Dwarves have picked up a factional Ability at last! It goes like this...

Drunken
Unit begins the battle drunk for 3 turns, which reduces damage taken by 15% and provides a 15% chance to do 25% more damage on any given attack, but doubles their odds of Missing enemies or being Charmed by units. When Drunken runs out, the unit has a 50% chance of falling asleep. Additionally, every unit with the Drunken Ability has unique effects that are only active or available while they are Drunk. Drunkenness cannot be Dispelled.

I'll use each unit's individual Drunken Ability to lay out their unique While Drunk effect.

The damage reduction is small but doesn't care about damage type, so it's nice, particularly when dealing with threats that have unusual damage types. Do note that it's not a proper resistance and so doesn't have the quality of being a bigger effective reduction on existing resistances; you shave off 15% of the final damage, simple as that.

The damage bonus is, unfortunately, essentially irrelevant. Its odds are low enough you can't plan around it happening, not even really on average, and while the boost is bigger than Drunken's damage reduction it's still not that large, easily lost amid natural damage variation. For the actual Dwarven units it's basically just free damage, so whatever, but there's some capacity to pass out Drunkenness to other units, and it's a bit of a poor trade if you don't expect the unit to be taking damage. A ranged unit you're going to be able to keep out of danger, for example.

While it's not directly built into the mechanics of Drunken itself, Drunken is like Orcish Adrenaline in that it's a non-Morale-based way of encouraging a mono-racial army. As you'll see, multiple Dwarven units have Talents to induce/extend Drunkenness, which (almost) all apply to all Dwarven allies. They usually can induce Drunkenness into some selection of non-Dwarven units, but only Dwarven units get the non-standard special effects, making it much more questionable whether it's worth using it for the purpose of benefiting non-Dwarves, since they'll just get minor boosts to damage output and durability and then very possibly fall Asleep down the line, a dubious trade.

Though naturally Guard Droids and Repair Droids are exempt from Drunken. What with being robots.

Something to note: the King's Bounty games cap out at displaying 9 turns of duration of buffs and debuffs. I say displaying, because for most effects that's all it is: a display limit. For whatever reason, Drunkenness is a special exception where 9 turns actually is its maximum limit. I'm not really sure why, but whatever the case... well, as you'll see, the AI isn't really coded to account for this fact, where if there's lots of Dwarven stacks on the field, they really should be pacing out their alcohol party instead of drinking everything on the first turn, and the AI... does not do that.

Racial relations-wise, Dwarves have moved to...

-3 from Demonic presence in allies.
-3 Morale from Undead presence in allies.
-3 Morale from Undead Lizardmen presence in allies.
-1 Morale for Elven presence in allies.
-1 Morale for Lizardman presence in allies.

... an even harsher dislike of Demons than ever before and an even bigger spike in their Undead hate. (Which is extended to Undead Lizardmen, unsurprisingly)

But otherwise things are much the same as ever.


Dwarf
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 240
Leadership: 85
Attack/Defense: 20 / 16
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 75
Damage: 8-12 Physical
Resistances: 20% Physical
Talents: Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points), Dwarven Beer (Charge: 1. All allied Dwarves as well as units of other species below Level 5 that wield metal weaponry and are not Undead, Lizardmen, or Demons become Drunk for 3 turns or extend their current Drunken effect by 3 turns), Poleaxe (Reload: 2. Only available while Drunken. Inflicts 10-15 Physical damage to an adjacent enemy, inflicting Bleeding for 2 turns)
Abilities: Armored (+20% Physical resistance), Vengeful (If the stack is below 50% of its original numbers, it always crits), Drunken (Furious while Drunk)

Suddenly they have Physical resistance, Leadership has gone up 5 and Health has actually gone down 5, and of course gained Dwarven Beer, Poleaxe, and their Drunken effect. (Also, their gold cost has gone up by 20, but eh)

This makes Dwarves an actually interesting unit! The ideal goal is to get them into a brawl with a bunch of Physical enemy melee units reasonably quickly, and just tank punishment while dishing out damage. There's other Furious units, and always has been, but none that was specifically notably resistant to Physical attacks (Unless you count Clot of Darkness Black Knights in Armored Princess), so now they truly have a nifty niche all to themselves.

