Started playing this wonderful game again for the dozenth time, so thought I might put in some tips and tricks I find out to help people out if anyone else still plays the game. If even 1 person does say they would want an actual guide, I'll write out a mission by mission guide, with all the different choices leading to different things.

For those who have only just picked it up, don't sleep on diplomacy! Take your time, and read though all the different offers. Even if you have played though before, I'd advise to look though it again. It took me an ungodly amount of time to realise that you can quite literally print money though the diplomacy. Plus, make there are so many options to supercharge your troops and heroes. This is why I've split the chapters up into a "Diplomacy" and "Non-diplomacy" headings.

Pengwern, Medesham and Elmet can all be allied with in the first chapter, and all 3 have some good options.

This kingdom is where you can upgrade your archers, along with hiring Pengwern Archers, who come with the Sharpshooter trait, so they only take 50% weather debuffs. This means they can still shoot when normally nighttime or thunderstorms means archers can't shoot at all, making them useless. Fun fact as well, if you buy the Pengwern archers in Chapter 1, they don't seem to have a tier 1 type, so you get tier 2 archers. They also are usually rank 5, so you pretty much get the same as 2 tier 1 rank 5 archers in one unit.

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This place has a lot of magic upgrades for your heroes, and is where you can print money with the "Joint Venture" option. The best option is giving 6,000 gold, and in return you'd get slower build/research (I always take all the things that slow it down and I usually rapidly fill everything up in the villages and towns with ease) and gain 1000 gold per turn for 10 turns, giving you a total of 10,000 gold.

There are some cheaper options if your like, but the return isn't nearly as good, and the cooldown is always the same from what I can see. They also have a trade option to help with your troops, and also a way to get infinite amount of Lore as well. Keep track of it, as in the beginning it's best to pay for the set 3 lore, but you'd quickly hit the 30 lore mark, meaning the 10% lore increase would be better since it's cheaper and you'd get more when you hit the 40 lore mark.

One thing I'd suggest is only get your lore up to around 60 max though diplomacy, as you get lore from towns, along with quests, and some other diplomacy actions can give lore for cheap too. Plus by 60 you have about 80% of the research options unlocked.

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This kingdom might not look like much, but it's Military Training option is the most comprehensive out of all of them, and is a MAJOR force multiplier, with things like giving a flat +10 defense to 2 units at a time, 4 different % based options, and even if you somehow manage to get though all of them to all your units (you'd probably need like 200 turns just to fully do one army) it still has a flat "+200xp to all units". Funny enough that even effects units in the reserve, so it really means ALL units.

I haven't been able to figure out if there is something special with the Elmet legionaries like how the pengwern bowmen always have sharpshooter, but they have higher armour and health then Ironguard, but less damage. There might be something in their ability line, because I still remember doing a double take when I was just looking though all my allies armies, and see a Elmet Heavy Cavalry with "Greater Area Damage", meaning it deals it's damage in a 10m radius. This is meant to only be available on Dark angels, I don't think even colossus or giants get it, they get the normal one which is only a 5m radius.

EDIT: There IS something special about the Elmet Legionaries! For some reason why it isn't shown when you view them in the strategic map, but in the tactical map, they have the Formorian Slayer trait! +50% damage to Formorians. It might not sound like much, but it is a free trait, and Formorians are the enemies you fight the most.

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While you won't be able to get an alliance with them yet, the Sidhe council has a trade option that if you do the option of giving a lock of your hair to secure a non-aggression pact, giving you +10 rep, you can access. That is something I HIGHLY recommend doing, as for some gold you can get decreased cooldown and mana cost on any hero, and if you wish, you can supercharge this by taking the second set of options, losing some health for more cooldown reduction, or losing spellpower for more mana cost reduction.

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Powys is the last 'kingdom' you can negotiate with, but in Chapter 1, they are a non-entity outside of 1 diplomacy event. You can't even get an alliance until you reach tier 2 units, and even then, it usually takes me to tier/chapter 3 to get said alliance. Depending on your choices though, they might be helpful later on in chapters 4/5. I would recommend waiting till tier 3 to get the alliance anyway, as while it is possible in Chapter 2, it requires doing a non-aggression option, and they don't have a permanent option, meaning once it runs out you'd lose the reputation gain from it.

