Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War

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Not pictured: the numerous Catachan Devils eating guardsmen like M&M's.

Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War (christ that's a mouthful) is a 4X Strategy game published by Slitherine, the same guys who published Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon and the Sanctus Reach video game, and made by Proxy Studios. Essentially, it plays like a glorified Civilization Warhammer mod, which isn't a bad thing as civilization practically nailed 4X games.

Setting

The resource rich and strategically important planet of Gladius Prime is under attack from Orks, and the Space Marine Chapter (no name ever given to the chapter), unable to defeat the greenskins by themselves, call the Imperial Guard for aid. As the guardsmen arrive, a warp storm hits the planet and screws everything for everyone. This allows Chaos to gain a foothold and drags a Tau flagship into the system for good measure. And as all this shit is going down, the Tyranid specimen held by the Adeptus Mechanicus escaped from its containment, and then, from beneath the earth, Necrons awaken from their slumber. (Oh, and the Eldar are there too.) Now the various factions are fighting for the domination of the planet and/or for their own survival.


It also makes Gladius Prime one of the unluckiest planets in the entire setting as it is a Tomb World with an Infinity Circuit that managed to attract nearly every single faction of note and tons of usually-not-seen hostile lifeforms (especially at the same time) including Umbras, Vespids, Kroot Hounds, Ambulls, Catachan Devils, Psychneuein and Enslavers of all things. The original surviving Hive World population is pulled apart in a free-for-all between the many factions that might or might not have their best interests in mind, and the factions will also shoot at each other regardless of allegiance unless they are in the same team before the game starts, which leads to scenarios where Space Marines shoot at each other, the Astra Militarum shoots at Space Marines, Chaos allied with Tyranids to take down the T'au and more.

Gameplay

It plays out like the average 4X game, more specifically Civilization, with a hex-based grid, a scramble for resources and units, founding new cities etc, but unlike other 4X games it has ZERO diplomacy. None. By default every faction is hostile to each other, including between the duplicates of the same faction. There is only war indeed.

Every faction makes degree of use from 5 resources: Food (used for infantry and maintaining population), Ore (generally used by buildings, fortifications and vehicles), Energy (on average used for maintaining buildings and usually for making some units too), Influence (often used for some special faction-only abilities, heroes and items for heroes, each city tile has an upkeep of 1 influence) and Research (used for unlocking new technologies, and all factions make use of it). Certain factions have different resource needs such as the Tyranids only requiring Biomass and Influence.

Each faction starts off with an unit that can make a new city (the first one is free, and the Space Marines get to drop their only city anywhere instead of having an unit), and every city starts off with a building that can create additional buildings and an unique starting building that generates a wide variety of resources. The city is represented on the map by an HQ fortress with a lot of health and armour, but if it gets damaged every building suffers a penalty to their output equal to the percentage of health lost. One of the more unique features is the way production is handled, in which the production of various units is only done by their respective buildings, so it is possible to produce ground infantry and vehicles at the same time.

Cities have the following elements:

  • Population: Possibly the greatest headache in your burgeoning cities is the rigid rate at which the city produces population, which is required for manning buildings, otherwise your entire city gets an output penalty that gets bigger the greater the difference between the demand for population and the actual population that is available, which can be handled by temporarily disabling some buildings to reduce demand. They require room to grow in, which can come from specialized population buildings available early on in the research tree or from certain buildings.
  • Growth: What determines how many turns it takes for more population to grow. It can have its speed maximized by creating enough room for the population to grow in, or else the grow will slow down as it gets to the limit.
  • Loyalty: The second greatest headache in your cities is keeping this value to a number that doesn't mess with your output too much. Loyalty demand is generated by population at a 1:1 rate and -6 from each additional city you have beyond the first, for all cities. Each point of loyalty below 0 causes a penalty of -2% to the city's output, down to -50% output (-25 loyalty), while each point of loyalty above 0% provides a +1% bonus to the city's output. It also has a specialized building that produces loyalty.

Each city requires city tiles to expand to, which can be built from the building menu, and are required for placing buildings on those tiles. Many tiles provide either a bonus or a penalty to the buildings when it comes to their output, such as grassy fields allowing food-producing buildings to generate extra food, or volcanic lands to generate extra ore for the buildings that extract ore but have a penalty for food.

Each faction also has access to the research system, which is divided into 10 tiers and requires 2 technologies of the previous tier to unlock the next one. Each additional tech slightly increases the prices for all techs, and it can unlock anything from new units to new buildings to new passives and even abilities for units. Each faction has mostly-unique research that unlocks different things.

Combat

The game bases its unit stats around the 8th and 9th editions, with many mechanics imported from the core rules and reworked into the game, and the regular die-based system is replaced by numbers and percentages that are not affected by random chance, being instead an averaged value when compared to the dice.

