The Earth Line is far better than the Fire line. Maybe the summons can do more damage, but the second Fire summon, Delin, costs five hundred mana, can only be cast during tactical battles, and only summons Delin for three turns. If you're having trouble finding the mana to cast things other than early summons and curses, there's no way that you could find the mana to summon Delin. Beyond that, there's no way that a single summon that lasts three turns in tactical combat is capable of matching the usefulness of ~12 Blizzards, which you could cast for slightly less mana and which are each more or less sufficient to kill a full-size army.

Beyond that, Crag Spawns, Earth Elementals, and Grave Elementals are decent tanks, and Grave Elementals grant any unit of yours adjacent to it when it was summoned a shot at resurrection, which is rather useful for protecting high-level or weak units. This is in contrast to the Ignys and Fire Elemental, which are far too vulnerable to even risk as front-line units - these things are more for finishing blows, yet in general as Wraiths you don't need assistance in the killing department, you need assistance in the tanking department. Also, in general a large trained unit will outperform most summons in the damage department, anyways, but Wraiths are, shall we say, lacking in the tank department between their lack of metal armor and their low health (and yes, I acknowledge that you can make a dodge tank, and Wraiths are even relatively suited to it, but dodge is badly outpaced by accuracy, especially if units are coming out of fortresses with the accuracy-boosting structures, are lead by Commanders focusing on the Leadership line, or which were designed to counter dodge units; besides which, it only takes one or two lucky hits and a dodge tank just turned into no tank at all, and dodge tanks additionally have to spend most or all of their traits and much of their equipment on things that give dodge bonuses instead of potentially more useful traits and equipment that give health, damage, and initiative). Incidentally, Burning Wraiths and Fire Elementals are very similar, so if you don't like Burning Wraiths you probably won't think too highly of Fire Elementals either.

The secondary effects of summoning Ignys and Fire Elementals are more or less equal to the secondary effects of summoning Earth Elementals - all three damage surrounding targets, and the damage is likely going to be similar for all three unless you can convince the AI to keep standing in the fires left by the Fire Elemental summon. Crag Spawn provide an area debuff upon being summoned that is useful for delaying enemies while any ranged units you have weaken them, and additionally have more health than Fire Elementals (which means that they can last in close contact with things they can't readily kill more easily than Fire Elementals can), Delin provides no on-summon effect that I know of (though I've never actually cast the spell, because it cost 500 mana and only lasts 3 turns in a tactical battle), and Grave Elementals provide a useful effect for keeping units alive and in the fight (namely, once-per-battle resurrection for any friendly in the eight tiles adjacent to it when it was summoned, although the death ward will only last five turns).

I generally would consider the Burning Wraiths to be only slightly worse than Cyndrum Demons. Both are too lacking in health and defense for me to really consider using them in an army. If I have a Fire Mage, I'll keep the Fire Shards; if I don't, I'll still only convert it if I'm focusing on making Death Magic powerful. Fire Shards are just too useful for too many damage spells for me to really be inclined to corrupt them unless I'm actively focusing on Death Magic.

resoln trained troops aren't that bad actually. wraith blood adds 20 dodge, the monk robe adds another 10 and you can get another 20 if you pick the 2 dodge traits. if they get hit, they can't absorb lots of damage (which is a problem late in the game vs. an AI that stack the repeatable +hit technology), but against most monsters and early/mid game AI troops ~50 dodge units will take little damage (probably less than full leather armored troops with no dodge). they are definitely tougher than the free shard demons. 

More like I am playing with a really weak race and still winning anyway and I think they are weak.

Any race can have an equally good mage sovereign, and better other stuff besides.

If all the abilities of the race and all of the abilities of the sovereign were picked randomly, it would probably be just as good as Resoln is.

There is just no cohesion there, you have to rely on really powerful spells because you don't really have anything else.  Other races can have really powerful spells and instead of nothing backing it up they can have good stuff backing it up.

I really like the infinite cannon fodder to make sure your perimeter cities can have lots of free defenders, but hopefully when you have freeze it won't be an issue anyway.

I really tried hard to get a lot of use out of all their special stuff and not just play like a handicapped version of some better race and imho their stuff was just nerfed entirely too hard from FE to LH.

Map Random, Size Small, Type Mountainous, Wildlands Balanced, Production Default, Quests Balanced

Difficulty Challenging, Monsters Moderate, Pacing Normal, Magic Moderate, Resources Moderate, Random Events More Often

Ceresa is lvl 12, Kallus is level 10.  They were both in the same group since I got my first hero which was Kallus.  Shard spawns up to about level 10 for the youngs and 8 for the ancients.  Season is 271.  The whole magic tree is researched.  The whole civilization tree is researched except wildlands and logistics/company.  Only the first 2 levels + both mounts in the warfare tree.  No repeatables.