This is obviously some tips that are not part of the diplomatic portion of the game.

My recommendation for town/village buildings is to go for health for the different types of unit other than archers, who should be damage. Why? Because the buildings give a percent increase of 5/10% for the different levels, and your health is always going to be massively higher than damage. Archers are the one difference here, since obviously they are squishy, so low health, but deal a lot of damage. Going with damage, you'd only start seeing returns that reach into the double digits in chapter 3, and for most of them, you never see them in the triple digits.

I personally also pick the options in towns for extra reserve troops, because I can increase Lore other ways was described earlier. Which leads me onto another tip. ALWAYS have a good 6-8 sets of light troops in the reserve. There are so many options where you will 'lose' some troops to gain a benefit, and you don't want to send off your ranked up troops to do so. Light troops just because they are the cheapest, it doesn't matter who you send off, just how many of them.

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As a bit of a heads up, I'm 99% sure it's been confirmed (I remember reading a post from a dev, but can't find it anymore) but the 4th item for the Set of Ser Brandon, which you get 3 of them from the Merlins Workshop quest, was never put into the game. That being said, it might not be totally out of reach, which I'll talk about later.

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In the objectives screen, at the top right hand corner, you'll see some icons, they might be greyed out or filled in. Either way, hover over them and see what they say. They are some optional sort of objectives related to battles which, if you complete them, makes things so much easier later on! One of them makes Victory point capture time decrease by 90%! Another allows you to resurrect some troops at the end of a battle! They are something to definitely look into, and try to complete as quickly as possible.

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Lastly, which should probably be first since this is about when you first set up your hero, but the tyrant option of "Recruit the strong and kick out the rest" actually does more than give you your starting Tyrant points, and gives you a rank 5 Ironguard unit. Nice little boost right there. Weirdly enough, choosing spearmen for the extra troops takes you from having 1 blackthorn to 4, with you losing one of your light infantry/deepwood warriors, while the bowmen and horse options just give you 2 of the chosen unit. My personal opinion is to take the horses, as chasing down fleeing bowmen can be a pain without them, but it is for the first battle only, so you could do without.

In terms of what class to play as, it is completely up to your on what you'd like. Obviously Sage is the magic caster, Champion is the front lines and warlord is somewhere in-between, being able to hold on the front line while buffing and can sling some decent spells out. The biggest thing is the guards of a Sage only has Armoured (+40 defence against arrows), instead of Heavily Armoured (+80 defence against arrows) like the others, so they are a little more susceptible to arrows. You'll find a lot of people will say Sage is the best class to play as for William, and he does get some quite powerful spells (his "ultimate" is Meteor, which can kill multiple units at once if you land it correctly).

Personally though, I prefer making him a Champion, mainly because of 2 skills, along with the fact you'll get Morgana Le Fay who's is a Sage and will be competing for items. He gets the normal boosting skills of a champion, so +20% health, +15% damage, +15% lifesteal along with cleave and blast, but he also gets Formorian slayer (+100% damage to Formorians, which while you will fight heaps of non-formorians, they do remain one of the biggest enemy factions, and most likely the one you fight against the most as William), bless, allowing you to add 200% attack damage on him, which, as a champion is already ridiculously high, and lightening blade, meaning you can hit even more enemies (I've see champion William mow though an enemy force quicker than heavy cav trampling the enemy).

To round it out, he also gets lightening bolt for some ranged spell damage before getting into it, Beast Master, giving a boost to all beastmen type units (sadly, as far as I can tell, the defence part doesn't work, but the damage does), surge of victory and power of blood, decreasing cooldowns and increasing your magic shield by killing enemies.

The 2 skills I talked about earlier though, which while are the ultimate/requires level 16, which isn't very hard to get to, is Summon Wyrm, allowing you to temporarily summon a unit of Wyrms, which is a pretty decent unit to have, and can tank very well, and most importantly, he gets teleport. No more trying to run down an enemy, or to a unit getting overwhelmed, just teleport into the middle of the enemy, pop off your spells, and with the surge of victory, by the the end of the fight, your spells should be ready to be used again, so off you go. It might not sound like much, but it is utterly overpowered. Sage hero casting a spell with a long cast time, meaning it'll be powerful? Teleport and assassinate him. Archers being a pain? Teleport. It is kinda of funny, I usually end up needing to put the mana regen items on a Champion William much more than a Sage William late game.

