Conquest of Elysium 4

General Advice

• Dawn of a New Empire is the most balanced society start. Others will disproportionately favor/disfavor some factions pretty heavily. Fallen Empire is pain.
• Not all factions are created equally. Weaker factions include the Markgraf, Enchanter, and Pale One.
• Many factions have magic rituals that use sacrifices/fungi/gems/etc. Don't ignore these, they're usually integral to your faction's playstyle.
• Aside from gold and iron, a site's resources are only visible/collectible if you have a commander that can use them to power rituals.
• Don't forget to use trade. Some factions can set it to pick up sacrifices/etc and leave it all game, some benefit from changing their trade admin as the situation warrants.
• There are several planes of existence but usually only Elysium is relevant to winning.
• Occasionally events occur (monument to hades, gate to hell, floating cube) that cause aggressively annoying units to spawn and make a mess of everything. The AI is not intelligent enough to do something about this. You'll have to fight your way to the source and end the problem yourself.
• Look up how to turn on autosave and never turn it off.

Army Advice

• Opportunities to recruit commanders are precious, you cannot move your armies without them.
• Have redundant commanders so you can temporary split up forces to capture more sites.
• Units may be stealthy or invisible. Use units with scouting abilities where you can, don't leave your commanders exposed, and think twice about suspiciously unguarded sites.
• When taking independent sites, err on the side of overpowering force. You can always come back with a stronger army later instead of throwing away some of the units you have now.
• Battles play out entirely without your input. All you can control is your force composition and what spells your casters have memorized at the time.
• Make sure your ranged lines can hit the enemy when your melee lines meet theirs. If they can't, split off excess units into a smaller force.
• Mages may cause collateral damage. Not the end of the world, but something to avoid when you can.
• While in the unit transfer screen you can use hotkeys to select/deselect all slow units (s) and fast units (f). A force is as swift as its slowest unit, and a force comprised entirely of fast units can move one more space per turn.

Brief Faction Blurbs

• Voice of El: Excellent first-time faction. Practically plays itself with powerful freespawn that rampages the map.
• Priest King: Decent first-time faction. You have so many options but you can't really go wrong with any of them.
• Baron/Senator: You can't really doomstack. What you can do is spam standard armies all over the map.
• Necromancer/Markgraf: Use the twiceborn ritual on an apprentice or two for a commander who recovers sanity lost from raising dead.
• Bakemono/Demonologist: You have to focus on creating a doomstack, but you're very good at it.
• Witch: Your witch leaders have more poison resistance the higher their tier. Don't accidentally poison them to death before they get immunity.
• High Priestess: Use your blood feast rituals to give up small longterm gains for massive short-term advantages.
• Barbarian: Get a Spirit Guide ASAP. They're the key to what little endgame this faction has. You may actually consider conquering the underworld.
• Druid: Focus on capturing ancient forests and using rituals to enchant them into self-sustaining bastions of power.
• Burgmeister/Markgraf: You don't have agile forces and your small units are weak, but you can mass a lot of crossbows.
• Warlock: Small elementals aren't worth using if you have any other options. You want trade badly.
• Troll King: Play dirty. Turn forests into troll forests to spread freespawn, use hit and run tactics, use goblins as spell-chaff.
• Enchanter: Be patient, and use your big site-consuming rituals in your enemies' territory, not your own.
• High Cultist: Stick to the coasts. Use rituals to summon units with stronger rituals.
• Dwarf Queen: Turtle and focus on expanding from mine to mine. Aim for endgame.
• Illusionist: Spell mirrors deplete themselves a lot faster than illusion mirrors. Illusions have pronounced strengths and weaknesses, play around them.
• Dryad Queen: Save gold for commanders, you need them to attract freespawn, ferry around forces for micromanagement, and of course, to actually lead your armies.
• Pale One: Mod them into a faction that isn't hot garbage.