Had some great feedback so far: while I'm working on my big CoE5 scripted video I think I'm gonna spend some more time with each faction and try to play them all on harder difficulty settings, as I feel I probably made some mistakes here and there. Witch I've replayed a bit and think I might have over-ranked her, she feels closer to C or B at the moment, than the A I put her in. I think Baron is probably still only an A even after the King coronation ritual, despite having the best economy in the game, he doesn't have any truly overwhelmingly strong mechanics like that Simulacra thing the Illusionist gets. I'll be doing a series of guides on every class, which will hopefully stimulate more discussion and help me figure them out a bit more, and then do a bit more of a scientific tier-list again afterwards.
Witch has a very powerful mechanic in Rank 3, you can scry swamp with level 1 spell and when you scried all swamp from elysium you can scry swamps from Aztlan and use third level spell to teleport your army in Aztlan to harvest all the swamps. Then you can get to the primal plane by swamp walk or through Aztlan portals. This get such a massive economy boost and it is very hard for an opponent to stop you from getting a third level witch because your starting fortress count as both a fortified location and a swamp and you can use all you ritual defensively there. Her worst match ups are against enchanter, elementalist and undead because she relies on poison and control spell and is weak against poison immune and mindless ennemies.
Sorry, I missed this comment@@guillaumelasne3523. I agree with this, I think she might be a bit better than I realised, but I still don't think she's quite got the overwhelming, OP mechanics that the other S tier have, even with that.
The necromancer is S+ Tier in my opinion, because if you get twiceborn fast and not raise the dead if you do not need to and get banefire archers as fast as possible, then you have the strongest early game. Banefire archers are way better, then just the decay effect you mentioned. They have 1-2 armor piercing damage and 1-3 normal piercing magic damage. This means that they can deal 2-5 damage and can ignore a lot of armor! Decay is just an extra effect. The best thing about them is there dps. Also lichs are arguably the strongest monsters in this game, as long as they are immortal! They can cast 2 level 3 spells each round! They have high magic restistant and decent hp. And they have one of the strongest level 3 spells there is, which is the death spell. 20 armor negating damage with a burst of 25! With army of the dead 1-18 longdead and limitless and soulvortex or Finger of death or cloud of death or dark power, they still have strong lifedrain to stay alive, while protecting themself with longdead and dealing huge amounts of damage with the death spell or chill of death spell and also strong level 2 spells in case they got unlucky level 3 spell rolls. But the best part is that you can planar swap entire armys into hades with planar swap and let them die!😂 While also having complete map controll with the stygian path ritual, whil allowes them to travel almost anywhere in just a singel turn! So you can just spamm your lichs into the enemy in just a few turns, until they die or just swap them into hades, if you think that will take to long. 😆 Necromancer is far the strongest class. Also try to avoid mayor summonings, if you found a old castel or ancient temple. Most mayor summonings are just wasted hands of glory in comparision to immortal casters, like vampires or liches, which can both take on entire armys on there own, with the right spells!
Cheers dude, really appreciate that! I'm replaying a lot of the classes myself and trying to get my head around them better, and upping the difficulty to Knight has kind of turned CoE5 from a "chilled adventure" into something a bit fiercer...
27:23 The druid can now summon quite a few gods and creatures from the Primal Plane. Creatures like Beholder or Ents. The Gods all come with multiple high level magic schools as well as a ton of health and are Planar Immortal. So the Druids engame is definitely not that weak.
No, you can summon 6 Beholders, and all of them can be upgraded to Eye Tyrants at a lv 3 library. Eye Tyrants are RIDICULOUSLY powerful, having four lv 3 schools and 2 lv 2 ones.
You might want to consider using the mod that unlocks the three hidden classes (beholder, archmage, and goblin king) and add those to your next tier list. Nice work overall.
It's not a real mod since normally AI players can spawn as those classes so they are going to be present in some mod-less games. The problem would be rather that they are sort of a mix of other classes and may not be important enough to make a video on. The advantage is that aside from unlocking hidden classes you can also block classes that you don't want to play against in a simple self-made mod. If anyone reading this is interested, this is the mod: selectclass 16 aiclass 0 selectclass 17 aiclass 0 selectclass 18 aiclass 0 PS: Using command " aiclass -1 " will prevent AI from randomly spawning as selected class. PS2: In main menu of CoE5 select "Mods" then click "Open mods directory". In there make new folder for example "Hidden Classes" and in that folder save text file with mod commands as "Hidden Classes.c5m". After reloading the game there will be "Hidden Classes" mod in "Mods" tab. Click it once to enable it. Now you can play as one of those classes.
Beholder and archmage are SS tier they can recruit mage of other factions and they get there rituals. It’s basically playing many factions at once. And you got the goblin king… as far as I can say it’s a troll king whit out troll. The goblin king as a cool staff that make fire be it’s not as good as the troll king. Also I don’t know if they have something going on passe the early game cause I never survived past the first year in game
To clarify on the Enchanter and their income spell; they have a level 1 ritual spell that spawns a stationary unit that boosts the income of the tile by 1 gold and 1 iron for each tool there, but it's capped at doubling the income for the tile. So a coal mine of 1 gold and 1 iron can produce 2 gold and 2 iron. An iron mine can be boosted to make 4 gold and 4 iron. If you're playing coop, you can put these in your allies' tiles and boost their eco too (but they will capture the tile if not garrisoned and can't be removed so be careful with this). In the late game, they can create a network of portals which is ridiculously useful with the near instantaneous travel between points. It's my go-to choice when just playing with friends against the world (not really into pvp).
The way to play Enchanter for me is to make full armies of flying sword that you lead with captains while your Enchanters stay inside your cities making more swords. You start a bit slow but get unstoppable with very well defended cities.
Priest king has an insurance policy with their slaves, and fairly versatile with the different schools - probably low A. Their biggest rng is sometimes you will get a questionable bless bonus instead of a greater summon. Enchanter is very resource dependent. Druid is better than in 4, but still somewhat weak early on. Warlock on A may be high. They are versatile, but very gem dependent and weaker early on. S tier, I would reserve for the strong early game nations. Especially with MP enchanter is too vulnerable for s tier, especially compared to demo, necro, cultist, illus. Witch really depends on your spell rolls. If you start with charm, she is close to A.
53:43 Slight correction. The type and amount of free units depends on what kind of mine enchantment you have. Not how much you upgraded your shamans or sorcerers. A Hatchery will produce basic kobolds. A Stronghold will produce basic, warriors and ranged units. Shamans come with a level 2 ritual unlocked, so even a basic Shaman can turn a Hatchery into a Stronghold if they roll the right ritual. What the Prophets and Kings do unlock is the dragon spawns. I will once again disagree about the Kobolds not having end game stuff. Dragon Spawn and a ton of casters are the end game for Kobolds. Massed White Dragon Spawn are a menace. I killed Bhaal of the High Priestess with 400 of them and only lost 30. The Red Dragon Spawn are very good at quickly killing small groups of anything that isn't fire resistance or has awe/fear. They also can use their dragons to boost the chance of getting casters and drakes. The sorcerers are also level 2 spell casters out of the gate. This means that the Kobolds can easily put together half a dozen "Blizzard" casters with a few hundred cold immune meatshields. Very few things can survive that. The other colors also have potent spells but no battlefield wide ones at hire. You can easily get a dozen "Meteor" casters though.
Do Kobold Sorcerers reach Level 3? I forget now. If so then I do see your point but I don't think they're anything on Warlock to be honest... their summons are all variations of chaff (or dragons, which are ok but not that great) where the Warlock seems to unlock this never-ending scaling series of unit summoning powerlords!
@@battlemode Kobold Sorcerers are level 2 on hire. They can be upgraded to level 3 by making them a King. Shamans are level 1 and can reach level 2 when they become Prophets. "Blizzard" is a battlefield wide cold damage spell and it's only level 2. Hence the normal Sorcerer being able to cast it out of the gate. Kobolds get a ton of casters and as they don't really need gold to pay for normal troops, they can afford them too. I have conquered Heaven, the Elemental Planes, the Primal Plane, and I am currently taking over Aztlan with them in one of my kobold games. I don't know exactly how they would stack up to a Warlord, but the Kobolds might have an edge there as they are 100% immune to their respective element. Taking over the Elemental Plane of Fire for example was incredible easy. If I remember correctly Flame Spirits and Fire Elementals are completely unable to hurt red kobolds. I don't think Kobolds have any summons aside from dragons. Their strong points are a ton of level 2 casters, Dragon Spawn (especially white and red) as well as the drakes.
