So I started playing the game, and found I really like the playstyle of Resoln, a faction with some obvious weaknesses that relies heavily on magic and unique summons to make it viable. Most of the ideas found herein can be read buried in comments made in the forum on the developers website, but I have never found any discussion that takes this particular Resoln strategy to this extreme, so I decided to post my own.

Imo on higher difficulties, you need either to decisively commit to overcome Resoln’s weaknesses or play to her strengths. I’ve seen alternative strategies posted that rely on battle summons or strongly branching into fire or air paths for Resoln. But the following strategy plays to Resoln’s strengths: strong Death magic with a minor path in Water. I’ll outline it in it’s most extreme, excluding any other paths.

I use this strategy on Ridiculous/Ridiculous or Insane/Insane levels, and it works pretty well. High magic density, frequent monsters, numerous quests. In the Advanced Options menu, I like to turn on ‘Manual Improvement Placement’, because building ‘snaking’ cities to connect to outlying resources or block enemy map access is definitely useful, but not necessary. Everything else is set to normal or default. Low magic makes this strategy much more difficult.

The high game settings mean you basically have no chance to keep up in the city improvement, army building or research race against the AI factions. You need some other way to project power.

• Many powerful debuff spells right from the start, including some that scale up in power depending on the number of death shards controlled. Interesting.
  
• A unique spell that corrupts any shard to a death shard. See where this is going?
  
• Free demon spawns at each shard. Cool. Btw, the demons that spawn at death shards happen to make the best troops. Extra cool.
  
• Unique spider troops able to lay down some crowd control (web) and extra mayhem (beguile) in battle. Useful.
  
• Sovereign Bond trait allows Ceresa to effectively summon a spellcaster unit (Familiar) that has no upkeep cost. I’ll take it.
  
• Wraithblood trait means Ceresa has an inherent dodge bonus. I can work with that.
  
• Ceresa begins the game with both Death and Water knowledge, two very complimentary magic paths. They give us all the ingredients we need to make this strategy work, without relying on random champion picks.

• Ceresa has the ‘Scarred’ and ‘Wraith Blood’ traits, which together means she doesn’t heal hardly at all on the strategic map, and even at high level she is going to have relatively low hit points compared to just about anything else. Guess that means we’re gonna have to keep her well healed in battle.
  
• Faction is restricted to leather armor… bad news in a fair fight. But we ain’t gonna fight fair! Demons don’t wear armor anyways...
  
• Being an Empire faction, Resoln doesn’t have initial access to ‘Sovereign Call’, so our towns aren’t going to grow as fast as the Kingdoms. Guess we need a strategy that doesn’t rely on big towns!

Personally I don’t see lack/capability of battle healing magic as either a strength or weakness. Rather it just reflects a playstyle. In general, he who hits fastest with the hardest and the mostest in battle is gonna win, regardless of heals (you can't heal something if it's already dead). Healing your Heroes/Sovereign so they survive to level up from experience is another matter entirely. And for that Empire factions have plenty of options.

Resoln is all about casting debuff magic in battle. If you don’t have mana, you can’t cast spells and you die. So Resoln is also about mana generation. I’ll say it again. Mana. Mana, mana, mana. Got it? How do you get Mana? Essence (in towns) and shards. So ultimately we want lots of Conclaves for their extra mana and research generation, and we want to control as many shards as we can find.

Troops… meh. We got loads of free demons… we don’t need no stinkin’ troops. Armor… meh. We got Death magic… we don’t need no stinkin’ armor (and our enemies aren’t going to have armor either, heh, heh). Heavy weapons? Meh. We got Graveseal spell… we don’t need no stinkin’ heavy weapons.

But seriously, the demons we want to use are the Cyndrum demons (automatically spawned at a death shard) upgraded to a company-sized unit (i.e. 6 troops). They will serve as both our heavy-hitting troops and meatshields throughout the game, backed by mage spell support. Spiders can be mixed in on occasion for their web cast, but mostly it’s going to be Cyndrum demons backed by Ceresa doing the work.

