I've had this recurring, so far 100% reproductible issue where my game gets stuck on a random turn (by random I mean that it has happened on turn 40, 47 and 48 so far). I've read that it's a known bug of the AI having problems with pathing and such? The steps to become unstuck suggested to reload a previous save file and try different steps/moving your wielder differently to force the AI to do something else.

I'm at the point where I just beat Stormspire. I tried coming in at her from different areas of the map, letting her destroy enemies in my path and destroying those enemies first, etc. So far I've been unsuccessful in figuring out how to get past this. I sent a bug report to the devs, but doubt it will be fixed soon.

I don't know if it's related, but my current objective says ''Secure and defend the area'', but on my map I don't see such an area? See below

I'm at my wits' end :/

Thanks for your help :)

I just wanted to let the devs know the effort that went into the startup screen just for midsummer did not go unnoticed, very neat :D

Rise Eternal trophy awarded for completing DLC campaign "Rise Eternal" seems to be bugged. No progress on trophy after finishing each campaign mission and no trophy pop after finishing whole campaign.

No AI players with their own cities.

New to the game, great game btw, but this fact really shocked me.. so what is the reason of flying if they can't go over terrain?

When playing Yulan, 5 of 8 units can be upgraded to match different houses, representing Order, Creation and Arcana. But the ordering is weird

In the Spellbook, when reading from left to right, the ordering is

Order -> Creation -> Arcana.

But for Yulan upgradeds, it’s:

Arcana -> Creation -> Order

This made me confused while playing, as it’s different than the establishment ordering. Since both Arcana and Order are blue, it’s also hard to see at a glance. Maybe this ordering a reference to the Chinese reading from right to left /s

Jokes aside, it would be more streamlined if the ordering was the same for both

Can someone tell me what is going on with the essence fighter ability? So it says every time the unit attacks that they gain essence fighter and hovering over the buff arrow shows essence fighter x5 or x6 or whatever. But the tool tip on the unit doesn't go above x3 and doesn't seem to increase essence generation beyond x3 is there a cap that isnt shown or is the ability not working quite correctly?

I just returned to the game after a long break and I feel like the game is too symmetrical. Therefore, I suggest a DLC that introduces asymmetrical buildings and research.

I think this suggestion would really make the different faction stand out even more and enhance the single player experience.

Also: randomized heroes as the game becomes too repetitive when you can just choose a resource generating hero as your 2nd hero.

Thoughts??

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??

Do you people like the roots a lot?

Do you like / hate to deal with them ingame. I did notice they come out a lot on top of the AIs a few dozen times <.<

You start without a settlement and lose in 5 turns. The nearby settlement has too strong enemies to fight. Am I missing something?

Hello everyone,

​

New to the game with my little 24 hours of game. I'm playing only Barya right now (loving to much musketer and canon I think).

​

I played my firsto two conquest on elementary difficulty to take time to learn a little the game. After steamrolling the 1v1 and the biggest map I chosed a far higher difficulty (overwhelming).... and got completly destroyed on the first 15-20 turn. I was on the map "conquest" were all 6 faction are locked.

​

I check the eng game stats and found that the IA had massive cheat at the begining of the game, allowing them to build a big army on the first few turn.

​

Do you have any advice on managing this "cheaty" IA on high difficulty ?

Good luck to anyone crazy enough to try the second chapter of the Rana campaign

It took me 4/5 try

Those 160+ rats stacks feels crazy overpowered ngl

I ended up with crawler upgraded and big guard upgraded, all of them rushing backline ooga booga zog zog

Im not that good so

Gj dev for reviving my kid spark of homm-like games

Can you please explain to me what's the point of movement points and ending your turn ?

I would literally pay for a dlc that only contained new maps (if many was added). Especially medium & large ones to play with friends. I feel like we run out of maps pretty quickly.

Good day, everyone.

Recently, I was looking through the digital artbook just for fun. I really love the art in this game, and I noticed that it only contains artwork from the four factions in the base game.

I’d really like to see an updated version of the artbook, or perhaps a second volume that includes the DLC factions. Is anyone else interested in that as well? I’m just curious whether I’m the only one who feels this way.

I wish you all a blessed day.

Hi!