15:25 I honestly consider both the upgrades for the Baron and the Senator to be fun gimmicks for when the game should already be over. Both classes are kind of an early game rush faction, and by the time you got both the gold and the location for the upgrade you should have either won already, or control such a big part of the map that you can attrition the remaining enemies down with sheer numbers.
I'm doing a King run for Baron now amd I absolutely agree. The Coronation feels like a double win mechanic. I also think that Baron plays more like a classic 4X with all the settlement upgrades you can do
Really fun video! Although I do suspect you are underselling some characters. The barbarian, I can't point a finger to what, but I suspect is a fair bit stronger than you claim. And the Cloud lord is basically an air warlock with flying base troops, so while he might not be as versatile as the Warlock it still feel weird when you call him weak with the latter in S tier. Although I haven't played this game enough myself either (is that even possible?) and now I really need to get around to playing the illusionist and enchanter! (and also the Dwarf queen).
Yeah I suspect I'm missing something with the Cloud Lord, I just found his troops rather difficult to use well, and his summons feel a little underwhelming. Warlock is an A tier at least because of his versatility. I think I should have reserved S-Tier for truly overwhelming classes with very easy to cheese mechanics like Illusionist and High Cultist, but Warlock is a contender because of just how powerful they become and if you get enough gem variety they have no real weakness. I'm not sure you could say the same for the Cloud Lord. That said I'm replaying them all now for a longer video series I've planned, and might well update this list to fix any errors! Cheers for watching!
@@battlemode "Enough gem variety" brings up another important issue with most gem classes in that their economy tend to feel a lot weaker than especially sacrifice classes. Summon prices don't seem to be that much cheaper despite mines being relatively rare and divided between four different resources, making gem summons feel rather expensive. On the other hand you could probably make an argument that there is a sort of survivorship bias with the "chance of disobedience" classes. An obedient demon will always feel like a bargain if you forgot the times you lost all your action points and had to take a self inflicted fight at a key moment. And I am glad I don't have to make a ranking my self.
I disagree with 2 things. 1. I am a lot less annoyed at the dwarfs although I can relate to the feeling but for me it was always the Tibel king and the Warlocks that had the endless amount of stupid unkilabal armies. The Dwarfs are also really fun to play in my opinion if you get a few teleportation scrolls. Once I had a mine in the inferno, there was nothing the Devils could do. 2. While mods are absolutely not necessary they can be a lot of fun especially the ones that ad new classes (ther is a pretty good fairy one that gets secravises but only in the winter).
I probably wasn't very clear, judging by another comment I had there, so I should clarify things. The Dwarfs are D tier because they suck, they're not very strong and they're not a threat to your game, they're manageable if you don't mind building a dozen armies and using them to play rat-catcher and chase after all the Queen's Counsellors that she spawns every turn. The problem is that in a game where I feel very little frustration (ant apocalypse is another that I don't really enjoy, although it can become satisfying when you do beat them) I find the Dwarfs just really annoying to deal with, because if you don't deal with them they will entrench to the point where the cost of taking them out is dramatically higher. I'm playing it up a bit for the performance, I don't care THAT much, but I thought it'd be fun to show a bit of emotion over them. Perhaps I'll do a Dwarf Queen LP and see if I can get into Inferno like you suggested, that does actually sound like fun, although I find the pacing of her campaign dreadfully slow.
@battlemode ah I see the problem. I thoroughly enjoy dashing form mine to mine evening hostile enemy armies and hiding behind my walls but I do agree that the Dwarfs lack puch in a filed battles. And I still have not faced a strong ai Dwarfs queen so many that is why I am not particularly anoyd
@@marcelinio9988 They're definitely a different playstyle for people, and I hope I got across that they can be fun to play as yourself. I did enjoy them for a bit but I don't remember finishing a game with them as they were just a bit slow for my liking, and I like using more magic.
You clearly dont value mage focused factions AND MID game strong factions. Dryad, horburgs, monkeys and barbarian are all something like inbetween factions that use summons and money where all S tiers use only one. All S tiers spread much slower. Also how can you say that dwarves are so much worse to play against than kobolds and then rank them otherway around. Otherwise I liked this video THANK YOU PS. I think this in mp perspective. Real player comes after your bases a bit more agressive so long game strat are not as good
I need to play competitive CoE to do a MP list. I'm actually replaying all these classes again as I know I made a lot of mistakes! Monkey Maharaja is way stronger than I realised, for example, and I like Dvala more now too
@@battlemode I started today game as dwarves against horbugs. I also play battle for wesnoth and also in that game even when dwarves have lost game will still take long time because they die so slowly. I hope this doesnt go to that
@@battlemodeI agree that you underrankeds Kobold, AI play them bad because they do not priorize Stronghold ritual over Iron costing troops. They are easy to play as a begininner and co do elemental battlefield wipe as early as second tier shaman or sorcerers for the ice kobolds.
Great video! The only real feedback I have on the rankings is that I think Markgraf is prob B tier. While it has necromancy, it has worse necromancy, and *much* worse necromancers bc they are slow (and so even the basic reanimation takes 50% longer), and even their vampirism (and the rituals locked behind it) relies on finding an Old Ruins, a terrain that may not even exist on the map regardless of era. They have good potential when things go their way, but a lot of the time they struggle.
You have reignited my interest in this game. Love troll King, love becoming the "clone father" with illustrations and just all the stuff you can do. With the dwarfs I like them in theory but they aren't as fun as if like them to be, both as foes they can't realistically be killed and just send out annoying squadrons, and to play they seem quite limited (tho I may just have to revisted them as I have had fun in the past with them.)
I went a bit overboard with the Dwarf rant actually, but they are definitely the most annoying class to fight against! Glad you've enjoyed the video Callum! Cheers!
"Last one of these ran two hours but this one should be shorter" lol. All good not enough CoE talk out there. Also thanks for the link to Adrian's music, great stuff.
Hey Battlemode, I just finished your Conquest of Elysium review, and I must say it was excellent! I do have a suggestion on how to present and categorize each faction for improved structural presentation. Consider breaking down each class based on a list of factors such as force generation in the early game, force generation in the late game (taking into account economy and scaling), raiding movements and strength, map access (sea, planes), and map control. A simple grading system of minus, check, or plus could be applied to these components. This logical categorization can help your readers gain a better understanding of the factions. For instance, a faction scoring many pluses could be classified as S tier. I've also noticed that the AI seems to have bonuses for summons and free spawn. This distinction makes NPC-controlled factions behave differently from player-controlled ones, and it's worth highlighting in your review. For example, some player factions hit a breakout point with level-three summons that the AI player can't replicate. In my games, the player's efficiency/effectiveness with the Earth elemental wheels or the dryad Earth Mother has been a deciding factor. Keep up the excellent work, Battlemode. This is the best review I've seen! Best, T Doggs
Enchanter is such an excellent class. The summon guardian spell prevents 90% of indie s from taking your villages and the like with just one cast. And casting 6+ on your citadels make them such a pain in the ass to take for opponents that they just don't bother trying
Honestly I feel like the Dryad is worse that Dwarf to fight against. Yes in the late game the Dwarf are harder but the Dryad is harder in early and middle games, they can pump out way more units that Dwarf and they snow ball fast. But maybe it’s just that I got strange luck with my game
I'm actually playing Dryad right now and I think I had them all wrong: definitely they rely more on their freespawn units and animal summons aren't so useful for them as they are for Druid!
9:03 You can upgrade the slow amazons with the fast trait via tattoos. Fun fact, the fast trait completely overwrites the slow one. A fully upgraded tattooed amazon army is very difficult to beat. Everything having regeneration, being fast as well as having a few damage mitigations and resistances makes them very hard to get rid of. That includes their spellcasting priestesses. So I don't think their endgame is that bad. The ghosts seems to be a bit overpriced for what you get, but if you need poison immune units/commanders they are great. Given that they start with some very hard hitting and fast moving units and I consider an all regenerating army to be very powerful I might even go so far as to put them into A tier.
@@battlemode I know this is late but also they are the class that most easily takes over hades, even easier for them than necro due to the mass spirit armies than can plane shift
Hey BM! quick question: I really like Abyssia in Dominions, it's pretty much the only civ I can get some progress in and I like the lore, do you think any faction in CoE is related to them? Demonologists maybe?
Some of the Abysian-style infantry are found in Inferno, with the fire resistance and very heavy armour. I think Abysia would be a good pick for a Class though!
Know I'm quite late to the party! But I'd have put the Trolls in C. They are strong when not countered but can get so painfully hard-countered too... their magic resistance is garbage, all of them, even the Troll King himself can be almost *easily* beaten by a sorceress with a charm spell. It's such an achilles heel that I find them infuriating to play as and frequently laughable to play against (unless you don't have access to either magic resist targeting spells or fire attacks, then... not so laughable).
