Map: Default settings. Medium Size. 8 Players. Challenging Difficulty.

I chose to play as Yithril because I wanted to test the AI out and this meant getting into a lot of fights with them. So I planned on being a massive warmonger.

Started near a 4,3,2 and settled there. There was also a clay pit nearby, iron, and other resources nearby. As I expanded and took out nearby monsters like Butchermen my city leveled and I made it into a Fort, in order to better be aggressive early game. 

I ran into Resoln, and some other factions but Resoln was actually close to me. Being a warmonger I attacked them off the bat. I took Gedden with little to no resistance. Then marched on Hagudst.

I designed a unit called a Grinder. Basically it had a one-handed blunt weapon, leather boots, leather breastplate, leather vambraces, muscle, and fury. With this set up it suffered no encumbrance penalty and had a lot of damage. Also using berserk they could sprint across the field with a +4 damage bonus. Is wasn't rare for them to one shot enemy units.

My Grinders made short work of Resoln's militia and unarmored spear men. Even outnumbered 2 to one I won with few to no causalities. It helped that Ceresa did odd things like leave cities under siege only to get killed by a cave bear. I was also disappointed that Ceresa had no bound elementals. Since she refused to surrender I wiped her out.

I ran into a bunch of Magnar's stacks out exploring. They were made up of some truly badly designed slave units that had 9 or even 5 initiative. Not exactly scary, even in huge stacks. I decided to attack Paridan next because they are always fun to destroy. They were located below me, sorry I don't have a good picture but you can kinda see them on the mini map.

I took New Serrene with no problem but Tenfell was filled to the brim with champions and horsemen. Of course horsemen are a horrible unit. Discounting their choice of blunt weapons which is probably a known bug they still used more armor then they should as it made them encumbered. As a result even though they had horses my Grinders were faster.

I also started producing Dreadnaughts which were my custom juggernauts with Heart of Stone, Ignore Pain, and Brutal Nature. With the removal of armor types the Heart of stone trait is OP and the splash trait is UP with cleave. Dreadnaughts had base 14 armor with HoS and a Braided Belt. With magical amulets and Fortress bonuses it got even higher. Needless to say Dreadnaughts were nigh unstoppable and made short work of Horsemen. Having the improvement that gave all my units Charge helped more then a bit as well. Grinders thus could charge across the entire field and oneshot enemy units with a +7(berserk, fury, muscle, charge) attack bonus first turn.

The above picture also shows the bad strategic AI. Even with my army right beside their town the AI sends out a group of horsemen to take back that outpost, instead of maybe attacking my solo units. They also placed their sovereign alone in the middle of my guys... with no back up what so ever. This unfortunately happens all the time. The AI just does not realize that putting small groups of units or even solo champions right next to my huge armies is a bad idea. Kinda a huge deal.

Also the enemy sovereigns had multiple specializations. The queen was a Assassin Mage Defender and had skills from all those trees.

My Grinders and Dreadnaughts waded through twice their number Horsemen and militia with repeated ease. Pariden did surrender unlike Ceresa though.

By the time I finished her off though Gilden had taken out Alter and Tarth and was trying to crush Krax. Gilden, as usual, was the strongest faction by far. I decided to take him out. I built of 3-4 armies led by champions full of Dreadnaughts and some new chain-mail units called Greywards. By this time I had a some very high level fortresses that could pump out even Grey Wards and Dreadnaughts in a single turn. Kinda OP. So I just crushed Gilden using waves of units and Autocalc. The only exception was their Capital which was bugged and had something like 9 catapults in it. I took out all his other cities and forced him to surrender. Then declared war on the pitifully small faction of Krax and immediately got him to surrender.

Magnar was thus the only one left. Using the strategy I beat Gilden with worked here as well and he surrendered, leading to my victory.

Yeah me!