Plaguelords/Buildings 1.03

Hall of Plague
The Hall of Plague is a very unique building, not only can is cast a horrific spell, but it doesn't follow the typical pattern that all keeps follow. Its hit points are low and only slightly increase during "some" level upgrades. In addition, its view range increases as it levels up, too. However, the building is still massive, more so than some other keeps and it doesn't cost gold to build - crystal and stone only. You will also notice that the building seems to made out of other Plaguelord buildings, such as a Plague Shrine and Laboratory. Like with some other races, the Plaguelord keep is where their Titan is produced, so you'll need to make sure it's placed well at the start of the game to ensure Lord Antharg doesn't get stuck when he arrives on the field.

That Chaos Plague it can cast can be horrific to face, but it's quite a mixed bag. On one hand it can potentially end an enemy sweeping the map, reducing their powerful army to a war-ridden mess. But on the other hand, it simply wont save the Plaguelord player from a strong invasion - only weakening them for who ever they face next. It also costs an appalling amount of 500 crystal. This factor alone will probably prevent you from ever using it, as you'll never have that much crystal when you need it. The only time the spell will be beneficial to the Plaguelord player is to cut the hit points down of very powerful enemy units, such as Dragons, allowing the Plaguelords to quickly dispose of the threat before it does too much damage.

Tower (Plaguelords)
Nearly every tower in the game requires a large amount of stone or gold, however, the Plaguelords' towers do not. Unfortunately though, they require a very large amount of crystal instead, which the rest of the race is in dire need of. Otherwise, though, their towers aren't actually that expensive when compared to the towers of other races. But that cost shows its worth as the towers themselves are only considered to be below average at best with all things in consideration, as well as having a long build time. This is further compromised with their builder's poor build skill. Although the tower's electrical attack allows it to penetrate common missile resistant units, such as Orcs and Skeletons, the Plaguelords race lack missile units that possess other attack types until they gain access to Eyes of Flame, forcing their towers to usually use electrical attacks.

Ghouls and the standard Hydras work well in aiding the tower's defense, as units that are resistant to electrical attacks are usually weak, or at least weaker, to physical attacks. This also works well as a hefty meet shield for the tower, which you certainly don't want to get damaged much or else you'll be paying a regretful crystal fine.

Cess Pool
Cess Pools are the Plaguelords basic and more common production buildings. They produce builders and the most basic infantry. Because of this, you'll find yourself building quite a decent amount of these almost immediately at the start of the game. Fortunately, they're relatively small in size, especially for a production building, and would build quite quick if it weren't for the Zombie's lower than average build skill. This means you can quite easily get many up and running without any hassle. Despite producing just basic infantry when it comes to offensive units, late game Ghouls can still be useful, so you'll still be producing units from these buildings even when you have no mines that need to be filled.

Laboratory
The Laboratory is purely a research building that power-ups the Plaguelords basic infantry (Slimes and Ghouls) and allows for Slimes to be produced at the Cess Pool. The building is about average in size and quite expensive in regards to its gold cost. As the building and its researches are available right at the start of the game (after building your keep) you can, if you choose to do so, power-up your infantry immediately. The cost of these researches don't usually clash with leveling up you main keep, but can hit your infantry production hard.

Temple of Eyes
The floating eyes are some of the more common units you would be fielding within the Plaguelords army, and they are both produced and upgraded from the Temple of Eyes. Due to how long it takes to produce Eye of Flames and the fact that there are 2 other units from this building that you may be making use of throughout the game, then you will need to build a few of these buildings - usually around 3-4 in your average game. Although they are bigger than the Cess Pools, they are still relatively small in size.

Plague Pile
Plague Piles may only build Bone Catapults, but they have two other reasons why a Plaguelords player will be building plenty of them - the ability to increase to virulence of disease, making the illness more viable, and an increased army limit of +3. Although very small in size, they do cost a lot of crystal and building more than a few in succession will cause problems for the Plaguelords economy. You are encouraged to build as many of these as you can, but you must keep a good balance between building these and running the rest of your base / army, otherwise you might find your very own skull among the pile!

Brood level 1
The Plaguelords don't really make much use of their Broods, simply because they can't usually afford anything from it. Dragonflies are the only affordable unit, although you still need to produce a lot of them to make them effective, but aren't useful to the race and thus not worth producing. Wyverns are expensive and their cost clashes horribly with the rest of the race, reducing the possibility of producing them, but are otherwise great fliers. The Plaguelords choice of Dragons are both decent choices, but again, they cost an incredible amount (especially for the Dragonliche) and the Plaguelord player simply has to make drastic cut backs in order to get one in production - which usually leads to other problems. Plaguelords Broods are really only for the richest of Plaguelords players - unless you're doing well, building and upgrading a Brood may just be nothing but a liability.