I agree, their early game is kinda dodgy because of Troll King's low MR, but I seem to remember both Mum and Gramps have quite high MR, or am I misremembering?
@@battlemode True, I think those mage trolls have decent MR. But crucially every single recruitable they get has terrible MR, which combined with low numbers of powerful units brings it to a point where an apprentice illusionist or apprentice cultist or equivalent could ruin a whole Troll force. Even just a point charm / mind control sometimes destroys them on its own by turning those powerful units against themselves with ease.
@@battlemode A bit like combing the Troll King with his Mother. High Hp, strenght, regeneration, charm immune and has level 3 hedge magic, which includes the earthquake spell. He can also be Stygian bathed to make him immune to non magical weapons like all trolls.
The whole family go for enthusiastic walks into Dwarf Strongholds in my games. It’s incredible to look at (obviously they still need “infantry” support, and the King may die, but Mum and Gramps do very heavy lifting)
I think that Barbarian is worst class in all class. Barbarian leader wants become vanguard, so he goes down quickly. Spirit Guide can access ancient spirits, but he is very expensive (75 + d20).
It is in the manual, but I also couldn't find it for a long time. It just directly affects how much damage is done and reduction/boosting in strength causes less or more damage on a successful hit respectively.
I look upon your list and cannot understand how someone can be this wrong or even how you got to some of these conclusions. I had tested every class on Marquis difficulty against classes that are equal or a bit higher in power level. I hate tested all of the classes against human opponent in pvp as well. It was a combined effort of me and people I play with often. But even without all that testing, I still cannot understand how did you put Baron, the worst class in the game, above so many others. He is right there with Monkey Maharaja who are similar in how bad they are. It's rather confusing. How is Voice of El, one of two most broken classes, in the same rank as something as bad as Senator?! My fin dings are as follows (the higher the number the worse the class, 4 being worse) : Tier 1 : Necromancer, High Priestess, Demonologist, Voice of El. Most powerful classes the game has to offer, not much can stand against them besides some tier 2 classes Tier 2 : Warlock. Markgraf, High Cultist, Priest King, Pale Ones (Some of them can take on tier 1 classes, excluding Necromancer and Voice of El) Tier 3 : Witch, Bakemono, Druid, Troll King, Dwarf Queen, Illusionist, Drayad Queen, Scourge Lord, Kobolds, Raksharaja, Enchanter, Burgmaister (here you see a lot of classes as a lot of them are similar in power if you know how to use them properly) Tier 4 : Baron, Senator, Cloud Lord, Monkey Maharaja (here are classes that are the worst the game has to offer, done poorly, clunky and awkward to play, or just being outmatched by anything besides tier 4 classes) Pardon me if I sound harsh/rude as I am genuinely confused by your video and kinda see it as misinformation. I am happy to answer any questions about this as well
No no, glad for the feedback! I'm actually replaying all the classes as I go. I don't play any higher than Knight right now, that's enough for me. I don't play the game to be challenged so much as enjoy the exploration. I did make the caveat that I don't think a power ranking really makes much sense in this game, because you really need to be asking the question "Powerful at which difficulty level, on SP or MP, on which Society, and what are you trying to do in the game aside from win?". I don't think the game really supports the kind of strict hierarchy of power like something like Dominions does, where a strong player will have difficulties with the weaker nations, because in CoE I feel that the tiers are somewhat closer. Of course, I'm open to hearing otherwise. If people who play it a lot have different ideas, by all means let me know! I'll do a revised tier list later but there's no way Baron is that weak, I think he's incredibly strong just because of the economy and the sheer amount of magic users you can get. It's not just about 1 vs 1 combat matchups: Baron can play the raiding war like nobody else because of the sheer number of troops he gets.
@@battlemode I'd say not playing on higher then Knight does not allow you to fully experience the game. On difficulties below Count, the AI refuses to transition to level 3 rituals. This means some purely lategame classes do not show off what they can do. For example, if you are not playing at least on Count, High Priestess constantly uses Ceremony To Baal, a worthless ritual that is meant to just help her transition to lvl 3. This results in her having multiple rows of scorpions that put her too far away from casting any spells and results in an almost all melee army. This is not only easy to stop if you have tanky units and a few good spellcasters. This also means the AI on lower difficulties does not utilize her key rituals like Second Sun, Banquet of The Dead, Greater Bloodfeast. Those rituals summon extremely deadly units and are cheap (besides Second Sun). The main cost to them is destroying a location permanently but it is meant to be used on y our opponents resources or around them. The AI actually does that. I spoke of this a bit too much but some other classes suffer similar issues with lower difficulties then Count and even on Count the progression to lvl 3 is not fast. I greatly disagree that power ranking does not matter. I see it as very helpful guideline for pve and needed for pvp. In pve, it helps one stay away from classes that they have no chance what so ever against. For example a well made list would show you that the Monkey Maharaja is extremely clunky and badly designed. It has a main focus on recruiting units while his units are more tanky then humans and do a bit more dmg then humans, this will not stop classes such as Priest King for example, who has easy access to Tzitzimitl that do 12 range 1d8 true damage attack that paralyzed (or other mages he summons for cheap) while behind rows and rows of free spwaning slaves. Also his rituals to summon things are so overpriced they seem to be made as a assistance rather then the class being focused on summons as the summons are weak for how much they cost making the class clunky to use. High Priestess being able to make an insantly tanky frontline by sacrificing a few farms for only 15 sacrifices then doing no summons to go to lvl 3 quick, gaining her powerful lvl 3 spells results in again monkeys having no chance. The use of the tier list shines even more in pvp where we had tested classes of lower tier fighting higher tier classes and it almost never ends well for the one using a class of a lower tier so it helps not have unfair matchups. A lot of things were considered when ranking classes. How powerful are their units and spells, how fast can a class achieve their setup and how good it is at what year. How clunky or smooth the glameplan is, how consistent said gameplan is. And this is doen when putting classes in the same environment that will not give anyone an unfair advantage. When it comes to the Baron. He mainly has human units. Yes he has a lot of them but they are still weak humans. Knights get stopped on large units or a lot of free spawning units like slaves, bakemono, kobolds and so on. His mages you said he gets a lot of are lvl 1 mages with bad spells. They need to be upgraded on a library to get to lvl 2 and even then their spells are quationable at best. Hight Arcana lvl 2 only has Meteor, Soul Slay and Enchanted Sleep as useful spell and to get those you need to roll trough 9 spells on a library taking up a lot of time and gold to do so. And after all this investment, the court mage is only human and die to a bunch of freespawning blue kobolds and 1 or 2 of their mages with lvl 2 frost magic that kills not the mage with the Blizzard spell, but also most of your other units. Troll King can have the Troll King, Mum and Gramps by year 2 (I do not mean a high difficulty AI but a player even, did that consistently myself), and those 3 can then solo whatever army Baron brings up with Troll King being tanky, Mum summoning stuff and fearing stuff while Gramps casts Arcane Tempest, Call Lightning or Earthquake that kill everything. Said Troll King is also better at harassing, so are Kobolds, and also for example the Dryad Queen who has actaly really tanky and hard hitting units that she "recruits". Maybe too many examples but your probably got my point
@@curiousmindflayer5169 I just tested it and the AI does not actually refuse to transit to level 3 rituals on lower difficulties. In a modded test game I gave the High Priestess AI 1000 sacrifices a turn and they did cast Second Sun turn 5 while being on the Boy difficulty. My guess would be that the AI simply does not have enough resources to cast the higher level rituals. The AI only plans for a very limited amount of rituals and doesn't seem to save up for the more powerful ones. That's why it's rare to see the expensive level 3 rituals. As to "not fully experiencing the game" on the lower difficulties, I personally disagree. There are a ton of different way you can experience Conquest of Elysium. A two player duel on a tiny map is one experience. A huge map with 10 players in two teams is another one. Restarting if the starting position is bad leads to yet another one. Trying to conquer all the planes with each class is a fourth. There are a lot of different ways to play and enjoy Conquest of Elysium, and each one is as valid an experience as all the others. Power ranking does matter in very specific situations. But it's not really all that great in a game with so many different ways of playing it. For example, you said Baron is really weak? The Baron's strength is that he is an early game rush class. He gets weaker the longer the game goes. So if you accelerate the game by giving the AI the 133% income bonus of the Marquis difficulty, of course he is going to underperform by a lot. The same can be said about multiplayer where a human opponent will safe up for the specific late game counters to the Baron's armies. I could probably make a pretty good argument that someone who only plays against the higher difficult AIs or human opponents never had the true Baron experience. The Baron is very high tier for anyone wanting a relaxed game against the AI or for new players that haven't learned all the interactions and classes yet. Someone completely new that would look at your list and select the Demonologist is probably going to do a lot worse than if they had selected Baron. I would like to hear what exactly pushes the Voice of El in the 1st tier for you. I personally like the class, but find them very similar to the Baron in playstyle and abilities. Sure, the bless can get up to a nice level, but that takes time. The Inquisition and Crusade are very good, but they also don't scale that well. And the higher level freespawn is powerful but not really that reliable.
