1.) Original Poster said: "Race overall: Flavorful, but one of the weaker races."

What are you smoking? Resoln is one of the best, maybe THE best. I think I know why you don't see their strength:

"Death Worship: ...Some fun spells...In practice I hardly ever use them, as I cannot afford the mana..."

Infection/Graveseal/curse combo? You can wipe out tough armies fast with that, especially if 2 casters work together to set it up. Pick the enemy unit with lowest spell resistance that isn't about to die. Cast infection, then Graveseal, then Curse. Win.

Archers really help to take advantage of this combo, they can focus fire on the highest threat enemies first, and shred them with critical hits.

Stop casting summon spells (so you can save mana), and just cast Infection/Graveseal/Curse (Against some enemies you don't need curse). I think you'll have a higher appreciation of Ceresa.

2.) Grave Elemental as a summon is amazing. It casts death ward on every friendly unit near it when summoned. Death Ward makes it hard to lose.

Resoln is a very mana intensive faction. If you are having mana supply issues, the problem may be that your strategy is not prioritizing mana production enough.

Obviously Resoln should get every shard they can for the mana and summons as well as beeline up the sorcery tree for the shard upgrade tech as soon as possible. In addition, the spell mantle of oceans you get at rank 3 of the water line is a huge help at reducing tactical spell costs, especially when combined with the trait in the mage hero specialization tree that reduces mana costs as well. Resoln should also be building a higher proportion of conclaves than most other factions on spots with essence and placing a high priority on the line of buildings that boosts mana production. This should be comboed with the city enchantment that produces +1 mana per essence.

Hey this is a little bit off topic and all, but I was just wondering what technology must be researched to recruit bound hoarder spiders? Can't see them in the tech tree (while bound widows and bound harridans)

edit: nevermind, just found out that kingdom custon factions don't have access to the required tech

Its leader, oracle ceresa is the main antagonist of the game (according to the lore and campaign map).

I'm trying to learn how to play Resoln. Spend the whole day browsing through guides and threads. Also played 3 games as Resoln. Till now i still can't grasp the essence of Resoln.

My observations and the issues i face:

Most magic/mana dependent faction and the spells are extremely devastating.

Most humanoid trained units(mainly the melee) almost totally useless due to equipment locked to leather. The gravewardens and archers still fairly deployable, but not viable as i require tanking units to protect my Champion/Sovereign while they cast spells. 

The Elementals from BINDING, they are good mid game with the 2nd tier, but the 1st tier(young) and the 3rd tier(Ancients) are really underpowered. 1st tier elementals are pretty weak honestly in early game(i usually play chall/chall and higher mode, so the mobs start at way higher level). Mid game its all balanced, but late game, when the units have a 6 man headcount and good gear, the elementals get slaughtered hard! Not to mention due to low survival rate of the Elementals, it is extremely hard to maintain veteran Elementals and by late game, the AI HAS truckloads of high level veteran units. So Elementals are disposable meatshields? Thats their only purpose?

The Elementals from SUMMONS, they are way better than their binding brethren. I can still get a few veterans up by having them stay back and being useless while my other units tank and the Champions/Sovereign kill everything. Still they are weak compared to late game 6 man units. Necromancy works wonders early game, but late game, 1 juggernaut can wipe them out in 1-2 turns.

Spiders, i use them mainly for web and beguile to protect my Champions/Sovereign while they spell casting, other than that they get slaughtered unless im playing easier mode.

So this is basically the play style of Resoln? Spells to destroy, Elemental/Summons are disposable tanks to protect your Champions/Sovereign. Am i playing it right?

Btw im not really cussing Resoln faction being too weak. I managed to win my games due to the crazy strong spells but the play style is simply too weird.

"Water I: Slow is awesome, Inspiration is nice. Freeze (lvl 2) and Mantle of Oceans (lvl 3) are great as well, and worth the level-ups. Again, level 4 & 5 bring nothing worth mentioning"

If you were talking about Fire Magic, I might agree with you. However, Water IV brings Blizzard, which is quite possibly the best damage spell in the game, aside from possibly Dirge of Ceresa after corrupting every last shard you found.