Poleaxe inflicting Bleeding is also quite useful since it notably improves effective damage output on the targeted unit and the damage over time is appreciated in its own right of course. Also notice that Poleaxe's Reload works out to essentially 1 Poleaxe per Drunken period. (Everything that induces/extends Drunkenness does so by 3 turns) This isn't important very often since battles in Warriors of the North tend to go by fast, but it's worth keeping in mind regardless.

I especially appreciate that Dwarves are finally set apart from Miners in a substantial way; Foremen comboing with Miners was appreciated as an attempt, but it wasn't all that distinct in practice. In Warriors of the North you actually have clear guidelines for which unit to pick for what purpose.

As far as fighting Dwarves goes, things haven't changed too dramatically. The main distinction that stands out is that it's more dangerous to let enemy Dwarves get into melee even on your big heavy units that can tank a hit; the Bleeding may well induce casualties even if the initial hit does not. And of course that you should avoid using Physical attacks on them if you can avoid it.

Well, that and the AI has a bad habit of using Dwarven Beer in place of moving. This is a recurring problem with AI Dwarves-the-faction, where if a unit has a Drunken-inducing/extending Talent they'll never move before using it, and the AI also pays no attention to duration. If, say, you're fighting three Dwarves-the-unit, they may well all use Dwarven Beer on the first turn even though the third one is ramming right into Drunkenness' duration cap. As such, the introduction of Drunken mechanics is not so straightforward a buff in AI hands to those Dwarven units that can induce/extend Drunkenness. It's still almost always an overall buff, but the AI stupidity means there's caveats.

It's also worth noting that Vengeful and other crit-forcing Abilities and Talents are a bit more relevant in general, if you're playing a Viking: maxed out Absolute Rage leads to a critical hit doing double max damage instead of 50% more than max. A Vengeful stack's crit may well be doing more damage than what they could get out of a non-crit at full stack size! (Albeit only for a fairly narrow window) Vengeful isn't exactly the greatest example, but it's worth mentioning regardless.

For reference, the exact list of non-Dwarven units that Dwarven Beer will pass out Drunkenness to is...

Vikings, Berserkers, Axe Throwers, Jarls, Robbers, Marauders, Swordsmen, Guardsmen, Knights, Horsemen, Paladins, Goblins, Orcs, Orc Veterans, Orc Trackers, and Werewolf Elves

Note that Furious Goblins and White Werewolves are not included, even though you might expect them to be. Similarly, you might expect Warrior Maidens and Skalds to be included, but for whatever reason they're excluded. More interesting is that the game has code for affecting Barbarians and the Neutral version of Berserkers, even though they don't appear anywhere in the final game. Notably, Dark Side brings back the Neutral Barbarian and Berserker while retaining the Viking counterparts -maybe they were considering that for Ice and Fire?

One really notable bug: the Set that claims its Set effect gives 'permanent knockback' to all humanoid Dwarves actually converts their 'Furious while Drunk' effect to 'Passive while Drunk'. With no knockback when they do attack. So you should avoid using that Set alongside Dwarves-the-unit.

On the note of that Set, it got egregiously mistranslated! The 'permanent knockback' statement should be 'infinite retaliations' or some such, because that's what the Set actually does, with the original Russian correctly informing you of this. This being the root of the above glitch; the game is trying to give your Drunk Dwarves infinite retaliations twice, and so it 'rolls over' and ends up at zero retaliations instead. So correct usage of this Set involves letting enemies dogpile your Miners or Foremen or whatever, for maximum retaliations.