Much of our tech research is going to be directed towards town improvements and obtaining extra army slots. Many other techs are superfluous to this strategy, or just nice to have but not necessary.

What we are going to do:

• Always build our town sites on tiles having the highest essence. Remember mana, mana, mana.
  
• Upgrade EVERY town as a Conclave - Oracle - Tenfell University. This will give us maximum mana output. And research. We like research too.
  
• Corrupt EVERY element shard we find into a death shard. This is going to super-buff our combat spells into insane levels of power, plus gives us hoards of free Cyndrum demon troops.
  
• Offer tribute to all other factions on first contact. This should tone down enemy aggression against us, at least till we are ready for it.

What we are not going to do:

• Not build ANY troops in any of our towns (except our unique spiders). Nope…. none. Ever. Well, maybe a few Sions eventually, but otherwise... Zippo! This wouldn’t work well in a multi-player game, but against the AI it works fine.
  
• Worry too much about the early expansion/research race against other factions. They will all fall to our unstoppable hoards in due time (they are doing all the hard work of building our future towns for us, after all).

Let’s take a closer look at our spells, shall we?

Openers

• Wither - cast this spell from the strategic map on enemies before battle begins (or cast it in battle if you wish; early on this just wastes a turn of spellcasting, but later when your casters get Mantle of Oceans it can save you a lot of mana). It lowers the attack power of enemies (i.e. has the same effect as armor). Scales with number of death shards, so with enough of them you can lower enemy attack to ‘0’. Presto… lack of armor disadvantage solved! My understanding is that it doesn’t work against spell damage or magic staves, but I’m not sure about this. Also, if you cast it on an enemy town on the strategic map as a prelude to your attack, enemy troops inside the town get withered, but the town's militia garrison doesn't seem to be affected by the spell.
  
• Shadowbolt - This spell is really about reducing magic resistance rather than doing damage. Use it as the opening shot to wear away MR if you feel the enemy’s magic resistance is too strong to risk casting your more expensive spells.
  
• Infection - If magic resistance isn’t an issue, this is usually the first spell to cast on a large groups of enemies, so we can spread our debuff spells to the whole group. Target the enemy unit with highest initiative (i.e. the enemy whose icon is lowest in the queue down the left border of the screen). By itself, Infect does nothing, but now any other debuff spell cast on the infected unit will spread to all others in the group too. Note that this also works for the Web spell. So a single spider can lock down an entire army for 3 battle rounds.
  
• Dirge of Ceresa - mass poison damage over time. Use it in conjuction with Graveseal and Curse once you have 5+ death shards active to make it worthwhile, since it scales and armor will reduce the damage. It can really play havoc against strong city garrisons. Just fall back and let the poison do the work.

Debuffs

• Counterspell - enemy magic is generally bad news. Anything that requires 2 turns to cast is generally worse. So use this when you see a caster preparing a spell.
  
• Slow - reduces enemy initiative. Low initiative doesn’t just mean the enemy goes last, but if it is low enough, it means friendlies actually get to move twice before the enemy gets their turn. So for this it is quite a bargain spell and shouldn’t be overlooked.
  
• Blindness - reduces the enemy’s accuracy to connect for both melee and ranged attacks. Sometimes this spell alone can reduce a boss to impotence. I’m fairly certain it works against ranged spellcasters as well.
  
• Curse - eliminates enemy armor for 3 battle rounds. And they thought armor would protect them, heh, heh.
  
• Graveseal - one of your more expensive combat spells, but doubles all damage. Well worth the mana when cast on an infected unit or tough boss. As your demons gain higher levels with experience, they can do 100+ damage per hit with Graveseal.

And all those were just your starting spells! Awesomeness! Once you start gaining experience you can get:
Level-ups

• Freeze (Water Disciple, strategic) - reduces enemy initiative. Remember that stupid Haunter guy with the Pyrosnakes? Whammo!
  
• Mantle of Oceans (Water Mage, strategic) - reduces Mana spent in battle. Eventually in late game you won’t need this, but in the early game, or if you fight wars on multiple fronts, it is quite good to conserve mana expenditures.
  
