Barbarian race discussion

[Ozymandyus]

Hey folks, I had just started my first game of COM a few nights ago, and after reading through the races and abilities had selected...barbarians with a warlord/astrologer/specialist/life mage, advanced difficulty. I realize after reading some of the threads here that this apparently makes me a cliche, but it seemed logical enough from the available selections.

Anyhow, I had run across the new gladiator unit and, not knowing any better and seeing that it superficially looked like it was better than a berserker, started making them instead. What actually caused me to seek out these forums was that, at least anecdotally, the gladiators seemed a bit weaker than the zerkers, and I wanted to see if I was missing something. Looks like this was timely, as you have an ongoing discussion about it. From what I can tell, although the gladiators are indeed more survivable, the real reason you have troops like these is for their ability to pre-emptively eliminate enemies that would otherwise be too difficult for a low-magic race to fight. From my experience, the gladiators are failing in this regard. Sure, you may have one figure in a unit survive an attack that a zerker would not, but if you're lining up your battle lines correctly, it's not as big of a deal. The gladiators simply do not do enough damage to justify replacing zerkers, let alone considering the extra cost and requirement of another building. I have an almost impossible time as it is taking on things like doom bats or gorgons in nodes with zerkers (even with my magic working in nodes), but my gladiators just get mowed down. I just end up wasting a lot of mana trying to keep them healed, then they die anyway without killing the enemy.

Just now getting to the point of being able to try out the spell zerkers, will post feedback on them as I can.

It seems to me that the barbarians are still lacking in mid-to-late-game units, as things currently stand. I think the gladiators are a step in the right direction in this regard, but either need more figures per stack or a higher damage output per figure, possibly both. The only other option at the moment is sticking with zerkers, and doing your best to buff the hell out of them. But with the volume of units you need as the game moves along, it gets really tedious to keep buffing individual units in this way.

[Nelphine]

In theory though, you don't need a fighters guild (I think? I haven't tried them yet), and barbarians are a rush race, so you should be using gladiators against Commons and uncommons, not rares. Against lairs or nodes you would still use bezerkers because you don't need increased durability against neutrals who can't cast spells.

And welcome!

[Ozymandyus]

In theory though, you don't need a fighters guild (I think? I haven't tried them yet), and barbarians are a rush race, so you should be using gladiators against Commons and uncommons, not rares. Against lairs or nodes you would still use bezerkers because you don't need increased durability against neutrals who can't cast spells.

And welcome!

Thanks, Nelphine!  Played the vanilla game for ages and still enjoyed it, but was very happy to find the mod and the community here.

I believe you're correct, gladiators require the coliseum which is separate from the fighters guild.  It didn't occur to me to use the gladiators earlier in the game both because I wasn't familiar with them, and because of the expense.  Even still though, the main utility of the gladiators appears to be against traditional missile units, due to the large shield (unless that mechanic has changed too).

I was off to a great early start with my game and feeling kind of invincible...right up until I hit a sorcery node with gorgons and a chaos node with doom bats in rapid succession.  After my two experienced stacks of zerkers were summarily wiped out, it gave me pause to read carefully all of the new changes, and eventually brought me here.  Still haven't really figured out a good counter with the barbarians, maybe the spell zerkers will be it...but I haven't revved up full production on those yet.

[teelaurila]

With the caveat that I have not played the most recent barbarians... You really must have alchemy, that +1 tohit is indispensable. A zerker with just common life buffs should do away with a doom bat: if you miss the defenses immolation will mercilessly roast you, but will only tickle a buffed one. Stoning gaze is probably the single worst thing a life barbarian can face. You need lion heart, unicorn, angel, prayer, to buff your resistance else zerkers just get stoned instead of fight. But gorgons are rare as are these.

[Ozymandyus]

With the caveat that I have not played the most recent barbarians... You really must have alchemy, that +1 tohit is indispensable. A zerker with just common life buffs should do away with a doom bat: if you miss the defenses immolation will mercilessly roast you, but will only tickle a buffed one. Stoning gaze is probably the single worst thing a life barbarian can face. You need lion heart, unicorn, angel, prayer, to buff your resistance else zerkers just get stoned instead of fight. But gorgons are rare as are these.

Thanks for the info Teelaurila, I am still very much learning this new game, which is fun in a sense as it makes it a new experience, but also frustrating to put several hours into it then get my ass handed to me.

In my game I did pause to gear up to produce Spellzerkers, in case that was the missing link.  While I did find that the SZ were a great troop (essentially a slightly weaker berserker + magician abilities), they just come along too late to do any real good.  By the time I had a stack of them my heroes could mostly handle the gorgons by themselves.  The doom bats were another matter entirely...because they have a LOT more hit points you almost never one-shot them, at which point the doom and immolation melts any of the barbarian units, and does severe damage to a hero.  They're sure a heck of a lot nastier than I remember in the vanilla game, even if you try to use ranged units, the bats are so fast that they can get at most one shot in before the bats are upon them.

In any event though, the delay caused by waiting to gear up production to produce SZ ended up being my demise.  By the time I could properly field them, a chaos/sorc enemy was laying waste to me with volcanoes and water elementals.  So far as I can tell, you either win early with the berserkers or not at all.  Pausing to build up infrastructure to produce later-game units is ultimately a fatal delay.  It means you'll have to bypass anything that has units like the bats or gorgons, which I find frustrating, but is apparently the price you pay.

Think I'll try another race/strategy next.

[Seravy]

Spellzerkers and Gladiators have been added to have something that other realms can use when playing Barbarians as Berserkers are too fragile for them. As a Life wizard, you probably don't need either of them and should keep using the Berserkers.

[teelaurila]

About the notion of "pause to build infra": You don't. You build a stack to grab treasure asap, then feed the gold to buy that infra (and possibly even some units) at a few select cities. Then use the units to keep the treasure-ball rolling by hitting harder targets (and more targets when you have more than 1 stack).

Later on I tend to have some second-tier unit producers that build up their infra to create garrisons. Magicians is usually it. (Which I start to question in my present game when a sky drake showed up...)

[Ozymandyus]

Just following up on this folks, I did decide to try a different game (orcs with specialist, cult leader and 10 death books), and as fate would have it, my first opponent was Horus playing with the barbarians and mostly life books. I rolled over him like a cheap rug for the most part, his berserkers were absolutely no match for a stack of ghouls.

However, now that he's down to his last town (with heavenly light), he has it stocked with three heroes and gladiators, all buffed up. I find that I get wrecked trying to take that last city, even with a stack of heavy hitters like shadow demons led by my best hero. Spells and magical ranged attacks just basically bounce off (do no damage). I'm not sure what the AI is doing that I didn't in my game, it didn't seem to matter how I buffed my gladiators, they still died far too easily, even to magical ranged attacks.

Anyhow, I have some of his nearby former cities working on producing berserkers now, which I'm promptly hitting with blood lust. We'll see how a stack of those do against his buffed gladiators!

[teelaurila]

Be aware that exorcise and holy word wipe undead. The way death should kill that fortress is to turn his armies undead and throw those back at him. You could need many stacks, you might do real harm only by combat casting. But you should attack fast as death. If he has only one city, perhaps you should make peace and head for the next wizard. This one is harmless (since life).

Buff stacking is the thing. Especially defensive. City walls also give 3 armor which can be huge. Especially with +todef.

Barbarians have low base resistance so poison from ghouls should work. Remember black prayer. But you can only kill one barbarian per 2 ghouls or so.

[Sapher]

Gladiators on lunatic.
https://youtu.be/PouSFtcY5-g
https://youtu.be/Artx9tjTJYA