Critical hits cause twice the normal amount of damage to be dealt to the target. However, since individual figures in a unit each make their own rolls to hit and for damage, it isn't terribly unlikely to get damage within the normal range.

Example:

3-figure unit, damage range 5-10 per figure. So we get 0/5-10/10-20/15-30 damage per hit for 0/1/2/3 figures successfully hitting the target on a normal hit, or 0/10-20/20-40/30-60 damage per hit on a critical hit for 0/1/2/3 figures successfully hitting the target. If we assume a 50% chance of hitting the target, then a reasonable damage range to expect on a critical hit is something like 8-37 damage (note that this is an estimate - I did not actually go through the math to calculate anything here), which isn't significantly outside of the reported damage range of 5-10x3, though with the same 50% hit rate a normal hit can only reasonably be expected to do something like 4-18 damage, or roughly half of the expected damage of a critical hit.

Naturally, the expected damage per hit will change with the number of figures in the unit and the actual accuracy of the unit, and there's always the possibility of every figure in the unit dealing minimum hit damage and yet the hit going critical, which will look exactly like a hit where every figure in the unit rolled maximum damage since the minimum normal damage is equal to half of the maximum normal damage.

I haven't ever played as a Resoln player, but I have used a lot of Resoln abilities in custom races.  Also, a lot of that stuff was in the base FE game rather than LH, so take the following with a grain of salt:

My Thoughts

I think that Resoln really spreads itself pretty thin.  I think that if it was a bit more focused that it could do a lot better.

In the FE base game, you could harvest shards from turn 1 and the second level shard harvesting tech for +2 per turn per shard and getting the mid level elementals was in the first tier of the magic tree.  That got nerfed really hard in the move to LH and that nerf hit Resoln really hard.  The more powerful units now come much later in the game and that hurts a ton.  In FE, Binding was my favorite ability, now I pretty much don't take it at all.  That change really made me sad.  Almost want to go back to FE in order to get Binding back.

Cult of a Hundred Eyes - Hoarder Spiders are mad uber and they can stun the entire enemy army.  They also have a ton of HPs and they can tank decently if you set them up against just one enemy at least to hold it off from attacking something else.  They come really late in the tree, but they shouldn't be underestimated.  You take the whole Beastlord trait hoping to get you 1 Hoarder Spider in the game and this race can make as many as they want.  Having multiple of these shouldn't be underestimated.  The weaker spider versions aren't that good, though, and they make this trait one of the weaker traits, IMHO.  I will use spiders captured as a Beastlord, but I don't take this trait for custom races.

Corruption is actually pretty nice and ensures that you won't ever be stuck with shard types you can't use at least.  I am a much bigger proponent of Slow than the previous posters.  One or two slows can be roughly the same as casting haste on your whole army.  I like to get that in early and often.  I think you really want to invest some serious effort into the water line as Oracle Ceresa, because Freeze, Mantle of Oceans, the Counterspell, and Blizzard can all be pretty strong.

I am not a real big fan of going deep into the Death line.  I think mostly it is a waste of traits to get higher than level 2 in it.  All the good stuff comes early pretty much.  The Kill spell is really good if you want to try to beat the main quest final boss with it, but Ceresa really misses the trait that gives 2 Spell Mastery per level and 10% exp.

If you are going to pick Resoln, I would say to make your second Champion a Defender.  You can dip into enemy race territory and buy the advanced armors when the AIs research them and give them whatever armors you end up with from quests.  Being able to distract quite a few units while your main force picks off things from the side can be pretty powerful, especially when your race in general has really low defense.

Research wise, Resoln gets very little from the warfare line.  You can grab the first tier research for cheap and get Drills for the +1 army size and get the Lumber Mill tech if you have a lot of trees around your cities, but you can for the most part ignore this whole line with Resoln.  Resoln has by far the worst trained units, so much it's sad.  It is even worse that Death and Water are both not capable of giving per essence training bonuses unlike all the other types of magic.  The Air and Life bonuses are huge and the earth and fire bonuses are both really good too, but water and death get nothing.  If you are going to make a fortress with Resoln, make it one of the cities that has no essence and save your essence cities for Conclaves.