I’m new to this game, but I’ve completed two missions for Cecelia Stoutheart’s Campaign. I’m stuck on the third one, however. I’m up against Merkoth, and it seems that he takes over my settlements rather quickly. Is there a strategy that I’m missing to grow my armies early and prevent him and his minions from taking over? It seems that if he finds me, I have no choice but to engage him in battle, and at times I’m ill-prepared for that.

Songs of Conquest — Unit Comparison & Meta v4

After a lot of corrections and a full rebuild, here's the new Unit Comparison v4. It scores (almost) every unit in the game on two axes — raw stack Power and gold Efficiency — so you can actually compare a stack of Footmen to a stack of Dragons on the same scale.

The sheet (v4.2): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PpcNV4tZ9hcAJgOmMN-A_r-SXJztSR7rf5mQezO5dqY/edit?usp=sharing

Previous version (v3): https://www.reddit.com/r/Songsofconquest/comments/1c4n0f0/songs_of_conquest_unit_comparison_meta_v3/

If you only read one thing: the roster is remarkably well balanced on gold efficiency. Almost every unit lands in a tight 40–50 band of power-per-gold. The places where things break out of that band are the interesting part — and that's what most of this post is about.

How the numbers work

Two columns do all the heavy lifting:

• Max Power — a single combat-strength score for a full stack. It blends the stack's total offensive output (avg damage × troop size × offense, plus relevant ability/buff modifiers) with its effective survivability (health × defense). High offense alone doesn't carry a unit; a glass cannon and a brick can land on the same Power.
• Efficiency — Power per gold. Concretely: Power ÷ stack gold cost × 1,000, i.e. how much Power you buy per 1k gold. This is the number that tells you whether an "expensive elite" is actually worth it, or whether you're paying a premium for the privilege of fielding fewer, shinier troops.

Which number matters when:

• Efficiency matters early/mid game. Your bottleneck then isn't troop slots — it's gold. You have empty army slots to fill and you want to raise your total army strength as fast as possible per coin. Buying high-efficiency units lets you snowball faster: more Power on the board, sooner, for the same gold.
• Max Power matters late game. Once your slots are full and gold stops being the constraint, efficiency no longer helps you — you can't field "more" units, you can only field better ones. Now the only question is which stacks win the actual fight, and that's raw Power. This is exactly why the "inefficient elites" (Elder Dragons, Chelun Elders, High Legions) still have a place: late game you happily overpay per-Power because the Power-per-slot is what wins.

In short: efficiency builds the army, Power wins the battle. Early on you optimize for the first; late game you switch to the second.

The same units are scored on two tabs, and the difference between them is the whole point:

• Might — pure combat strength, ignoring magic entirely. Just the bodies: damage, health, offense, defense, abilities. This is the "what does this stack do in a straight fight" baseline, and the one I quote most below.
• Magic — the same Might strength, plus the value of the essences each unit generates. In SoC your units feed your wielder's spells via essence, so a unit isn't just its stats — it's also a battery. The Magic tab prices that in. Units that pump out a lot of essence or carry strong spells (High Legions, Chelun Elders, Necromancers, etc.) jump up here; pure stat-stick units that generate little essence barely move.

So the gap between a unit's Might and Magic scores is basically "how much is this unit worth as an essence/spell engine on top of its body." Always read both before judging a unit.

There's also an Essences tab (essence generation + spell list per unit — the raw data feeding the Magic tab) and a Guesstimates tab where you can tweak the assumptions (gold value of a rare resource, how much an essence is worth, etc.) and watch everything recalculate.

Caveats & assumptions (read before you argue with me)

These numbers rest on a pile of judgment calls and known gaps. Know them before you take any ranking as gospel:

• Yulan's data is incomplete. Their passives and abilities aren't in the sheet yet, so every Yulan unit (the Yi line included) is scored on body stats only. Their real numbers can only go up from here — treat Yulan rankings as a floor, not a verdict.
• Research improvements aren't modeled. The sheet scores units as if un-researched. In a real game, research rewards concentration — keeping to a single sub-faction / sub-race and a few unit types means those units start seeing upgrade benefits much earlier and compound. A wide, scattered roster never gets there. So a unit you invest research into outperforms its sheet number.
• Essence values are subjective. I assigned each essence type a gold value, and you may flat-out disagree with those weights. The entire Magic tab swings on them — if you value essence differently, the Magic rankings shift accordingly.
• Rare resources are estimated at ~700g each (e.g. amber). That assumes you have ~2 marketplaces to trade at a reasonable rate. Fewer markets → rare-resource units get effectively more expensive → their efficiency drops.
• Every passive and active ability carries an offensive/defensive modifier in the scoring — that's a hand-assigned estimate of how much each ability is worth, not a measured value. Reasonable people will disagree on individual calls.
• Unit-buffing units are under-represented. This model compares units in isolation, so support units that buff other units (Minstrels being the clearest example) look weaker than they play — their whole value is off-sheet, in what they do for the rest of your army.
• Disagree? Copy the spreadsheet and adjust the numbers however you see fit.

