Re-thinking Klackons

[rgp151]

I hadn't played Klackons in years, and have long considered them pretty terrible. I will usually keep a single Klackon town if I conquer them to make Stag Battles and that's about it. But recently I've been playing a lot of setups with Life and Nature and figured I would give Klackons a try. They've been pretty darn powerful. Stag Beetles are probably the fastest "Super Unit" you can produce, so if you just shoot for those ASAP its very effective.

The "traditional" way to play Klackons is to try and build a bunch of Klackon Settlements with them, but that's garbage. I just played them like any typical race and pretty much ignored the Unrest penalty. Well at first you can crank the taxes, but once you conquer a town you have to set them back down. But having Just Cause helps a lot.

So basically I just plan on having my capital be the only Klackon town, unless it happens to be that there simply isn't much to conquer. Make Stag Beetles as soon as you can and then start sending them out to conquer. Keep making them and put a Stag Beetle in every town you have. 

As far as setup, I tried two similar ways. Both are good:
1:
Warlord, Alchemy
4 Life books
4 Nature books

Just Cause 
Heroism
Endurance

Earth Lore
Water Walking
Resist Elements

2:
Warlord, Alchemy
5 Life books
3 Nature books

Just Cause 
Heroism
Endurance
Bless

Earth Lore
Water Walking

I think the second option is a little better, but its situational. Certainly if you end up going against Death wizards the second option is better, but you never know when you start. Generally, the Beetles can withstand Sprites and Shamen, so I think the second option is generally more valuable.


The other good thing with this is that you have a chance to get Move Fortress later, though it often won't matter much by that time. 

But basically its all about Stag Beetles and roads. Pump tons of Stag Beetles, make engineers fairly early and start connecting everything with roads, flood everything with Stag Beetles. Ultra Elite Stag Beetles with Alchemy can take just about anything. Bless will keep them safe from Black Sleep and allows them to take on Wraiths handily. With Water Walking, Endurance and Pathfinding they guys will be zooming all over the map taking everything, and they are even fairly disposable. Just keep producing them, if they die its fine, there will be more to replace them. 

Yes, there are some unrest issues, but its not the end of the world, you just have to deal with a little unrest. The good thing is that it is at least consistent. Its 20% across the board, so you can deal with it and get your taxes set right for all races.

[Anskiy]

What about the other Klackon units? Have you not found a use for their defense bonus? Granted, I don't recall them having many units to build in the first place...

[rgp151]

What about the other Klackon units? Have you not found a use for their defense bonus? Granted, I don't recall them having many units to build in the first place...

Nothing else Klackons make is worth producing. All the other units are garbage. They don't negate First Strike, nothing really. The thing about the Beetles is they are capable of hitting flying units, which is one of the things that makes them so good. They are one of the few Normal units that can. So with Life, you are pretty much stuck starting with Barbarians for the Thrown attacks or maybe going with Nomads for the Horsebowmen/Rangers early on, which can also hit flyers, or Halflings, but they move too slowly for me.

Plus, with the Klackon production bonus you are able to get to making Stag Beetle really fast and they are 1000X better than any other Klackon unit. They move at 2, hit flyers, have breath attack for hitting Phantom Warriors and such, they are super tough and hard to kill. Once you get them, on Hard 1.5 you're guaranteed to be able to conquer any nearby wizard unless they started with 11 books, and even then maybe. I typically send them out with  hero or in packs of 2 and they can take pretty much any towns and many encounters. On Extreme its more challenging, but even still, this seems to be one of the few non-11 book sets that can work on Extreme 1.5. 

I'd say Stag Beetles are right up there with Paladins as a "super unit". They are almost as though. They don't have Immunity, but they can nevertheless take a town filled with Shamen, which is important in the early game. 

For me, winning the early game requires the ability to take towns filled with Shamen and/or Sprites, which is not easy for most units. Paladins can easily take Shamen, but they cant' hit Sprites, where as Beetles can do both.

[rgp151]

Yeah, just played a game with this on Extreme and they are indeed competitive. I was able to do quite well with them in fact. I think its unquestionable that you can get to an Armor's Guild faster with Klacons than any other race. Then those Beetles are just so good. Throw Endurance on them and you are zooming all around. And they were strong enough to put up with the constant waves of attacks and were even able to deal with Pikemen. Yeah, I think my view of Klacons has changed from seeing them as the worst possible race to maybe the best! Well, I say "best" meaning a race that gives a very strong start. Yeah, you have to deal with some unrest but its really not a huge deal. And the nice thing is once you get that capital up and going, you just keep pumping out Beetles and engineers feeding those Beetles out to all teh new towns you conquer.

[rgp151]

Been playing with them some more, and I have to say I'm blown away at what a good starting race they are. Of course in MOO the Klackons are the best. Typically any race with a production bonus is the best in 4X games, but it always seemed to me that Klackons were an exception in MOM because they had been given so many handicaps. And in every strategy guide I have seen on them people always talk about "building your Klackon empire" and how you should basically focus on building lots of Klackon towns. This always seemed like nonsense. On Extreme and Impossible you simply cannot afford to make your own towns. All towns in your empire should be conquered because the AI just builds too many too fast. It is absurd to try to out settle the AI on Extreme and Impossible. So the idea of building a "Klackon Empire" was quite ridiculous.