• Pull of the Earth or Gust of WInd (Geomancy / Aeromancy, mage trait) - knocks em’ down so’s they can’t hurts us!
  
• Drain Life (Death mage) - Transfers HP away from the victim and gives to the caster, scales with number of death shards AND and combos with Graveseal. So by mid-game it is an awesome heal spell for Ceresa, and by late game it is a deadly offensive spell.
  
• Defiled Benediction (strategic) - who says you have to be a death mage to be able to cast Drain Life? If your heroes are dying, its your fault.
  
• Touch of Entropy (Death Master)- If you think Drain Life stacks nicely with # of shards, try this one out for size.
  
• Sacrifice (Death Archmage) - once your Conclaves stop growing, use this to get more free mana.
  
• Kill (Death Archmage) - makes bosses be deaded.

Like most other factions, Resoln’s expansion really benefits from early road building. However, quite frankly, our strategy really super-empowers Mages with death magic. Each such mage can eventually lead their own army of demons, so you can fight wars on multiple fronts (you’ve got your Familiar which can serve in a pinch, but it never gets to level up the skill tree). So if my first free hero has Death magic, I generally go for Mage, otherwise I take the Commander path. My Commander skill build generally goes Road Builder > Healer > Leadership 1 > Command > Leadership 2-4, Tactician 1-3. THis is a fairly slow build, but the first 4 skills are extremely useful to support your main army, while Tactician will eventually give your demons the edge they need to make sure they move first. Merchant 1-4 might also be considered, as Resoln needs gold to buy magic items for all its heros, but you can get gold through other means. More experienced players might try different paths on their heros, but till you get comfortable with your opening game, Mage or Commander is a solid choice.

Non-mages are going to encounter some problems casting magic in battle due to high enemy MR on ridiculous/insane settings. The Touch of Darkness spell (researchable under magic Rituals) will allow non-mages to permanently trade some hit points for higher spell mastery. Not quite as good as Prodigy skill imo (see below), but it does allow non-mages a way to become decent debuffers as well. Note that the ToD spell also works on your Familiar (see next section).

Bacco the Beggar (a random quest that sometimes shows up early on) can eventually be leveled-up as a useful part of your army, but if you need to expend all your Mana to beat him (he has 64 HP on Insane, and unless you have found a nice weapon you will be fighting him with your toothpick walking stick), it is probably not worth the bother. At the start you have more important things to do with your mana. As the game develops there are plenty of other opportunities to gain a Warrior class champion. Of course, if you are willing to take an nearly permanent affliction on Ceresa (not recommended) you can let Bacco kill you, then he hangs around on the strategic map, and afterwards you can gank him with your whole army to make him join.

As well as being a central part of our strategy, thematically I want Ceresa to be a kick-butt battle Mage... she is, after all, the Fallen Enchantress of game-title infamy. Given her low HP, probably not the wisest move, but hey, it’s all roleplay. All of those cool debuff spells only work if the target fails to resist (and at Ridiculous/Insane settings everything gets higher MR). So the very first traits we are going to upgrade are:

• Prodigy I, Prodigy II and Prodigy III, so her spells are almost guaranteed to work even against most magic resistance.
  
• Savant is next, so she can cast the more complicated spells without losing a turn.
  
• Death Mage, allows her to cast Drain Life. No more healing woes.
  
• Healer - preferably I like to locate and purchase a Troll Charm in a foreign Shop, which essentially does the same thing.

At this point (lvl 8), if you don’t already have another champion with Water magic, you should upgrade Ceresa to Water Mage so as to cast Mantle of Oceans on herself. This massively reduces mana spent in battle. But if at all possible, I try and have another champion do this so I can have Ceresa continue to focus on her climb to kick-buttness:

• Evoker I, Evoker II, Evoker III, Evoker IV - this effect stacks with all the death shard boosting AND Graveseal. Nice. At 10 shards active, try Dirge of Ceresa doing 40+ poison damage per round to everything that fails to resist (too bad for them we have Prodigy III) for 10 rounds. Or Drain Life doing 100+ damage per cast. Pretty cool. Nothing but the most powerful bosses stands a chance.
  
