Just finished up a Quest win on Resoln on hard with the latest patch, and felt I should contribute my thoughts. I've previously beaten two games with Resoln, in 9.14 and 9.12. Figured I'd share my thoughts on their current state. All games I used the pregen character, Oracle Ceresa.
Race Bonus: I like it, it is characterful and useful early on. I wish it effected units more, however. Once you get up to 5+ men it doesn't mean much. What I would prefer to see is 3 + 1 per stack, so a 5 man unit would restore 8 health on killing. That way it scales into late game effectively.
Summoner Specialization: This is an alright specialization. Primarily because it gives you the shadow warg right away. Also turns any sand golem drops even more effective. However, a lack of summons, especially in death, which you'll probably be maxing first, means it is almost entirely early game in it's effectiveness.
Strengths and Weaknesses
- Spiders: I haven't found them very effective. Space in your armies are limited, and spiders aren't very good at combat. They also eat up mana to make, which is very precious early game, while not providing a very effective use of a slot later on. I've only tried them out a bit, and just never found them worthwhile. Next game I'm going to try and use them more, to see if I still have this opinion.
- Faction Spells: Dirge of Ceresa and Corruption are what make the faction, for me. Dirge of Ceresa is your late game army eraser. Corruption is what powers your Wither, Soulburn, Berserk, and of course Dirge of Ceresa to obscene amounts of effectiveness. Infection I've found to be awful, since it takes three activations of mages to start effecting people (channel, wait, cast another debuff). Graveseal is an alright mid game boost to kill hard targets. Dirge/Wither/Corruption is what makes this faction at all powerful, relative to the others, from what I've seen. This trifecta means that you can defeat almost any other army another faction can throw at you. Your biggest worry are counter spells, so high resistance to stop them from going through, and archers to feather enemy mages can be needed.
- Binding: Somewhat useful, very finicky. Early game it gives an alright army without upkeep cost, and without slowing production from your cities. Since I find I'm playing for end game hyper mage, I find these very effective. Also, the death elementals can get up to 9 men, and with berserk+corruption, can tear apart most things mid game. I dislike how mid-late game you have a huge number of spawning troops who are useless. They should scale in some way, either tied to sovereign level or number of shards. Otherwise you just have 12+ men to disband or stuff in a random city as a free, weak garrison.
- Cyndrum Demon: This is the death shard binding summon. If you play like me, and corrupt everything to power up your death spells, you'll be seeing a lot of them. They are a very neat unit, perhaps my favorite in concept of the unique units Resoln gets. In execution, they require constant micromanagement to become useful, since you need to charge them up with their undying rule. I think this unit and its abilities should be changed, to make it more dependable and less frustrating to use. As a suggestion, change undying so that it triggers from ANY stack dying in the battle. But also, when they lose men, it is permanent. This means you don't have to worry about last hitting, but there is a check to their power.
- No Armor: This is a pretty huge disadvantage. It shifts how your factions fights, in my mind. Your troops mid-late to late game just won't stack up to other factions. But, your unique ability to power up death spells means you have a sovereign, and hopefully a champion or two, who can wither troops who invade for your armies, and are a nuclear tipped spearhead for your assault, with dirge wiping out entire armies in a cast. If you run into boss monsters, like Torax, or Waerog, you can soulburn and touch of entropy them to death easily. I feel this fits the faction story perfectly. Ceresa's armies are just weak pawns to be used to protect her as she corrupts everything with black magic.
