So, not getting a pre-built city is good because you then don't have to guard it. Awesome logic.
Yes it is. Your ignorance about warfare is showing now. A common tactic employed in war was razing your own towns just so that the enemy couldn't get it. The same idea and logic applies here as well. Actually, it works better,
because Cultists are designed to work with one huge city, so not having any extra cities is a non-issue for them. Other factions are built upon having more than one city and thus outright losing one without any chance of retaking it back can be a painful sting if not an outright devastating blow.
About marines. Is gear giving fixed bonuses, or they scale off basic params? Because in latter case it does not matter much what stats of naked unit were.
It's both. Basic equipment (weapon and armor) give a fixed bonus. Rings, amulets and heroes can give a fixed and % based bonuses to stats. If we decide here and now that it doesn't matter for Marines then it doesn't matter for
any unit either. Cultists 2nd tier units are Archers and have far superior base stats to Marines, btw. That means that if we compare both on equal terms the Cultist will come off with the superior ranged units. I haven't really looked at all the ranged units, but Cultists might be the best non-magical ranged units when not considering Dust Bishops or the Ardent Mages Sorceress units (whatever they were called).
Didn't notice problems with happiness on hard tbf. That's what luxuries are for and they're not a big problem for a faction that can actually expand, but I guess depending on the map seed it can happen that happiness will hamper you a bit.
It is entirely up to RNGesus, yes. I've had lots of outright stinker beginnings. Luxuries are there to help boost happiness, but you may not always be in a situatiion where you have access to them. Unless you are a Broken Lord in which case they don't give a shit about food production and probably not so much about industry either and just focus on dust, which is not affected by happines. I think that's crazy and just solidifies how utterly (too) powerful Dust is compared to everything else.
Money that's better spent on buying units and buildings. Also, is it actually possible to have so much money that keeping all the best boosters up all the time is no problem with Cultists like I did with Vaulters or Broken Lords (without spending money)? I will have to check that, but from what I've seen so far it might be problematic.
Ah, but you don't need so much money for buildings since you only have one city. Also keep in mind that you'll be selling stacks of units for 8-10k dust at mid-game.
If you have access to them. Could be that you are shit out of luck and don't have 1st tier luxury items in your region, but such is the nature of the game.
Eh, that's a strawman. I didn't say they're great just because they're ranged. I said that starting with ranged army is the best possible option while starting with support is the worst and that's 100% true. Being able to start and win fights from turn 1 is important and yes, you do have to fight as many quests require it and you will be attacked when exploring.
It's not a strawman because it is absolutely true. There are many minor factions that will slap your shit hard if all you have are Marines. Delvers are pretty much the absolute worst and your beginner Marines can take them on, but have fun trying to subjugate something more badass like the Kazanji. There are quests that require you to fight, true, but in those cases you use option B and bribe them to join you.
They're still cannon fodder for equipped and upgraded armies so my point stands.
Only applies to late game and against other players. The AI is incapable of upgrading their units with any of the meaningful items that require strategic resources. Disregarding that, there is no chance at all of having more than one well equipped army until the player gets to the later stage of the game. It is very resource intensive and expensive to have a fully upgraded army. Add in the fact that you have a ton of cities to manage and a lot of very important buildings cost a buttload of those same resources that you need to upgrade your troops.. Yes there is no denying that they are mooks, that is much of their point, but they are good enough as mooks to raid smaller enemy cities en masse from all sides of their empire. The enemy will be unable to protect all of their cities and militia are shituseless against anything so they should be good enough to raze at least a town or two which is a sufficiently good victory. You just need to do it before people start getting into the era where they can get the good equipment that only requires dust, which should be easy enough. I always fill up my towns with troops that are equipped in that dust gear because it is amazingly effective and perfect for making city defense forces.
Sorry for not having the time to address everything, I should be studying now instead of talking about video games.
Edit: It just occurred to me that I forgot to make one important point about the minor factions: In order for the enemy to take them back they have to declare war against you. For example, my friend playing as a Cultist was just swimming in influence points and always had all city plans maxed out, he also had a shitton of excess points that he used to
keep complementing his enemies. This makes sure that they don't declare war against him and if they do, the influence cost is much higher. That means that they will risk losing city development plans due to a large loss of influence.
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