Well, THAT was interesting. I sent my paladin unit and Serena to assault a Chaos Node guarded by Fire Elementals. 3 FE's and 3 Hell Hounds, no sweat (right?). The first two Hell Hounds went down without a scratch on the Paladins, but then I lost two paladin figures (during two separate exchanges of melee) while attacking one of the fire elementals. With both my unit of paladins and the fire elemental at half life, the odds seemed very good that the Fire Elemental would trade or straight up win if I pressed the assault with my paladins. I ended up running out the 50 round timer so I wouldn't risk anything in a retreat.

That's one of the few times in my recent memory that fire elementals have seemed to do anything except die. Jafar actually cleared the node a little later, but I sniped his guardians and took up residence before his spirit arrived. Whee! Speaking of Jafar, I need to kill him before he can spread the Klackons much farther.

I started with Halflings (so! much! food!) and I've taken several nomad cities so far. I'm going to make a point of only using horsebowmen and slingers to guard my capital during this game. I'm looking forward to trying out swarms of halfling swordsmen, see how that works out.

i haven't play MoM in years, i think...

i always enjoy using barbarian horsemen. their axethrows work very well with their mobility, but i guess they're not as useful as nomad's bow horsemen.

had lots of fun with lizardmen javelineers too, but lizardmen's limited buildings and xenophobia is somewhat hard to manage in endgame ,unless i get that spell for moving my tower.

I've actually never played lizardmen, but they might be a good candidate race for Life, because the Stream of Life spell eliminates all rebels in alien-race cities. That spell is a big reason I like the Dark Elves-Life combination.

I can see how swimming settlers could be useful.

Their cities are pretty poor, developmentally speaking. Similar to Gnolls, Trolls, and Klackons, you just want 2-3 to get the units they offer. Those stat bonuses are pretty sweet, though (+1 shield, +1 hp per figure); gives their guys a lot of extra durability. Javalineers are pretty amazing (they shoot decently well, and then they melee pretty well too), and I shudder when I see large stacks of Lizardman shamans that I'm going to have to wade through.

Okay, those swarms of halfling swordsmen? Not nearly as much fun as I'd built them up to be in my mind. They just got rolled by most everything I wanted to send them against. Turns out chaos spawn, gorgons, sprites, slingers, you know, everything, just rolled right over them and barely blinked.

A stack of 9 DID manage to stand up to an air elemental in a sorcery node, though, and lost a total of 4 to the elemental and 3 phantom warriors within. So halfling swordsmen can kill phantom warriors, and if you stack enough together they can kill an air elemental. They could probably handle other swords and spears, and maybe halberdiers, but not much more than that.

Looking at the unit list in my halfling town, I realized that halflings really only have one decent unit: slingers. They just can't build much of anything else. Good thing slingers are pretty awesome.

You don't use Lizardmen units in the endgame. Lizardmen's endgame is "conquer another race that can produce better units." Heck, that's not even the endgame, it's the beginning of the game. Get those 2HP swordsmen and spearmen out quick, and overwhelm the neutral cities that can make actual good units. If the game goes on too long, you lose your advantage. You're not supposed to build up to Dragon Turtles and then rule the world like you just built Paladins. That's not how Lizardmen/Gnolls/Klackons are supposed to work. :P

Yeah, that's exactly what I was just thinking. You have to change your strategy if you're going to use lizardmen, and go for rapid conquest. That means they're not a particularly good candidate for Stream of Life utilization, since city development is not their game.

You might not want to develop every city to its full potential (for example, I rarely build a Ship Wright's Guild unless I need boats or unless I'm going for a Merchant's Guild, and I often don't build an Armorer's Guild with low tech cities), but having most of the buildings is usually better than not having them. Just need to balance the cost of the buildings versus your other needs.

Conclusions after a game with halflings: Use spearmen if you just need guards to convert rebels or something, use shamen if you need to purify terrain, use a trieme if you need to cross water (better yet, get someone else to build a galley), and use slingers if you want to actually fight. Slingers are far and away the best combat unit halflings have, and they are easily reachable right from the start (unlike Paladins, for example). I just don't see much reason to build a unit for fighting besides slingers.

I never build any military buildings beyond a barracks unless the city is going to be a unit factory. It's a waste of upkeep.

The same goes for maritime buildings, except the ones that are needed as prerequisites for the Merchants Guild.

I'll usually build up to a Fighter's Guild, if for no other reason than "Just in case..." (an impulse I haven't managed to shake). I've gotten better about it, leaving things like City Walls unbuilt in most cases.

That's funny because I always build City Walls eventually. A garrison of 1 Paladin with a City Walls can defend against almost anything. If it's a dangerous area I back up the Paladin with Priests and Magicians, at least.

I don't garrison my cities very well. Usually 2 spearmen, and I'll rush troops there if I see a threat coming (and there is time). Most of my units are out looking for trouble, and my cities are either producing domestic projects or units. Any paladins (or similar grade units) I have are too busy running around attacking things to be sitting behind city walls on garrison duty.

Of course, this is without Insecticide, so YMMV.

This is exactly what I did for my first game at Impossible Level! (Four Opponents. Medium Land. Medium Magic.) Then I found myself on a big continent with two opponents coming from opposite sides. Great fun!