Classic Question: Your Favorite Faith, and WHY?

[llyr]

I didn't dig very deep to see if this thread already existed, but I figure if it does this will just get deleted...and I'm fine with that too. This will be my first post ever since I used to be part of the Sierra LOMSE forums, before they were unfortunately shut down . I don't know if ManTera remembers me, but I certainly remember him, and it's great to be back and find another thriving LOMSE forum. Anyway, enough chitter chatter, lets get down to business. It's time for me to tell you all why WATER is by far the best faith in Urak!

The Mage Tower:

Priestess: While weak in terms of attack and defense, they have a nice mana pool, especially at high levels and accompanied by artifacts.
Kraken: While worthless early game, they can be an asset to any coastal or ocean encounter.
Water Elemental: Cheap, expendable, yet easily buffed with Bloodlust and Quicksilver. A great addition to mages in a Library or a wandering thief.
Potions: We are the only faith that can make health potions! Can you dig it?

The Barracks:

Amazon Warrior: The developers were correct in stating that water warriors have "no obvious strengths or glaring weaknesses" on the battlefield. While weaker early game, these warriors boast speed, decent attack, and high defense as they grow in level.
Heavy Cavalry: Arguably the second best cavalry in the game, next to the Archon Knights. They are fast, and have amazing attack and defense at high levels. The backbone of any Amazon army.
Lizardmen: While they are very quick for infantry units, I find them quite useless. They may be cheap, but I'd rather spend my ale and gold on Heavy Cavalry.
Corsair: Best boat in game. Period. 36 movement points with exceptional battle prowess.

The Thieves Guild:

Amazon Thief: A favorite in Urak, Amazon thieves have some of the best missile attacks in the game. While their range is short, that can easily be improved using a multitude of artifacts: for example, the Aquaring. I find their quick fast attack rate and sharp javelins a favorable tradeoff for slow movement and average stealth.
Slingers: Tough and fast. Pretty useful at higher levels with Average missile stats and high melee stats for a missile unit.
Seagull: Great overland movement in comparison to other faiths. They can also fly, a definite plus.

The Great Temple:

It is unfortunate that the Great Temple produces such worthless units, in comparison to other Water Buildings and the Great Temples of other faiths. I rarely spend my resources here, but I suppose their are certain advantages that I should mention.

Serpent: While this unit has fantastic stats, it can only be used in naval and coastal battles, which are rare.
Giant Arachnid: Such a ridiculous Legendary Creature. I have no clue what the game developers were thinking. Out of all the creatures of the deep, they chose Spiders? Anyway, it is pretty obvious that players should avoid wasting gold on these creatures. I find their only use to be their immobilizing web which is useful in stopping mages from casting spells. While they can only be summoned once, you can summon as many as you can afford, and they come in bundles of two.

Water Spells

I would argue that Water has some of the best spells in the game. They boast variety in all four categories, lacking only in the offensive category.
Offensive: While Water has no Area Effective damaging spells, Ice Bolt can come in handy to finish off enemies or start off the battle. Bloodlust is extremely useful in boosting stats and Rust is great for using on enemy Warriors. Freeze is extremely useful with a low mana cost.
Defensive: A priestess can easily boost her troops at a low mana cost. Quicksilver is great for missile units and the Amazon Thief. While Warriors and Calvary enjoy Steam Cloud and Guardian Waves. Freeze can also be used defensively to protect a unit who is about to die, even the mage. It can be used to it's fullest effect, when casting it on a warrior who is also buffed with Steam Cloud. Enemies will batter this unit, inflicting no damage, but taking 3 HP damage per hit. I use Freeze as a defensive spell much more often than offensive. Light Rain is also EXTREMELY useful against fire units, packing a punch and slowing them down significantly.
Healing Spells: While the Priestess cannot rival the healing spells of an Elven Enchantress in battle, Healing Waters can easily be selected as the beast Overland Healing spell in the game, healing ones whole party up to full for 10 mana. Gift of Life can also be useful, when paired with Heal Self.
Overland Spells: Fog is great to cast pre-battle and to slow down scouts and enemy parties. Make Land is not only fun, but a great way to reach death and islands early game (if researched.)