Well, I did just fully complete a game with the exact same settings using a "fixed" Resoln in 200 turns and that was at a leisurely pace.  

For the game in question, the game putting me in the middle of a huge swamp slowed me down.  Having all my cities with 6 total resources or less slowed me down.  The race itself slowed me down.  Having exp mobs get lucky one shot kills on both my initial units early game slowed me down.  Having 0 crystals the whole game slowed me down.  Spending lots of time healing because everything had 0 defense slowed me down.

I wouldn't say the game in question gave me an "average" start, but the point is that I wasn't really far ahead at any point.

My fixed race added Beastmaster, Cautious, and Veteran in place of Summoner, Attunement, and Sovereign bond.  It also added Enchanters and Master Scouts in place of Binding and Adepts.

In the fixed game I just did a normal strategy with some tank units and no second hero to slow down the first one.  Didn't need a defender second hero, because I had units that could tank.  I didn't even use Cautious, I just thought it would make sense for someone that can see the future to be careful to avoid battles it would lose.  I also forgot that I even had Beastmaster, I thought I was still a summoner.  I even had 2 beast collars unused in addition to Tame.  I didn't put anything in the summon line, instead staying upper tree and getting level 3+ in everything except Earth.

Not that I couldn't have done something somewhere in that ballpark with the first game, but I was actually trying to make full use of all of the race's abilities and use shard spawns, use trained spiders, etc.

Basically, I am just trying to say that certain strategies are a whole lot better than others and IMHO Resoln isn't well suited to any of those.  Resoln, played like you might assume it is supposed to be played when you look at the abilities, is pretty weak.

Feel free to chime in any time about why you think it is supposed to be strong instead of just claiming it isn't weak.  Ideally, that would involve a strategy that some other race couldn't do better.

Hi all

I know this comes in 4 months after. But I ran into this thread while searching for something else. Being that Resoln is the only race I play (I have played others though) I must admit I have grown to know almost all aspects to it. The very reason why they have the spiders is for the webbing and confusion as is as vital and no one here in this thread has ever mentioned how important it is.

Resoln lacks armor, but also it has ways of "delaying" attackers. Resoln needs to hold the attackers, debuff them, then destroy them in order to PRESERVE units. Those that are losing spearmen or gravewardens or units in general have no clue as to how to play Resoln. Let me tell you, the purpose of leveling your army isn't only the bonus in attacks, HP or anything else. Is because of the Wraith Touch ability. This scales as the formula goes: 2 points of "vampiric" power per level PER unit. So it means a typical level 7 unit of 4 soldiers would do let's see: 56 Dmg. Now, you don't have to use that power just to heal. And also it doesn't cost any mana. 

Resoln is a Death Worshiper. So I dont care what people say about what shards to convert or what not to. I convert EVERYTHING on sight. You will know you're doing it right when you have 12+ Death Shrines and you can SOLO towns. Dirge of Cereza + Wither + Mass Curse + Siphon Strength/Life and finally: Touch of Entropy. I have witnessed how many Yithril empires had thought they could bring their "uber" juggernauts just to see them die in an otherwise humiliating way. I've even stayed just skipping g turns on purpose doing nothing just waiting for the poor juggernaut slowly die at 15 HP/s but has 0 attack to fight back. I know other means of playing Resoln, feel free to pm me if you want.

So I know this is old, but that's how you do it.

Maybe I will disappoint you, but I do play up to "Challenging" difficulty. I have played on "Expert", but with a custom faction based on Resoln of course and against a single opponent (or more, but just one on Expert). On "Expert", the lack of armor on Resoln becomes an issue. Also, you have to kind of be fond of Shadow Bolt to debuff the pesky Gilden and others with their magic resistance. An enemy debuffed means Contagion and Curse + Blindness + Graveseal which equals fun.

I haven't checked how many turns I spent towards winning so I can't give you an exact number, maybe like 300 turns?

Hope that worked for you!

All AI Sovs have two AI traits that influence their behavior. Ceresa has Paranoid or Insane or something like that. So yeah, she's not your most friendly neighbor usually. But the AI doesn't really know how to play Resoln. It should be fairly easy to conquer them.

@Darkstare: You are right, Challenging and Expert aren't very impressive Keep experimenting and one day you'll be able to beat the game on Insane!