I'm playing Tarth for the first time in my current game; I am winning with them on Ridiculous+ (XtraSavage mod), but I'm not a huge fan. You might as well throw away the bow Irane starts with, and their great strength is archery, which is a long way into the tree. +50% damage vs. beasts has got to be easily the worst profession bonus. The small army boost is quite handy at the start of the game, but is nearly useless later. Normal movement through difficult terrain is handy but not earth shattering, similarly with Stealth. If you survive long enough to get the better bows then yes archers with double-strike are powerful, but that's quite a long time. I've had some success in my current game because I had plenty of city sites to settle, and I was able to spam Pioneers as I was using Sovereign's Call + Tower of Dominion for growth rate of +4 even when approaching my food cap. Wisp and Lightbringer are quite good for shielding archers. It does all depend on being able to survive long enough to get archers though. I was fairly lucky in my current game as my neighbours did leave me alone for a long time, too busy fighting each other I think.

Give me Resoln any day, although it has been quite interesting experimenting with Sovereign's Call and Heal, which are spells I don't normally have available.

1.Ridiculous is second highest.

2.The bow is pretty useless, giving her a big initiative hit and doing minimal damage, even using her +50% vs. Beasts. I ditched it for the first dagger I could get. I'd much prefer to use her as spellcaster with decent initiative.

3. Fair enough, but I aim to finish my games faster than that. It's fairly rare for me to get a Conclave to level four. Although admittedly Sovereign's Call makes it a lot more feasible, especially now the higher city levels require lower population.

4. Well, maybe, but in any case in practice you won't be able to train archers until what, turn 50? Turn 75? because you won't have researched them yet. The start of the game is the most crucial part; Tarth gets the small army bonus and the Stealth bonus to help, but doesn't get decent troops till quite late. Almost any of the other factions get cheap troops early; Resoln gets free shrine troops, Beastlords get Beasts, Magnar gets slaves, Kraxis benefits from spears + wooden shield early, etc. Verga gets -50% wages and it doesn't take that long to research Juggernauts, which are his best troops. Pariden doesn't get a whole lot, but the Scying Pools and Procipinees Crown are well worth having from the start of the game, and Summoner is not a bad trait (especially as with the Crown summoned creatures will cost zero maintenance). Gilden gets extra hitpoints and better armour. Tarth gets Masterwork Chainmail, but this is right at the end of the research tree, I quite often don't get that far. And Rebels is a really nasty Trait, the last thing you want is extra unrest. Tarth has Rebels; a useless profession for the sovereign; an awful starting weapon for the sovereign; and special equipment that is not available at the start of the game. The only faction which has a similarly hard start is probably Altar. In fact Relias probably has it harder as he doesn't get Life magic, so no Sovereign's Call until you've got a hero with Life magic, and Altar starting troops won't get the Tarth small army bonuses and extra movement. Both Altar and Tarth can be strong if you can make it to their strong points of Henchmen and bows, but they may find the start of the game difficult.

5. I prefer Resoln because it suits my playing style. I like Death magic, I like Water magic, I don't care that much about armour past leather. They're a "fun" faction, they play differently to other factions. In terms of strongest faction I would go with Umber; Kulan's the only sovereign I've beaten the game on Insane (highest difficulty level) with. Although I think I could probably do it with Resoln if I tried enough times and got a good starting position. But beating Insane is hard work, I didn't find it a great deal of fun.

I agree that inspiration is a really good enchantment.

Eh? Sure I understand you can create your own sovereign. I did it once a while back. I don't really see the point though, the pre-designed ones are supposed to be balanced and have all the lore. I imagine most people would choose to create a sovereign with combinations of traits which are very overpowered. (Although I still think Kulan is hard to beat.) Most of the time I'm looking to make the game harder though, not easier.

I'm just finishing off completing the game with all the standard factions, Tarth is the last one. I guess the Undead will be next. Maybe I'll try beating Insane again with a custom sovereign after that.

That would certainly be hard! I hadn't considered making a weak custom sovereign, but of course there's no reason not to. I just assumed the point was to try to get the best combination of traits you can, but of course you could go the other way.

Out of that lot, the thing that would make me struggle the most would be Earth and Fire magic. The rest may be a bit rubbish but I could probably live with them if I had Life or Death magic, or at the very least Water or Air magic. I guess maybe I could reverse my normal strategy and make my sovereign a Commander and my first hero a mage if they had better magic schools. Or I could just concentrate on making my sovereign a good summoning mage as quickly as possible. If I could survive long enough to get the levels and mana to be able to consistently cast Fireball / Diamondskin / Giantform it might be ok I guess.

Would be an interesting game, I might have to drop down from Ridiculous though.

What's Warrior Profession, by the way? I would have thought the weakest profession is Hunter (+50% vs. Beasts).

That's not a custom sovereign though, is it? I don't mind playing Scarred, but a Scarred Warrior without Life magic? ... um no thanks. That's not a challenge, that's just making really stupid choices. When making a custom sovereign all of the positive traits should have some benefits, even if some of them seem clearly better than others. On the other hand choosing Warrior if you've taken Scarred without Life magic is just idiocy.

It still seems a really stupid idea though. Even if the objective is to make it hard for yourself, it would be more or less unplayable if your first hero didn't have Life magic, and that's random.

I might like a challenge sometimes, but I'm not that much of a masochist.

If you really want to make the game harder, you'd design a custom faction with either no traits or only weaknesses, and you'd design a sovereign the same way (if you take a weakness, make sure it's one of the ones that doesn't have a redeeming feature). If you want the game even harder than that, you'd select the worst available weapon, the worst available weakness, and the worst available profession.

Your Sovereign's profession is the only trait that you actually have to give to a custom sovereign in order to use him for a game; there is no requirement within the game that you must spend all the design points you are given when creating a custom sovereign, or when creating a custom faction.

Can you use first aid on yourself?  I thought you could.

If so, a warrior should be able to use that just fine.

A warrior can get an ability that heals itself when it does damage, can't it?

Does the hero ability that heals 3 hp per turn work if you have scarred?  If so that would get you 3 hp per hero per turn.

I wasn't trying to make the worst possible race/hero, just a pretty bad one ~

Merlinme: I agree to you that "Juggernauts are the best units". But you are fatally wrong if you think it doesn't take long to research them. That seems only true on first sight!! I played a game with this race and I was not stoked.

LIFE raises the city growth in such a way that you get much earlier to the next city level(s). And this gives you a great benefit to research and production! As a result of this you will have mages/archers who are able to deal with the Juggernauts when the enemy has them.

So to my opinion LIFE is by far the best magic school followed by EARTH.