Miscellaneous:

Location: On the default map, Water is strategically placed on a sort of peninsula directly bordering two allies and indirectly bordering Chaos and Death, which can be reached easily by sea. Chaos is also an ally, while death is an obvious enemy.
Artifacts: All three Ledgendary Artifacts boost their champion classes significantly, and the Drowning Spell can pack a serious punch, especially since it can be used twice a day. The Blowgun of the Amazons also makes Water Thieves unrivaled among other thieves, especially if used on your Thief Lord.

While I've listed many pros and cons, I believe the pros outnumber the cons significantly, making Water, in my mind, the strongest faith in Urak.

[swiftfoxmark2]

I am partial to Life myself. While they do not have the best attack and defense units, their missile units are top-notch and the infantry is great at defending them.

Also, their warrior units are riding a dinosaur. How cool is that?

I also have played Order and Death with some frequency. Death is more of a guilty pleasure because once you get Spawn Cave, you dominate the game if you use it correctly. Then the game just gets boring as every army falls before your might and ability to produce max level champions and units.

Order is great as well, although their units are much slower than Life's, so their high attack and defense is really tough to use properly. Also, their missile units are average.

The other faiths are pretty decent in their own right, but I have to say that I really enjoy playing as Life.

[axethrower12]

I would say Earth is my favorite. Despite that they are slow they do have ways of dealing with this.
I think the dwarf warrior is the one of the highest attack and defense in the game. And he has a humorous lines, eat my dust, plus he has a nice rally cry Crush!
My favorite unit is the axe thrower, if you can keep archers off of them, and get them to the combat they can spam axes, second they don't take long when using the aim command.
Earth magic doesn't have many offensive spells like order or life, but sands of sleep, entanglement, they have there uses.
Barracks - warriors are tough, and can use the defend and berserk command and have really high values
dwarf soldiers are slow but still have a nice attack
riders, they are very fast and can swarm units, without them, battles would be much harder, I prefer speed and creating a distraction for my other units so they can get to the front line.
Thieves Guild - never used the thieves that much, i don't think they are very good spys though, Axe throwers are great, I like the picture for them in the LOM version, in LOMSE they look nothing like their picture.
Mage Tower - again, magicians, have spells for slowing down units, the stone hands and stone skin can be great early on for dwarf warriors. The detect cave is perfect for earth, so you don't waste time wondering around the map looking for caves and encounters considering the low move points. Shamblers are ok early on, but are useless later, rock golems are a nice distraction and move fairly fast if I remember.
Artifacts - warrior and mage, nothing to say about them that they are perfect for them, the thieves is lesser in benefits.
I like the look of the buildings, very much like the lord of the rings
Never used the holy gateway much, but maybe if I play the game again, I will give it a shot. Its not as practical as the order chapel or forge for fire.
The rockworm can take out entire armies depending on who you are attacking, but I don't like the stone giant at all, I guess he could be a meat shield.

Earth is first mainly due to the units and that I like Lord of the Rings. But when I first played the LOM demo life was definitely my favorite. After that it is much harder to decide who I like - life, order, death. Then mostly likely fire, chaos, the least being water and air. Death Halberdiers and javalin throwers are just awesome by themselves. I like the idea of order but not very good at commanding them. Life for many of the reasons swiftfoxmark2 listed. It is cool that the warrior rides a dinosaur. Fire and Chaos are mainly the same but the magic for both is great in many ways. Especially the spells that fire and spin in circles. Chaos by far has cool spells. Hiring goblins or stick throwers and transforming them into giant monsters and the enemy to cows or chickens was a lot of fun. Air mages look cool and have deadly spells but can't say much about the rest of the units. The only way I would win at air, was to move the flying units over land that ground units could not go to and pelt them with stones. The eagles sound like a great idea, but they are definitely not the Great Eagles from lord of the rings. Water, I never really got into, they have a great location strategically, being right across from death and can assualt them by sea. But the units I didn't like, lizard peoples voices and the air fairies I could not not stand, earth mage and thief are bearable. The lord units of water are great in their own way, but the warrior rides a giant flamingo or ostrich or something. That sort of sums it up, the faiths that I like less have really great lords, artifacts, and spells but not a fan of the units.