I don't understand Resoln

Have you noticed that the main source of troops for Resoln are generated from their shard shrines and altars?

The shard units are free from upkeep and if they die, you generate new ones automatically.

Nobody understands Resoln. That's their thing: being enigmatic and all that.

Anyway, Binding is excellent to gain an early-game advantage. Their other traits are...flavorful.

Pariden has (one of) the best trait in the game, Enchanters. But don't tell anyone. Before you know it, someone will cry 'nerf'.

Yes, the resolyn shrine generate troops are cool.  And the demon unit adds figures every time it kills an enemy unit.  Yada.  Very powerful, in early game, but fragile.  It is a long but brittle spear (metaphorically).  Resolyn's units become outclassed very quickly by more traditional troops.  This sov has great flavor, but is a poor choice for playing to survive, er.. win.

Does anyone use the spiders? 

Never got far enough to use spiders as resolyn.  I use spiders I tame, quite a bit as a beast master. The spiders, bears, and wolf/fast lizard thingys make a decent army early on.  And as support troops to a standard army, they are great.  I find therm very useful even in mid game.  They free up production for building infrastructure instead of (some) troops.  The hoarder spider has massive HP and 'dazes' all enemies.  Mauling units sometimes lets me take out ogres tyhat regular troops can;t face successfully. High movement wolves, lizards are great for scouting, and a stack of them, centrally located make a great defensive reaction force.  Oh, and a few of these fast, lean critters are great for getting at the enemies spellcasters, especially the "shak-reek" (ug) ones.  Back to resolyn:  perhaps I will try a game long enough to get to the 1000 eyes spiders, etc.  Let you know.

Dear Elana, Resoln are great fun to play. 

My advice for a good experience: go summon at start up to skeleton horde / horrific wail, then just climb in dark / water (leveling both), then pick the -1 turn on spell cast, after either go for more damage on spells, or continue with summons.

Convert any non water shard to a death one. Blind + slow + curse + graveseal + wither + beguille (from the black widows or w/e they named the first spiders you can train) spread with infection = easy battles vs anything non magic immune (until later on when you can do other stuff).

The free elementals as well as summons are enough for early game to help you level heroes / explore and clear areas around settling locations (well mind you not deadly / epic enemies).

The dark magic + spiders is so powerful atm in game because there is no way to remove harmful effects. So your army will be blinded (-25% accuracy and dodge with new patch), slowed (scales with number of water shards), have no armor from curse, take critical damage from graveseal, have reduced melee and ranged attacks (scales very well against large groups of enemies since each unit has it's atk decreased by 2+1xdeath power, for example with 4 shards you decrease it by 5, so a group of 6 archers with 20 atk each will lose 30 total atk) and have a 50% chance on melee attack to hit a friendly nearby unit. Add the native high dodge units of wraiths, and you pretty much are in full control of battlefield.

Someone has been crying 'nerf' for a long time now, the last time was not long ago and it was shot down...

https://forums.elementalgame.com/443484/page/1/#replies

Phazon, that's a different Pariden trait.

The 'decalon' costs 2 picks, so I don't feel that one's overpowered.

right, misread what you wrote sorry.

Enchanters should cost 2 points indeed

Cyndrum demons are pretty amazing for free troops. Get them up to a group of five, and you can do a lot of damage...for 0 wage.

Crow demons can scout out the whole map for you, and are excellent for harrassment tactics r taking distant outposts. 

Grave elementals are good damage sinks. 

Have your champions rely heavily on magic. Design all your troops to have the "hallowed rite" trait, so they can earn you mana as they kill.

Design your units to have "Constitution" and the hp penalty isn't so bad.

Build units with dodge traits, and defender trait and shields to hold the front lines, while archers or spellcasters do support damage. Cyndrum demons can join your front liners to get swarm bonuses and deliver heavy damage. 

Mirror elementals are useful suicide troops.

Oh, and dirge of ceresa and graveseal are two of the best spells in the game. 

I believe there's a limit to how many demons of each type you can get from the shards. You'll have far more troops if you stick to several different types of shards.

That said, it's nice to get the power of Wither up.

I read in another thread that someone thought that Wither is a weak spell.  Wither is not a weak spell with Resoln.  With Resoln you can covert all your shards, and yes I mean all of them, to Death Magic.  Then the Wither spell is reducing opponents attack by 18 or so.  In other words, the opponents have 0 attack.  Those are instant wins.  You can definitely win with Resoln.  That's just one of many strategies with them.

Oh and about those spiders... you only need the cheapest spider (20 mana).  Don't be fooled into paying the high mana cost of those other spiders.  The spiders are for crowd control and controlling ranged units so you only need 2 of the cheapest ones.  That's it!

Am not converting them for the demon spawns. But to increase the power / effect of my spells. As that's what really makes Resoln (or any dark based caster) powerful. Debuffing / cursing an enemy army to the point where they pose no threat to you (or killing them with damage spells). Wither is best against formations (groups of units, the more the better), it has no effect on groups of mages tho (does not decrease their atk since is full magical).

That being said, doesn't mean they rule supreme, but they do have a nice tailored kit

I've noticed that they get units from shards.  I haven't noticed those units actually doing anything in battle other than dying.

Young Grave Elementals do basically no damage when they hit something, Young Mirror Elementals I've never seen attack because every time I've had one with my army, it's been hit and killed on its very first turn of combat.  I haven't seen any other types of elementals come from shards because this game, all I have near me is water and death shards. 

What research do I need for Cyndrum demons?  I've looked through the whole research page, and can't find any reference to them.

and for the most part, those units suck.

you don't need research for those. they are the demons that spawn on death shards. each shard type has one demon type associated with it. the power of the demon corresponds to the level of the shard improvement (higher tier shrine upgrades spawn higher tier versions of the demons)

I would only agree with that for the fire and water demons, they desperately need more defense or hitpoints to actually be useful. However the air and earth ones are quite decent, and the death ones are extremely powerful. Regardless, the point is that Resoln has little trouble putting together fairly effective early armies out of demons, spiders and summons. They are an extremely potent faction when played to their strengths.

I remember Sean modded the Mirror Elementals to have massive amounts of HP in order to make them useful at their intended roles.  Still no armor, but when even the weak one has ~60 hp, they don't need armor so much.  Besides, every point in damage they don't take is one less point of damage their attacker takes.

For the fire demons, does their tactical ability permanently raise their attack?  Or is it only for the duration of the battle?  If it's the latter, the cost should probably be lowered, or have its bonus improved to +3.

The water demons reflect back the damage done to them. It's been a while since I played Resoln last, but they reflected full damage back then. A water demon with say 15 hit points meant 15 points of sure damage on the enemy. Sure, the demon dies, but you get it back free of charge.

It's only free if you couldn't have used the army space better somehow.

And unless it's the first turn of the game, you probably could.  Your fortress is going to pump out units at some point; might as well use the army space for something that isn't "one time negligible damage".

Also, is there any way to see how long until you get another elemental from a shard once a city has overtaken the shard?  I can't select the shard itself anymore, since I get the city instead.

Anyone notice that the change to shard levels nerfed Resoln demons?

They need a way to unlock the greater demons again.

Spiders are meant to hold enemies in place, which is what they do perfectly.

Spiders + Wither + Dirge + death shards = win vs. everything.