BTW, and I would never play any other race this way, you might want to make ALL of your cities into Conclaves.  A lot of people play Resoln without trained units at all and if you go this route then you aren't seriously hurt by lack of per essence bonuses from spell types or the barracks and training yards and associated upgrades.  On the upside, lack of mana is a common complaint and conclaves are huge mana generators with their mana per essence buildings really early in the tech tree.  Research per essence buildings come from Conclaves too and that can help you speed through the research tree to get the more powerful stuff from there.  Most of the conclave upgrades are in the research tree and so are the Black Quire (?) and other upgrades that let you get things like Hoarder Spiders.  If you want to train some staff users for ranged power (I would suggest it) you can still train them at Conclaves.  They won't be done as fast and they won't be as tough, but you really don't want them to be getting attacked much anyway hopefully so it can still work.

No Armor isn't a big penalty if you only research the first tier of the warfare tree and focus elsewhere after that.  You still have leather for your ranged units which is OK and you probably want that anyway so you don't have initiative penalties.  Also, you probably want to get the +20 dodge vs ranged magic items on your staff users if you are going to make them.

Sovereign Bond - If you are going to cast this, just put the familiar in one of your cities and use the strategic spells it can cast.  Being able to double up on Freeze and some other Strategic spells can be pretty useful.  Definitely don't underestimate casting strategic spells with this race.  Do it a lot.  The more you cast strategically, the less you have to waste time casting tactically.  I wouldn't waste army space with the summon.

Summons - I really like using these to go straight to the enemy back line and to divide and conquer with, delaying important stuff from joining the battle with my main forces.  High HP stuff like Grave Elementals can be good for that.  The kinds summoned out of battle for your main army can be pretty decent too so you don't have to train things.

2nd and after free champions - I would take them for the spell types and sacrifice them immediately to give the spells to Ceresa.  I would just keep Ceresa and the first free one I made into a defender.

Playing Resoln

If I was going to play standard Oracle Ceresa, I would basically try to do most/all of the above.  Heavy on Conclaves possibly with zero/one town(s) and zero fortresses.   Focus almost completely on the magic research tree and only take the cheap stuff from the other ones.  Heavier on water magic than life magic.  Grab a defender second champion that can heal itself at regular rates instead of 1 HP/turn.  Try to grab two or maybe even three Hoarder Spiders when available.  Use corruption a lot.  If the second champion can be one with Air magic with initiative per essence I would grab that and make staff users in a Conclave somewhere.

Making a custom Resoln race

You probably want to take away some wide and add some more deep.  Less of a jack of all trades and more of a master of a few.  I would definitely replace Attunement with Brilliant.  Instead of Sovereign Bond maybe Veteran or Tactician.  Race wise I would definitely get rid of Adepts and replace it with Enchanters.  That would allow +1 mana and research per turn per Conclave.   Between Binding, Death Worship, and Cult of a Hundred Eyes I would get rid of one of those and get Master Scouts.  I would probably get rid of Death Worship and keep the free city defenders from shard shrines and keep the Hoarder Spiders.  You lose some cool spells this way, but tbh there is enough to cast even without it.  Lack of good things to cast really shouldn't ever be Ceresa's problem.  The extra mobility could be really good, though, especially if you could get your slowest unit up to 3 moves (4 with Tireless March).

I really hope someone makes one of these for every faction.

Couple of other things:

Summons up to Air Elemental (including Skeletal Horde) are good, but after that you may wish to focus on getting Sacrifice (to solve mana issues), Blizzard (as an AI army killer) and Savant (-1 casting time, requires getting lots of spell mastery to get there, which is very helpful for Death spells). The following summons are ok, but the next really useful summons in my opinion is Summon Grave Elemental. If cast tactically this gives Death Ward for five turns to all surrounding units. So definitely do not cast this next to the enemy's back line! You want it next to as many of your units as possible. Tactically summoning Grave Elemental has won me very tough battles in the past, as half your army can die and then come back with full hitpoints.

