Apocalypse Reborn: Guide 3: Guardians of the Moon

Apocalypse Reborn: Guide 3

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by J.A.

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Guardians of the Moon

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A noble, strong, but slow race, the Guardians of the Moon hold control over Necromancy and the various forms of Undeath after the passing of their masters. Though their progenitors have long sealed themselves away, the newer generations uphold traditions strenuously and look to maintain and uphold the lands of their forebearers. They have protected all that they could, brought peace where they can, but even with immense numbers the warbands of the continents ran wild and caused great devastation. After centuries of pondering and arguing, they chose amongst themselves a great house to lead them, and gave them a quest to find a Citadel. What many believed would take centuries was done in but a decade and now the race entire scrambles to find their footing in a world going at breakneck speeds for their kind.

Honorable and just, but lacking in understanding of the world due to their warped perception of time, the Guardians of the Moon will find themselves always on the backfoot diplomatically. However, with investment into their diplomacy tree, they can become a de facto leader amongst all the other factions and have an easier time of creating alliances. They require far less food than other races, yet have bonuses to its production, which give them a great tool to trade within all stages of the game. Not only that, but many of their units are cheap and don’t cost population to create, which allows them to create slow, but strong swarms with which to overwhelm their foes. With the Citadel giving them knowledge and incentive to search for their masters, and as their progenitors stir, the Guardians of the moon look upwards at their shattered cradle and wonder if they could once again ascend and live where they were meant to live as guardians of the world entire.

Racial Traits:

The Guardians of the Moon are mostly composed of higher Undead such as Vampires and Liches, though with a few Necromancers in their ranks retain their mortality. Their lands are carefully cultivated to passively support lesser Undead, such as Bone Familiars and Skeletons, which provide security and policing in their lands while not affecting their crops. They focus on melee, but their DPS stems mostly from their spellcasters. While their melee units hold down the enemy and inflict passive damage, their spellcasters weave powerful magics and gain veterancy with every kill and revived corpse. However, this is balanced by the greater difficulty for them to advance through the tech and cultural trees, as well as their decreased movement speed for all their armies. Like a mighty glacier, the Guardians need time and space to grow to great strength, relying on allies whose lands they guard to strike and lash out, until they rouse their ancient primogenitors and receive ancient blessings and knowledge that will let them strike out with ease.

+Land of the Dead: The Guardians of the Moon make use of Undead workers for many manual tasks and to maintain security in their lands. This gives them a flat bonus to their resources, save for food, which they receive a percentage bonus. This fact also increases the security of their lands against espionage, passively reduces banditry in their lands, and increases the attrition rate of enemy armies.

+Inexorable, but Lethargic: The Guardians of the Elm are slow to improve their cultural and scientific tech trees. If proper focus is not made to invest in universities and other improvements to cities, they can lag behind significantly and find themselves out-teched militarily and economically. This slower rate is made worse by slightly higher costs of acquiring new technologies and cultural modifiers. This is considered the primary weakness of the Guardians.

+An Unstoppable Legion: The Guardians are the de facto steamroller faction. Their Undead units barely cost anything to upkeep and hardly take any attrition in enemy territory. Not only that, but those costs and attrition rates can be undone by spreading Blight in the path of your armies, which can be automatically done via certain Units or even Undead Champions. However, those Units and Champions arrive in the late game, and until then the Guardians will have to contend with manually spreading their Blight, carefully managing their spellcasters to gain veterancy, and their slower move rate. It’s recommended that you have mercenaries hired to replace your Undead units and babysit your spellcasters to level them up in the early game.

Cultural Traits:

The Guardians of the Moon cling to old traditions and technologies out of fear of losing more of their civilization and culture. This drastically lowers their research income and cultural gains, while also increasing the costs of every cultural milestone and research technology. This entices their players to invest in diplomacy and military tress, which have normal rates of acquisition and costs compared to their other trees. However, while this would make them powerful in the early game, it will endanger them in the midgame. Great efforts must be made to lower the percentage of Undead in your population, gain bonuses from other populations under your command, and even invest in espionage to steal technology and cultural knowledge from other factions.

