Daemon Buildings

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Daemon Buildings

Doomspire
The Doomspire is quite a poor keep comparatively to those of the other races and this comes from a variety of factors. Firstly, it's one of the more expensive keeps in the game, requiring three different resources and a collectively higher cost than other keeps. Secondly, the building is massive AND has a terrible shape, making it difficult to find a suitable place to build it. And finally, it barely does anything. Apart from the expected converting and leveling up, the only other thing it does is builds Quasits, which can be obtained from another Daemon building later on. With all these things in consideration, there is pretty much no reason to ever build more than one of these other than making a second base somewhere else for a backup plan.

Tower (Daemon)
Daemon towers are quite impressive. With their great stats, elemental attack type that bypasses missile resistant units and generally cheap build cost (for a tower) they are one of the best in the game. The only sub par issue based on the building itself is its build time - which is somewhat mitigated by the Daemon builder's great build skill. There is, however, another issue which isn't really the fault of the tower's. The Daemon race lacks small units that can actually garrison a tower. One is an infantry unit, the other is a missile unit. This leaves the Daemons' towers with very little in the way of customization options. With fire being quite a common attack type to resist late game and the Daemons' only missile unit that can garrison being their electric damage-dealing General, their towers can end up being quite ineffective or easy to exploit, undermining their otherwise great stats.

But to quickly dismiss the Daemons' defensive capabilities would be a foolish mistake, for they have access to a second defensive structure - the Lightning Spire. With its amazing 60 magic damage and tower-like toughness, they can be added to the perimeter of the Daemons' base which, when combined with the standard towers, can make seiging them difficult. However, once must note that the Lightning Spire also possesses the electrical projectile that their standard towers acquire from their Generals being garrisoned, reducing the effectiveness of that sick damage output by having a miss really missing! This does mean that full on armies can fare much better against the Daemon base than using less but more powerful units.

Pit
The Pit is the Daemons' core production building, producing all Daemonic infantry except for their General. As such, you will be making many of them. Like most core production buildings in WBC3, they're thankfully not very big, allowing you to actually fit quite a few within your starting grounds where they can be easily protected. They also have fantastic view range and good hit points. Although, they're not the cheapest of buildings around and their shape is a little space-wasting on the horizontal sides.

Gallows
The Gallows serve two purposes: the first one being an income research building, offering surprisingly cheap income rate skills. The second is allowing the production of Reapers and the Pit, ensuring the Gallows still serve a purpose once those income skills have been researched. The building itself is quite small, pretty durable but rather expensive. Considering the usefulness of the income skills and how cheap they are for the Daemons, the Gallows should be the first building you build when reaching tier 2, unless your enemy knows the Banish spell - in which case the Portal takes priority.

Portal
The Portal is the Daemons' main research building, offering a broad range of differing skills, including a seriously important one - Binding. The skills researched from the Portal all have large affects on the Daemon race and the building is also required for the production of Succubi, which all makes the Portal very important and thus should be of high priority to build. Although, if your opponent lacks the Banish spell (which is quite likely) then you could build the Gallows ahead of the Portal for those very useful income skills. The improved income would also help out with the expenses of the researches found at the Portal.

The Portal also offers a large +4 points to your army limit that could help support the usually large Daemon units, but, despite being about average in size, it's terrible shape makes them undesirable to build - leaving many pockets of wasted space and potentially trapping your builders after completion when built too close to another object. Further more, going through tier 3 and 4, the Daemons can build Lightning Spires which, when upgraded, offer +3 army limit points as well as acting as a powerful secondary defensive structure. This pretty much means the Portal shouldn't be used to increase your army limit.

Brood level 1
The Daemons aren't short in the department of flying units, which immediately puts pressure on the usefulness of the actual generic fliers. Imps are overall better than Firebats and Harpies are more situational with Daemons than with most other races that have access to them. Unless you are fighting High Elves, then you could delay your Broods till tier 5 when Dragons become available. Due to the lack of usefulness of those basic and advanced fliers, you will probably never be needing to build any more than two Broods. It's even debatable whether its worth building them just for their Dragons, as a swarm of Daemons and Imps usually tend to be enough to take out most opponents. Still, a Fire Dragon can raze buildings fast and a Storm Dragon can help against spellcasters, so they can distinguish themselves and work hand in hand with the flying Daemon units - it just comes down to whether you actually need even more brute force to take on your opponent.

Lightning Spire level 1
Although the Daemons' towers possess great stats, they are limited in their ranged offenses due to a lack of customization options. This is where Lightning Spires come in. The damage output from these buildings through sheer power, speed and damage type can fill in that gap left wide open from the lack of options for the standard towers. 50 magic damage absolutely stings and with so few units in the game that resist the type will lead the Lightning Spires to be a real pain to deal with. However, with a range of 8, using the electrical projectile and limited to just grounded units hampers the building's offensive capabilities. Thankfully, they can be upgraded via a level increase in tier 4 that allows them to hit aerial targets as well. But they will still have a range of just 8 and use that same projectile.