This place now has an option to recruit a knight (Champion class), which gives you "Sir Lindon". Honestly I don't find his abilities very useful, but it's up to you. You will get heaps of heroes on your journey so he is by no means a must to get. You can use him though to increase your standing with Elmet to gain quicker access to the military training diplomatic option if you don't have it already.

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While not having a normal set of interactions with, does have a few diplomatic events. These events are amazing and should most definitely be done. One gives you an option of either boosting 1 cav unit, or increase an army's movement speed by 15%, which is what I recommend choosing. You will be moving all over the place with Arthur, and as such it can help out a lot. A second event gains you a "Lady of the Realm" which you can then marry to your knights, which can give them either buffs or debuffs, depending on the lady in question.

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Under control of Sir Caradoc, he can become an ally, or you can attack London and take it over yourself. This is your first chance to get a "Stronghold" type place, giving you a fair few buildings you can build. There are only 6 Strongholds in the entire game, though realistically, you'd only control about 3 before the end of the game, and only if you focus towards getting them.

In my opinion though, allying with him is a much much better option, giving you a lot more benefit. He has multiple diplomatic choices, getting captains in your entire army, and military training as well. I will fully admit though, if you don't do his quest straight away, you can get most of these benefits for William before hand, though you won't be able to get the Military Training, as you can only get that in Tier 3, and you won't be able to get any of the hero buffs for your future main heroes. You can easily set up an army in the reserve area and buff them to give out later on though. This will mean just passing turns a lot because of cooldowns.

You are able to recruit Sir Alain as well in London, who is another Champion Class. Again, in my personal opinion, you can pass over him, just like Sir Lindon, though, if you feel like you do want another hero, or at least a Champion to put in your team if you don't have one, I'd go with Sir Lindon, as for whatever reason, Alain has less skill points. You can get Lindon as early as level 2, though all heroes scale to, I believe, one level below William himself, where as you'll get Alain as early as level 5. For whatever reason, Alain doesn't get those 3 levels worth of skill points, though it's really only 2 levels/6 skill points, as Alain has 1 extra skill level taken.

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This one will be a little different, as based on your choices in its related quest, 3 different things can happen to this location. I've put both names down, as the quest and notification for it all talk about Ilchester, but the actual province is called Salisbury. An overview of said quest is there are two sides fighting over them who are in the middle. It's quite easy to see it's a Old God/Christian type choice if you wish to choose a side, or the third option is to take it for yourself, though this will cause both sides to attack you, with the Christian kingdom actually coming to you to attack. I don't recommend taking it for yourself, as while Salisbury does have a trader, and you won't get a second one for a decent amount of time, the diplomatic options from either side is worth a lot more.

The "Christian" option, there are 2 major diplomatic activities, with the biggest one being a repeatable option to increase your Christianity points. As far as I know, there is no other repeatable option to do this, and each point beyond the max 20 gives your troops 1% more health (each point beyond for the rightful/tyrant option does the same for damage). There is also a scholar option, giving some options to get recipes and lore I believe (currently doing an old gods play though while writing this, so going by memory). When you reach tier 3, you also get an option to choose to buy a bunch of items from them, which gives you a fair few items for the price of one, though you don't choose much beyond the item/rarity. One major benefit for Christian Rightful players for siding with Dorset as well is access to a Golden Basilica, which is most likely the first building allowing you to get the special units available for you.


The "Old Gods" option, which for some reason, the diplomatic actions here is much better in my opinion. Has the same option as Dorset to increase faith rating, but for Old Gods instead of Christianity. You can also buy the services of a Wizard hero, Sigbert, which is someone I definitely recommend getting if you can. Lastly, you also get an option, in paying some gold and 1 skill point, to get a flat 15 boost to your mana or a 10% boost to your spellpower.


Within this chapter, you should slowly start having access to 2 more diplomatic options with the Sidhe, one that, for 4,000 gold, gives 2 more max charges to your Grail Shard (which is well worth it in my opinion) and secondly, an option to get more recipes. It's not too much, except for the one that requires a skill point, so it's up to you if you want to get them, though the items are decent. That being said, you can just take the option, take a picture, and reset, so it's up to you.