Miner
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 40
Leadership: 20
Attack/Defense: 8 / 8
Initiative/Speed: 3 / 2
Health: 22
Damage: 3-4 Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points), Strike (Charge: 1. All Miners purge all ongoing status effects and double their Defense, but cease to retaliate when attacking. Foremen in the army temporarily increase their Initiative, Speed, and crit chance), Moonshine (Charge: 1. The unit receives or extends the Drunken effect by 3 turns. Does not end the unit's turn or use an Action Point)
Abilities: Night Sight (+50% Attack in underground or night battles), Drunken (30% chance to get a full second turn if out of Action Points and taking damage)

When I say 'full' I mean that Miners will get whatever their current Speed is in Action Points. Yes, that means Driver's Whip boosts its effectiveness. As does Haste. Or any other lingering Speed boost. It's less likely to trigger than Demonic Fury, but it's pretty terrifying in terms of making it easy to accidentally let Miners just cover the entire field in one turn and smack something you thought was safe, especially since it can trigger on Traps.

The Drunken stuff is their only actual changes.

Notice that Moonshine only effects the Miner stack that uses it. In exchange, Miners get to extend their Drunkenness for free, which is particularly useful given they'll tend to close to melee first if you're supporting them with Foremen. Though a weird mechanical note is that Moonshine does not provide experience to Miners. It's really weird and I suspect it's an oversight.

Their Drunken special is dramatic in its impact, albeit irritatingly random. Particularly if you're playing a Skald (Resurrection-the-Skill returns, albeit a bit less amazing), it can be quite worthwhile to hurl Miners into the fray. Turn Back Time is one way of maximizing the effectiveness while minimizing casualties, and stalling out the enemy for a turn or two is quite good.

Enemy Miners in particular can be quite infuriating, particularly due to how their Drunken effect interacts with Diversions: a Miner whose turn has been eaten by Diversions can actually get their turn anyway from taking damage, even if the damage occurs before their listed turn rolls around. It can also trigger on damage-over-time effects! If they're benefiting from Driver's Whip, it's not at all unusual for a Miner stack to cross the field and start laying into your ranged units, sometimes even if you deliberately avoid attacking them once their turn is over. (eg due to Trapper Traps) As such, Miners are actually a much higher priority target in Warriors of the North compared to prior games, and are one of the better targets for hitting with non-damaging disabling effects like Blind, Ice Prison, etc, while you focus on wiping out other enemies. Stalling them out while Driver's Whip runs out goes a long way to make them more manageable, after all.

Also, yes, they still have the game claiming they have Night Sight while this is not really true. This extends to being Blinded by Beam of Light anyway.


Cannoneer
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 800
Leadership: 220
Attack/Defense: 30 / 22
Initiative/Speed: 3 / 2
Health: 140
Damage (Ranged and melee): 7-12 Physical
Damage (Siege Gun): 14-24 Physical
Resistances: 10% Fire
Talents: Salvo (Reload: 1. A ranged attack with equivalent range to the Cannoner's base, which does 20-34 Physical damage against a single target), Bottle of Rum (Charge: 1. All Dwarves, as well as non-magical ranged attackers below Level 5 plus Pirates and Sea Dogs becomes Drunken for 3 turns or extend their current Drunken effect by 3 turns. Undead, Demons, and Lizardmen are excluded)
Abilities: Archer (Range: 7), Siege Gun (Calls the Siege Gun attack against most Objects), No Melee Penalty, Drunken (30% chance for attacks to knock enemy back. Knockback distance is 1 tile on a normal attack, 2 tiles on a Salvo)

Base damage has gone up by +1/+2, with Salvo not only boosted to roughly match but also having its Reload halved, and of course they've picked up Bottle of Rum and their Drunken effect.

I particularly like how Pirates and Sea Dogs are included in the effect, as it's always been a thing in these games that Cannoneers have an association with pirates. Having an actual mechanical motive to combine them is nice! It's too bad Drunken's effects just aren't that great on non-Dwarves.

The actual precise list of non-Dwarves that Bottle of Rum passes out Drunkenness to is...

Slingers, Axe Throwers, Bowmen, Elves-the unit, Hunters, Avengers, Furious Goblins, Goblin Catapults, Pirates, and Sea Dogs

Yes, Furious Goblins. The melee one. Not the regular Goblins that throw axes. This is probably an accident. Also, yes Scouts got excluded, much like White Werewolves being unaffected by Dwarven Beer even though regular Werewolf Elves are affected. These are probably oversights as well. Admittedly passing out Drunkenness to ranged units isn't a great thing to do, so it's not like it's a big loss...

