What strats/builds are you testing?

[Eji1700]

So it's barely more than a day, but this game feels like it has so much more variety compared to AoW 3 (which still wasn't bad). I'd love to know what everyone is testing out and how they feel about it.

Personally i've only done a few quick runs to test some basics followed by a Xeno + Syndicate run, focusing on indentured + overseers + xeno to keep things cheap and allow me to shower the game with operations.

As several in the discord are aware i'm super impressed by how strong indentured are for how easy and cheap it is to mass them (t1 doctrine for half cost upkeep). You only need one or two overseers per army to make them very hard to kill murder machines, and having both a full range shot + a move and shoot stagger and pushback is crazy good for focusing down units. Start modding them and they become death machines fast.

On the xeno side it's a bit mixed. They fill a very important role of being front line units (my hero was melee to help with this, and runners and better than you'd think, but pustules are crazy), but at the same time even if you plague everything you sometimes don't get enough and you NEED to rush the tech to at least get pustules, likely followed by the +30% per hero doctrine.

For such a heavy commitment (and hence why having very good non research units is important) playing the lottery on it feels a bit rough, especially when you do hit an enemy running lasers and lose two or three. You also have basically no bio damage to take advantage of the infection debuff until you start kitting people with plague pods.

Anyways that's all i've got so far. What's catching everyone else's eye?

 

[Promethian]

Syndicate Psynumbra. Look at the Syndicate version of the PsyN (say Sin in your head, its fitting for their theme too) units. They have a unique passive trait +1 damage per Indentured in battle with them, up to 5. That is simply freaking crazy. You already recognize how good Indentured are. Now support them with the PsyN debuff/CC units that also have very good damage. In fact the first PsyN unit has a 20 point self heal so they are also quite tanky, can use them to initiate/lure.

My first game I also got Psi-fish as the nearest NPC faction. Doing missions for them gave me a version of the PsyN hero weapon that did everything the same as the usual one, but had 2 more damage and overwatch capability. Was a real boon.

 

[Booo]

I have enjoyed Promethean starting as Kir'Ko . The combination works very well since you can make your psionic attacks deal thermal damage with focus: flames. There's also promethean mods that do really well with the Kir'Ko units, like the phoenix launcher.

Below are the two Kir'Ko units I ended up using the most:


Promethean and Kir'Ko is probably something of a left-field combination, why I am happy it worked as well as it did. Promethean seems like a strong secret technology in general, more because of its operations and mods than the units.

 

[IloveSteak]

I would give anything to be a Psi-Fish

 

[Frank327]

Well my first try with Amazon + synthesis turned out to not have many synergies.

I wanna try Vanguard + Promethean. The plasmoids with Vanguard interlocking armor should be a great early melee unit that you don't have to spend production for and plasmoids have great synergy with engineers.

In the midgame there is a mod that gives +30% against enemies that are burning including extra accuracy and it should go really well with pretty much any Vanguard unit.

 

[Garresh]

To be honest I'm not sure yet. I've definitely been messing with Syndicate since they seem sneakiest, but a lot of the stealth aspects in this are vastly different from AoW3 so I'm still wrapping my head around it. Pretty much none of the secret techs I've seen seem to support sneaky tactics. But synthesis enhances operation strength, and has some great mods that allow you to make stealthy assassin stacks.

But the militia system makes strategic strikes a lot harder. BUT the covert ops line means you can technically run sneaky on any faction, just without covert units.

All in all though, Syndicate seem pretty strong, and I'm pleasantly surprised how viable it is to run low tier forces well into late game. So yeah, lots of Syndicate Synthesis.

 

[TheGrinningMan]

I knew I was taking a gamble when I tried Kir'ko Synthesis, not sure if it's going to pay off. Their lack of innate cyborgs and mechanicals makes some Synthesis goodies utterly useless (the War of the Machines doctrine, or the Integrated Military Networks upgrade) for anything that isn't a Synthesis-specific, making it extremely cosmite-thirsty; I produce most of my units with a daemon. Still, those daemons are pretty good upgrades, and with all my psionics, I've already got a full toolkit for handling squishy units; we'll see if Synthesis doing the same level of specialization for harder targets makes the two complement one another.
If nothing else, it's the perfect set-up for lame jokes about "there's bugs in your system".