This is why I made two things clear in the video: that the tier list is kind of useless as everybody will come up with their own definitions for their own playstyle, and that you shouldn't take it too seriously. Thanks for the detailed comments though, lots to think about!
31:25 I make mods for video game, and the first mod I ever made for Conquest of Elysium was one to disable the Dwarf Queen. I had a game where two Dwarf Queens spawned next to me and then the inferno disaster started. Nothing like crossing the map desperately trying to fight off hordes of demons while two dwarf queens back cap your eco. I had to go back and forth three times in order to finally end the disaster, only for a greater demon to wipe out the army I was using to hold the dwarves at bay and lose all my eco anyway. I literally just quit after that, I didn't even care that I stopped inferno, I was just so sick of dealing with dwarves.
I'm glad at least one other person also has this problem. I was a bit hard on them here because I'd literally just had a game ended by them (not because they were winning, but because it just wasn't fun trying to catch all the Queen's Councillors running across the map constantly, taking my stuff. By far a more annoying issue though is playing a team-game with either Warlock or Druid as a team-mate, when they start spamming out crows/clouds across the map and taking all your infrastructure. I think that one has become my new most hated thing in CoE :D
He's quite easy to get if you've got the right spells. Also Fear will make him run off the battlefield, so he's vulnerable to magic in general. But if you don't have any magic, boy! is he hard to take down!
@@battlemode That is quite funny. I like to add the dwarfs and the dryad to games where I want to explore everything a class can do, or where I want to try going to other planes. Both classes will never misplace their last commander or citadel and can be placed under house arrest without too much trouble.
Bugermaster are A+ or S there summon are just that good, Ent for 100 magic weed is so cheep for how strong Ent are and the robot are really strong. There biggest problems is the slow and managing to survive the early game.
Yeah I think I'd probably have them as A, S is a bit much. The Ents are very good but the Hoberg's slow trait is a bit of a killer and I'm not sure they have anything quite as overpowered as the Necromancer or Illusionist etc.
If enchanter eats witch swamps then she has used her resources for no gain herself. Unit cost would be high. How about high priestess. When she eats villages then farm is left. Farm isnt that valuable anyway
Barbarian is definitely stronger than kobold king. Kobold King has horrible early game. Extremely vulnerable and can be defeated easily. Barbarian is very strong early due to ability to summon athereal ancestors. If you just take everything around for herbs with barbarian, build raid camps, you will spread like a plaque destroying everything with sheer numbers.
I just can't seem to make them work and I'm no slouch at the game. It could be I'm not picking a good set of game settings for them, or I'm trying to be too aggressive with them or something...
So here my knowledge of the unique era class stuff Barron can only become king in monarchy as that's the only time a king castle spawns in. Senator can become emperor in both empire/new empire. He can also be a dark emperor in fallen empire. Enchanter can make a gold golem in dark ages out of the gold mine.
1:27:36 Actually the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse do come from Heaven. El is not a nice God. The Priests are also very good against demons and undead as they can banish them. They aren't too bad against human troops they can charm. And the Flagellants can be buffed quite a bit with blessings. One of their best mechanics are the Inquisition and the Crusade. Two complete stupid armies for hire.
It is, it's just annoying to chase them down constantly, they're the only faction that if I see is in the game I'll strongly consider restarting because I don't think the way they work is particularly fun. But as I said in another comment, I do quite like playing AS the Dwarf Queen, they're a really cool faction to control.
i got to disagree with the barb placement, once you get your spirit armies you become extremely overpowered. you can freely access hades, get a large part of your economy from there and pop up any where you want on elysium. amazons and the standard barbarians are basically irrelevant. focus on cav early on and get spirits as soon as possible and you shouldnt have any problems. in my opinion they are the class that can most easily take over hades. so i think they should probably be a or s tier. and dwarves are my favorite ai enemies, because you can keep them small and they wont suicide into your armies with their last commander, since they cant move their queens. so if you want to kill the archon having a dwarf enemy survive until late game is perfect. also fun to play as, but boring early game.
I never got that far with Barbarian and I think I mentioned this on the video, so fairly sure I missed stuff. However, the problem with ghosts is that they melt to battlefield wipe spells, and I didn't see anything in their roster that really gave me the "this is OP" vibe like I get from Warlock, Necromancer, Illusionist etc. Hades access itself is ok but not enough to make something A or S tier in my eyes. Definitely agree on Dwarf Queen being quite fun to play! I enjoy the toys she gets to play with later in the game for sure, just not a fan of them when the AI uses them.
ive been playing barb today and you are right a or s is a bit too optimistic. but i do think, that once you get your herb economy off the ground they have huge potential. ghosts have 6 mr, so i dont think battlefield wipes are as dangerous to them as other nations. so i think a b rating would probably be fair. the most difficult/random part is getting an early spirit guide, after that and getting around 100 herb income they do become very strong. they dont get obviously op monsters like others, but i think you should really think of them as a true horde nation. first living hordes, then spirit hordes.@@battlemode
With barb it is about spreading around the map like cancer and spamming op ghosts whose real power is their numbers + ability to access hades + ability to move everywhere even water. Played barb much against bots of high dif - Marquis+ and had no problem steamrolling map early.
Have you ever played a MP game with either the Warlock or Druid as a team mate? That is a painful experience unless they don't use their Stupid summoned units
Demonologist does get very strong very quickly, and I think along with High Cultist deserves S-Tier for basically being strong at nearly every point of the game. I think High Cultist is even better in the early game actually. I'm a lot better with Demonologist now and learned to spam the lowest tier Demon summoning spell, which brings out an early army of level 1 spellcasters with very effective combat spells.
@@battlemode Plus it gives you some chaff imps that are "useless and just want to kill things, despite being lousy at it". I like the humorous descriptions in this game.
Had some great feedback so far: while I'm working on my big CoE5 scripted video I think I'm gonna spend some more time with each faction and try to play them all on harder difficulty settings, as I feel I probably made some mistakes here and there.
Witch I've replayed a bit and think I might have over-ranked her, she feels closer to C or B at the moment, than the A I put her in. I think Baron is probably still only an A even after the King coronation ritual, despite having the best economy in the game, he doesn't have any truly overwhelmingly strong mechanics like that Simulacra thing the Illusionist gets.
I'll be doing a series of guides on every class, which will hopefully stimulate more discussion and help me figure them out a bit more, and then do a bit more of a scientific tier-list again afterwards.
Witch has a very powerful mechanic in Rank 3, you can scry swamp with level 1 spell and when you scried all swamp from elysium you can scry swamps from Aztlan and use third level spell to teleport your army in Aztlan to harvest all the swamps. Then you can get to the primal plane by swamp walk or through Aztlan portals. This get such a massive economy boost and it is very hard for an opponent to stop you from getting a third level witch because your starting fortress count as both a fortified location and a swamp and you can use all you ritual defensively there. Her worst match ups are against enchanter, elementalist and undead because she relies on poison and control spell and is weak against poison immune and mindless ennemies.
Yeah, witch is very strong class.
Sorry, I missed this comment@@guillaumelasne3523. I agree with this, I think she might be a bit better than I realised, but I still don't think she's quite got the overwhelming, OP mechanics that the other S tier have, even with that.
The necromancer is S+ Tier in my opinion, because if you get twiceborn fast and not raise the dead if you do not need to and get banefire archers as fast as possible, then you have the strongest early game.
Banefire archers are way better, then just the decay effect you mentioned. They have 1-2 armor piercing damage and 1-3 normal piercing magic damage. This means that they can deal 2-5 damage and can ignore a lot of armor! Decay is just an extra effect. The best thing about them is there dps.
Also lichs are arguably the strongest monsters in this game, as long as they are immortal!
They can cast 2 level 3 spells each round! They have high magic restistant and decent hp.
And they have one of the strongest level 3 spells there is, which is the death spell. 20 armor negating damage with a burst of 25!
With army of the dead 1-18 longdead and limitless and soulvortex or Finger of death or cloud of death or dark power, they still have strong lifedrain to stay alive, while protecting themself with longdead and dealing huge amounts of damage with the death spell or chill of death spell and also strong level 2 spells in case they got unlucky level 3 spell rolls.
