[quote=Dragar;682587]
Quote:
Originally Posted by DonCorazon
Baalz - agree on the usefulness of warlocks, and getting a couple with E is critical (i just scored a natural E2 in one game  ) with bloodstones an early must. However, most of their uses are late game. |
I don't know that I agree with that. To be sure, I'm not for a second arguing that demonbred are not excellent units, nor that a reasonable person couldn't decide they're the way to go over warlocks for some situations, but I think warlocks are very, very useful early on and just get better as the game goes on. Now, I can't really argue with Micah's general plan of not recruiting them heavily until const-6 is researched, but if you bite the bullet and accept a couple losses from old age they contribute mightily from very early.
Consider where you're at around the end of the first year. Your heavy infantry is tough enough to ward off most threats, but there are a couple things you're vulnerable to if you don't have mage support. Elephants and thugs/SC pretenders who are fire immune are the most likely threats and astral mages are the most obvious answer. An early thaum research along with around a dozen warlocks gives you on average a couple guys who can teleport in and spam paralyze (soul slay) which transforms you from a one trick slow pony into a very mobile and flexible threat who nobody can really even easily conquer your PD. Level 4 research is not exactly late game, and that opens up everything (depending on your early direction) from bloodstones and soul contracts to demon knights and blood rain. A single level 5 could also arguably be grouped into the early game and that's hoarde from hell, bloodletting & send lesser horror - all of which are *wickedly* effective early on fueled by a blood economy jumpstarted by powerful blood mages. To my mind it's just got a wonderful synergy, your warlocks (ignoring cost effectiveness) are the absolute best choice to get your blood economy jumpstarted, while also being the absolute best choice for casting rituals, and the absolute best choice for combat. The more you recruit, the more likely you are to have a couple with the random you really want earlier. You sacrifice a bit of cost efficiency, particularly before you can forge boots of youth, but cost efficiency is not generally the top concern when considering capital only mages. I guess that's the big part of my feeling about recruiting warlocks, if you recruit 12 warlocks in year one, then the chances are good you've got a couple E randoms to site search, a couple S randoms to teleport around, and couple B randoms to supercharge your bloodhunting and forge your boosters. Having less warlocks means you're much more likely to have a run of bad luck and not have landed the guys you really want by the time you need them. It's not *that* uncommon to go 10 rounds of recruiting without getting ie an earth random to prime the pump with site searching....