Near the end of the chapter, if you've taken all the old god choices you can, you will be able to access the "Brothers in Arms" diplomatic action. This one action is quite honestly amazing, and probably why Old God play through's seem easier than Christian ones. You have the option of taking a permanent -5% HP debuff to William to get a unit of Unseelie Warriors, or a -5% damage debuff for a unit of Unseelie Archers. The best part is even if you somehow lose them all, you can still build a new unit of them. A fun fact here is that while you are just about to get to tier 3, when you are able to get these troops, you're still tier 2, and there is no tier 2 versions of these troops. With how powerful these troops are, you can quite literally send the archers to fight in melee and they have a fair chance of winning. Both units always come with the teleport skill, and start at rank 10. Don't let the fact they only have a small amount of troops in their unit put you off, each one is worth a lot of humans units.

Lastly, you have a third option, getting the warlord hero Lord Amhlaidh (it can't just be me who thought it sounds like "am laid", right?), for the low low price of getting both HP and damage debuffs. Quite honestly, it's a hard choice in my opinion. Amhlaidh has some good spells for a warlord (he has every ice spell, along with king of ice passive, and can summon a white dragon), and his guard are unseelie warriors as well, meaning they are more powerful than even champion guards, but the warriors or archer options gives the unit without needing a building built, which limits how many of these troops you can get. You will start to be getting a backlog of heroes by this point as well, even if you don't pick up any optional heroes, you should have 3 heroes in the reserve. I think I'd personally go Archers most of the time, but I usually run a little heavy on archers as is (6-8 archers in a army out of 18 units).

You are now tier 2 military wise, meaning you have more powerful troops, allowing you to go to more areas and not get curbstomped by much more powerful troops, as this is the main way of the game "limiting" where you go. You also now have access to some other types of troops as well. The biggest of these differences is being able to upgrade your light cavalry to heavy cav, along with a different type of heavy infantry you can move your Ironguard into.

In my opinion, light cav as a unit is only good to quickly get to Victory Points, and that's about it. Heavy cav can still rundown everything that isn't cav itself, and the Formorian hounds don't actually count as cav either. It has much better stats overall and is definitely an improvement.

One thing you can do though, is if you are okay with spending the gold, when they level up to 5/10/15 and get a new trait option, you can change them to a different type of unit, and get that units trait picks instead. This means you can easily get heavy cav that has the "Haste" ability, allowing them to move 50% faster for 60 seconds, or the masterwork weapons for an extra 10% damage.

Ironguard and Oathbound, the new type of heavy infantry you can get, are very much a defence and offence focused heavy infantry. Which one you want is purely up to you, and how you actually use said infantry. Are they meant to be an anvil so others can hammer into the enemy forces? Do you set them out with the intention of them decimating the enemy by themselves? The biggest thing I'll say though, is while the Oathbound has worse health and defence stats, for only a minor increase to attack stat, the 25% faster attack speed is no joke. They will happily cleave though enemies and not slow down, and is usually my preferred option, even more so because my preferred option for beastmen is Wolfbreed, who have ridiculous levels of armour from the get go. But I'll talk about them later.

Truthfully, unit choice doesn't really matter nearly as much unless your playing on Nightmare or Impossible difficulty. Challenging difficulty, so long as your not sending heavy infantry to fight light in a forest, or leaving your archers completely unprotected against heavy cav, and so on, should be completely fine with whatever you choose. Only thing to watch out for is enemy heroes, champions can mow though even heavy infantry surprisingly quickly, and the mages are not to be under estimated if you can't keep up the magic shield. Normal and Casual difficulties though, you'd have to actively work towards losing units to actually lose one.

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So, fun fact, I have yet to figure out if the Dragon Skull is required for anything. This is the item you get if you kill the dragon in the "Lone Dragon" side quest. It's a powerful component, and admittedly I haven't actually fully played though a tyrant playthough yet where I actually killed it, usually I send it away. I've yet to find some sort of item you can only make from the dragon skull, and haven't found any special interactions as of yet, though saying that, I've never tried giving the skull to to your second army command, who interacts with a lot of dragons. Nor have I tried having it while in Wales.