+Conservative: The Guardians of the Moon are slow to change and accept change, therefore they have vastly slowed rates of gaining new technology and cultural traits. Though they start with higher happiness than any other faction, this bonus is largely used up in the early game. Invest heavily into diplomacy and espionage. Gain as diverse a population as possible, trade for technologies, and steal when you can, otherwise you’ll be left in the dust.

+Warhawks:  The Guardians of the Moon, however, have a slight bonus to their military tech tree. Lowering upkeep rates and reducing attrition rates is one thing, but their cost reduction technologies are also upgraded. This allows the Guardians of the Moon to have truly massive armies at all stages of the game and even field the largest endgame armies with a substantial treasury available to produce another if one is lost.

+Eloquent: The Guardians of the Moon are easily taken advantage of in unfavorable alliances and trade deals, unless they relearn how to once again live in the present. Concessions that would make sense in a hundred years must be discarded. However, once their current way of thinking is changed, they become stalwart negotiators and leaders amongst all factions and have greater ease creating alliances and even federations.

Military Overview:

The Guardians are a powerful faction to play militarily, but they’re surprisingly a defensive faction, unless you use the right tactics and Champions. Focus on creating large armies that eat up those coming your way and get veterancy for your units for most of the game, until you unlock the late-game and endgame units that you need to leverage that weight. However, you can also endeavor to create small, mobile strike groups centered around your specialized Champions, so that you can deal damage and search more ruins by using certain units in conjunction with one another. Overall, the Guardians are primarily defensive until they unlock their best units, but they can crush anyone else once they do and there’s options for fun until then.

If you’re playing the Guardians of the Moon:

The early game of the Guardians is all about using your initial flat bonuses to churn out full armies with little upkeep cost and keeping them near your borders or to pacify neutral armies. Your focus should either be to start building an Espionage or and Administrative Champion. The former for stealing research and the latter for boosting your pitiful research values. Do your best to get neutral settlements and improve immigration into your lands, because the less Undead you have as your main population, the lower your debuffs to research get.

The Conquerors can begin striking out against enemies in the midgame. Assemble an army with mercenary frontline units, then use them to buff your spellcasters and necromancers. Though you can’t heal the mercenaries, they should be tough enough to survive and you can heal them in any city that you have. Your Espionage champion should be traveling into other regions and investigating cities. Find the ones with Universities or other research buildings, then begin to sap resources. Remember to get all the traits that augment the skill, so that you get the most out of the exchange. Remember to leverage your flying T1 unit, the Undead Familiar Swarm, as cheap attack units and aerial defense if your enemy is trying to overwhelm you with flyers.

Your late game is simple: overwhelm the enemy with your low-cost, low-upkeep armies and break straight through to their Citadels and win. Even without research and skills that allow your Necromancers to raise your foes armies into chaff that can whittle down enemy stacks, you can still come out on top of most fights by just going at them headlong. Getting to this stage will be difficult, but once you reach your final unit roster, there’s hardly anything anyone else could do to stop you.

For endgame strategies, you can refer to the endgame strategies page, or you can turn your doomstacks around and just win.

If you’re playing against the Guardians of the Moon:

Raiding the Guardians of the Moon is essential to making sure that they can’t complete their armies and steamroll you. Search for their Espionage Champions in your cities, make sure that they’re not sapping away your research to boost your own. Take away any Ruins that are close to them, and make sure to have your own Espionage Champion focused on killing their Administrative Factions. If possible, ally with another faction and overwhelm them and burn down their developing settlements, but don’t attack their Citadel. That will create a grudge between them and you, which will mark you for conflict against them forever. Hamper them and make sure that you can get your full-power armies online before them, and trim them when you can.

As for Champions, the Guardians have strong Champions that hybridize between spellcaster and melee combatant. They gain EXP very quickly thanks to powerful AoE abilities and lifesteal, so make sure to engage them solo with your Champion. That Champion should be a Champion-Killer and focused on doing only that. Any hybrid Champion will fail, along with any Espionage Champion, because they won’t have the right amount of defense and health regeneration to keep standing against them. A General Champion can work in a pinch, but make sure they’re focused on buffing defense, morale, and health regen, so that they can tank the enemy until you can fire on them after their army is dispatched.