Annoyingly, the in-game description of the Drunken knockback effect provides a much vaguer description than what I've provided, making it sound like the knockback might be affected by having a substantial Attack advantage or the like. Nope, it's just 'did you use a regular shot or Salvo'.

Regardless, Cannoneers are no longer suffering from 'Catapults tend to be better for the job' the way they were in Armored Princess. Cannoneer knockback makes them a great option for supporting a ranged-heavy army, potentially keeping slower melee from closing to melee range before dying, and Drunken strongly encourages running groups of Dwarves together for maximum effect anyway, so if you're running a Dwarf-heavy army Cannoneers makes more sense to slip in than Catapults. It's really nice!

As enemies, Cannoneers are arguably a little less threatening, kinda. Their damage has gone up, and the knockback is potentially irritating if for some reason you're using slower melee yourself, but as is usual with Dwarves they have a bad habit of using Bottle of Rum even when it's a complete waste of their turn instead of shooting you. Since Warriors of the North is so fast-paced, it's not unusual for a Cannoneer to miss their turn from Diversions, then functionally miss their next turn by using Bottle of Rum, and then be dead before they actually fire a shot. That's a fairly stark contrast to the prior games, where if you didn't specifically go out of your way to Blind them or whatever they would get in damage on your forces.

On the other hand, they're not 100% obsessive about using Dwarven Rum, so you can't get away with always ignoring them for their first proper turn, and since they are more lethal than ever, even before the Drunken damage boost applies, when they are spending turns shooting they're pretty unpleasant to deal with.

Also note that Cannoneers still have the odd thing that their regular ranged attack only suffers a -20% penalty to damage for firing beyond their effective range, but it jumps up to a 50% penalty if either using Salvo or aiming at a target Siege Gun applies to.


Alchemist
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1100
Leadership: 270
Attack/Defense: 25 / 35
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 170
Damage: 10-25 Poison
Resistances: 25% Poison
Talents: Potion of Poison (Charge: 1. Target a single enemy unit, with an effective range of 7. It takes 5-15 Poison damage and is Poisoned, while adjacent units take 30% damage but still get Poisoned), Fire Water (Charge: 1. 10-20 Fire damage to one enemy unit, with an effective range of 7, and Burns the target), Living Water (Charge: 1. 15-25 Magic damage against a single Undead or Demon, on an effective range of 7, and inflicts the 'Holy Shackles' penalty. Alternatively, can be aimed at an allied unit to heal an ally by 15 Health per Alchemist)
Abilities: Poison Protection (25% Poison Resistance), Acid Spray (Ranged attack striking through all targets up to 3 tiles out, melee range enemies can't retaliate, with a 15% chance to Poison each target), No Melee Penalty, Alchemist (When any potion Talent is depleted, it's replaced by a Talent that will add 1-2 charges to the potion Talent in question. These recharging Talents all have a Reload of 2), Drunken (If currently drunk, using their potion-recharging Talents will always yield two charges)

They've lost Energy Drink, but Holy Water has been made into something more general. Their Leadership has gone up slightly, and of course they have a Drunken effect. It's kind of a neat idea, but it's not all that great in and of itself, since they need support to get more than one use out of their Drunken effect. (Turn 1: Hurl a potion. Turn 2: recharge it. Turn 3: hurl a different potion. Turn 4: Drunkenness is done, too late)

That's okay though, since Alchemists have long been a solid unit and Armored Princess overhauling damage-over-time effects already did a lot to make them really great. In fact, it's kind of nice that their Drunken effect isn't very good standalone, because Alchemists have always been one of the more notable cases of a unit that can be slapped into pretty much any force and contribute well, even though they're a racially-aligned unit. Besides, reducing randomness in the early stages of a battle is nice, since that's the portion of the battle where such randomness tends to matter most!

