age of wonders 3 archdruid stack strategy

Your enemy doesn't have any use of his armies if they're not at the place where you're striking. Archdruids have among the best map knowledge in the game with Hunters and Shaman as hidden scouts and the ability to produce them pretty much anywhere with just a Dolmen, and they can summon armies pretty much anywhere too. Archdruids can hide their leader stack in forests, I've hidden in the domain of my enemies' throne city for several turns while I was waiting for his leader to get ambushed elsewhere. The entire strength of the Warlord is very strong units. I've beaten human warlords before as Archdruid, but you shouldn't just go head-to-head with Warlords in the end-game. Most importantly, thanks to their strong start, their late game strength is unlikely to matter much. Late game archdruid armies don't have the muscle a warlord or dreadnought provides, nor the magic a sorcerer has, nor the zombie-apocalypse snowball effect the necromancer brings to bear, but they are no slouches, even if their end-game abilities can feel a bit underwhelming. On the original question: I'd say the biggest advantage of the Archdruid is his very strong early game: A hero with healing abilities and a longbow, very fast armies (Hunters, fast animal summons, the longstrider upgrade) with many different terrain walking abilities and swimming, fast city growth and a spell to limit terrain impact on morale, and lots of crowd-control abilities (Spiders with web!) to clear sites early.Īll this means that the Archdruid can expand very quickly and efficiently. I prefer the second one: it gives the druid less of an advantage than the first, and it just feels very right, making druid spells link more closely with nature. So casting summon animal in a cave will likely get you a spider, casting it in a swamp boosts the chances of getting a reed serpent, a penguin is more likely to appear in the arctic and an elephant in the tropics. It's slightly more subtle, in that it tweaks the likelyhood of certain animals appearing based on the terrain you cast it on. It's still random which specific serpent or spider you get, but far less so.

It lets you summon specific animals by splitting the spells into different ones: summon animal becomes summon baby spider, summon baby serpent, summon wild animal, for example. If you don't like the way druid summons work, there are two mods that allow you to change the way animal summoning works.

Age of wonders 3 archdruid stack strategy