But the best part is that you can planar swap entire armys into hades with planar swap and let them die!😂
While also having complete map controll with the stygian path ritual, whil allowes them to travel almost anywhere in just a singel turn!
So you can just spamm your lichs into the enemy in just a few turns, until they die or just swap them into hades, if you think that will take to long. 😆
Necromancer is far the strongest class. Also try to avoid mayor summonings, if you found a old castel or ancient temple. Most mayor summonings are just wasted hands of glory in comparision to immortal casters, like vampires or liches, which can both take on entire armys on there own, with the right spells!
Enjoyed listening to the whole thing; very useful since I've not played a lot of the factions still! Thanks for sharing
Cheers dude, really appreciate that! I'm replaying a lot of the classes myself and trying to get my head around them better, and upping the difficulty to Knight has kind of turned CoE5 from a "chilled adventure" into something a bit fiercer...
27:23 The druid can now summon quite a few gods and creatures from the Primal Plane. Creatures like Beholder or Ents. The Gods all come with multiple high level magic schools as well as a ton of health and are Planar Immortal. So the Druids engame is definitely not that weak.
Another one I need to revist I think. Summoning a Beholder sounds awesome! Thanks
@@battlemode I think there is also one ancient beholder that can be summoned, and he/it is quite a lot stronger then the normal ones.
No, you can summon 6 Beholders, and all of them can be upgraded to Eye Tyrants at a lv 3 library.
Eye Tyrants are RIDICULOUSLY powerful, having four lv 3 schools and 2 lv 2 ones.
You might want to consider using the mod that unlocks the three hidden classes (beholder, archmage, and goblin king) and add those to your next tier list. Nice work overall.
Cheers! As a rule I don't use mods in Illwinter stuff but if I ever exhaust the content already in here, I'll do just that!
It's not a real mod since normally AI players can spawn as those classes so they are going to be present in some mod-less games. The problem would be rather that they are sort of a mix of other classes and may not be important enough to make a video on. The advantage is that aside from unlocking hidden classes you can also block classes that you don't want to play against in a simple self-made mod.
If anyone reading this is interested, this is the mod:
selectclass 16
aiclass 0
selectclass 17
aiclass 0
selectclass 18
aiclass 0
PS: Using command " aiclass -1 " will prevent AI from randomly spawning as selected class.
PS2: In main menu of CoE5 select "Mods" then click "Open mods directory". In there make new folder for example "Hidden Classes" and in that folder save text file with mod commands as "Hidden Classes.c5m". After reloading the game there will be "Hidden Classes" mod in "Mods" tab. Click it once to enable it. Now you can play as one of those classes.
Beholder and archmage are SS tier they can recruit mage of other factions and they get there rituals. It’s basically playing many factions at once. And you got the goblin king… as far as I can say it’s a troll king whit out troll. The goblin king as a cool staff that make fire be it’s not as good as the troll king. Also I don’t know if they have something going on passe the early game cause I never survived past the first year in game
To clarify on the Enchanter and their income spell; they have a level 1 ritual spell that spawns a stationary unit that boosts the income of the tile by 1 gold and 1 iron for each tool there, but it's capped at doubling the income for the tile. So a coal mine of 1 gold and 1 iron can produce 2 gold and 2 iron. An iron mine can be boosted to make 4 gold and 4 iron.
If you're playing coop, you can put these in your allies' tiles and boost their eco too (but they will capture the tile if not garrisoned and can't be removed so be careful with this).
In the late game, they can create a network of portals which is ridiculously useful with the near instantaneous travel between points.
It's my go-to choice when just playing with friends against the world (not really into pvp).
Thanks for the info!
The way to play Enchanter for me is to make full armies of flying sword that you lead with captains while your Enchanters stay inside your cities making more swords. You start a bit slow but get unstoppable with very well defended cities.
Priest king has an insurance policy with their slaves, and fairly versatile with the different schools - probably low A. Their biggest rng is sometimes you will get a questionable bless bonus instead of a greater summon. Enchanter is very resource dependent. Druid is better than in 4, but still somewhat weak early on. Warlock on A may be high. They are versatile, but very gem dependent and weaker early on. S tier, I would reserve for the strong early game nations. Especially with MP enchanter is too vulnerable for s tier, especially compared to demo, necro, cultist, illus. Witch really depends on your spell rolls. If you start with charm, she is close to A.
Yeah you are dead right there, the spell choice really makes a big difference to how the class plays in the early game
Empire does not sound like the setting Barbarians would prosper in
Have you seen the Barbarian version of Fallen Empire? They seem to survive there pretty well
"Fallen" might be relevant there?@@battlemode
53:43 Slight correction. The type and amount of free units depends on what kind of mine enchantment you have. Not how much you upgraded your shamans or sorcerers. A Hatchery will produce basic kobolds. A Stronghold will produce basic, warriors and ranged units. Shamans come with a level 2 ritual unlocked, so even a basic Shaman can turn a Hatchery into a Stronghold if they roll the right ritual. What the Prophets and Kings do unlock is the dragon spawns.
I will once again disagree about the Kobolds not having end game stuff. Dragon Spawn and a ton of casters are the end game for Kobolds. Massed White Dragon Spawn are a menace. I killed Bhaal of the High Priestess with 400 of them and only lost 30. The Red Dragon Spawn are very good at quickly killing small groups of anything that isn't fire resistance or has awe/fear. They also can use their dragons to boost the chance of getting casters and drakes. The sorcerers are also level 2 spell casters out of the gate. This means that the Kobolds can easily put together half a dozen "Blizzard" casters with a few hundred cold immune meatshields. Very few things can survive that. The other colors also have potent spells but no battlefield wide ones at hire. You can easily get a dozen "Meteor" casters though.
Do Kobold Sorcerers reach Level 3? I forget now. If so then I do see your point but I don't think they're anything on Warlock to be honest... their summons are all variations of chaff (or dragons, which are ok but not that great) where the Warlock seems to unlock this never-ending scaling series of unit summoning powerlords!
@@battlemode
Kobold Sorcerers are level 2 on hire. They can be upgraded to level 3 by making them a King. Shamans are level 1 and can reach level 2 when they become Prophets. "Blizzard" is a battlefield wide cold damage spell and it's only level 2. Hence the normal Sorcerer being able to cast it out of the gate. Kobolds get a ton of casters and as they don't really need gold to pay for normal troops, they can afford them too.
I have conquered Heaven, the Elemental Planes, the Primal Plane, and I am currently taking over Aztlan with them in one of my kobold games.
I don't know exactly how they would stack up to a Warlord, but the Kobolds might have an edge there as they are 100% immune to their respective element. Taking over the Elemental Plane of Fire for example was incredible easy. If I remember correctly Flame Spirits and Fire Elementals are completely unable to hurt red kobolds.
I don't think Kobolds have any summons aside from dragons. Their strong points are a ton of level 2 casters, Dragon Spawn (especially white and red) as well as the drakes.
15:25 I honestly consider both the upgrades for the Baron and the Senator to be fun gimmicks for when the game should already be over. Both classes are kind of an early game rush faction, and by the time you got both the gold and the location for the upgrade you should have either won already, or control such a big part of the map that you can attrition the remaining enemies down with sheer numbers.
I'm doing a King run for Baron now amd I absolutely agree. The Coronation feels like a double win mechanic. I also think that Baron plays more like a classic 4X with all the settlement upgrades you can do
Really fun video! Although I do suspect you are underselling some characters. The barbarian, I can't point a finger to what, but I suspect is a fair bit stronger than you claim. And the Cloud lord is basically an air warlock with flying base troops, so while he might not be as versatile as the Warlock it still feel weird when you call him weak with the latter in S tier.
Although I haven't played this game enough myself either (is that even possible?) and now I really need to get around to playing the illusionist and enchanter! (and also the Dwarf queen).
Yeah I suspect I'm missing something with the Cloud Lord, I just found his troops rather difficult to use well, and his summons feel a little underwhelming. Warlock is an A tier at least because of his versatility. I think I should have reserved S-Tier for truly overwhelming classes with very easy to cheese mechanics like Illusionist and High Cultist, but Warlock is a contender because of just how powerful they become and if you get enough gem variety they have no real weakness. I'm not sure you could say the same for the Cloud Lord. That said I'm replaying them all now for a longer video series I've planned, and might well update this list to fix any errors!
Cheers for watching!
@@battlemode "Enough gem variety" brings up another important issue with most gem classes in that their economy tend to feel a lot weaker than especially sacrifice classes. Summon prices don't seem to be that much cheaper despite mines being relatively rare and divided between four different resources, making gem summons feel rather expensive.