Note that where reloading a potion had only a 10% chance to provide 2 charges in Armored Princess, here they have a 50% chance at base. As such, the Drunken effect is actually much less of a boost than it would be if you backported it into Armored Princess. Also note that Alchemists still only lose 20% damage for throwing a potion beyond its effective range; in conjunction with their much-improved ability to reload potions, Warriors of the North Alchemists may be better off just standing back and throwing potions instead of advancing each turn the way they should in The Legend and to a lesser extent Armored Princess.

As enemies, Living Water tends to hurt Alchemist performance, at least if you're not running Undead or Demons. They're really prone to tossing a heal for hundreds of Health on a stack that's only going to benefit from a double-digit portion of the healing. They don't even prioritize targeting Giants or anything! As such, while they don't have a Drunken inducing/extending effect to waste a turn with, they're still almost as bad as some of the units that do about basically wasting a turn on a regular basis. Otherwise, they fight much as they do in Armored Princess, with little new of relevance to talk about.


Giant
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 7000
Leadership: 1600
Attack/Defense: 54 / 60
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 1
Health: 900
Damage: 80-100 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 20% Ice
Talents: Earthquake (Reload: 1. Attacks all enemy units, the damage dropping off by 10% per tile out. Base damage is 60-80 Physical damage per Giant, with Soaring units taking only 30% of this damage. Flying units are immune), Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points), Dwarven Summer Beer (Charge: 1. All allied Human, Dwarven, Elven, Orcish, and Neutral humanoids gain the Drunken effect for 3 turns or have their existing Drunken effect extended by 3 turns. If the Giant's Leadership is higher than the average Leadership of all affected units, then the Giants gain +2 Speed. Otherwise, the Giants gain 50% Attack)
Abilities: Likes Emerald Green Dragons (+1 Morale if Emerald Green Dragons are in the army), Cold Protection (20% Ice resistance), Drunken (Regenerates a random amount of Health every turn they're Drunk)

Now Earthquake is much harder to completely avoid, and of course they've picked up some nice Drunken-related effects! (Not to mention they have resistance to Ice) This is probably the first game Giants are actually seriously worth considering, and certainly the funnest they've been to use.

Even if Earthquake's change does make them even more annoying to fight.

They're also one of the least negatively impacted in AI hands. Since Dwarven Summer Beer provides ongoing benefits above and beyond the Drunkenness, even if the Drunken-extending/inducing part is being wasted that doesn't mean the Giant stack wasted its turn. Nor is it clearly optimal to use Earthquake first just because it's a reloading Talent. The only time a major inefficiency is occurring is when a Giant stack has more than 1 Speed for some reason and still stands in place to use Dwarven Summer Beer instead of walking a tile forward beforehand.

Note that the regeneration from being drunk is wildly swingy, able to restore as little as 1 Health and as much as all of it. It tends to be a few hundred at a time, so it's usually a decent amount, but you can get pretty unlucky. Conversely, keep in mind an enemy Giant down on 1 Health might instantly bounce to full. It's overall not a big deal how swingy the regeneration is, as both purchasable and hostile Giants take a long time to start showing up; by the time Giants are relevant they're also probably numerous enough that even a full heal is unlikely to be that much of a proportionate boost.

Warriors of the North is quite good to Giants. More so than the game itself claims! The in-game description for Dwarven Summer Beer claims the Speed boost is +1, not +2. It also doesn't compete with Haste, so if you're running a melee army and using Haste to back it up, keeping your Giants the highest Leadership stack will consistently lead to 5 Speed Giants if you open with Dwarven Summer Beer! (Though it's a bit annoying this will generally mean not using your full Leadership...)

Note that if Giants are the only unit in your army that can be affected by Dwarven Summer Beer, they will always get the Attack boost instead of the Speed boost. Which is a little unfortunate... if it defaulted to boosting Speed, you could mix Giants with an army that included no other humanoids and so get the Speed boost while always using your full Leadership value.

Oh well, this is still their best game by a lot.