Because I think Sacrifice is so important I disagree with the idea that you shouldn't go deep into the Death line. Mass Curse with -1 casting time is good. Kill will kill anything if you cast Shadowbolt at them for long enough (to reduce their magic resistance), so it's great for killing Wildlands bosses or winning the Quest victory. It's not particularly expensive or slow to cast bearing in mind that you should have -1 casting time, Mantle of the Oceans and Sacrifice (for extra mana) by that stage anyway.

If there is only one roll to hit, then there is no point in reporting damage as "X-Y x Z" as it would be functionally identical to "XZ-YZ" damage (note that this is damage, not attack - combining the attack score to make one large strike at A*Z attack is by no means identical to making Z strikes at A attack). Moreover, if on any given hit you attain less than X*Z damage, there is no obvious mechanic in place to describe how that happens as it violates the known rules for damage computation (since at least one of the three damage rolls would have had to roll for less than half of the maximum damage, yet half of the maximum damage is the lower bound on any damage roll that isn't affected by special rules), and I'm reasonably certain that I've seen units hit for less than X*Z damage. While I'm not absolutely certain that each individual figure rolls to hit, it would appear to fit my game experience better than the assumption that there is only one roll to hit and several different damage rolls.

And yes, it does make the "dodge" scenario seem a bit unlikely. However, there is also a method of rolling for hits that allows for a relatively high dodge rate despite multiple rolls for hits - rolling for each figure to hit the same way that Maul rolls for successive attacks (you keep rolling to make hits until you miss or attain the maximum number of hits allowed per attack) would leave the hit chance at the reported ~70% for basic units and still leave room for there to be damage scores of less than X*Z. This methodology makes it much less likely for large units to achieve their maximum hit damage, but it allows for a much higher miss chance than parallel hit rolls. Examples:

If the hit rolls are independent of one another, then against a 0-dodge opponent a 70-accuracy 3-figure unit has a 97.3% chance of successfully dealing damage with any given attack, while if the attack rolls are evaluated in succession and are dependent on the success of the preceding roll, that same unit only has a 70% chance of successfully dealing damage with any given attack.

For that matter, even if the attack score is reduced significantly (let's say that instead of a 70% chance for each figure to hit, you now have a 30% chance - meaning that the 70-accuracy unit is attacking something with 40 dodge), the three independent attack rolls still give you a 65% chance of dealing damage on any given attack. You would only have a 2.7% chance at the upper third or so of the damage range, but you'd only completely miss 35% of the time rather than 70% of the time.

As such, based on my gameplay experience, I would say that each figure in a unit rolls to hit a target, but the rolls are not fully independent of one another; rather, they would appear to roll to hit in a similar fashion to the way Maul works - you get to keep rolling for hits until you miss or attain the maximum number of hits allowed for your unit. This isn't something I'm certain of, unlike the damage formulas, but I am fairly confident in it as it would seem to fit my experiences in the game. (Mind you, there is a decent chance that I computed the probabilities incorrectly for the multiple independent hit rolls, as computing probabilities isn't my strong suit; regardless, it should still be representative of the general tendency of the multiple independent hit rolls, and the multiple dependent roll probability is correct).

I generally don't like nerfcries, but the Gallowman is pretty OP...

Could people stop quoting me out of context? Thanx    

I don't like the passive part of the Wraith trait, because I loath the dodge/accuracy model. The HP penalty really hurts Ceresa. The active ability, Wraith Touch, is flavorful and very useful.

You are right, I did not mention the 3d part of the racial feature: the unit options. I could say it's because you should never build units as Resoln anyway, or I could say I did not want to embarrass the Devs, by having to point out how stupid Zealotry is. But no, I had simply forgotten them...

Joeball, did you ever consider writing a Beginner's Guide for LH?