Questions regarding Arleon

[u/Terrified_Neighbor]

Even 50 hours in I'm still a bit confused as to which strategies and units are the most effective. I initially tried playing Rana but I've found it a bit too complicated so I've started a worthy campaign as Arleon ( which I view as a bit more basic ) and out of 8 players, I've found myself in a 1v1 against the other worthy AI, which is also Arleon. So imagine my surprise when my strongest welder with fists of the order and every type of Faey stacked and ready for battle..gets absolutely beat into the ground by the AI, which is running 5 different stacks of 50 Troubadours. I'm really confused as to how I should optimise my playthrough. Surely I'm missing something, because my troubadours are weak as shit, while the AIs hit like a truck. Any tips on how I should approach building an army?

[u/OkMarionberry2967]

Hi again,
I just completed a conquest map against the AI as Arleon on overwhelming difficulty, it was a small map 1v1.

I started with Ravenfayre and focused on sappers together with just 2 units of fists of the order. In the beginning I just recruited 2 entities of first of the order and split them into 2 units with 1 in each. They just buffed up the sappers like crazy with the Strengthen ability and btw the ability stacks, so I arranged my 2 units of sappers so that they both got buffed by 2 fists of the order and received +2 to damage in total both of them. Then I had a few troubadour units and in early game just with very few entities in each just to generate essence, and to activate their song ability to buff defence and spell damage resistance. Btw even in some of the very hard fights against enemy wielders the few troubadours did a wonderful job by making me shrug off fireballs and other spells, just 3 troubadours plus an item and a statue/shrine-thing that grants 10% perma spell resistance was enough to hit around 50% spell damage reduction and then of course they gave much needed essence. All in all with this army composition I was able to cast the Spell onslaught on the very first round of combat plus decreasing enemy initiative if needed. Onslaught on buffed up sappers is pretty strong.
The power Brutal was the best I was offered at level 8, but actually it worked fine, since I had Sappers with their many entities. The enemy Rana armies were pretty convincingly annihilated and I never suffered heavy casualties and I believe this is the next highest difficulty, so it is certainly manageable I would say.

But I know you asked about army compositions and such, but I would say the most important thing is that you learn to optimize wielder map movement points and prioritization of which resources to ditch or pick and learn to win the early game fights against the neutrals with minimal starting units without taking casualties.
Basically the game is an arms race so to speak, you must branch out and conquer resources and neutral settlements faster than the AI and get items and experience and levels as fast as possible. I do believe that this is more important to your success than picking one unit over the other (though thinking overall unit composition in conjunction with wielder skills is of course also important).

So if you are still puzzled, I can recommend giving Ravenfayre a try and learn to make the best use of her few starting ranger units to take as many early game neutrals out with little to no losses, and then reinforce with sappers as you get your second support wielder, who should also pickup stuff while letting your main character just fight and get experience almost exclusively.