Military Race Rankings(Life+Warlord)

[Anskiy]

I am currently evaluating the races as they play by using a heavy Life focused build with Warlord, Specialst and Spellweaver. While I am not the best player of this game, I think I have enough experience to figure out how well a unit works in different contexts, and how useful it is in general. Anyhow let's begin:

Barbarians:

These fighters are godly, Berserkers are amazingly strong and take down nearly anything in the early game. With buffs they stay relevant for a long time. Their only bad point is the low Resistance, which hurts when going against Death wizards. But there are many ways to combat that. Late game, Gladiators are a strong generic unit that travels decently fast, has some amazing durability, and can dish out quite a bit of hurt. Barbarians can't build Libraries but they don't need to, since they are also good at taking lairs and nodes, what with their Cavalry having extra damage and first strike and Berserkers being so powerful.

Gnolls:

These seem quite weak. Wolf Riders are a good unit for early game fights, and their absurd speed and pathfinding keeps them relevant later. What fails this race is every other unit. Halberdiers are spammable but suffer from mediocre durability and low Resistance. Jackal Riders seem powerful on paper but come way too late for what they are supposed to do. Their low Resistance makes them suicidal against Death wizards unless you specifically invest into a Unicorn, and the lack of any ranged attack or first strike means they take heavy losses in any significant battle. In addition, not being able to build Magic Markets is absurdly annoying.

[jhsidi]

I couldn't rank most of the Arcanus races very well. A swathe of them offer substantially similar units and buildings -- with some balance differences, but since it's Arcanus those are kept fairly small. Also, I think most players will end up having mixed races. I'd rank halflings at #1 simply because they're good at mixed race.

But you've got a point about gnolls. They're a one trick pony (wolf riders), and the trick does not scale or remain interesting over the course of a game. Felt like barbarians were just a bit better than gnolls back in the berserker-only days, but now barbarians have two cool new later game units while gnolls are just ... meh. I usually secure 1 gnoll city for the scouts and raze the rest.

[Incanur]

I chose gnolls in the game I'm currently playing (Expert) in the hopes of rushing with Wolf Riders, but that plan didn't work out. Instead I went for treasure hunting with heroes, which succeeded. I agree gnolls feel somewhat underpowered, but I plan to try them again in the future & see what I can manage. Wolf Riders are amazing scouts. It seems like they'd do well for treasure hunting with Confusion against melee monsters because of how fast they move.

[massone]

A serious ranking would compare the race's performance in all of the realms and every retort. More realistically, it should look at whether there are any set ups that allow it to be competitive at the highest levels. I think the races are fairly balanced as starting races.

I'd consider the lack of any research buildings and the critical Amplifying Tower for Barbarians a pretty severe weakness. They also lack roads and even Miner's Guild so their production sucks. On COM II they get Linking Towers so it's slightly less debilitating, but on Maximal maps their aggressive play is weakened even more.. Life just happens to have a lot of the buffs as common spells, and your strat is taking 5 retort points, so all you've got is 7 spellbooks. It's a very front-heavy strat that suffers in late game. On Large/Huge and Wet maps above Expert level, the weakness becomes more apparent, especially when you're unlucky and don't find any neutrals to attack.

Gnoll spearmen and swordsmen are really good. They're even more of a rush race than Berserkers, but in that role they excel. Not only do their base units have extra movement, the extra attack on swordsmen make them almost as good as other races' halberdiers, and much easier to spam earlier. The actual Halberdiers have 9 attack when they're veteran with War Colleges. Not having magic markets isn't as bad as barbarians not having research. You're missing 6 + 6 + 12 points in city RP, vs. 6 + 10 Power + 3 RP, but you get Amplifying Towers and access to Mithril/Adamantium without Uranus' Blessing, and the RP from Libraries, University, Sage's Guild come at a much higher ROI compared to Wizard Towers. Spellzerkers don't have ranged attack so they're hardly a consolation for not having Amplifying Towers. On Large or Huge maps, we're talking about an easy 70+ casting skill by the time Very Rare spells come around, and that could be 1/3rd of your total. In COM II this changes slightly with Linking Towers, but I still think Overland is more important, not to mention the Linking Towers give SP equivalent instead of flat bonus, which means they get worse as your SP pool grows from Power.

Both these races fare a lot worse compared to economy plays larger maps but excel on smaller ones.

[Anskiy]

Well I personally think Life and Warlord allows the races to shine best as far as their military units go. It could be argued that their other factors, such as power generation or economy, are fairly important too, and I wouldn't disagree, but I think other realms take away the focus from regular units, and I was interested in ranking them. Anyway, I think I could rename the thread to be more accurate.

[massone]

I wouldn't consider Warlord a particularly good retort for either of them. Aside from Jackal Riders, these races don't have extra figures, and for Barbarians in particular, I consider the low figure gladiators much more useful than berserkers and more efficient to get because Barracks and Coliseums provide level and fame bonus, while Fighter's Guild does nothing else unless you're going to get warships (but if you were, you wouldn't be building berserkers from that city anyway). And if you're going to use a lot of Wolf Riders, they also barely benefit from the extra level. It's too little for the price of 2 points.

I would consider Chaos' Flame Blade and Mystic Suge much more useful for these, and Chaos just a better fitting Realm overall because it has no focus on economy, so none of its spells are wasted, and you'll have strong summons to transition to later in the game. Because the Life buff spells are mostly in common while the economy spells are Uncommon+, I would consider a Chaos primary, Life secondary to be stronger. Nature's also a pretty good choice for Transmute and lots of summons throughout the game.

[Anskiy]

Well I think the extra level still helps, sure it's not optimal compared to say buffing longbowmen or slingers but the stat raise is still fairly noticeable, and I find Berserkers fairly useful for the early to mid game. Problem with Chaos buffs imo is that Gnolls and Barbarians generally struggle to stay alive, especially when pelted by ranged attacks as is commonplace in city assaults mid game, so that Flame Blade could easily end up getting wasted compared to say a Holy Armor or Endurance on the unit, not to mention the Healing spell for sustaining your forces just a bit longer.

[massone]

You could get 5 Chaos 4 Life instead and still have most of those buffs. And there's no need to cast flame blade overland, or keep your units alive. Especially Gnolls, these are meant to be spammed as expendables. Their spearmen have 6 attack with Flame Blade, and swordsmen have 8. They can easily dominate before magicians, by which time you can simply use Fire Storm or switch to summons like Fire Giants or Gargoyles. Klackons would do much better with tank strategies.

[Anskiy]

Well, another point is that you shouldn't try to make more than your starting 3 Gnoll cities as them; they are meant to conquer and expand using other advanced race's units, not build up much themselves. So even if you argue that Warlord is not as strong on Wolf Riders, it still buffs any potential race they end up capturing and is a pretty safe choice imo.

[Anskiy]

Halflings:

Pleasantly surprised by these small folk. Their swordsmen actually end up being surprisingly durable with Heroism and Holy Armor, and allow Halflings to push in the early game. Everyone knows how good Slingers, especially buffed ones are, so no need to reiterate that. I was also surprised by how evasive their magicians are; mind you, while they are still quite frail, they can actually survive some unfortunate close encounters even against halberdiers. The biggest weaknesses of this race are their slow movement speed and fraility. As amazing as Slingers are, they have a variety of counters, and are not particularly durable. Magicians obviously suffer from strong ranged attackers, especially when they're summons. Trying to use a Halfling army offensively late game is intensely sluggish, and they don't even get engineers to offset this. Granted, by then they should have unlocked some good summons thanks to their research bonus, so it's not as bad as it sounds.