How to play Southern Orcs
Alignment
Southern orcs are mostly neutral, in comparison to the standard orcs. Few units remain chaotic, so they are good during the night or in the underground.
Core units
Goblin Pikeman I-II - Very basic and offense oriented unit, good against horsemen or drakes. Cheap and fragile.
Greenie Messenger - Level 0 unit, that can quickly get villages. Ineffective in combat. Patriarchs can upgrade their strength with their leadership.
Orcish Bowman I-III - Poison specialist, with ranged and melee poison weapons. Also have access to fire damage. Can be upgraded to orcish Crossbow and lose all the specialities, but gain very powerful single ranged attack.
Orcish Heavy Infantry I-IV - Core of the southern orcish army. With very good armor, these fighters are very strong and resilient, so enemy have to use cold or fire to kill them. Slow and expensive, but very useful to hold the line or attack. With hammers, they can smash skeletons. Pair heavy infantry with patriarchs and bowmen/crossbowmen.
Orcish Light Infantry I-III - Light fighter, that is hard to hit by non-magic enemies. Not very deadly, but fast. Maneuverable, but they are not heavy hitters. They are chaotic, stronger during the night.
Orcish Medium Infantry I-III - Almost like classic grunts, but stronger, with 2 very similar melee attacks, that helps a bit when needed. Many attacks, but weaker. Good all around unit, that is also faster than expected. No ranged attack.
Orcish Patriarch I-IV - Leader, not very strong in battle. leadership and cold damage make them a good combo with medium or heavy infantry, or with level 0 messengers. Chaotic. They can also heal +4 all units and hold the line, while other units are in the village or behind the patriarch.
Level 2+ units
Orcish Crossbow II-III - Mixture between classic orcish crossbowman and dwarvish thunderers. Good when used correctly against the correct enemy.
Orcish Messenger I-II - Scout. Good resistances to fire and cold, so they can hunt down mages and dark adepts - or survive longer against them, when they block their retreat path.
Basic strategy
As leader, you can use a partriarch. Generally a good unit that can help others gain experience faster. Also you can go for bowman to get access to poison early on. Another variant is light infantry, if you wish to take villages early on with leader.
Use messengers to get far villages. Do not buy too many of them, because they are not very strong. Many of your units are good in defending villages.
Many of your units are neutral, so try to use this to your advantage. During the night, try to attack with help of your patriarchs and bowmen.
Combine patriarchs (leadership, slowing, healing) with bowmen (poison) to weaken enemy. use your infantry to smash them. You do not have any mages and any weak units (with exception of level 0 scout), so you do not need to heal so much. However, at least one fifth of your army should be patriarchs.
Against special enemies, add these units:
- Anyone strong and not magic oriented should be slowed and killed by heavy hitters like heavy infantry.
- Mages can be killed with light infantry, medium infantry or messengers.
- Drakes are weak to cold, pierce and arcane. You have two options. Kill them in melee with your strong units, or slow them (patriarch) and damage them by poison (bowmen). Also crossbows are very effective.
- Elves in forests can be poisoned by your bowmen, same as dwarves in mountains. Poison is very good in most situations and not everyone dare to attack bowmen in melee combat. It means that you can have a lot of them, and still enemy will prefer attack your more melee oriented units, like classic infantry.
Upgrading
High priority: patriarchs, bowmen