On the other hand you could probably make an argument that there is a sort of survivorship bias with the "chance of disobedience" classes. An obedient demon will always feel like a bargain if you forgot the times you lost all your action points and had to take a self inflicted fight at a key moment. And I am glad I don't have to make a ranking my self.
@@kalolofw9093 this is a really good point. I'm reevaluating this list as I definitely missed a lot
I disagree with 2 things.
1. I am a lot less annoyed at the dwarfs although I can relate to the feeling but for me it was always the Tibel king and the Warlocks that had the endless amount of stupid unkilabal armies. The Dwarfs are also really fun to play in my opinion if you get a few teleportation scrolls. Once I had a mine in the inferno, there was nothing the Devils could do.
2. While mods are absolutely not necessary they can be a lot of fun especially the ones that ad new classes (ther is a pretty good fairy one that gets secravises but only in the winter).
I probably wasn't very clear, judging by another comment I had there, so I should clarify things.
The Dwarfs are D tier because they suck, they're not very strong and they're not a threat to your game, they're manageable if you don't mind building a dozen armies and using them to play rat-catcher and chase after all the Queen's Counsellors that she spawns every turn.
The problem is that in a game where I feel very little frustration (ant apocalypse is another that I don't really enjoy, although it can become satisfying when you do beat them) I find the Dwarfs just really annoying to deal with, because if you don't deal with them they will entrench to the point where the cost of taking them out is dramatically higher.
I'm playing it up a bit for the performance, I don't care THAT much, but I thought it'd be fun to show a bit of emotion over them. Perhaps I'll do a Dwarf Queen LP and see if I can get into Inferno like you suggested, that does actually sound like fun, although I find the pacing of her campaign dreadfully slow.
@battlemode ah I see the problem. I thoroughly enjoy dashing form mine to mine evening hostile enemy armies and hiding behind my walls but I do agree that the Dwarfs lack puch in a filed battles. And I still have not faced a strong ai Dwarfs queen so many that is why I am not particularly anoyd
@@marcelinio9988 They're definitely a different playstyle for people, and I hope I got across that they can be fun to play as yourself. I did enjoy them for a bit but I don't remember finishing a game with them as they were just a bit slow for my liking, and I like using more magic.
You clearly dont value mage focused factions AND MID game strong factions. Dryad, horburgs, monkeys and barbarian are all something like inbetween factions that use summons and money where all S tiers use only one. All S tiers spread much slower. Also how can you say that dwarves are so much worse to play against than kobolds and then rank them otherway around. Otherwise I liked this video THANK YOU
PS. I think this in mp perspective. Real player comes after your bases a bit more agressive so long game strat are not as good
I need to play competitive CoE to do a MP list. I'm actually replaying all these classes again as I know I made a lot of mistakes!
Monkey Maharaja is way stronger than I realised, for example, and I like Dvala more now too
@@battlemode I started today game as dwarves against horbugs. I also play battle for wesnoth and also in that game even when dwarves have lost game will still take long time because they die so slowly. I hope this doesnt go to that
@@battlemodeI agree that you underrankeds Kobold, AI play them bad because they do not priorize Stronghold ritual over Iron costing troops. They are easy to play as a begininner and co do elemental battlefield wipe as early as second tier shaman or sorcerers for the ice kobolds.
Great video!
The only real feedback I have on the rankings is that I think Markgraf is prob B tier. While it has necromancy, it has worse necromancy, and *much* worse necromancers bc they are slow (and so even the basic reanimation takes 50% longer), and even their vampirism (and the rituals locked behind it) relies on finding an Old Ruins, a terrain that may not even exist on the map regardless of era. They have good potential when things go their way, but a lot of the time they struggle.
Very good points! I've got Markgraf on my list of "classes to replay" for another upcoming video
This is an amazing surprise on a Sunday afternoon, thanks Ben!
I'm pleased you enjoyed it! Cheers!
You have reignited my interest in this game. Love troll King, love becoming the "clone father" with illustrations and just all the stuff you can do.
With the dwarfs I like them in theory but they aren't as fun as if like them to be, both as foes they can't realistically be killed and just send out annoying squadrons, and to play they seem quite limited (tho I may just have to revisted them as I have had fun in the past with them.)
I went a bit overboard with the Dwarf rant actually, but they are definitely the most annoying class to fight against!
Glad you've enjoyed the video Callum! Cheers!
In the mid game, the Dwarfs are very good in raiding with their free spawn.
"Last one of these ran two hours but this one should be shorter" lol. All good not enough CoE talk out there.
Also thanks for the link to Adrian's music, great stuff.
More to come: a video for each class and I'm part way through a fancy scripted video review
I'd watch a high priest game.
I'll consider it! Need to finish my team game first
Hey Battlemode,
I just finished your Conquest of Elysium review, and I must say it was excellent! I do have a suggestion on how to present and categorize each faction for improved structural presentation.
Consider breaking down each class based on a list of factors such as force generation in the early game, force generation in the late game (taking into account economy and scaling), raiding movements and strength, map access (sea, planes), and map control. A simple grading system of minus, check, or plus could be applied to these components.
This logical categorization can help your readers gain a better understanding of the factions. For instance, a faction scoring many pluses could be classified as S tier.
I've also noticed that the AI seems to have bonuses for summons and free spawn. This distinction makes NPC-controlled factions behave differently from player-controlled ones, and it's worth highlighting in your review. For example, some player factions hit a breakout point with level-three summons that the AI player can't replicate. In my games, the player's efficiency/effectiveness with the Earth elemental wheels or the dryad Earth Mother has been a deciding factor.
Keep up the excellent work, Battlemode. This is the best review I've seen!
Best, T Doggs
Cheers Tom, really appreciate that. I love the idea for the improved review structure, I'll do that. Thank you!
@@battlemode I have a graphic. Perun seems to do well with it
This is a very helpful vid, I just picked up the game and wanted more info on the races themselves.
Great! Thanks for the feedback
Enchanter is such an excellent class. The summon guardian spell prevents 90% of indie s from taking your villages and the like with just one cast. And casting 6+ on your citadels make them such a pain in the ass to take for opponents that they just don't bother trying
Thanks for the video. I might turn in on future videos. :)
Cheers!
1:18:10 Some of the Scourge Lords summons are also sacred and benefit from the blessing.
Ahh, that definitely helps. That's another one to replay and revist in a tier-list update
Honestly I feel like the Dryad is worse that Dwarf to fight against. Yes in the late game the Dwarf are harder but the Dryad is harder in early and middle games, they can pump out way more units that Dwarf and they snow ball fast. But maybe it’s just that I got strange luck with my game
I'm actually playing Dryad right now and I think I had them all wrong: definitely they rely more on their freespawn units and animal summons aren't so useful for them as they are for Druid!
9:03 You can upgrade the slow amazons with the fast trait via tattoos. Fun fact, the fast trait completely overwrites the slow one. A fully upgraded tattooed amazon army is very difficult to beat. Everything having regeneration, being fast as well as having a few damage mitigations and resistances makes them very hard to get rid of. That includes their spellcasting priestesses. So I don't think their endgame is that bad. The ghosts seems to be a bit overpriced for what you get, but if you need poison immune units/commanders they are great. Given that they start with some very hard hitting and fast moving units and I consider an all regenerating army to be very powerful I might even go so far as to put them into A tier.
I must replay them and test this, I knew I'd missed something
@@battlemode I know this is late but also they are the class that most easily takes over hades, even easier for them than necro due to the mass spirit armies than can plane shift
Hey BM! quick question: I really like Abyssia in Dominions, it's pretty much the only civ I can get some progress in and I like the lore, do you think any faction in CoE is related to them? Demonologists maybe?
Some of the Abysian-style infantry are found in Inferno, with the fire resistance and very heavy armour. I think Abysia would be a good pick for a Class though!
@@battlemode I hope it gets added! I generally avoid tier lists but this one was quite informative, thanks!
Super-powered
Advantaged
Balanced
Challenging
Disastrous
Ha! I like that
Know I'm quite late to the party! But I'd have put the Trolls in C. They are strong when not countered but can get so painfully hard-countered too... their magic resistance is garbage, all of them, even the Troll King himself can be almost *easily* beaten by a sorceress with a charm spell. It's such an achilles heel that I find them infuriating to play as and frequently laughable to play against (unless you don't have access to either magic resist targeting spells or fire attacks, then... not so laughable).
I agree, their early game is kinda dodgy because of Troll King's low MR, but I seem to remember both Mum and Gramps have quite high MR, or am I misremembering?