Now, you might be asking why does this have it's own entire heading. For a long time, I thought both the Arcane forge along with the trader was a waste of time. You can get pretty decent items from the quests and battles, and Arcane forging seems wasteful, losing 3 items in return for 1 item? Might as well just use it for XP. Items from the Trader cost insane levels of gold (you can fully outfit the buildings in a town in return for 1 item?!?). Thankfully, if you listened to me earlier, you should have absolutely no issues with gold.

I think in my first half dozens of games, I might have naturally got 1 or 2 items worth of "recipes" done (usually always seem to get the banner of deepwood though). Since you have to spend a decent amount of resources, even skillpoints, to get some of these recipes, it never seemed worth it.

Then I figured out how to actually use them, and now I actively focus towards using it.

First thing that again took me an uncomfortably amount of time to realise, was that when some items have a bold gold title, it means it is part of a recipe! Even if you don't have the recipe unlocked/showing in the log, it'll still be bolded. So if it shows up in the trader, BUY IT! Some of these recipe items are incredibly powerful. You don't even need to be at the trader to buy it, you can do it at any point, and if no hero is there, it will go straight to your arcane forge inventory. Sadly, you do have to have an hero at the arcane forge to actually forge anything.


Next, at the arcane forge (for like half the game, the only one you'll have access to is Merlins Workshop), you will see the previously mentions 3 items to 1 forged item. A "type" meaning that whatever is forged will be of that type, and a primary and secondary options. This might not mean much just on it's own, unless you've played though enough to have a rough idea of what each name of an item correlates to, so you know what to put in there. Here you have two options:

1) You can randomly put items together, or not so randomly if you do have the idea I said before. This can work surprisingly decently, and it isn't hard to do, as you can change items 1 at a time fairly quickly

Or you can go the sorta cheating way, though I don't consider this that cheaty since you still have to try to make the items, and that's not always the easiest to do.

2) All special forging recipes, along with a list of each property, is easily found at where ever King Arthur is installed/cfg/Artifacts. There are 4 files, which can easily be opened with Notepad, that tells you everything you need to know. It isn't 100% straight forward, since it will say stuff like

"Name=Cape_of_Sir_Brandon
Type=Armor
SubType=Armor
Spells=Defense(1)
Set=SirBrandon
SetSpells=(2 Defense(1)), (3 Magic_shield(2)), (4 Immunity_villam(1))"

Which is how the Cape of Sir Brandon you got in Chapter 1 from said forge is set out in the files. As I mentioned earlier, while the 4th item of Sir Brandon, which is an amulet, was never implemented into the game, there is a fully done artefact table for it, so it might be possible to forge it, but I'm unsure of that, as it isn't in the "recipes" file.

One of the files in that previously mention folder is a "artifact_modifiers" which will actually explain what that "SetSpells" and "Spells" thing actually mean, and that gives you an approximation of what you'd need to put into the forge to get your wanted item.

The next big thing that really changed things up for me, is when you put the 3 items in, it seems like it will do something approaching a dice roll in terms of what gets combined. There isn't a straight combination of effects when you put items together, I've put in something that gives magic shield, and ended up with something that didn't have anything to do with a magic shield. This also means putting the same 3 items into the forge, in the same spaces, won't necessarily give you the same item.

The easiest way I take advantage of this, is having at least 4 items, putting 3 in the forge, looking at the item that would be forged and then just dragging and dropping the 4th item into either the primary or secondary, checking what item would be forged, and if it isn't something I want, dragging the item that was just in the recipe into the same position, and check again. Rinse and repeat, and you can see the many combinations. Some combination of those items could easily make over a dozen different items. Thankfully, the gold bolded title will still come up in the possible forged item, so you will know if it is worth it.

The only issue is, unless you take pictures of the recipe before hand, or, somehow, managed to more easily translate the file is saying into what the item is saying, you might not know what recipe the item is for, and checking the recipe list in game will shutdown the forging window, resetting everything, causing you to need to hunt for the item again. You are able to check your inventory though, so there shouldn't be any reason to double up on items.

Gold, while not nearly as important as other RPG type games in King Arthur, is still very useful. You get more than enough to keep your army topped up, and to be able to build buildings/research and do diplomacy. But if you wish to go down the Trading and Arcane forging path, along with always getting the options to supercharge your troops and heroes, you need a bit more gold than what you get.