On a different topic, Dwarven Summer Beer is actually a translation oopsie -in the original Russian the name is a callback to a Quest from Armored Princess where you're tasked with making 'Pilot's Beer', where the punchline is that the secret ingredient is used machine oil. This Pilot's Beer is what the Giant is supposed to be drinking/sharing. This kind of thing crops up a decent amount with Warriors of the North, where the game makes a callback to The Legend and/or Armored Princess and the translation misses it; some of these oopsies are really obvious even just looking at the English versions. I suspect Warriors of the North had little or no overlap with the prior games when it comes to the people doing the translation, but whatever the case it's an unfortunate thing that can leave a player with the impression that Warriors of the North was trying to make a break from the prior games, or some such, even though that's absolutely not true. If anything, it actually has a lot more callbacks than Armored Princess did!


Foreman
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 600
Leadership: 130
Attack/Defense: 22 / 28
Initiative/Speed: 7 / 2
Health: 120
Damage: 13-14 Physical
Resistances: -10% Magic, 10% Fire
Talents: Driver's Whip (Charge: 1. +3 Initiative and Speed to all allied Miners. Does not end the Foreman's turn), Oil Grenade (Reload: 4. Ranged attack that does 6-10 Fire damage to a single enemy with an effective range of 6. Additionally leaves an Oil Fog in that tile and all adjacent tiles, which lasts for 2 turns, lowering Fire resistance by 15% and reducing ranged attacker's ranged damage by 20%. Level 5 units ignore the Oil Fog's effects. Only available while Drunk)
Abilities: Night Sight (+50% Attack in underground or nighttime battles), Foreman (Allied Miners double their Attack and Defense. Additionally, Miners using Strike gain +1 to Speed and Initiative and are guaranteed to crit), Drunken (Melee attacks have a 30% chance to stun)

They've picked up Oil Grenade and their Drunken effect. Oil Grenade is obviously synergistic with Alchemists following up with a Fire Water (Especially since Oil Grenade shares the quality of only losing 20% damage when lobbed beyond its effective range), and of course the player can just lob Fireballs/Fire Rains themselves, but it's also just nice for making Foremen able to more significantly contribute in the closing-on-the-enemy phase of battles.

It's a bit unfortunate the Foreman's two new gains are a bit underwhelming. Oil Grenade is appreciated, to be sure, but its damage is noticeably lower than their melee damage (Even if you're actually in the proper range!) and without proper support the Oil Fog is only useful against ranged attackers, while a 30% chance to stun in melee is low enough odds that you can't actually count on it happening at all during a given Drunken period. Furthermore, while you might expect a Stun hit to elicit no retaliation, Warriors of the North has overhauled things so that all cases of inducing Stun on a melee attack still provoke a retaliation, even stuff like the Cyclops' Stunning Talent. So even when you get a Stun, it's only useful for lowering Speed, Initiative, and locking off Talents for a turn, all of which are things that are a bit situational in their utility: who cares that you lowered the target's Speed if all it was going to do is wail on your Foremen anyway? Who cares that you lowered its Initiative if it didn't affect turn order? And who cares that it blocked off their Talents if they don't have any? (Or worse, maybe you'd prefer they use their Talent, and so the Stun has made things worse) If you could plan around it happening every time, the situational-ness wouldn't be too much of a flaw, but as-is it's a bit frustrating.

On the other hand, Foremen are bolstered indirectly through Miners having gained their dramatic Drunken effect, and the primary flaw with Foremen has always been that they're a relatively generic slow melee unit outside of combining with Miners. They're actually a fairly solid slow melee unit already, so an argument can be made they don't need much of a boost.

As enemies, Foremen are more annoying than ever if you're obsessed with avoiding casualties, but... that's not very important. You can easily max Grand Strategian well before you reach Dwarven lands, you'll likely have plenty of Gold to spare, and you really ought to have Resurrection, Sacrifice, etc by then. The only exception is that you might be fighting Foremen relatively early through Keeper fights, and since Evil Gremlins always pose a problem to avoiding casualties in such fights it's not that dramatic a point.

I mean, it's still annoying to suffer a few casualties unavoidably because the Foremen went first and immediately lobbed an Oil Grenade at your forces, but it's not terribly important as far as more concrete gameplay.

And yes, just like Miners the game still inexplicably tells a weird almost-accurate lie about having Night Sight.


