usefulness of the high-end Construction summons?

[Tifone]

I'm not definitively an expert, quite the opposite, but I think a major point for the poison golems is that they require you the same Construction path you need to gear them. Ideally, I think you could go for a strategy (requiring a rainbow pretender of course) of aggressive remote site-searching with the spells (thaum 2, conj 2), some evoc or enchantment to keep you up, and then get to Construction 9 getting at one time the SCs and the artefacts to gear them up. You even get, on the way, to build Golems at Const7 and equip them of Const6 gear. Playing it nice you could start building Poison Golems equipped with artefacts around the time your enemy starts fielding medium summons with const-4 gear and alteration to buff them. Maybe a dream but it could be fast.

[Baalz]

Well, I personally think poison golems are underrated. SC's have 3 roles:

1) Singlehandedly clearing chaff (and most things are chaff at the stage of the game level 9 spells come out). Poison golems are O.K. for that, cost effective if you don't have access to one of the really good choices like Tartarians.

2) Killing other SCs. Poison golems are O.K. at that to if you equip them propertly. My poison golem won the big SC challenge that was run awhile ago up against the best stuff everybody could build for an arena fight with 20 something entries I beleive. Boots of quickness and a standard of the damned, and they'll take down most things not custom built to fight them.

3) Heavy hitters supporting large armies - mean to be very tough while mages do the killing. Poison golems are pretty good at this to. Properly equipped they're immune to pretty much everything, while nothing is immune to their banefire aura. Great lighting rods to charge out front while your mages rain all kinds of stuff down which the golems are immune to.

All in all, pretty respectable units for the cost if you can cast them.


Iron dragons are good raiders. If you've been stockpiling blood stones and have flying mages (or pass out flying boots) you've got reasonably priced flying raiders who will take out any unsupported PD. Because of their immunities, plenty of nations will have trouble stopping a lone iron dragon even with a mage or two supporting their PD. Throwing a surprise iron dragon to trample the rearmost mages can be extremely effective.

Mechanical men are fantastic in lots of situations and I always assume they're gonna have armor piercing + strength of giant weapons so they'll take down the big fellas to. Storming Caelum's capital? Instead of taking horrendous casualties to thunderstrike send a mage with a rings of lighting and frost resistance and a squad of mechanical men. C'tis fatiguing you out with skellispam while poison makes your very expensive super-elite units keel over - mechanical men to the rescue.

Clockwork horrors are one that people overlook that can be a very nasty surprise. They're size 1 and have two attacks. If they're buffed with weapons of sharpness, strength of giants, mass flight (in a pinch several mages casting gift of flight will work - each square has 6 of them) and optionally quickness they will chew through the toughest SCs in the game, and neither protection nor defense, fireshields nor awe will help.

Manikins/Mandragoras are pretty hard to use cost effectively, but they can be worth their weight in gold as an unexpected surprise when your opponent is storming a castle and didn't expect them.

Everybody already knows and loves the golem.

Crushers are fabulous as linebackers, particularly to stop a hoard of tramplers. Watching 20 elephants stopped like they ran into a brick wall by two crushers while your mages leisurely take them apart....fun.

Lumber constructs.....uh.....well, they're cheap?

[Nikelaos]

i love clockwork horrors, not quite higher end but cheap, easily massed, and very deadly with those construction buffs chucked on.

mindless slaughter anyone?

[HoneyBadger]

I've always been a big fan of Clockwork Horrors. People say a lot about imps, but Clockwork Horrors are the Terminator version of imps. I'm surprised they aren't mentioned/used more often, since they're really quite lethal.

[NTJedi]

Well the clockwork horrors have massive fatique building making them very vunerable for any battle going beyond 4 turns. I personally prefer the mechanical men over clockwork horrors since they have shields and no loss of fatique. For specific planned scenarios the clockwork horrors can be quite useful.

[Xietor]

I like Iron Dragons in many situations. They are vulnerable with their low mr to certain counters, but they certainly have their uses.

[HoneyBadger]

Oh I didn't realize that they got that much fatigue...so yeah, I can see the limitation.

[Lingchih]

Originally Posted by Xietor

I like Iron Dragons in many situations. They are vulnerable with their low mr to certain counters, but they certainly have their uses.

I like them because they are big and made of iron, and they fly, which, on second thought, is totally ridiculous considering they are made of iron. Well, that just makes them even cooler.

I always make one or two, but I hardly ever use them. They just look cool, and it impresses the peasants.

[Edratman]

I'm a crusher fan.

[HoneyBadger]

I like fighting the Crusher/Hoburg independents, those are a lot of fun!