You primarily get gold though battles and though quests. You will also get some when you first take over a beast lair, and when you cleanse a corrupted location (along with a minor artefact).

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I have already talked about the Joint Venture option with Medeshem, which will gives you decent returns, though it is a little slow. There are a few other options here and there to get gold, though non of them are repeatable unlike Joint Venture without having to fight something. These are also the only ways to completely legitimately get gold.

The next option, while in chapter 2 is definitely still legitimate, goes a bit pear shaped in chapter 3. There is a roaming Formorian army in Gloucester. Depending on how fast you complete things, you might not realise said army respawns, allowing you to fight them again, getting the gold and experience. When you complete all of chapter 2 bar the last mission to Glastonbury, another Formorian army will spawn from Dumnonia, and is again, one that respawns. That gives you two armies, that for just waiting a few turns, will respawn (I think it's like a 4-6 turn wait to respawn).

The reason it goes pear shaped in Chapter 3, is your first mission is to clear the Dumnonia Formorian Mound. Doing so allows you to get access to your second army. The thing is, the Dumnonia mound is a tier 3 location, to stop you from trying to clear it before going to Glastonbury. This means you get upgraded to tier 3 troops so you can go and complete the mission. This does mean you can easily curbstomp those two roaming armies, without any causalities even unless on impossible. The pear shaped part? So long as you don't clear the the main army in each province, those armies will respawn. A third respawning Formorian army will start spawning as well when you get half way though Chapter 3 up in the Roman lands.

The last option, and one that is most definitely cheaty/buggy, is with the use of Sir Amans, who you get though the Sir Bors questline (Side note, for whatever reason, he has more damage and health than Sir Argavaine, equal to champion stats actually, even though he is a warlord). He has the "Inspiring" trait, which means any time you recruit/replenish in a province he is the lord of, it costs 25% less. You are completely able to have him the lord of the land, start the training of an entire army worth of troops, remove him as lord of said land, and then cancel the training of said army, in which you will get gold back at the normal price, and not the 25% cheaper amount. If your lucky enough, give him a wife that does the same thing (I'm 99% sure there is a wife that does that) to make the discount even higher. Rinse and repeat for however much gold you want. But by then it might just be easier to use the cheat mode. He does quickly gets replaced with Sir Lawrance, who who has the "Enthusiastic" trait which is -50%.

This section will be less of a tips and tricks, and a bit more in lines of a rant/spiel. Objectively, I feel like most of the special Christian units are worse than the Old God/Seelie - Unseelie units. The biggest reason for this is Seelie units get more benefits from buildings and skills and the like, since they have higher stats, and the stated stats are actually for each troop in a unit, not the overal amount. There are also no "Flying/Monster" buildings that give the extra health or damage.

If you compare like to like, I feel like the order for the light infantry available would be Springborn - Autumnborn (there called Autumnbreed in game, but for ease I'm calling them born as well) - normal light infantry - Holy warriors. The Springborn and the Holy warriors get the Armoured modifier, which helps out a lot since one of the best counters to light infantry is archers, but both of the borns also get a bonus to fighting in forests, where light infantry are already king, making them even better. Autumnborns also get the Swift Attack trait. The basic light infantry are more numerous, with roughly the same health, meaning they have a lot more staying power. Yes, Holy warriors also come with 20 armour, 15 more than base deepwoods, but the extra 40 troops in a unit I feel is still better. When compared to Autumnborn, they only have a bonus against them when getting hit by archers, otherwise, either of the borns will easily wipe out a Holy warrior unit, both in the open field and even more so in the forest.

The Christian Tyrant get Lionhearts, who admittedly are quite good heavy infantry, and they will beat Ironguard pretty easily.

Putting them up against either Sidhe warriors is bit of a throw up, since those warriors are less pure heavy infantry, and much more a combination of both light and heavy infantry, giving them much more flexibility. The warriors will still win against a Lionheart unit in open fields, but they'd be heavily bloodied, and most like needed to be retreated back. In a forest, they shine a lot more and will handedly crush a Lionheart unit, since they don't get the debuff for fighting in a forest. You can say this gets balanced a bit more towards the fact each building allows for 2 Lionhearts, where as you only get 1 warrior per building.