Guard Droid
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 300
Leadership: 120
Attack/Defense: 25 / 25
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3
Health: 100
Damage: 12 Physical
Resistances: 20% Physical, 80% Poison, -50% Magic
Talents: Harpoon (Reload: 1. Targets an enemy who is 2-5 tiles away in a straight line with no intervening obstacles. Drags it adjacent to the Guard Droid and attacks it for 10-14 Physical damage with no chance to counterattack), Beam of Light (Reload: 2. Targets a unit up to 3 tiles out, and hits all units in the intervening distance. Eyeless units are unaffected. Most units below Level 5 lose 30% of their Defense for 2 turns. Units with Night Vision as well as Beholders and Evil Beholders are Blinded instead. Undead units take 5-20 Physical damage instead)
Abilities: Shock (Basic melee attack has a 30% chance to Shock enemies), Mechanical (80% Poison resistance, -50% Magic resistance, cannot be Poisoned, Morale never changes, immune to Mind effects, cannot be healed or resurrected by most effects), Armor (20% Physical resistance), Eyeless (Immunity to Blind, Precision, and Oil Mist. Also can detect invisible creatures), Engineer's Accuracy (Unit never Misses)

They've picked up an anti-RNG element in the form of Engineer's Accuracy. Guard Droids didn't need buffing, but I certainly appreciate Warriors of the North providing a concrete anti-frustration tool for dealing with eg Nimble enemies. The game's even nice enough to usually provide an early source of either Guard Droids or Repair Droids!

Note that the in-game description for Beam of Light claims that it has one more range than in Armored Princess, but this is simply wrong. Even the original Russian falsely claims it; probably the devs considered it and then changed their mind but missed this text.

The overall details of how you use and fight them are largely the same, bar the caveat that it tends to take a lot longer in Warriors of the North to be getting a hold of Engineers and so it takes a lot longer for Guard Droids to gain access to their full potential. The main distinction is that now they're a preferred option for reliably wearing down/finishing off Nimble and Cautious enemies. Even that's less important than you might think, as Rage is more powerful than ever and goes a long way all by itself to resolving that bit of frustration.


Repair Droid
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 250
Leadership: 80
Attack/Defense: 10 / 25
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 5
Health: 64
Damage (Ranged): 6-8 Physical
Damage (Melee): 10 Physical
Resistances: 20% Physical, 80% Poison, -50% Magic
Talents: Repair (Reload: 3. Heals an adjacent Mechanical unit for 44 HP per Repair Droid in the healing stack, +10% for each rank in Artifactor the player has)
Abilities: Flight, Archer (Range: 5), No Melee Penalty, Mechanical (80% Poison resistance, -50% Magic resistance, cannot be Poisoned, Morale never changes, immune to Mind effects, cannot be healed or resurrected by most effects), Armor (20% Physical resistance), Eyeless (Immunity to Blind, Precision, and Oil Mist. Also can detect invisible creatures), Engineer's Accuracy (Unit never Misses)

They've picked up Engineer's Accuracy. Like Guard Droids, nothing has really changed in details, they're just now a good ranged unit for consistently wearing down/finishing off evasive enemies.

Though for whatever reason in Warriors of the North AI Repair Droids are even worse about repeatedly changing their mind before actually doing something. It's... not that important, and I assume it's a byproduct of the code refactoring, but it does make them slightly more tedious to fight.

Context-wise, Repair Droids are less overwhelmingly amazing because Warriors of the North has a much more accelerated pace for combat. Having durable repair units for repairing a durable melee unit was very good in Armored Princess in part because its combat was slow enough in pace that stall strategies were very powerful in general. In Warriors of the North it's much more often practical to wipe out the enemy before they get the chance to inflict damage, making such stall strategies considerably less relevant. Conversely, fighting battlegroups heavy on Guard and Repair Droids isn't nearly as frustrating, because it's much harder for Repair Droids going for the Repair to be a serious problem; Warriors of the North gives you a lot of good tools for rapidly doing lots of damage to groups of Droids, such that you're unlikely to have unharmed Repair Droids suddenly deciding to undo a lot of your work, and in general the faster pace means even a strong, well-timed Repair is unlikely to snowball into more Repairs until your army is wiped out by unkillable Droids. You'll just be momentarily annoyed, typically.


