Military Race Rankings(Life+Warlord)

[Anskiy]

High Elves:

These charming forest folk are pretty strong in combat, despite their slow growth. Longbowmen easily win engagements early on, inspite of Guardian Wind. Heroism and Warlord lets them punch swordsmen just fine. They then contribute to a strong mid game, where you get decent halberdiers backed by accurate magicians. Elven Lords are hands down the best melee unit in Arcanus, with their high resistance, good defenses, high to hit and armor piercing. They are a bit pricey when mass produced though, albeit Sanctify can cure that problem easily. If the wizards you fight don't outright counter bows, Pegasai are a good unit to transition to. While they are considerably less damaging than Longbowmen, they have more durability and much more speed to make up for that.

[Anskiy]

High Men:

"Regular" humans definitely live up to their name as a strong militaristic race. Early on their units are quite mediocre because of the resistance penalty, and you pretty much need to build a Fighter's Guild to seriously conquer anything. Once you do though, you are well set. Crusaders with archers are a great combo that takes out even a reasonably defended city. Crusaders are honestly pretty powerful, not only are they amazingly sturdy, they can also heal and deal some good damage. By contrast, Pikemen feel like overkill, and rarely worthwhile for capturing cities considering their slow speed, low resistance and frailness. Come midgame, six figure magicians pretty much decimate any opposition that doesn't kill them first. Crusaders defending magicians is incredibly strong and lets you conquer very efficiently. I was a bit disappointed to find I had no reason to make either Knights or Paladins though. Definitely think both of them need a buff, especially Paladins.

[Kellnaved]

High Men have so many unique midgame units with Crusaders, Pikemen and Knights that i wish one of them (probably not the knights) would be pumped up to 120 - 180 production cost and turned into a late game unit with corresponding increase in stats and abilities. I always find myself to only use paladins and magicians in the end (playing mostly on expert). This would still leave High Men with more option for the midgame than most other races and would spice things up for a supposed lategame powerhouse. For example like Priests are upgraded versions of Shamans, High Men could have an upgraded version of Priests (Inquisitors, High Priests, ..) that you want to include one ore two in late game armies not just because they are cheaper but because they are the best at their role.

[Anskiy]

Klackons:

The bug people are still incredibly mediocre. While not as unplayable as in the original Master of Magic, they still suffer from a lack of good traits on their units. +2 defense is an incredibly underwhelming racial bonus, while it does let their halberdiers survive enemy fire longer, their mediocre damage output and resistance means that they still struggle against enemy garrisons. Klackons' main advantage is their economy; -4 inherent unrest is a huge deal, as it makes max taxes actually viable without any extra bonuses. Their production bonus is also quite noticeable; when the other AIs are still stuck with swordmen and bowmen, they can upgrade all the way to halberdiers. This means that they are ideally played as a rush race, NOT as a long term one. Stag Beetles are pretty disappointing as far as Armorer's Guild units go; they sacrifice half the damage output of halberdiers for +1 defense and +2 resistance. In practice, all that means is that they can tank some mid game units better if you buff the heck out of them. They still die to various nasty units like fire giants and water elementals, making them a wash for offense.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

Klackons also have high growth rate, so I guess you're supposed to out-spam cities, use your high early gold income and production to get your buildings up, then spam your mediocre units to overwhelm your neighbours. which realm to use to best overcome your mediocrity?

IIRC, in an earlier version of the Com manual, Seravy said that 9 shields for beetles had been tried, but was too powerful.

[Anskiy]

IIRC, in an earlier version of the Com manual, Seravy said that 9 shields for beetles had been tried, but was too powerful.

I...fail to see that. An extra defense point from what they have now would not make a big change. As it stands, I have no reason to make beetles besides hitting fliers. Halberdiers have better damage, better potential for buffs, and are cheaper. While fliers do become a problem mid to late game, by that time I should be using other, better races to deal with them.

[Incanur]

I only have limited experience with Klackons so far, & I haven't been impressed by their units, but the fact that stag beetles can hit flyers & move quickly strikes me as significant. I've employed beetles to clear out nodes of air elementals where halberdiers would have been useless. From a Life magic perspective, I do see why halberdier would seem better via buffs.

Klackon have the tension of being pretty bad at ruling other race. If you want to keep your taxes at max, you're going to have a lot of unrest in conquered cities.

As an aside, I don't agree they were unplayable in the original MoM. I had success with them. It's tedious, but you could take many cities in the later game by throwing stacks of stag beetles at them. (Of course, original MoM is so easy you can win with basically anything even on impossible difficulty. I managed to do so with all of the default wizards, though sometimes it took forever. With Freya I got banished to a small island, but the AI just didn't come after me & eventually I battled back into the game with great wyrms & so on.)

[Anskiy]

Yeah, I didn't mean that you couldn't win any games with Klackons, just that they were badly unplayable compared to any other race in the original.

[Anskiy]

Lizardmen:

Lizardfolk are decent fighters. Being able to water walk innately is an underhandedly strong ability. It allows them to hunt for good settler locations early on, and harass the enemy with their troops. Later, it lets them cover large swathes of ocean without fear of retaliation by strong navies. Besides that, +1 HP is a noticeable racial trait that lets their troops survive long enough in drawn out battles. The -1 resistance hurts but can be reasonably compensated for. Javelineers are a very versatile core unit; while they don't excel in their damage output their ranged attacks, good melee and decent HP allow them to adapt to most situations mid game. Dragon Turtles aren't very strong, but are tanky enough to serve as good protection for the Javelineers. Their halberdiers feel a bit like an afterthought, but are still useful for when Javelineers can't take hits. Come lategame, this race suffers from their best unit being fairly easily countered, but it can make all the relevant high tier buildings(Amplifying Tower, Wizard's Guild, Sages' Guild) which allows it to get to and use higher tier spells by then.

[namad]

Pretty sure it is just draconian, and by a gigantic amount. They've been nerfed and studied and nerfed over and over. A single draconian bowman is just such a powerful unit against an AI that won't always know how to counter a flying ranged unit. It lets you spread yourself thin. The breath attacks though benefit a lot from warlord and heroism and the ability to fly helps you expand and explore over water early, and IMO any life warlord build is about early military conquests.

Of course, as I mentioned, it's been nerfed many times, and the biggest nerf of course is the bowman ammo count. However this was a very powerful strategy used by many players on very high difficulty settings before it was nerfed. Although now that it's nerfed and the ai's intelligence has been improved so many times, I myself play on a slightly lower difficulty setting than I did before, and I was never a "good" player to begin with.

Life warlord barbarians work insanely well with quick combat though, aka, how did that ai snipe that treasure hut so fast.