Seelie Warriors compared to Unseelie are a bit weird. Unseelie lose 50 attack power at tier 3 in return for 10 more armour. This gets even bigger the further you get in the tiers, with at tier 5 it is a 200 attack power lost in return for 10 more armour only still. How this will effect things I'm not too sure, I've never been able to properly put down how effective armour is.

After this level, things do go a bit different. Old Gods get the Sidhe archers, both of which are the same, and both are absolutely amazing. Archers in this game is a must have, not only for anti-flying unit work, but just in general. Without them, you will have a lot harder time. They might only have 40 troops in a unit, but they fire 2 arrows at once, putting them to 80 arrows, and will have a much higher damage than normal archers.

Christian Rightful get Knights of the Light, a very offensive focused heavy cavalry unit, so much so they actually have less HP than light cavalry. They do have the most damage of all cavalry, and come with the Swift Attack ability, so they attack 25% faster, making that damage all the more better.

Christian Tyrant instead gets Holy Avanger (I think it's meant to be Avenger), who are just weird. I think the closest I can compare them too is the Oathbound line, as they are a heavy infantry focused toward offence more than defence. That being said, they actually have more health and the same armour as the standard Ironguard, and, taking into account the Oathbound 25% faster attack speed, still have slightly more damage than them. Their biggest downside, is they only have 50 troops to a unit, which does bring them more in line with the basic heavy infantry overall. Holy Avengers are the only unit that I would feel could possibly defeat either Sidhe warriors in the open field 1 on 1, but it'll be very chancy.

Sidhe Council Guards/Champions are again a heavy infantry unit that are insanely powerful. They can one v one anything and come out on top, including heroes. Biggest weakness is they don't have any armour modifier, so archers would do a good amount of damage, but I have seen them rip apart a flying unit on their own with barely any damage, so don't expect that too work nearly as well. They've also been dogpiled by 3 formorian heavy infantry on challenging before and came out the winner with only 3 out of 20 dead. There is no reason outside of issues with leadership to not have these guys over warriors, unless you couldn't wait and built the building for them before hand.

A Quick side note, in addition to Spring and Autumn born, there are Summer and Winter born too, which are heavy infantry. They are not a unit you can recruit normally, and are only available though diplomatic interactions and niche events. Summerborn have slightly lower damage and armour for heavy infantry, but insanely high health for their tier, I'm talking about cavalry level health. Winterborn on the other hand have rather insanely low damage, as in light infantry level of damage, but have slightly higher than normal heavy infantry health, along with some of the highest armour available. They both have the Heavily armoured modifier of all heavy infantry, but also get Woodlander, meaning they get a buff while fighting in forests. From testing, this means they'll roughly equal the normal light infantry, unless they also have woodlander, and most definitely win against any other heavy infantry. Spring/Autumnborn will crush Summer/Winterborn in a forest battle though.

Next for the Christians, we have Rightful Guardians and Tyrant Arch Guardians. For whatever reason, Arch Guardians have less health than normal ones, and that is the only difference? Might have something with their ability line, but either way, it makes no sense to me. It's not even more will to fight or armour, everything else but the health is the same for these two units. They units can be amazing, but they are very micro heavy and not the easiest to use. Since they are flying, they are great at capturing Victory points, but contrary to what most people, including me at the beginning thought, don't use them against archers. They will die, as they get focused down and are a priority target for spells too. Heavy Infantry and Cavalry are there preferred target. The absolute best way is to have them sweep down, do their area attack to disrupt things, and then have one of your own units come in to attack before they can get back into formation. Also great for blunting a heavy cav charge too.

Seraphs make next to no sense to me. They might do double the damage of Guardians, but Guardians have double the amount of troops. They also only have slightly more health than Guardians, not even enough to account for even a quarter of an extra guardian. They do get 50 armour to the guardians 20, but I don't feel like this is worth it.

This becomes even worse compared to the Dark Angels, for Tyrant Christian players. Dark angels might only do a third of the damage of Arch Guardians, and nearly half the damage of the Seraphs, but they get an upgraded area attack, so instead of hitting everyone in a 5m radius, it's now 10m. This is massive, as you'd be able to hit the entire troop easily, and could even hit multiple. They also have double the health of Arch Guardians, and about 75% more health than the Seraphs.

TL;DR, Old gods, either Rightful or Tyrant, over Christian, and Tyrant Christian over Rightful Christian.