• Death Master - Touch of Entropy spell. Mass Curse is good, but mostly unnecessary with Infect/Curse. But we need this to get to...
  
• Death Archmage - Kill spell... now bosses don’t stand a chance either.

Along the way, both the Geomancy and Abjuration skills can be pretty cool too, but you probably won’t need them except in rare special combats. If you really feel your mana generation is just not enough, then you can prioritize getting to Death Archmage earlier. This enables the Sacrifice spell, which boosts your mana income at the expense of population.

Any other Death mages just develop along the same path with the same skills.

Familiar
The familiar adds to your ability to project power by being able to cast all of Ceresa's known spells (except for Dirge of Ceresa - bogus; try using Sovereign Call with Beastmaster or Cautious traits and it works, so why not DoC?). This means it also bestows a bonus cast of all Ceresa's strategic spells during cooldown, such as Wither or Freeze. Nice.

However, the familiar's real calling is the extension of Ceresa's deadly battle magic. This has both upsides and downsides. Firstly, the familiar doesn't count as a hero, so you can keep it in an army stack and it doesn't leach experience gained after battle away from other heros (nice for monster spawn farming). It DOES level-up the same as any other unit, gaining +2 hp and +1 spell mastery per level. This adds up, so you'll want to keep your familiar alive between battles. But since it doesn't develop a skill tree as a hero would, ultimately it's mediocre starting spell mastery (70) needs to be improved to be an effective Death Magic debuffer. You can use the Touch of Darkness spell to trade hp for mastery. Thus by level 7 or so you should be able to raise the familiar's spell mastery above 90, which is respectable. The tradeoff is leaving it with hp so low anything can one-shot it. Solve this by strategically casting Freeze on an enemy army before battle to reduce their initiative, or use a Commander with the Command or Tactitian skills, so the familiar has a chance to move to the rear and cast first before the enemy does. If you have enough death shards active so that a strategic Wither spell reduces enemy attack to '0', then of course you don't need to worry about low hp.

On the downside, the biggest drawbacks are a base move of 2 and vulnerability to missile attacks. Also, Mantle of Oceans doesn't work on the familiar, wich means it can seriously eat into your mana reserves. Once your heros get mounts, the familiar will slow your demon army stacks down, thus it's best to keep him on established road networks moving between freindly cities. Keep it out of battles involving enemy archers (unless you are sure you can kill or neutralize enemy ranged attackers - ie. use Pull of the Earth, etc). But for farming monster stacks for the experience, or adding spell support to melee-only battles in home territory, the familiar excels.

Spiders
Spiders can be extremely useful when used in conjuction with the Infection spell. Imo Widows are preferable to Harradins since they are cheaper to train, have 2 unique "no-mana-required" spells to cast and you really want to use them as crowd-control rather than front-line melee fighters. Just like the familiar, spiders gain hp and mastery as they gain levels. So keep 'em alive if you can.

Casting Web on an infected unit (or vice versa) will immobilize on average about 2/3 of the enemy forces for 3 battle rounds, which is a HUGE advantage to limit counterattacks on your unarmored Cyndrum Demons. Swarm an enemy with demons, kill any adjacent units before they can counter attack, then repeat each round. You can gut your enemy's forces before they have a chance to get in a single blow, and you might not take any casualties at all.

Once Web wears off, cast Beguile on any surviving infected unit(s) to cause a 50-50 chance for them to attack their own adjacent friends. By this point there is usually not much enemy left, and your demons can come out relatively unscathed.

The biggest drawback of using spiders is their mediocre spell mastery. So there is usually about a 1/3 chance their spell will fail and cause no effect. You can mitigate this somewhat by infecting the unit with the lowest magic resistance, or casting Shadow Bolt. But overall the upsides are good enough to justify a slot in most armies.