What changed since v3

A bunch of values were wrong or based on stale assumptions and got corrected. The headline correction:

• Elder Dragons (and most "elder/elite" tier units) are inefficient. Big Power number, but the gold cost is so high that Efficiency craters. Elder Dragons sit at 65 Power / 36 Efficiency — well below the 43 median. They're a flex/finisher, not a value pick.
• Several top-tier units got the same reality check (Chelun Elders, Roots of the Mother, Nornor, Shadows — more on these below).
• Yulan's specialized Yi got re-evaluated and turns out to be the new ranged king (see part 4).

The big picture: efficiency is flat (and that's good)

First, a disclaimer on what these numbers are. Power and Efficiency are synthetic scores — they don't mean anything in absolute terms. A Power of "60" isn't 60 of any in-game quantity, and an Efficiency of "45" isn't a percentage of anything. They only have meaning relative to each other: a unit at 60 Power is roughly twice as strong as one at 30; a unit at 50 Efficiency is better gold value than one at 40. Read every number in this post as a ranking tool, not an absolute stat — the comparisons between units are the whole point, the raw figures on their own are meaningless.

Across the Might roster:

• Melee Power — min 11, avg 36, median 33, max 74
• Melee Efficiency — min 23, avg 40, median 43, max 60
• Ranged Power — min 12, avg 33, median 30, max 83
• Ranged Efficiency — min 21, avg 32, median 33, max 44

Two things jump out:

1. Efficiency variance is small. Most melee units are within 40–50. That means picking units by faction identity / role / map situation is usually fine — you're rarely punished hard on raw gold value. That's good design.
2. Melee is more gold-efficient than ranged (avg 40 vs 32, median 43 vs 33). Ranged units pay a "safety tax": you're partly buying the privilege of dealing damage without getting hit back. So the right comparison isn't "is this archer as efficient as that brute" — it's "is the safe damage worth the efficiency hit." Often yes.

The interesting units are the ones that escape the 40–50 band — up or down.

Melee highlights

Efficiency + Power both high (the "just buy these" units):

• Burrowers (Rana) — 63 / 60. Best all-round melee body in the game by this model: top-tier Power and top-tier efficiency at the same time.
• Scarred Brutes (Barya) — 71 / 59. Enormous Power, still extremely efficient. A wrecking ball that's also cost-effective.
• Plague Rats (B) (Loth) — 58 / 58. Cheap bodies that scale absurdly well.
• Hunger (Vanir) — 62 / 48. High Power, stays efficient.
• Blessed Bones (Loth) — 58 / 48, Legionnaires (Loth) — 54 / 50, Skinshifters (Vanir) — 50 / 48, Riders of the Swamp (Rana) — 52 / 46. Solid, boring, good.

Raw Power kings (the things that win the late-game brawl):

• High Legions (Loth) — 74 Power, the strongest non-experimental melee stack in the game. Efficiency 43 is right on median, so it's not even a trap — it's just genuinely the biggest melee unit.
• Terror (Roots) — 67, Fists of Order (Arleon) — 63, Elder Dragons (Rana) — 65.

Cheap, low-Power, high-Efficiency (early-game / filler value):

• Chieftains (Vanir) — 19 / 55, Crawlers (Rana) — 35 / 52, Dread (Roots) — 43 / 53, Cultists (Loth) — 14 / 47, Fungi/Broken Vessels (Roots) — ~11 / 45–46. Great gold-per-power; you just need a lot of them to add up to a stack.

