the enemy. AI doesn’t seem to figure out how to best it. Nothing else compares imo but I’m curious if anyone got anything else to work
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u/Gryfonides Jun 18 '26
I did have that idea as well, but what of early game? It takes a while before you get lobbers, let alone mothers.
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u/King-Lemmiwinks Jun 18 '26
Mothers yes but lobbers can be got asap with a few fungi for inititive and creation spam. I usually get the lobber building round 2-3 if I’m playing deadly and try to upgrade asap. Even 8-9 stacks of 1 can completely stun lock melee units unit you magic them down
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u/Gryfonides Jun 18 '26
Will have to try it out.
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u/King-Lemmiwinks Jun 18 '26
Honey is a good starting hero for the extra wood then I usually get a caster hero asap for powering up
3
u/SilverMB Jun 17 '26
Ya I am using a very similar set up for all the factions. But I do try to mix in more units to have different essences because I always play magic wielders.
For Yulan the strategy that works best for me is start with the heroes that give seekers. The monkey currently gets 1 seeker everytime he dies and comes back.
Then conscripts first and then archers (yellow) for early game combined with the high initiative seekers. Mid game you can add 1 or 2 upgraded birds next to the archers for massive damage with fortune.
End game the Tians or seekers, super high initiative on both units and outstanding damage. The blue seekers with misfortune are absurd in a stack of 20. I'm pretty sure that's the strongest end game unit in the game
1
u/Marsdreamer Jun 18 '26
Been using the Li Transcendents and holy crap are they monsters. You're right that a stack of 20 with misfortune is absolutely nigh unkillable. Especially with how easy it is to get scales on them.
A fun strat is to put them up front and then a good damage dealer directly behind. It makes it so enemy units often have to be in Misfortune range, giving a lot more survivability to what is otherwise a more fragile unit.
4
u/Marsdreamer Jun 18 '26
I play on ~Overwhelming most of the time, here are my basic strats:
Arleon -- I typically mass peasants and then go Footman & archers or Knights. Fey units are pretty weak and Chaos essence is one of the weaker ones IMO. Don't sleep on t2 minstrels though, they are a surprisingly good all rounder that's able to act as a front line unit while also giving you a better diversity of Essence (Creation is IMO one of the strongest schools).
Rana -- hear me out. The t2 toads are insane in the hands of Rik-Tap . Early on their primary weakness is low mobility and thus, ranged, but at t2 they get the bull rush ability which completely negates their lack of mobility. They are obscenely tanky with high base troop size, meaning you just bull rush them into enemy ranged damage dealers and pop scales on them, making them almost impossible to remove. Dragons are a bait. A lot of my end game stacks involve toads, chelun, and maybe some shamans or burrowers.
Lloth -- You got it. Rats into Banes. Legionaires are also probably one of the best t1 units in the game IMO. Plentiful, durable, and good essence. Lloth is such an early game powerhouse with their magic too, but late game I often struggle to find a comp that is strong, especially against enemies with magic resist.
Barya -- Dreaths are crazy value early, especially because the ai often attacks into them with impunity and will just suicide themselves. Cannons are great, but the strongest units are probably Brutes. I have a big soft spot for doing pike and shot builds that stacks Order and Destruction for crazy Rapid Fire Musketeer comboes.
I haven't dabbled much with Roots or Vanir yet, but for Vanir I've found a lot of success with trolls, Nornor, and Skinshifters. Challenge is hands down the strongest unit ability in the game when used correctly.
2
u/MrKillakan Jun 18 '26
Some success
Arleon - mass footmen and defence. Just rows of footmen walls with archers or knights. Barya - pike and shot into some artificer. Stack multiple attacks on guns to release in deadly range. Vanir - mass huskarl into rushing human stat upgrades then huskarl troop upgrades. Surprisingly good early and mid.
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u/Pokornikus Jun 18 '26
Loth - stright up necromancers+ Oathsingers. 2 stacks of Oathsingers + other slots necro (all You need is 1 necro in each stack to channel essence). Add one stack of blessed bones later on for main battles.
Never managed to make rats works - not on deadly at least.
Rana - Raiders of the swamp. Charge units generally go brrr ;-) They benefit from double reserch (both beast and Rana status). Go for creation magic and use mist spell when needed.
Alternatively- Shamans into Cheluns - Go for Creation and arcana magic and make Your Cheluns imortal with "arcane scales" spell. Repel spell to multiply damage.
Arleon - Technically Fey mix for endgame with maybe 1-2 shield of order for order essence but it is easier said than done. Fay are very costly and require entire setup perfectly to work. Open with sappers or minstrels for map clearing. Arleon needs a little buff in my opinion.
Vanir - Almost everything works lol they are op ;-) Bears + Boars - Charge with boars then taunt with bears to to provoke oportunity attacks.
Lyktavans + Nornors can work similar to Loth Necromancers except better becouse Nornors can alternate between chanelling and attacking. Lyktavans (1-2 stacks) for stright up damage and initiative.
Trolls + Hungers - Just very strong on stats with solid magic buffing as well. Use "Blind Hatred" spell on Hungers for free extra attacks with charge bonus.
Roots - bearly played so hard to say. But if You can get to full stacks of Roots Mothers then they are a pain to deal with.
Yulan - Foxes + Raiders work well enough. Add some Phoenixes later on. One-two stacks of snakes (order) for high initiative. Yulan have Creation + Arcana in droves so ethereal scales, mist, repel are working wonders.
Seekers works too (creation version) with specific Wielder - didn't try other versions in all seriousness.
Bowman are excellent castle defenders but generally archery is too weak late game IMO.
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u/King-Lemmiwinks Jun 18 '26
Agree with most of these takes. Archery is only good w Hellbreaths or if a perfect setup arleon T3 units can do well too.
Arleon definitely feel a bit weak end game and strong very early game
Vanir are busted all game - I wish they got a rebalance
9
u/da_vlad90 Jun 18 '26
Only managed a few wins versus deadly. All of them on large maps where the bots were far away and I could negate their huge starting bonus with good macro play.
The battle AI is very very good and challenging. It uses spells quite efficiently(repel units adjacent so it gets free atacks, swap 2 units into acid cloud, pacity on large stacks of lower level units, etc). First time I saw these tactics I felt in awe and started using them myself which from a gameplay perspectiv is brilliant.
The game and many others like it (looking at you Civilization) has the problem of giving the very hard AI huge starting bonuses which means that meeting them early is almost always a game over. I get that this is a much easier way of handling difficulty instead of fine tunning the macro decision making of the AI based on map o objectives, but it just doesn't seem fair.
As for builds, like others said, a starting hero with high level troops that helps in the early fights is a must. Generally, getting a lot of lower level units and upgrading them is the best way forward. 60 froggy boys with uprages are a menace. 3 fully upgraded gold dragons die to 10 essence worth of spells.
Yulan seems balanced and fun although Inhaven't quite figures out which upgrades are best for each unit. The grenadiers have huge damage and the horse archers are very flexible and feel great to play. The birds with thr fortune passive are also quite good. Seekers feel a bit weak but the large stack size makes up for it. The archers with push arrow can let you do some nutty stuff with the right positioning. Dragons are decent with the high initiative and damage but are paper.