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Amazon/Promothean. On the surface they have poor synergy, since most Promothean upgrades are inapplicable to many amazon units. However their thermal synergy is real - they can stack a lot of thermal damage and you get a _lot_ of mileage out of thermal resist debuffs from the laser tree and Promethean ops.

Thermal resist buffs also cover the weakness of Arborians.

 

[Truewhit]

Amazon/Promothean. On the surface they have poor synergy, since most Promothean upgrades are inapplicable to many amazon units. However their thermal synergy is real - they can stack a lot of thermal damage and you get a _lot_ of mileage out of thermal resist debuffs from the laser tree and Promethean ops.

Thermal resist buffs also cover the weakness of Arborians.

Any other good tips for Promethean Amazon?

 

[Eji1700]

Welp after two games testing SynXeno I think i need to finally move on and start testing other strategies. My brief notes on it-

Went Klepto + Xeno melee weapon + secret research + 2 random techs (this can probably be something else).

I was hitting t8 pustule research (went straight for it) but that's with my cap and first sector going to research (no research boosters in freebies or in the sector).

First pustule was t10, along with a second one. I didn't track my path and timing exactly from there, but I got to destroyers decently quickly and mostly ignored other military research outside of some of the t1 stuff for mods. I think xeno has legs but it's probably one of the more complicated ones to play.

You can get off the ground for insanely cheap with this sort of strat. You indentured are the core of your army, and they're halved upkeep thanks to their doctrine, and xeno units are of course free.

Pustules are some of the best tanks i've ever seen. Purple move + defend + skitter is insane. You can easily threaten a fortified position with pustule swarms because they're stupid hard to hit, and have a leaping stagger to get people out of cover so your indentured can clean them up. They really help fill out the frontlines of the indentured + overseer combo.

There's probably a much more reasonable strat relying on racial armies more. Get pustules somewhat early, go around with racial armies getting some freespawn, and then tech up the rest of the xeno tree later. Xeno does have some very good strategics so I don't think you need to all in on the early game snowball.

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Any other good tips for Promethean Amazon?

I'm still testing specific combos. The only general point I would make is that they're masters of terraforming : Promethean destroys enemy sectors, Amazon creates forest (advantageous in many ways).

Note that Amazon purifiers can get a range buff on their purifier bomb from cover, but are shorter range in general than other purifiers. Also the bomb is a little redundant with the shot when the shot already ignores cover...

 

[Mcwynne]

Currently playing as Celestian Kir'Ko, lots of shields and healing. The basic celestian stagger resistance mod also goes really well with troops with swarm shield since a lot of armies have easy access to aoe staggering.

 

[IloveSteak]

I am trying different Amazon builds. I just love bows and large women, what can i say O.O

 

[Ethorin]

Assembly+Celestian is kind of hilarious... Light Bringers that heal themselves is a bit less "blast in and kill quick or die" than I think they were really meant to be...

btw, was anyone else really sad when they realized Assembly+Void Tech lost two damage on their Void tech dude? Also, why do they? none of the other Assembly melee units lose damage for having "basically lifedrain"

 

[Frank327]

Currently playing as Celestian Kir'Ko, lots of shields and healing. The basic celestian stagger resistance mod also goes really well with troops with swarm shield since a lot of armies have easy access to aoe staggering.

Yeah celestian frenzied are amazing. As soon as they get to close rang, damage is no problem. And Celestial allows you to keep them alive long enough to do that. Also with the stagger resistance they can 1v1 most enemy melee units.