However, if you simply abandon such a strategy and play Klackons just as you would any other race, they are indeed extremely powerful.

They have three huge advantages.

#1) They have a production bonus, so they can build faster than any other race (except Dwarves). You will, all else being equal, always be able to develop your Klackon capital faster than you would be able to develop any other capital. You can also crank the taxes at the start for more gold in the early game to rush-build faster.
#2) Stag Beetles are easily one of the best units in the game, and arguably the toughest unit aside from Golems. But Beetles are better because they can hit flying units, whereas Golems can't. They are also cheaper to produce than Golems and have higher attack. So many times I've been able to defend cities against substantial attacks with just a single Stag Beetle.
#3) Ruling non-Klackons as a Klackon wizard is far better than ruling Klackons as a non-Klackon wizard. There are games where the map just happens to have lots of Klackons, either neutral or from an enemy wizard. When you are non-Klackon, these cities present a significant challenge as incorporating too many of them into your empire can really be a drag on your economy. However, if you start as Klackons, then conquering and ruling non-Klackon races really isn't that bad. You can to dial back your taxes to normal levels once you incorporate a non-Klackon race so its best not to take neutral cities to early, but once you start you can really steam role. But the really good thing is that now all of those other Klackon towns you find can easily be incorporated into your empire. When I play non-Klackon, if I find Klackons its like, "Ugg, stupid Klackons." But when playing Klackons, all other races are equal, all have a 20% penalty (which in fact makes some races easier to include in some cases, such as Dark Elves, Trolls, Dwarves, etc.), and Klackons are great to find. So really, when playing non-Klackon its like there is one race that you will always struggle to deal with, which is Klackons, but if you start as Klackons, then all races are actually good to incorporate into your empire.

This is why Life is almost required for Klackons though, so you can have Just Cause, which helps a lot in the early game when taking other races.

I think overall Life + Nature is the best way to go for Klackons, however, Life + Sorcery is not bad either. You have Bless from Life, which is great against Black Sleep and Death Gaze, but you are still open to Confusion. By taking Sorcery you get Resist Magic, which is very good on Beetles.

I like the Water Walking though, and you can't really guarantee Flight with Sorcery, plus it takes longer to get it. Many times I've needed Water Walking in the early game. I would see maybe going 1 Sorcery, 3 Nature, and 4 Life, with Warlord and Alchemy instead of 4N4L, and then just hoping that you are get Resist Magic, but...

Anyway, I think if I were going play such a thing as a MoM tournament or if there was MoM multiplayer, I'd take Klackons for sure.

[Iranon]

The only way in which I've been able to make Klackons "work" is with 11 Life books. Highest possible tax rate to support a few shining cities with Stream of Life, everything else is a miserable dump I'm squeezing for money.
The native unrest reduction on top of Just Cause is enough to keep Klackon cities manageable.

But even that is not really stronger than picking a respectable race, riskier (we're in trouble if there's nothing with development potential to conquer) and less practical on high difficulties (not much time to do our own expansion).

[WannabeGamer]

As a newbie trying to get into MoM, I really appreciate all of your insights rgp151! One thing I was curious about this particular strat is why Warlord? If I understand correct, single figure normal units like Stag Beetles benefit the least from experience, and this strat heavily relies on them, so wouldn't make more sense to take more spell books or a different retort like Channeler? I feel like I'm missing something

[WingsofMemory]

As a newbie trying to get into MoM, I really appreciate all of your insights rgp151! One thing I was curious about this particular strat is why Warlord? If I understand correct, single figure normal units like Stag Beetles benefit the least from experience, and this strat heavily relies on them, so wouldn't make more sense to take more spell books or a different retort like Channeler? I feel like I'm missing something

Warlord allows for an otherwise unreachable level-up for non-summon units, and makes them tougher out of the gate. For stag-beetles this is still pretty useful, but for non-stag-beetle klackons units, like the ones that you will rely on until you get the stag-beetle presses up and running it's a complete game changer. You need to survive long enough to start pumping out stag beetles.

Also, while stag-beetles ability to hit flying units is incredibly good and they are the lynch-pin to a klackon success, if you are running life magic (which is basically a must to make klackons halfway useful) there is a chance to get the spell "lionheart." And casting lionheart on a warlord klackon unit of any kind (spearmen, swordsmen, halberdiers) makes them basically as tough as stag beetles since that spell works best with multi-figures. There are situations where you might want to use units other than stag beetles, or at least supplement your stag-beetles with them, and your town garrisons are going to be mostly (if not entirely) spearmen, which warlord will help a ton with that.

Don't forget Alchemist with klackons. They can't get 'magic' weapons any other way, and they are terrible at mana production. They can be pretty good at gold production though, so with alchemist you can use your economy to feed your pathetic magic. Klackons are one of the low-magic/normal-unit-heavy races that rely on slapping around your neighbours early before they get too powerful. Klackons usually also require playing very wide, since their cities cap out pretty quickly, and they can pump them out pretty fast.