Sions
Sions are henchmen you will be able to train once you research the Sion Temple technology in the Magic school. Sions can't learn Magic paths (ie. they can't become a Death Apprentice), but they can learn a profession and progress up the skill tree as a Hero would and wield magic equipment. You can use them as administrators for your cities, but you can also use them as combat-support in your armies. They only really become viable once you have captured (cool) or built (wimp) a Fortress city with a Command Post and Warrior Temple, so they gain free levels when trained.The three Sion builds I find most useful for this strategy are:

• Commander > Administrator 1 > Admin 2 > Merchant 1 : for stabilzing unrest in cities and paying sion wages.
  
• Commander > Leadership 1 > Command > Healer : allows an accompanying Death Mage hero to multi-cast on the first turn of battle + faster recovery.
  
• Mage > Prodigy 1 > Prodigy 2 > Geomancy OR Mage > Prodigy 1 > Knowledge > Aeromancy : for crowd-control support in battle. Pull of the Earth spell affects 9 tiles and has no cooldown, but it costs more mana to cast than Gust of Wind.

You could also go Mage > Summon 1 > Ice Elemental > Summon 2 > Air Elemental and strategically summon Air Elementals for crowd control (they remain in play between battles), if you would rather not train Sions plus have a large surplus of mana to spend.

This is really just general advice, but important to mention. Each spellcaster should be outfitted with the following minimum kit:

• Dagger/Sword - you want to debuff the enemy before either they or your units attack, so you need your spellcasters to have as high initiative as possible. Even Daggers do this, making them the newbie mage weapon of choice. Raises initiative by 3. You can also likely purchase an Amulet of Haste fairly early in the game from a foreign Shopkeeper, as you have other priorities to research before (Glyph Stones).
  
• Belt of Precognition - The AI likes to use massed archer armies, and archers like to target squishy non-armored targets. This item is quick to research (Charms), and together with the Blindness spell increases survivability from enemy ranged attacks quite a bit. There is also the Monk's Robe to boost dodge rating even more, if you have the gold. By the mid-game, you should look to max out your dodge rating by adding a Tower Shield and Cloak of Shadows from a foreign Shopkeeper.
  
• Horse/Warg - Each gives nice bonuses and extra moves in battle (I prefer Warg for +2 initiative). Your Cyndrum Demons have a base map-move of 3, but your army moves according to the slowest unit in the stack (i.e. your unmounted hero). Thus as an extra bonus, using mounts will effectively increase your strategic army move.

Keep your eyes peeled for any random equipment that increases spell Mastery, Resistance or spell Damage, since in late-game boss battles victory will likely come down to your hero's resistance and being able to quickly overcome the boss's magical defenses.

SO on turn 1 we found our capital city on a tile preferably with 2 or more essence, and cast Meditation and Inspiration. If there is a shard immediately nearby, either expand your city towards it to get it within your influence, or if farther away train a Pioneer to be able to claim it with an outpost. Once you got the shard within your boundaries, cast Corruption on it and convert it to a death shard, then build a Death Altar. Meanwhile scout around a bit with your units and grab any easy loot. Imo, it is worth doing all this and adding the spawned Young Cyndrum Demon to your army stack before you attack anything, even though it might seem to slow you down some. I also tend to cast Summon Familiar right at the start, so my initial army stack is 5 units.

Your actual power with this strategy is directly linked to how many death shards you control, rather than city count. So while your cities are important research and mana generation hubs, the faction power display really doesn’t give the whole picture. You want as many death shards active as you can get before starting your first war. So priority should go to sending out Pioneers to locate shards, building outposts to claim them, and corrupting them to death. Resoln’s basic go-to town type is high-essence Conclaves upgraded to lvl 3 Oracle, each with a Meditation enchantment cast on it and the Garden/Apothecary/Alchemist city improvement, so as to get that extra mana. So during our initial expansion we want to found cities on sites having as high essence as possible.