 

[Promethian]

Something I have noticed that is massively helpful. Psynumbra and Promethean both have an early game strat op that summons a unit for 60 energy. I know that is more expensive than a unit at base however its done without taking up your time with a city. Summon these things and have them follow your main stack around to serve as a flank. Both are great. The Plasmoids punish the enemy hard if they let it get close. The Whispers are fast and do a repeatable psy ranged attack that stacks up morale debuffs for you. I have played with both now to extremely good effect. They are absolutely worth using.

Psynumbra is also quickly becoming my favorite secret tech. Its opening tech gives you a simply great tac op that does 20 damage and staggers a unit. Its a 1 pointer and only costs 25 energy. So spammable. This thing swings fights reliably and cheap. Then we get the doctrine that gives every unit Sadism, which increases damage by 25% if the target unit has low morale. Everything Psynumbra does includes a morale debuff. Then there is Consuming Gaze. This unit mod gives a 5 range, perfect accuracy, ignores cover, 12 damage, single action attack that heals the user for 20 health. Oh and its a tier II offensive mod so it increases damage by 20%. Who needs healer units! I'll just make all my guys heal themselves.

 

[Eji1700]

Did synth vanguard-

1. I built maybe one synth hacker and that was it. Just didn't seem to need them for the situation I was in (vs dvar and vanguard). Might have built them earlier had I been dealing with assembly.

2. Instead i focused on synth mods and ops, and to GREAT effect. It's not too expensive to make sure all your units count as integrated by throwing at least one synth mod on them, and the bonuses are worth it. Not just the flat stuff, but my god the ops.

3. Strategic ops- There's some crazy good ones in the synth lineup . They get a full army heal (as long as they're all integrated, which they should be) super early in the tech tree which can make aggressive pushes possible, something to help land your heavier strategics, and some decent anit mech stuff. The Vanguard have summon owl (more on that later), and then I was mostly using planet buster/orbital laser. There are some good defensive ones though (the summon security drones comes to mind).

4. Tac ops- dear god the "heal all integrated" tac op is so damn good its hard to justfy anything else other than the occasional laser/bomb strike to wipe something out.

5. One of my best victories was taking a superior dvar force holed up in a city by spending a few turns using summon owl (emergency recon) to get my flying commander 4 or 5 owls. I then gave them all the "incapacitate" daemon integrated synth mod (along with a bunch of other units). It wasn't even funny how badly it crippled their army. Half of their t2 or higher units getting their move wiped out every turn took an unwinnable battle and made it a decent victory. Synth mods are some of the best i've seen for crippling your enemies in the late game given how many mech units they use.

6. I was just testing out the drone carrier. I like that t4's are made to support an army now rather than solo a battlefield, but in my only test I tested that exact scenario and of course it was basically wiped out. I'll need to do more testing to see how i'm supposed to be using it.

 

[Ethorin]

Synth looks really cool so far in my attempts at Syndicate Synth, also, initially I thought my character was some sort of rebel because all the Synth stuff references like big on personal freedom hackey stuff... but the Doomsday Project is the DREAM of Centralize Economy Planning... and also enslavement... soooooooooo

 

[Lord of Riva]

I am playing Kir'ko xenophage doubling down on the biochemical aspect.

While it works out most of the time there some troubles with certain factions. I am playing Hot-Seat with my wife and she plays Dvar with Voidtech specialisation (which i find reall strong) she has allied herself with the Autonom Faction and fighting against them with basically only Biochem and Psi attack has been a Pain.

However at the same time most Kir'ko mods are incompatible with full mechanical units which limits the usefulness of some of the others secret techs. So I still need a feel for what works well together. Or at least makes less dependant on two damage channels.

As far as i can see cyborg units have the upper hand in this.

 

[Saitta]

Syndicate Psynumbra with Indentured spam and then making stacks of Malictors/Initiates to take advantage of the "Fueled by Servitude" trait that gives them +1 damage (cap of 5) per Indentured in the battle. A Malictor with +5 damage on a repeating/chaining ability is a lot of hurt.