As you would expect from something that has tower like stats, it is expensive to build and also cost a fair amount to upgrade, too. But that should not put you off building them, for their small size, +3 army limit when upgraded also allows them to serve a second role - army limit increasing. Where the Portal failed, the Lightning Spire takes over and shows what an army limit can really do!

Summoning Tower level 1
Summoning Towers are what get the ball rolling for Daemons in the late game. With many great researches to be had, Generals to be built and even Quasits to summon, the Summoning Towers become highly important and can be quite busy. They're not particularly big, but they cost a fortune - and that's just to start with. With two following level upgrades, even more expensive that the initial cost, you will end up feeling robbed after getting just one to reach the final level. But the cost is well worth it and each level's upgrades really do a lot to the Daemon race, so building them when available is definitely something you should consider.

The first level offers faster Daemonic unit production and the ability to summon eight Quasits upon will. The typical high cost of the Daemon units can conflict with a faster production rate, but being able to summon a full mine's worth of workers immediately can lead to even faster income by fully filling a newly converted mine then and there.

Chaos Shrine
The Chaos Shrine is another research building for the Daemons, one that focuses on mana speed and defensive upgrades. Despite being the building honored of producing Balora, it doesn't actually prevent the race from being defeated. It's somewhat small, cheap but weaker than the other Daemon buildings. Chaos Shrines are also needed for the production of the Daemons' main unit - the Daemon. This means you'll still need to keep a Chaos Shrine around even after obtaining everything from it. Well, I suppose you could always rely on Summoners to get you your Daemons. :p

Lightning Spire level 2
Once upgraded, the Lightning Spire overcomes one of it's drawbacks - the limitation of what units it can fight is removed. Not only that, but its hit points shoot right up and even its damage output increases! As mentioned in the summery of the Lighting Spire level 1, its army limit increases to +3. With these in consideration, the upgraded Lightning Spire is simply amazing and really does help out in those areas where the Daemons are at their weakest. However, despite a magic type attack, the Lightning Spire uses the electrical projectile that does not scatter upon a miss. Unfortunately, there are more bad points to come - its standard range of 8 does not increase during the level upgrade and by not actually being a tower, it doesn't get that hidden combat bonus, meaning its attacks are more likely to miss than a typical tower. But bad points aside, the Lightning Spire is still a great structure that helps out in many areas, whether it's with the army limit, in defense or even by making it rain where the Daemon units get a combat bonus.

Summoning Tower level 2
With each Summoning Tower upgrade comes more powerful researches for the Daemons, and here at level 2, all produced Daemon units become cheaper while summoned units become stronger! These two skills come at a great cost, though, for the Summoning Tower level 2 upgrade costs an incredible amount. But there are other added bonuses that come with it - an increased army limit and a 100 more hit points.

Brood level 2
If you're choosing to go down the route of Dragons or need to deal with annoying spellcasters that brute force doesn't seem to be working against, you will at some point be stopping off at a level 2 Brood. At this level you can produce Harpies and even upgrade them, but it's unlikely your Harpies will actively be engadging enemies in combat, so the research has little purpose. Firebats can still be produced, but again are still outclassed by Imps except for tackling enemy towers that deal fire type damage.

Summoning Tower level 3
It took 1250 Crystal, 900 Stone and 3 minutes, but you finally have you Summoning Tower level 3. Only one new research is granted upon reaching this level (Gate 2) but you can now produce the Daemons' General - the Summoner. This immediately opens up new strategies to the Daemon race through the use of a missile unit that can garrison towers, removing enemy Extra-Planar creatures from play and, more importantly, being able to summon the best Daemonic unit around, which takes delight in those Gate skills also obtained through the Summoning Towers. Due to the ridiculous cost to get a Summoning Tower level 3, you rarely will be able to pull off any more than two. This drastically reduces the amount of Summoners you can produce at once as well as drawing much enemy attention to itself. Fortunately though, it has a great amount of hit points - 800 in fact, which can help withstand enemy assaults while the rest of your army pushes them away.

Brood level 3
With Daemons being a naturally powerful race, featuring mighty flying creatures that bring death and destruction in their wake, Dragons generally don't seem that much stronger, especially the two Dragons that the Daemons can get a hold of. That's not to say they're useless for Daemons - just not as outstanding as they are seen in some other races. Fire Dragons can make besieging bases quicker with their fire breath attack, while Storm Dragons can throw a spanner in the works for enemy spellcasters and torment swarming units that are resistant to fire, who would otherwise laugh at Salamanders and Fire Dragons. However, Daemons are still more than capable of winning the game without them, so there's no real pressure to get a Brood to level 3, so there's no need to make cut back to make a bunch of Broods.