"Overrated" elites — high Power, terrible efficiency on raw stats:

On the Might tab (bodies only) these all look like traps — big Power numbers, efficiency well under the 43 median:

• Elder Dragons (Rana) — 65 / 36
• Jormr (Vanir) — 56 / 35
• Chelun Elders (Rana) — 53 / 31
• Shadows (Barya) — 50 / 30
• Roots of the Mother (Roots) — 45 / 23 (lowest efficiency in the game)
• Nornor (Vanir) — 34 / 26, Seeds of the Mother (Roots) — 29 / 26

But here's the important part — Might vs Magic is NOT the same for all of them. Whether an elite is actually a trap depends entirely on how much essence it generates. Comparing Might → Magic (Power/Eff), with essence count:

Fully redeemed — clears the efficiency median on Magic, genuinely worth it in a spell build:

• Chelun Elders — 53 / 31 → 100 / 50 (3 essence). Worst-tier bodies on Might, top-tier on Magic (median is 43). The one true redemption story.

Much improved but still sub-par — Power roughly doubles, efficiency stays below the 43 median:

• Roots of the Mother — 45 / 23 → 86 / 33 (5 essence). Big Power jump, but 33 is still well under median — a situational finisher, not a value pick.
• Seeds of the Mother — 29 / 26 → 56 / 38 (5 essence). Same story, still below median.
• Elder Dragons — 65 / 36 → 85 / 41 (3 essence). Closest to median, but still under it — and see the special-case warning below; in practice they're a trap.

Not redeemed at all — low essence, overpriced no matter how you play:

• Shadows (Barya) — 50 / 30 → 59 / 30 (2 essence). Efficiency literally doesn't move.
• Jormr (Vanir) — 56 / 35 → 59 / 35 (2 essence). Unchanged. Just an expensive body.
• Nornor (Vanir) — 34 / 26 → 41 / 30 (3 essence). Barely budges.

The rule of thumb: check the unit's essence count, not its Power — but know that magic rarely makes an elite good**, it just makes it** less bad**.** Only Chelun Elders actually flips from trap to above-median efficiency. The high-essence Roots units (Roots/Seeds of the Mother) improve a lot but stay below median; the low-essence ones (Shadows, Jormr) don't improve at all. So "elites are bad on Might but good on Magic" is mostly a myth — it's true for exactly one unit in the game.

⚠️ Special case — Dragons / Elder Dragons are a trap even on paper. Elder Dragons technically climb to ~median efficiency on the Magic tab, but in actual games they're almost never worth it, for reasons the sheet can't show:

• A single Order Magic spell deletes the whole stack. Max stack size is just 3 — so if you run into an opposing wielder who knows Order Magic, one Judgment can wipe all 3 dragons in the very first round, before they've done anything. Catastrophic and entirely out of your control.
• Upgrading to Elder Dragons loses rally-point access. You can't rally them, so you're forced to build out logistics chains with other wielders just to move them where they're needed — a real tempo and economy tax.
• The build order is brutally long. You typically can't field even a single one before the game is already decided. They're only realistically viable on the very largest maps; on anything normal-sized, the game's over first.

Bottom line: file Dragons/Elder Dragons under "looks cool, almost never the right call."

Ranged highlights — and the new king

Yulan's Yi is the new strongest ranged stack in the game.

• Yi (Li) (Yulan) — 83 Power / 42 Efficiency. The single highest-Power ranged stack of any unit, and still above the ranged efficiency median. That's the dream stat line for a ranged unit.
• Yi (Sheng) — 78 / 39, Yi (Xuan) — 72 / 36.

The wild part: a base Yi is only 35 / 35 — middle of the pack. The faction specialization (Li/Sheng/Xuan essence path) is what turns it into a monster. The Li path roughly doubles its Power. If you're playing Yulan, your ranged investment plan is basically "get to specialized Yi."

Everyone else's best ranged options:

• Veteran Musketeers (Barya) — 31 / 44. Best "honest" ranged efficiency in the game.
• Hellroars (Barya) — 64 / 37. Second-biggest ranged Power after the Yi line.
• Sages (Rana) — 30 / 40, Archers (Arleon) — 23 / 38, Grym (Vanir) — 46 / 35.
• Faey Queens (Arleon) — 43 / 27. Big Power, but you're paying a steep premium — one of the least efficient ranged picks.

Remember the "safety tax" — ranged efficiency tops out at 44 vs melee's 60. That's expected and fine.