Engineer
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1380
Leadership: 400
Attack/Defense: 25 / 32
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 180
Damage: 13-26 Fire
Resistances: 15% Fire
Talents: Create A Droid (Charges: 2. Creates a Guard Droid or Repair Droid stack in an adjacent tile, type randomly chosen, whose Leadership totals 120-160 per Engineer in the creating stack. For each point in 'Artifactor' the Hero has purchased, increase the Leadership by 10%), Repair (Charges: 2. Heals an adjacent allied machine-type unit for 88 HP per Engineer in the healing stack. For each point in 'Artifactor' the Hero has purchased, increase the healing by 10%), Blinding Grenade (Charge: 1. Ranged attack which does 7-20 Fire damage to a single target enemy and has a 25% chance to Burn it, but additionally Blinds for a single turn all adjacent enemy units of Levels 1-3. Has an effective range of 7), Create Blinding Grenades (Reload: 0. Only appears when out of Blinding Grenades. Generates 1-2 Blinding Grenades)
Abilities: Fire Thrower (Can fire up to 3 tiles out, hitting all units in a line, with no chance for affected units to retaliate. 15% chance for any given hit unit to be Burned), No Melee Penalty, Mechanic (Allied Guard Droids and Repair Droids gain +5 Attack and +1 Speed, and Blinding Grenade is replaced by Create Blinding Grenade when out of charges), Drunken (While Drunk, enemies within 2 tiles are automatically attacked for 5-10 Magic damage, with a 25% chance of being Shocked, each time the Engineer's turn begins)

+20 to Leadership (And +230 to gold cost), Shock Blinding Grenade has gained 2 minimum damage, Create A Droid has had its minimum Leadership bumped up by 20 (Paralleling their own Leadership increase) while its maximum has been bumped up by 40 (Which is an actual per-Leadership increase), some cleanup has occurred with their Abilities, and of course they've got a unique Drunken effect. Also they can reload their grenades as often as they like now. (When actually out, of course) The Drunken effect isn't actually that useful of one for them, since they tend to stay in the back lines, both in player hands and enemy hands, but it's certainly a neat idea. Another benefit not obvious unless you use Engineers a decent amount in both games is that Create Blinding Grenades has a 50% chance to add 2 charges, as opposed to the 10% chance it had in Crossworlds. (Oh, and reminder that Blinding Grenades only lose 20% of their damage if thrown beyond their effective range; don't worry too much about their effective range)

Nothing game-changing. In practice they're a little bit worse at everything except for building droids, but not to enough of an extent to really change things. This is probably for the best, as Engineers were really good in Armored Princess, particularly in player hands but they were also rather irritating to fight. You'd really need to more fundamentally change what they do to fully address the point, but a minor overall nerf actually does a decent job in its own right: in playing Armored Princess, I often found myself frustrated by just barely failing to clear out an Engineer stack and so it got off a Shock Grenade. In Warriors of the North, it's much more consistent for me to successfully wipe out Engineer stacks. There's other factors that tie into this, but the Leadership nerf certainly doesn't hurt.

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I really like what Warriors of the North has done with Dwarves. It could use some refinement, particularly regarding AI behavior, but Warriors of the North is the only game in the series where Dwarves as a faction are distinctive, interesting, and seriously worth considering fielding in their own right.

... it's really too bad Dark Side tosses all that out...

On a different note, the statue of a Dwarven god battlefield Object is actually a lot more common, tending to show up in basically any icy battleground -so all four initial Viking islands, for one. There's a guaranteed source of some early Dwarven units in Vestlig; it can be a good idea to grab some manner of Dwarf here to give you an option for venturing inside the radius of these statues safely, such as to collect chests, bait enemies into the statue's radius, etc.

Anyway, next time we cover how Elves have changed. The regular Elves. There's also Snow Elves, but we'll be getting to them later.

See you then.