In the late game, the Guardians are near-impossible to beat without a careful strategy. Their economy will rise and they’ll eventually get the techs they need, but they can still be constrained. Sabotage the unit production centers in their cities by razing them or sending in Espionage champions. Even though you can’t affect their economy, you can have an effect on their ability to produce. Mobility is important against them, and so is focusing on artillery and aerial units. AoE is essential, but you’ll need to buff magic and explosives significantly once the Guardians begin to start battle with buffs on their Undead swarms.

The Guardians, overall, need to be prioritized and destroyed as soon as you get the right units and technologies to siege down their Citadel. If you’re lucky and they decide to federate with you, make sure to curry favor with them and defend them while they ramp up. Once it’s just the two of you left, if your relationship value is high enough and you’ve gotten the most merits from overcoming the crises that arise, they might concede and you can win by assimilating them through diplomacy.

Faction-Specific Leaders and Champions

Leaders:

The Rising Star: A combination of Leader and Champion, but one that works, unlike the Children of the Elm. The Rising Star is a Vampire Lord which has exceptional stats and powerful traits available for unlock that make them a great duelist and spellcaster for your army. Though she’ll lose if brought against a specialized Champion, you’ll be able to see those coming from the overworld and run away if necessary. Boost her up as much as possible, increase her influence, and she’ll increase the Guardian’s cultural and technological advancements. However, if she dies, you’ll get a permanent demerit on cultural and scientific resources gained. High risk, but high reward.

The Count: The Count boosts the military and diplomacy gains for the Guardians, but at a further demerit to their cultural and scientific gains. His focus is turning the Guardians into a snowballing faction, because he increases veterancy bonuses, and also increases the bonuses provided by General-styled Champions. With him, you need to win early, because you’ll never catch up in the endgame.

The Artist: The Guardian’s focused Administration leader, which also provides a substantial boost to cultural gains. This leader provides increased cultural gains for the faction with every Ruin that they scour and traverse, as well as culture when certain, common events pop up. Though he doesn’t provide any bonuses to military, many say that he’s a balanced, risk-free leader that’s good for beginners who just want to remove one of the Guardians’ main demerits.

Champions:

The Phantom: A rare, faction-specific Espionage Champion, the Phantom is key for most Guardian players to ensure that they have a constant stream of Research by leeching off of other Factions. Very difficult to locate, let alone kill, she has incredible bonuses and can steal up to half of the research of another Faction or even whole research projects. Many consider losing her in the early game or midgame to be the end of their playthrough.

The Master Lich: A powerful Necromancer that has abandoned their mortality in exchange for power and immortality. The Master Lich augments the Necromancer Units of the Guardians and boosts Undead Units with regeneration and even second-lives during combat. A powerful defensive General and Spellcaster, but one that tapers off in usefulness in the endgame, barring the acquisition of certain artifacts.

The Innovator: An Administration focused Champion which boosts science significantly, but at the cost of a whole settlement and being immovable after being placed. The Innovator requires a lot of time to ramp up and careful investment over many turns, but provides incredible research and breakthroughs in exchange that negates the Guardians’ research demerits. Unfortunately, the Innovator can be assassinated if not protected, despite his high stats.

Opposing Champions:

The Guardians’ champions are surprisingly all prone to being killed. You’ll need to do so, because they’re all relatively helpful to the Guardians and contribute to their ascent to power. The Innovator, in particular, can be killed easily if you send three Espionage champions at once after him. Roll the dice and accept the losses, because you’re better off without the Innovator finishing their final project and giving the Guardians’ the best city in the game!

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Comments (345):

ChocolateIsTheBest:

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Nublet:

???

Ex-Nub:

Ignore him.

Rara43:

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Nublet:

How are Undead hot???

Ex-Nub:

…Wow, you really are a nub.

Rara43:

Oh, no. I think Chocolate’s going to post a whole damn manifesto.