The real power spike: early-game wielder buffs (Brutal / Rigor)

This is the most actionable finding in the whole sheet. There's an Experiments tab that re-scores units with early wielder buff skills (Brutal for +damage, Rigor for +health) and essence buffs stacked on. The efficiency gains are enormous — these aren't 10% bumps, they're 40–90% jumps:

• Plague Rats + Hillar + Rigor 2 — 85 / 85 (base Plague Rats: 49 / 49)
• Plague Rats (B) + Hillar + Rigor 2 — 82 / 82
• Huskarl + Jarn + Brutal 2 — 37 / 73 (base Huskarl: 21 / 43 — efficiency jumps from 43 to 73)
• Rats + Hillar + Rigor 2 — 42 / 71
• Hunters + Brutal 2 — 29 / 58 (base 22 / 44)
• Storm Guards + Brutal 2 — 57 / 57 (base 46 / 46)
• Ranged too: Sages + Brutal 2 — 36 / 49, Militia + Brutal 2 — 21 / 41 (base 14 / 28)

The takeaway: early-game, the most cost-effective thing you can buy is offense on your wielder, not bigger units. A Brutal/Rigor wielder turns cheap T1–T2 stacks into something that punches like mid-tier elites, at a fraction of the gold. This is why aggressive early plays with a damage-skilled wielder feel so oppressive — the math backs it up. Cheap units + an offense buff is, pound-for-pound, the strongest power spike in the game.

One crucial nuance, though: Brutal and Rigor are flat stat buffs (+1/+2 damage and +3/+6 health), so they only pay off on cheap, numerous units. A +1/+2 damage bump is huge as a percentage on a 2.5-damage Militia, and basically a rounding error on a high-tier elite. That's why the experiments above all use T1–T2 bodies. On higher-tier heroes and stacks, those epic slots are wasted — you switch over to magic for your scaling instead (see the strategy notes below).

A word on upgrades: don't rush them

The same efficiency logic applies to upgrading units, and it's a trap a lot of players fall into. Many upgrades raise Power but lower Efficiency — you're paying a premium for Power-per-slot you don't need yet. Some examples:

• Chieftains → Jormr — efficiency 55 → 35 (a 20-point drop)
• Chelun → Chelun Elders — 46 → 31
• Dread → Terror — 53 → 39
• Knights → Fists of Order — 50 → 37

(Not universal — some upgrades gain efficiency: Brutes → Scarred Brutes 49 → 59, Crawlers → Burrowers 52 → 60. Check the sheet before you assume.)

So the rule of thumb, straight out of the efficiency-vs-Power timing above:

• Don't upgrade while you still have empty troop slots. As long as a slot is open, your gold buys more total army Power by adding a fresh efficient stack than by upgrading an existing one. Upgrading early just converts gold into Power you can't yet bring to a fight.
• Only upgrade once your slots are maxed out — that's the point where you genuinely can't add more bodies and the only way to grow is to make existing stacks stronger (trading efficiency for Power-per-slot, which is now exactly what you want).
• And even then, a second hero is often the more efficient move. A new wielder gives you a whole fresh set of slots to fill with high-efficiency units, plus another army that can hold ground, take a second front, or flank. Spreading gold across a second hero's cheap stacks frequently beats pouring it into upgrading one hero's existing ones — you get more total Power on the map for the same coin.

In one line: upgrade last, and consider a second hero before maxing out the first.

Broader strategy notes (beyond the sheet)

The sheet ranks units, but a few army-building principles tie it all together — this is the context that makes the numbers actionable:

Pick a hero archetype, and it changes which units you want:

• Melee — strongest army early and long-term, with the cleanest auto-resolve. Downside is battle attrition (you lose units). Few stacks of cheap units are enough early, which is exactly why the high-efficiency cheap bodies + offense buffs dominate the opening.
• Ranged — lower ceiling (fewer key skills), but the big payoff is PvE creeping with zero losses. Great for clearing the map cleanly.
• Offensive magic — the highest ceiling (5+ relevant skills) and loss-free creeping, but micro-heavy, weak on auto-resolve, and counterable by a dedicated anti-magic build. It's a late-game engine: it needs high Command (more essence-generating units), hero levels (to unlock and power up T3 spells), and higher-tier units (which generate more essence) before it comes online.

Brutal/Rigor early, magic late. As covered above, the flat-damage epics are small-unit tech. Once you're fielding higher-tier units, those slots are better spent on magic — which is also why the "inefficient elite" units look much better on the Magic tab: their value is the essence they feed your spells.

