usefulness of the high-end Construction summons?

[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?

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by Baalz

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.

Yes, I placed the Poison Golem in the competition, maybe I didn't make it clear with this statement. The poison golem as a chasis wasn't irrelevant, it was ideal for the following reasons:

High base protection. This means it's unnecessary to buff base protection with stone boots, earth magic, etc. This means you can get boots of quickness and armor of souls - or something different if you prefer. Bottom line, with halfway decent armor he's got very good staying power - particularly if you're spamming drain life twice a round.

Banefire shield. This is something you can't otherwise get (well, other than the king of banefires), and has the huge benefit of being effective against fire immune units - imps specifically. Lifelong protections were indeed common in the SC challenge, but then again they're not exactly rare when fighting any blood nation. The banefire shield makes the standard of the damned an option for general use - how many guys can handle chaff control with no fire/frostbrand or shield?

Lifeless/mindless - makes him immune to many of the standard SC counters. If you equip him to give him elemental immunity towards whatever your opponent is likely to use it's pretty much down to running forward and whacking through the banefire shield at an extremely high protection guy who's spamming life drain (as in his HPs are shooting up every round). He's lethal towards SCs. He's lethal towards chaff. He's immune to everything the bad mages can cast (with a few exceptions, which your opponent certainly may not have access to).

No magic - doesn't seem like a benefit at first, but the point is he doesn't need to spend rounds self buffing. Critical for the SC competition, but certainly an important factor for general use as an anti-SC. A secondary consideration is you don't need to do any other reserach, you've got a solid SC with nothing but Cons-9 done.

All in all, look at what you get for the cost! He's maybe not the best unit in the game, but certainly cost effective if you use him properly...