Warning, I am still playing though Chapter 3, so this part will be updated a lot.


In London, you will now have access to a special type of Military Training option, this is a one off option, that you have 2 choices, you can increase the cost of your light cav for 15%, and they start at level 3, or you can increase it by 25% and they start at level 5. Why this only applies to light cavalry, I don't know, but with how easy it is to get gold, I'd suggest going the 25% increase to cost. You can then just transform you light cavalry into heavy cavalry at will.


You will now have access to 2 series of options. First set is by giving up a unit, you can gain either a unit of Springborn or Autunmbreed, along with the ability to make a new unit if that one gets fully wiped out. Otherwise, for some gold, you can get a unit of either Winterborn or Summerborn, but are not able to replace it if it is wiped out.

There are a few things you can do within Chapter 3, and quite a lot of "quests" along with side missions.

After completing the first quest, you gain a second army commanded by Morgana Le Fay. She is a Sage with lots of offensive spells, making her an incredibly hard hitter. Sadly she has no defensive skills and the only support skill, outside of the standard one all sages get, is the Storm of Avalon spell, something I do use admittedly. As I have said before, I quite like Pengwern Bowmen, and I usually transfer all of them over to Morgana, as coupled with this skill, means your bowmen are usually the only one firing.

There is still a respawning Tier 2 army, if you wish to level up Morgana and her units, though honestly, without giving away some of what happens, it's not really needed to level her units up.

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The Lost Monastery has many different paths you can take, though it always ends up at the same ending. The rewards, outside of either +2 to rightful or tyrant, or ignore it, are easy to get. After that you have many different options, getting a +2 to either faith, or if you explore, you can get a +5% to damage, health or spellpower, though with a 1 battle debuff. In the end it's up to you which you believe would be the best option to get.

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The Green Knight is free to attack whenever, if you don't take him yourself, when you go to war with the Romans, they'll attack him instead.

While I do realise this is an old game, and I doubt it'll ever get an update (one can still hope), I thought I will still just note down some of the bugs that come up. Thankfully, the game is pretty damn polished, so a lot of said bugs are much more towards wording, and can be put down towards localisation issues.

• Beast Master Hero skill doesn't apply defence bonus to beast units - Attack bonus works as intended
  
• Two diplomatic events for Brackenwood, related to how Sir Bors rebelled against King Arthur/William, fires off in the first chapter, even though he doesn't rebel until chapter 2. Could be something around how when you defeat him you automatically control Brackenwood.
  
• Not sure if this is a bug, but in Merlins workshop, you can just walk forward, which will take you to the end of the maze automatically, so you don't need to work out the maze at all. Also, note for missing 4th piece of Sir Brandons set.
  
• Quite a few different speechs seem to not react to your choice at all. Sir Bors doesn't change how he reacts to you, Morgana acts if you chose the option about how she will find Merlin even if you pick the option saying you'd rather she comes with you to the mound, and a fair few others.
  
• The Oxford quest will always seem like you failed it at the end, though there seems to be only 1 possible path to have it so it doesn't become a mound. The ending screen still shows the same failed screen as well. Also, while this isn't the path, I doubt many people will be able to easily be able to follow it without save and restarting each time, as it isn't a straight forward path.
  
  
  Game Breaking Bugs
  
  
  • During Morgana's Quest to the Lady of the Lake, within the interactive choice part, you are able to do a loop that allows for infinite amount of Rightful points.
    
  • As talked about earlier in my How to get gold part of the guide, you are able to get infinite amount of gold by queuing up units in a province governed by a hero with either the "Inspiring" or "Enthusiastic" Traits, removing them as governor, then cancelling the queued units, meaning while they are purchased for cheaper than normal, but when you cancel them you get back the normal price of the unit.
    
  • If you have a hero with a wife that has "Efficient Teacher", when chosen for anything that requires the use of a skillpoint, iif it is the first time, they gain the bonus from the choice, but they will be set to 5 unused skillpoints. It also allows them to be picked again even if they've already gotten the bonus before, and while they won't get the bonus a second time, they will still be put to 5 unused skill points again. It doesn't matter if you have just the 1, or 3 skill points from just leveling up (I haven't tried it when I have more than 5 skill points though), you will still be set to 5.