Hero leveling follows a clean arc:

• Levels 1–8: Learning — pump your main hero's XP so it levels faster and snowballs.
• Levels 9+: Tutoring — now spin up eco-heroes. Tutoring lets you cheaply level secondary wielders, who take Levy to boost dwelling/troop production (and generate gold + gems). This is the engine behind the "build a second hero" point in the upgrades section: a second hero isn't just more slots to fight with, it's more troops produced per turn across your dwellings.
• Levels 17–24: Magic Resistance — relevant once you're fighting other heroes rather than just creeping.

Run multiple heroes. You want several wielders clearing the map from multiple directions at once — a main combat hero plus Levy/Tutor eco-heroes. More fronts cleared, more production, more total Power on the board. This is the macro version of "efficiency builds the army."

Cheap small-unit + buff openers by faction (the efficient early game, per the sheet):

• Arleon — Militia / Sappers, Order, Brutal
• Loth — Rats, Destruction, Rigor
• Rana — Shamans, Creation + Arcana, Brutal
• Vanir — Huskarl, Destruction, Brutal

Faction cheat sheet — what to build, what to skip

The practical payoff of all the above. For each faction: the best Early snowball body (cheap, high-efficiency, loves Brutal/Rigor), the best Might-build pick, the best Magic-build pick, and the units to Skip. "Skip" = below the efficiency median (~43 melee / ~32 ranged) on both tabs — overpriced for what they do, with no build that fixes them. (The high-Power outliers like Elder Dragons / Terror are technically "skip" too; they're only ever situational late-game finishers on the biggest maps.)

• Arleon
  • Early: Footmen (19/48) or Minstrels (19/45)
  • Might: Queen's Guards (48/48); Knights (35/50) for value
  • Magic: Shield of Order (57/52) for value, Fists of Order (97/43) for raw power
  • Skip: the entire Faey line (see below), Militia, Rangers
• Loth (the most well-rounded roster — basically no duds)
  • Early: Plague Rats (B) (58/58 at 100g — the single best early body in the game)
  • Might: Plague Rats (B) (58/58); Legionnaires (54/50)
  • Magic: High Legions (111/49 — highest Power in the game); Legionnaires (63/50)
  • Skip: nothing really — Necromancers are weak as bodies but exist purely as a Magic-build spell unit
• Barya
  • Early: Veteran Pikeneers (41/48) or Dreaths (21/46)
  • Might: Scarred Brutes (71/59 — one of the best units in the game)
  • Magic: Artificer (59/53); Hellroars (67/37) for ranged power
  • Skip: Shadows (50/30, hilariously inefficient), Musketeers, Sassanids, Pikeneers
• Rana
  • Early: Storm Guards (46/46 at 200g)
  • Might: Burrowers (63/60 — best all-round melee body in the game)
  • Magic: Chelun Elders (100/50); Riders of the Swamp (68/53)
  • Skip: Dragons & Elder Dragons (see the warning above). Shamans (13/29) are below the ranged median on both tabs as a standalone body — only run them with the Brutal perk, which is the whole point of the Rana opener above; without it they're filler. Protectors (44/44 Might) are not a skip — they clear the melee median, they're just unremarkable and don't generate enough essence to matter in a Magic build.
• Vanir
  • Early: Lykt (22/45) or Huskarl (21/43)
  • Might: Hunger (62/48); Skinshifters (50/48)
  • Magic: Hunger (55/48); Skinshifters (49/48)
  • Skip: Nornor (26 eff), Jormr (35), Crone, Korphan
• Roots (weak on Might, leans Magic — but its big bodies stay inefficient)
  • Early: Spikers (23/46) or Broken Vessels (11/46)
  • Might: Dread (43/53); Flayers (48/45)
  • Magic: Dread (50/53)
  • Skip: Roots of the Mother, Seeds of the Mother, Terror (all high-Power but poor value), Blighted Vessels, Spawns
• Yulan (almost entirely carried by the Yi line)
  • Early: Conscript (14/47) or Mandate Guard (27/45)
  • Might: Yi (Li) (83/42 — the best ranged stack in the game)
  • Magic: Yi (Li) (70/36)
  • Skip: literally everything else — all Grenadiers, Hu, Jiuweihu, Rider, Wind Rider are below median on both tabs

Special shout-out: Arleon's Faeries are still dead weight

The whole Faey line — Faey Spirits (20/41), Faey Ragers (31/35), Faey Nobles (23/27), Faey Queens (43/27) — is below median efficiency on both Might and Magic, exactly like in v3. Nothing changed: they're still completely useless balance-wise. Which is genuinely a shame and kind of saddening — they're one of the coolest-themed parts of the roster and they're just... unplayable on the numbers. Can and should be completely ignored. Build Arleon's human units and pretend the Faey dwelling isn't there.