You are going to need your mana to corrupt newly found shards, so initially try and choose battles where you can win using skills and swarm bonus only rather than spells. 3-4 Darkling warriors or Skellies shouldn’t give too much problem. If you do cast spells, try and use them sparingly and use the less expensive ones. Stay away from Bandits till your Cyndrum demon has made a few kills, or they might take him out with their throwing knives. Don’t attack Butchermen till you are stronger or have improved initiative. The trick is to always let the demon make the killing blow, so it uses its Undying Curse ability to add a new member and thereby gain extra HP/damage. Once the Cyndrum demon is at full strength (6) it will easily pawn any of the ‘Medium’ threat monsters, even without any spells active.

It is important to NOT enter the tile after winning combat to claim the loot. You need those weak spawn camps to respawn their monsters, so you have easy fodder to ‘train’ your future Cyndrum demons. Just leave a few of the weakest camps within easy access of your starting city, and when you build new death shrines, send the new Young Cyndrum Demon to wait till the next batch of nearby monsters respawn. Then send in a mix of newbie demons with veteran troops, allowing the newbs to making the killing blow till they grow to a group of 6. Rinse and repeat to get full strength Cyndrum demon units. Note that once you have 5 death shards, you can cast the Wither spell on enemy Darklings from the strategic map, and their attack will be reduced to 0. So you can send in 2 or 3 totally greenhorn Cyndrum demons alone to ‘train’ without risk of them getting killed.


In the image above, you see I've 'snaked' my town out to include the death shard, so as to protect it from wandering monsters. Also I've left 2 nearby Darkling spawncamps alone, so they respawn new fodder to train my Cyndrum demons who are currently waiting in the town with my Familiar.

Keep exploring/expanding till you have secured and built 4-5 death shards and 3-4 full strength demon units in your main army. Backed by Ceresa’s spells, you now have nothing to worry about from anything with less than a ‘Deadly’ rating. Time to go hunting…

Demon Troops Substrategy
You might try building each shard first to get the "normal" free elemental demon spawn, then immediately corrupt the shard and re-build it as a death shard to get the Cyndrum spawn too. For a small turn-investment, this will give you all the diverse other demon types in addition to your Cyndrum troops as an extra bonus. Crow demons make very good scouts, since they can fly over mountains and water. The other demons can be used as lookouts or to beef up town garrisons.

As soon as you meet each faction, offer tribute. Not the kind where you pay a lump sum like when they demand it, but rather the kind where you willingly pay 10% of your net income, which is peanuts. This, and staying out of their territory, is initially the only proactive thing you can do to improve your diplomatic relations with your neighbors. Tarth and Ythrill are another story. They WILL declare war sooner or later, so better get prepared if you happen to start close to them.

When you do want war, just park your units on enemy territory and wait for them to tell you to leave or else. The proper response is “I will see your head on a pike first”. This way your reputation stays intact with the other factions as you are not considered the aggressor.

Even though Ceresa starts the game with all the spells she needs to fight a war, ideally, you want to wait till she is at least lvl 8 (for important skill upgrades and Drain Life spell). You should have no less than 4-5 full-strength Cyndrum demons in your main army, with maybe a few spares as well. At least 6 army slots and a second Mage for helping to cast a few of your debuffs or a Spider is very prudent (the familiar is good for this in the early game). You’ll need a mana reserve of maybe 200 or more so as to be able to fight consecutive battles. Your mages should have the recommended equipment (at least daggers and belts), and be enchanted with Defiled Benediction if they don't have lvl 3 Death magic yet (for battle healing). Once you have all this, you are good to go.

Defeating enemy armies is pretty standard procedure: cast Wither on the tile before you attack. This will reduce damage incurred all around. Then start the battle by casting Infect on their initiative leader, or alternatively on a unit with low magic resistance. Follow up with whatever debuffs you need, although I generally use mostly Blindness, Curse, Web and Graveseal. If you can fall back a bit with your demons till all the spells take effect, all the better (which is why Slow spell can be useful too). If Ceresa gets wounded by archers, use the Drain Life spell as counter-battery fire. As you control more death shards, Dirge of Ceresa becomes an option that can kill most city Militia outright.