@@battlemode True, I think those mage trolls have decent MR. But crucially every single recruitable they get has terrible MR, which combined with low numbers of powerful units brings it to a point where an apprentice illusionist or apprentice cultist or equivalent could ruin a whole Troll force. Even just a point charm / mind control sometimes destroys them on its own by turning those powerful units against themselves with ease.
Anyone know to keep the music for your class looping. After one play it starts playing the standard music.
Check the Steam forum, sure I saw something there about custom MP3 folders.
1:26:10 There is actually a third. You can wake up Gramps to get the whole familiy. XD
Missed that, what's he like?
@@battlemode
A bit like combing the Troll King with his Mother.
High Hp, strenght, regeneration, charm immune and has level 3 hedge magic, which includes the earthquake spell.
He can also be Stygian bathed to make him immune to non magical weapons like all trolls.
Ok that rings a bell, I'm gonna replay this one tonight I think, cheers! Really appreciate the corrections
The whole family go for enthusiastic walks into Dwarf Strongholds in my games. It’s incredible to look at (obviously they still need “infantry” support, and the King may die, but Mum and Gramps do very heavy lifting)
I think that Barbarian is worst class in all class.
Barbarian leader wants become vanguard, so he goes down quickly.
Spirit Guide can access ancient spirits, but he is very expensive (75 + d20).
Hi, I couldn't find anywhere how does strength actually works, the manual doesn't elaborarate either. Anyone know?
It is in the manual, but I also couldn't find it for a long time. It just directly affects how much damage is done and reduction/boosting in strength causes less or more damage on a successful hit respectively.
@@battlemode Looked again with search function but no success :(
I look upon your list and cannot understand how someone can be this wrong or even how you got to some of these conclusions. I had tested every class on Marquis difficulty against classes that are equal or a bit higher in power level. I hate tested all of the classes against human opponent in pvp as well. It was a combined effort of me and people I play with often.
But even without all that testing, I still cannot understand how did you put Baron, the worst class in the game, above so many others. He is right there with Monkey Maharaja who are similar in how bad they are. It's rather confusing. How is Voice of El, one of two most broken classes, in the same rank as something as bad as Senator?!
My fin dings are as follows (the higher the number the worse the class, 4 being worse) :
Tier 1 : Necromancer, High Priestess, Demonologist, Voice of El. Most powerful classes the game has to offer, not much can stand against them besides some tier 2 classes
Tier 2 : Warlock. Markgraf, High Cultist, Priest King, Pale Ones (Some of them can take on tier 1 classes, excluding Necromancer and Voice of El)
Tier 3 : Witch, Bakemono, Druid, Troll King, Dwarf Queen, Illusionist, Drayad Queen, Scourge Lord, Kobolds, Raksharaja, Enchanter, Burgmaister (here you see a lot of classes as a lot of them are similar in power if you know how to use them properly)
Tier 4 : Baron, Senator, Cloud Lord, Monkey Maharaja (here are classes that are the worst the game has to offer, done poorly, clunky and awkward to play, or just being outmatched by anything besides tier 4 classes)
Pardon me if I sound harsh/rude as I am genuinely confused by your video and kinda see it as misinformation. I am happy to answer any questions about this as well
No no, glad for the feedback!
I'm actually replaying all the classes as I go. I don't play any higher than Knight right now, that's enough for me. I don't play the game to be challenged so much as enjoy the exploration.
I did make the caveat that I don't think a power ranking really makes much sense in this game, because you really need to be asking the question "Powerful at which difficulty level, on SP or MP, on which Society, and what are you trying to do in the game aside from win?".
I don't think the game really supports the kind of strict hierarchy of power like something like Dominions does, where a strong player will have difficulties with the weaker nations, because in CoE I feel that the tiers are somewhat closer.
Of course, I'm open to hearing otherwise. If people who play it a lot have different ideas, by all means let me know! I'll do a revised tier list later but there's no way Baron is that weak, I think he's incredibly strong just because of the economy and the sheer amount of magic users you can get. It's not just about 1 vs 1 combat matchups: Baron can play the raiding war like nobody else because of the sheer number of troops he gets.
@@battlemode I'd say not playing on higher then Knight does not allow you to fully experience the game. On difficulties below Count, the AI refuses to transition to level 3 rituals. This means some purely lategame classes do not show off what they can do. For example, if you are not playing at least on Count, High Priestess constantly uses Ceremony To Baal, a worthless ritual that is meant to just help her transition to lvl 3. This results in her having multiple rows of scorpions that put her too far away from casting any spells and results in an almost all melee army. This is not only easy to stop if you have tanky units and a few good spellcasters. This also means the AI on lower difficulties does not utilize her key rituals like Second Sun, Banquet of The Dead, Greater Bloodfeast. Those rituals summon extremely deadly units and are cheap (besides Second Sun). The main cost to them is destroying a location permanently but it is meant to be used on y our opponents resources or around them. The AI actually does that. I spoke of this a bit too much but some other classes suffer similar issues with lower difficulties then Count and even on Count the progression to lvl 3 is not fast.
I greatly disagree that power ranking does not matter. I see it as very helpful guideline for pve and needed for pvp. In pve, it helps one stay away from classes that they have no chance what so ever against. For example a well made list would show you that the Monkey Maharaja is extremely clunky and badly designed. It has a main focus on recruiting units while his units are more tanky then humans and do a bit more dmg then humans, this will not stop classes such as Priest King for example, who has easy access to Tzitzimitl that do 12 range 1d8 true damage attack that paralyzed (or other mages he summons for cheap) while behind rows and rows of free spwaning slaves. Also his rituals to summon things are so overpriced they seem to be made as a assistance rather then the class being focused on summons as the summons are weak for how much they cost making the class clunky to use. High Priestess being able to make an insantly tanky frontline by sacrificing a few farms for only 15 sacrifices then doing no summons to go to lvl 3 quick, gaining her powerful lvl 3 spells results in again monkeys having no chance.
The use of the tier list shines even more in pvp where we had tested classes of lower tier fighting higher tier classes and it almost never ends well for the one using a class of a lower tier so it helps not have unfair matchups. A lot of things were considered when ranking classes. How powerful are their units and spells, how fast can a class achieve their setup and how good it is at what year. How clunky or smooth the glameplan is, how consistent said gameplan is. And this is doen when putting classes in the same environment that will not give anyone an unfair advantage.
When it comes to the Baron. He mainly has human units. Yes he has a lot of them but they are still weak humans. Knights get stopped on large units or a lot of free spawning units like slaves, bakemono, kobolds and so on. His mages you said he gets a lot of are lvl 1 mages with bad spells. They need to be upgraded on a library to get to lvl 2 and even then their spells are quationable at best. Hight Arcana lvl 2 only has Meteor, Soul Slay and Enchanted Sleep as useful spell and to get those you need to roll trough 9 spells on a library taking up a lot of time and gold to do so. And after all this investment, the court mage is only human and die to a bunch of freespawning blue kobolds and 1 or 2 of their mages with lvl 2 frost magic that kills not the mage with the Blizzard spell, but also most of your other units. Troll King can have the Troll King, Mum and Gramps by year 2 (I do not mean a high difficulty AI but a player even, did that consistently myself), and those 3 can then solo whatever army Baron brings up with Troll King being tanky, Mum summoning stuff and fearing stuff while Gramps casts Arcane Tempest, Call Lightning or Earthquake that kill everything. Said Troll King is also better at harassing, so are Kobolds, and also for example the Dryad Queen who has actaly really tanky and hard hitting units that she "recruits". Maybe too many examples but your probably got my point
@@curiousmindflayer5169
I just tested it and the AI does not actually refuse to transit to level 3 rituals on lower difficulties. In a modded test game I gave the High Priestess AI 1000 sacrifices a turn and they did cast Second Sun turn 5 while being on the Boy difficulty. My guess would be that the AI simply does not have enough resources to cast the higher level rituals. The AI only plans for a very limited amount of rituals and doesn't seem to save up for the more powerful ones. That's why it's rare to see the expensive level 3 rituals.
As to "not fully experiencing the game" on the lower difficulties, I personally disagree.
There are a ton of different way you can experience Conquest of Elysium.
A two player duel on a tiny map is one experience.
A huge map with 10 players in two teams is another one.
Restarting if the starting position is bad leads to yet another one.
Trying to conquer all the planes with each class is a fourth.
There are a lot of different ways to play and enjoy Conquest of Elysium, and each one is as valid an experience as all the others.
Power ranking does matter in very specific situations. But it's not really all that great in a game with so many different ways of playing it.
For example, you said Baron is really weak?
The Baron's strength is that he is an early game rush class. He gets weaker the longer the game goes. So if you accelerate the game by giving the AI the 133% income bonus of the Marquis difficulty, of course he is going to underperform by a lot. The same can be said about multiplayer where a human opponent will safe up for the specific late game counters to the Baron's armies.