Casket
Caskets are available to the Plaguelords in tier 3 and they are needed to allow Spores to be produced at the Temple of Eyes. Caskets are small and somewhat weak for a building, but they cost quite a lot of both gold and crystal. Fortunately, you'll only ever need to build one (assuming the enemy don't get their hands on it) so the price is really only a one time expense. Other than allowing Spores to be produced, it can also research damage upgrades for them. Each of these upgrades only offers a minor damage improvement but yet cost a sickening amount! It is indeed believable that the game could be over before you get the final upgrade.

Hydra Cave
Like the floating eyes, the Hydras also come in 3 different variations. The basic Hydra Cave can only produce the standard Hydra but when the Cave is upgraded, it looses the ability to produce it and can only produce one of the other two elite Hydras. The standard Hydra is very useful as it possess a great piercing resistance, making it ideal to lumbering down typical archers and towers. As such, even with the option to upgrade the Hydra Cave, you'll find yourself still owning a few that remain a normal Hydra Cave. Because of this and the fact that each upgraded Hydra Cave only builds one of the Hydra types, you'll be needing to build a bunch of these buildings just to complete the set. They're roughly average in size, perhaps slightly bigger, which doesn't exactly make things easy for you.

In version 1.03.25, the Hydra Cave upgrades were done away with, allowing all 3 Hydra types to be produced from the standard Hydra Cave, as well as removing the need to obtain a Fire Cave before you can produce Eye of Flames.

Fire Cave
Fire Caves only produce Pyrohydras but do allow for Eye of Flames to be produced from the Temple of Eyes.. Although Pyrohydras have the potential to do massive damage against all targets, they are let back by their high cost, terrible weakness and being over shadowed by other units in the Plaguelords army that can generally do more with less. Things aren't made any better for them when you take into consideration that to upgrade to a Fire Cave is to loose your standard Hydra Cave and with it the standard Hydra. Because of this, you may actually want to fore go upgrading your Hydra Caves into Fire Caves, although you will still need to upgrade at least one in order to produce Eye of Flames.

Note: In the unmodified game the AI can't upgrade their Hydra Caves and thus don't get access to the Fire or Ice Cave.

Ice Cave
Cryohydras are more manageable than Pyrohydras, as well as possessing an attack type that no other unit in the Plaguelords army has. This makes Cryohydras more viable than their fiery brother and Ice Caves worth that upgrade - which however, costs a lot of crystal to do. Even with Cryohydras around, the standard Hydra is still useful. So don't upgrade all your Hydra Caves to Ice Caves and remember to leave some un-leveled.

Note: In the unmodified game the AI can't upgrade their Hydra Caves and thus don't get access to the Fire or Ice Cave.

Plague Shrine
Plague Shrines produce the Plaguelords' General - the Plague Priest. It also researches faster mana regeneration skills, but the Plaguelords race don't make much use of it (although the Hero can still benefit greatly from them). The building is average in size, but unexpectedly weak and cost 3 different resource to build. Due to cost issues, you wont be having many Plague Priests in production at once, so you wont need many of these buildings - a couple is really all you need under standard circumstances.

Brood level 2
Wyverns are actually really good units and can help out when fighting Orcs, but as stated before, the Plaguelord player will struggle to add these to the mix of their units due to their high cost of gold and crystal. The price of getting a Brood to level 2 is also another issue, especially at tier 4. If you're struggling at this point with resources in general, then don't bother upgrading your Broods (or even build them) - if you can't afford a small attack force of Wyverns, then there's no hope for Dragons and thus no need to upgrade.

Brood level 3
Costing a total of 900 gold and 1000 stone with the reward requiring further amounts of gold and crystal, it simply isn't practical for the Plaguelords to sacrifice so much and jump through all those hoops needed just to pull a Dragon out of the Brood, unless you are doing incredibly well - but one could argue that if you are doing well enough to get a Dragon with out much hassle, then you probably don't need it. Granted, Dragonliches are amazing and Swamp Dragons aren't too far behind, but typically by the time your Dragon is ready after making many cut backs, you're likely to be in a position where a Dragon wont help.