Klackons are the race I've played the most, and I find that the optimal build roughly  is : Warlord, Alchemist, at least 1/2 remaining books in life, then the other half of remaining books can be spread around for diplomatic spell trading, put into nature for "water walking", sorcery for "spell lock", or life for more chance of important spells (like "lionheart") Klackons have a hard time supporting summons unless you want to forgo buffing your units, which you don't want to do, since they usually immensely benefit from warlord.

Hope that wasn't too long of a rant/read, and glad to see new face around here! Err, username not face. You know what I mean : P

[WannabeGamer]

As a newbie trying to get into MoM, I really appreciate all of your insights rgp151! One thing I was curious about this particular strat is why Warlord? If I understand correct, single figure normal units like Stag Beetles benefit the least from experience, and this strat heavily relies on them, so wouldn't make more sense to take more spell books or a different retort like Channeler? I feel like I'm missing something

Warlord allows for an otherwise unreachable level-up for non-summon units, and makes them tougher out of the gate. For stag-beetles this is still pretty useful, but for non-stag-beetle klackons units, like the ones that you will rely on until you get the stag-beetle presses up and running it's a complete game changer. You need to survive long enough to start pumping out stag beetles.

Also, while stag-beetles ability to hit flying units is incredibly good and they are the lynch-pin to a klackon success, if you are running life magic (which is basically a must to make klackons halfway useful) there is a chance to get the spell "lionheart." And casting lionheart on a warlord klackon unit of any kind (spearmen, swordsmen, halberdiers) makes them basically as tough as stag beetles since that spell works best with multi-figures. There are situations where you might want to use units other than stag beetles, or at least supplement your stag-beetles with them, and your town garrisons are going to be mostly (if not entirely) spearmen, which warlord will help a ton with that.

Don't forget Alchemist with klackons. They can't get 'magic' weapons any other way, and they are terrible at mana production. They can be pretty good at gold production though, so with alchemist you can use your economy to feed your pathetic magic. Klackons are one of the low-magic/normal-unit-heavy races that rely on slapping around your neighbours early before they get too powerful. Klackons usually also require playing very wide, since their cities cap out pretty quickly, and they can pump them out pretty fast.

Klackons are the race I've played the most, and I find that the optimal build roughly  is : Warlord, Alchemist, at least 1/2 remaining books in life, then the other half of remaining books can be spread around for diplomatic spell trading, put into nature for "water walking", sorcery for "spell lock", or life for more chance of important spells (like "lionheart") Klackons have a hard time supporting summons unless you want to forgo buffing your units, which you don't want to do, since they usually immensely benefit from warlord.

Hope that wasn't too long of a rant/read, and glad to see new face around here! Err, username not face. You know what I mean : P

Thanks for the insight and for welcoming to the forum! I think that makes sense, the effect on the beetles is small but it's about surviving until then. And yes, I understand the importance of alchemy. Do you have optimized strats for other races? I've seen some other posts on here about that but I don't recall if you shared yours.

[WingsofMemory]

Thanks for the insight and for welcoming to the forum! I think that makes sense, the effect on the beetles is small but it's about surviving until then. And yes, I understand the importance of alchemy. Do you have optimized strats for other races? I've seen some other posts on here about that but I don't recall if you shared yours.

I don't have much experience with Caster of Magic's ruleset, but the base game I've played a fair bit. The main thing with the different races is more to do with how good they innately are, and whether or not they are a "rushing" race. Rushing races are the ones that rely early expansion and combat and fall short in the mid or late game. Gnolls, Lizardmen, Klackons. Warlord/Alchemist combo with Life magic is really good for rushing races. It's honestly good with every race, but rushing races in particular kinda rely on that more.

In base MoM the spells schools are a bit unbalanced (not like horribly bad, but it's clear it could have used more playtesting.) and Life tends to be the most powerful school, and Death it's opposite is weakest. The more you rely on your own non-fantastical units the more important life magic is, the less you do, the less it is. I know that Death halflings is a popular build because it's hard to run death magic as non-halflings funnily enough. If you are running a race that's good at mana generation like Elves sorcery can really dominate with it's mana-heavy late game spells.

I'd honestly just experiment with what you think is fun or cool, since sometimes your race pick can be secondary to your spell picks. Halflings, High Men and Trolls are probably the 3 best races, and that will give you the most flexibility with your build. Some races synergize good or bad with certain schools, like Barbarians can make good use of Chaos' unit enchantments like Flame Blade since they also apply to their thrown attacks. Since Lizardmen can swim Nature and Sorcerys Water Walking and Fly spells lose a ton of otherwise awesome punch. Death Trolls are popular because regeneration synergizes with being undead from Black Channels, and it doesn't cancel regeneration, rather it benefits like crazy from it.

On a different note, if you want to check out some of the modding work being done on MoM you could check out the "Caster of Magic for Windows (CoM II)" section of the forum. I've been slowly working on creating new wizards complete with animated portraits, summoning and banishing sprites, original musical themes for diplomacy and etc. I have a poll open for whatever I'll name the Beastman wizard, and I am always happy to have more votes! Well, thanks for the response, have a good one dude!