I could probably make a pretty good argument that someone who only plays against the higher difficult AIs or human opponents never had the true Baron experience.
The Baron is very high tier for anyone wanting a relaxed game against the AI or for new players that haven't learned all the interactions and classes yet. Someone completely new that would look at your list and select the Demonologist is probably going to do a lot worse than if they had selected Baron.
I would like to hear what exactly pushes the Voice of El in the 1st tier for you. I personally like the class, but find them very similar to the Baron in playstyle and abilities. Sure, the bless can get up to a nice level, but that takes time. The Inquisition and Crusade are very good, but they also don't scale that well. And the higher level freespawn is powerful but not really that reliable.
This is why I made two things clear in the video: that the tier list is kind of useless as everybody will come up with their own definitions for their own playstyle, and that you shouldn't take it too seriously.
Thanks for the detailed comments though, lots to think about!
31:25 I make mods for video game, and the first mod I ever made for Conquest of Elysium was one to disable the Dwarf Queen. I had a game where two Dwarf Queens spawned next to me and then the inferno disaster started. Nothing like crossing the map desperately trying to fight off hordes of demons while two dwarf queens back cap your eco. I had to go back and forth three times in order to finally end the disaster, only for a greater demon to wipe out the army I was using to hold the dwarves at bay and lose all my eco anyway. I literally just quit after that, I didn't even care that I stopped inferno, I was just so sick of dealing with dwarves.
I'm glad at least one other person also has this problem.
I was a bit hard on them here because I'd literally just had a game ended by them (not because they were winning, but because it just wasn't fun trying to catch all the Queen's Councillors running across the map constantly, taking my stuff.
By far a more annoying issue though is playing a team-game with either Warlock or Druid as a team-mate, when they start spamming out crows/clouds across the map and taking all your infrastructure. I think that one has become my new most hated thing in CoE :D
You can protect key infrastructure by leaving a unit inside. This is much less of a problem if you have some freespawn or chaff summoning.
Playing against demonologists late game is impossible. Their summons are too strong have to wipe them in the early game.
Agreed, I rate them as one of the strongest classes in the game.
You forgot to mention grampa troll😢
Honestly I've never actually gotten that far into a game with the Troll King!
I do like the class though, I'll get around to finding Gramps eventually
36:20 She can't be nearly as annoyign as you picking her up and waving her around every five seconds!
Lol, yeah I overdid this one a bit
Voice of El should be S. Their free units are all blessed and when the Bless gets Fire Shield they are stunningly powerful!
I never felt like they were that strong but sure, if you start unlocking the Seals early that's really nasty to deal with!
I managed to charm the troll king before, then lost my main mage afterwards... I should've saved the file anyway tho tbh.
He's quite easy to get if you've got the right spells. Also Fear will make him run off the battlefield, so he's vulnerable to magic in general. But if you don't have any magic, boy! is he hard to take down!
"I hate the dwarfs" - BATTLEMODE 2023 ... unacceptable!!
I don't mind playing as them, I just can't stand the way the AI does!
@@battlemode
That is quite funny. I like to add the dwarfs and the dryad to games where I want to explore everything a class can do, or where I want to try going to other planes. Both classes will never misplace their last commander or citadel and can be placed under house arrest without too much trouble.
Bugermaster are A+ or S there summon are just that good, Ent for 100 magic weed is so cheep for how strong Ent are and the robot are really strong. There biggest problems is the slow and managing to survive the early game.
Yeah I think I'd probably have them as A, S is a bit much. The Ents are very good but the Hoberg's slow trait is a bit of a killer and I'm not sure they have anything quite as overpowered as the Necromancer or Illusionist etc.
you are sadly missing out not using mods just for fun? like seems very abutrary
The game is amazing as it is, I don't like modding games unless the game sucks and needs it.
Its a Heroes of Might and Magic-like, whatever that genre is called...
Yeah there's some resemblance but I reckon it's a bit closer to Warlords than HoMM
If enchanter eats witch swamps then she has used her resources for no gain herself. Unit cost would be high. How about high priestess. When she eats villages then farm is left. Farm isnt that valuable anyway
Barbarian is definitely stronger than kobold king. Kobold King has horrible early game. Extremely vulnerable and can be defeated easily. Barbarian is very strong early due to ability to summon athereal ancestors. If you just take everything around for herbs with barbarian, build raid camps, you will spread like a plaque destroying everything with sheer numbers.
I just can't seem to make them work and I'm no slouch at the game. It could be I'm not picking a good set of game settings for them, or I'm trying to be too aggressive with them or something...
I think Baron can get coronation in Haunted Capital too, so its not only for Monarchy.
or maybe im сonfusing Baron with Senator🤔
@@Grenbork I need to check, I'm 99% sure Baron cannot coronate himself in the Capital as I tried it before I recorded.
@@battlemode yeah i probably mixed him up with Senator, sorry😕
So here my knowledge of the unique era class stuff
Barron can only become king in monarchy as that's the only time a king castle spawns in.
Senator can become emperor in both empire/new empire. He can also be a dark emperor in fallen empire.
Enchanter can make a gold golem in dark ages out of the gold mine.
1:27:36 Actually the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse do come from Heaven. El is not a nice God. The Priests are also very good against demons and undead as they can banish them. They aren't too bad against human troops they can charm. And the Flagellants can be buffed quite a bit with blessings.
One of their best mechanics are the Inquisition and the Crusade. Two complete stupid armies for hire.
I need to play those guys again and do a refresher. They're all going on the list to replay! Thanks again MerryDiscusser!
i love dwarfs and idk AI dwarf is mostly harmless and brutaly stupid
It is, it's just annoying to chase them down constantly, they're the only faction that if I see is in the game I'll strongly consider restarting because I don't think the way they work is particularly fun.
But as I said in another comment, I do quite like playing AS the Dwarf Queen, they're a really cool faction to control.
@@battlemode funniest shit is when they have billion comanders with 2-5 workers taking your unprotected obective
i got to disagree with the barb placement, once you get your spirit armies you become extremely overpowered.
you can freely access hades, get a large part of your economy from there and pop up any where you want on elysium.
amazons and the standard barbarians are basically irrelevant. focus on cav early on and get spirits as soon as possible and you shouldnt have any problems.
in my opinion they are the class that can most easily take over hades.
so i think they should probably be a or s tier.
and dwarves are my favorite ai enemies, because you can keep them small and they wont suicide into your armies with their last commander, since they cant move their queens. so if you want to kill the archon having a dwarf enemy survive until late game is perfect.
also fun to play as, but boring early game.
I never got that far with Barbarian and I think I mentioned this on the video, so fairly sure I missed stuff.
However, the problem with ghosts is that they melt to battlefield wipe spells, and I didn't see anything in their roster that really gave me the "this is OP" vibe like I get from Warlock, Necromancer, Illusionist etc. Hades access itself is ok but not enough to make something A or S tier in my eyes.
Definitely agree on Dwarf Queen being quite fun to play! I enjoy the toys she gets to play with later in the game for sure, just not a fan of them when the AI uses them.
ive been playing barb today and you are right a or s is a bit too optimistic.
but i do think, that once you get your herb economy off the ground they have huge potential.
ghosts have 6 mr, so i dont think battlefield wipes are as dangerous to them as other nations. so i think a b rating would probably be fair.
the most difficult/random part is getting an early spirit guide, after that and getting around 100 herb income they do become very strong.
they dont get obviously op monsters like others, but i think you should really think of them as a true horde nation. first living hordes, then spirit hordes.@@battlemode
With barb it is about spreading around the map like cancer and spamming op ghosts whose real power is their numbers + ability to access hades + ability to move everywhere even water. Played barb much against bots of high dif - Marquis+ and had no problem steamrolling map early.
I prefer to play with factions that spawn a lot of stupid units. If I already flood the map a faction like the dwarfs does not annoy me too much.
Have you ever played a MP game with either the Warlock or Druid as a team mate?
That is a painful experience unless they don't use their Stupid summoned units
@@battlemode I only play singleplayer, so that is not an issue
Looking at Your let's play, Demonologist doesn't seem to be doing like an S-tier.
Demonologist does get very strong very quickly, and I think along with High Cultist deserves S-Tier for basically being strong at nearly every point of the game. I think High Cultist is even better in the early game actually.
I'm a lot better with Demonologist now and learned to spam the lowest tier Demon summoning spell, which brings out an early army of level 1 spellcasters with very effective combat spells.
@@battlemode Plus it gives you some chaff imps that are "useless and just want to kill things, despite being lousy at it". I like the humorous descriptions in this game.