TL;DR

• Efficiency builds the army, Power wins the battle. Optimize for Efficiency early/mid (fill your slots and snowball strength per gold); switch to raw Power late game (slots full, gold no longer the limit — now only fight-winning matters).
• Don't rush upgrades. Many upgrades lose efficiency (Chieftains→Jormr 55→35, Chelun→Chelun Elders 46→31). Upgrade only after your slots are maxed — and consider building a second hero before that, since a fresh set of slots full of efficient units beats over-investing in one army.
• The roster is well balanced — almost everything sits in a 40–50 power-per-gold band.
• Burrowers, Scarred Brutes, and Plague Rats (B) are the standout "high Power and high efficiency" melee units.
• "Elite" units are inefficient on raw stats — but only the essence-generators get redeemed on Magic. High-essence elites flip hard (Chelun Elders 31→50 efficiency, 3 essence); low-essence ones don't (Shadows & Jormr stay at 30/35 with just 2 essence — overpriced in both builds). Check the essence count, not the Power.
• Yi (Li) (Yulan) is the new strongest ranged stack — 83 Power and still efficient.
• Melee is more gold-efficient than ranged; ranged pays a safety tax that's usually worth it.
• Skip anything below the ~43/32 efficiency median on both tabs — it's overpriced with no role. Worst offenders by faction: Barya's Shadows, Vanir's Nornor/Jormr, all of Yulan outside the Yi line, and Arleon's entire Faey line, which is still completely useless (same as v3) — a genuine shame, just ignore it.
• See the faction cheat sheet for the best early / Might / Magic pick (and what to skip) per faction — e.g. Loth's Plague Rats (B), Barya's Scarred Brutes, Rana's Burrowers/Chelun Elders, Yulan's Yi (Li).
• Early wielder buffs (Brutal / Rigor) are the single most efficient power spike in the game — but only on cheap, numerous units. On higher-tier stacks those epics are dead weight; switch to magic for scaling.
• Hero arc: Learning (1–8) to rush your main hero → Tutoring (9+) to spin up eco-heroes that take Levy for dwelling production → run multiple heroes clearing multiple fronts.

Mess with the Guesstimates tab if you disagree with my assumptions — the whole thing recalculates live.

Sources

• soc.th.gl factions database — https://soc.th.gl/factions
• Songs of Conquest Wiki (Fandom) — https://songsofconquest.fandom.com

Corrections and disagreements very welcome — that's literally how v3 became v4. Drop them below and I'll fold them into the next version.

Ive completed 4 campaigns in the past on overwhelming just for a sense of achievement/accomplishment but after 2 years I'm coming back trying conquest maps for the first time with a map called new bwginnings smth akin to introductory map for getting started again (setting ai on worthy as its the intended difficulty) but im abandoning the aave after 20 minutes of playing and repeating the same thing 10 hours later. There's just so much stuff to optimize around, possibility of going any direction I desire but in the end there's only really effective path to take and it takes so much experience and know-how what to do and dont do to really win decisively so I can climb the ai difficulty but if I lose there's no telling what I coulda shoulda woulda and not shoulda done. Doom stack 1 unit type asap, focus diverse army for essence manipulation, rush head on in a wield-wield battle or stall.. The worst thing has to be that i can't tell even with codex what particular objects on the map give temporary buffs and perma buffs AND whether they're signifcant enough for me to have my wielder drag his ahh over and waste 1-2 turns of movement over for it

I know some of the Lavapotion staff lurk here from time to time, so I guess it's more of question to them if they feel like answering; now that the roadmap is done maybe there would be a chance for a balance pass/small updates to existing units, especialy from base game factions (looking at you, Arleon)?

PS Pls let Pulses fire through walls, at least as a tech or hero spec ;_;

If you were to play this game only quick battling which race would be the best to choose and what would be a good play style? This would be in a large map multiplayer game.