Keep up the pressure. Don’t give the enemy time to rebuild their army. Mana and healing is generally going to determine the pace of the war. I try and capture a new enemy city every other turn if I can if I have the mana, replacing badly wounded Cyndrum units with fresh ones from my reserve. Afaik, unrest doesn’t affect mana income. So as long as a city has essence, and can build new shards quickly, technically we don’t even care about unrest. Just speed-build the death shards and move on to the next battle. They will be suing for peace in no time.

But of course, when your enemy is down, kick them in the balls. Unless there is another war pressing on another front, there is no reason not to annihilate each faction in a single decisive blow. Once the enemy faction is down to their last city, hold off outside their territory and wait as many turns as it takes for the sovereign to come out of the city leading an army (once the sovereign runs out of henchmen, they will come out themselves). Let the sovereign alone and conquer the city, then demand that the sovereign surrender. With nothing left, they will resign and you gain them as a champion for your faction, along with all their magic goodies they have collected thus far. Nice!


Resoln can ignore unrest (for research purposes) in level 4 Conclaves that choose the Tenfell University upgrade. Otherwise she can control unrest in cities using the Oppression spell and later using Sions (Henchmen) trained as Commanders. But Sions will require a fair bit of research that doesn't bring much else with it to this strategy. Thus, I generally raze all but the best captured cities. Just make sure to connect them back to your territory using outposts, so you have one big continuous empire. Too many cities (i.e. more than 10 or so) just bogs down your production with unrest until you manage to locate and capture a Lvl 5 Fortress/Prison/Onyx-Throne. Keeping one Lvl 5 Town is also good, since it can construct a Bakery/Butcher/Brewery that increase food production (and thus max populaton) in all your cities. You are going to capture a lot of cities during the game, so you can be picky. Cast Salt the Earth spell on potential city sites outside your territory, so as to keep other enemy factions from settling there.

As the game develops, upgrade your shard altars to shrines and temples to thereby gain the extra mana and the adult and ancient Cyndrum demons for your army troops. But high-level Young Cyndrum demons work fine as front-line troops, even in the late game.

These are the game-changing techs important to this strategy. Initial priority in the following order:

• (Civ) Restoration - production bonus
  
• (Civ) Knowledge - research bonus
  
• (Civ) Trading - roads between towns
  
• (War) Drills - for extra army slot
  
• (Mag) Sorcery - for Tireless March spell
  
• (War) Weapons - daggers for your mages
  
• (Mag) Charms - Belt o' Precognition
  
• (Mag) Rituals - Defiled Benediction + Touch of Darkness spells
  
• (Civ) Administration - can rush production
  
• (Civ) Economics - 2nd extra army slot + roads to outposts
  
• (War) Warg Riding - I prefer wargs to horses for my champions (or buy from foreign Shop)
  
• (War) War Colleges - 3rd extra army slot
  
• (War) Siege Weapons - 4th extra army slot
  
• (Mag) Sion Temple - trainable henchmen
  
• (Mag) Glyph Stones - Amulet o' Haste (can likely buy much earlier from foreign Shop)
  
• (Mag) Arcane Apparel - Cloak o' Shadows (ditto)
  
• (Mag) Immortal Codex - upgrades demons + extra mana
  
• (Mag) Ereog’s Journal - upgrades to ancient demons + even more mana

Also their are a lot of good Civ techs for improving your economy. But you really don’t need large Conclave/Oracle cities past lvl 3 except maybe a few captured fortresses late game upgraded to lvl 4 Prison, so as to keep unrest in check.

Of course, not building any units in cities is just purely academic (although it works). I just want to establish a viable strategy for Insane/Insane that doesn’t suffer from slow research/expansion when compared to the turbo-charged AI. Ultimately there is no reason not to eventually add some Gravewardens or Catapults to compliment your Cyndrum melee units. But you don’t need them. Resoln places all the ingredients for victory in your hands right at the start. You just need to leverage their strengths.

Hope this guide helps anyone interested in playing Resoln on higher levels of difficulty. In any case, thanks for reading!