All units have the following stats:

  • Hitpoints: The total amount of health the unit has, distributed within the group size (amount of models) with an exception or two such as Scarabs (which have multiple models but distribute the damage to all the models when taking damage). Units can recover 10% of their health per turn as long as they stand still, do not perform any action and do not take any damage. Restored hitpoints will also restore any models accordingly.
  • Armour: Directly reduces damage taken by 8.3% which caps out at 10 armour (83.3% damage resistance, or 1/6 damage taken, but the armour value can be higher), it can be bypassed by armour penetration or weapons with certain traits such as Lance (limits the effective armour to a maximum of 8) or to a lesser extent Graviton (adds an extra amount of damage depending on how much armour an unit has, which will still be reduced by the armour but hits even harder if the attack has enough armour penetration). While several different sources of damage reduction can stack, it will never go above 83% damage resistance unless the unit is a hero, as heroes reduce all damage taken by a further 50%, which allows the maximum damage reduction to be 91.7%, or 1/12 damage taken. If the unit has an invulnerability damage reduction to apply against an attack the game will pick the greater damage reduction value between it and the armour's damage reduction, which means that if an unit has an effective 17% damage reduction from armour but 33% from invulnerability the game will pick the invulnerability damage reduction.
  • Models: The amount of models in an unit determines the amount of weapons that are fired (marked by a multiplier next to the weapons), and as the unit loses health it also loses models which reduces the amount of weapons fired. It also determines the unit's vulnerability to weapons with a low number of attacks (as the amount of damage dealt to an unit is limited by how many attacks can affect models, and a weapon with 1 attack will never be able to destroy an entire unit in one turn as long as it has more than 1 model) and blast (attack is dealt to additional models, affected by accuracy) or template (same as blast but with 100% accuracy) effect attacks.
  • Morale: Morale determines how susceptible an unit is to panicking. At 66% morale an unit will be Shaken (-17% accuracy and +17% damage taken), at 33% the unit will be Broken (-33% accuracy and +33% damage taken). Morale normally increases every turn but it is reduced by seeing models die (particularly powerful and expensive models such as heroes will often cause heavy morale damage to units nearby) and certain abilities that damage morale. Some factions such as the Space Marines are significantly tougher against morale reduction and are immune to morale-damaging abilities (And They Shall Know No Fear trait), while Tyranids are immune to morale damage of any kind as long as the unit is, or is near, a Synapse creature, otherwise it will lose morale by default.
  • Action: Whether the unit can perform something during a turn. Attacking always consumes an action, with some exceptions (such as weapons in the form of abilities that are a free action) and also consumes movement (except for the Eldar, whose infantry units can move after attacking). Methods to increase this value are extremely rare and every unit has only 1 action.
  • Movement: The amount of tiles an unit can traverse each turn. It consumes all its movement points regardless of how many tiles the unit moved, but the unit can move again if its movement points are refreshed somehow. Some terrain features such as forests and rivers take more movement points to traverse.
  • Level: Units gain experience whenever a nearby enemy unit dies, depending on the unit's "death experience". All units start at level 1 and for each level they gain +5% damage and hitpoints and +10% morale, up to level 10 (+45% damage and hitpoints, +90% morale). As the game progresses new units will be created with a higher initial level, depending on the game's speed. Heroes depend on this to unlock new abilities and increase the effectiveness of their abilities.
  • Traits: Many elements and modifiers that serve to classify what an unit is (infantry, vehicle, monstrous creature, fortification etc.) and many of their special effects, such as having some invulnerability damage reduction, ignoring the enemy's ranged damage reduction, providing a buffing aura to nearby units, ignoring movement penalties over certain terrain features etc. Many effects can be temporary, such as additional ranged damage reduction when in an Outpost.

Weapons also have their own stats:

  • Damage: The amount of damage a weapon does. Duh.
  • Attacks: The amount of times an unit attacks with the weapon.
  • Armour Penetration: How much armour one hit with the weapon gets to ignore.
  • Accuracy: It acts as a multiplier to the amount of attacks a weapon deals out, and it ranges from 1 (8.3% accuracy) to 12 (100% accuracy), but it can go higher than that in some circumstances while simply multiplying the attacks all the same.
  • Range: From how far away you can attack with the weapon. Range 1 means that you can only attack adjacent units with it, while 2 means you can attack units that are 2 tiles away from your unit. Terrain features such as Forests and Imperial Ruins can end up limiting the effective range of the weapon when trying to fire past it, as well as the unit's actual sight over their target.
  • Traits: In the same way that units have traits that define them, so do weapons. Some rather common ones include Rapid Fire (double the amount of attacks, effectively double damage dealt, against enemies at half the range, which is almost always seen with range 2 weapons but rounded down if it somehow ends up with range 3), Heavy (halves the weapon's accuracy when moving, which effectively halves its damage) and Blast (up to 2 other models in an unit are affected by the attack).

The total damage a weapon can do to an unit is essentially (Damage * (Attacks * Accuracy)) * enemy's applicable damage reductions, with a hard limit based on the amount of models in an unit compared to Attacks * Accuracy, so if your unit with 2 attacks and perfect accuracy gets its accuracy halved it won't kill an unit with 2 models no matter the damage. It also doesn't round up, so 1.9 attacks still won't kill 2 models in one hit. Weapons with a high amount of damage but low amount of attacks are better suited for low-model units such as various fortifications and HQs.

The Factions

Populating Gladius Prime are the many factions that got dragged into this shitshow one way or another, but they were all isolated by the warp storms breaking out and many of their quests involve getting things back into control, with the Old Ones' artifacts being involved most of the time.

Base Game

Astra Militarum

After Gladius Prime was double-teamed by both Orks and Tyranids the player character assumes the role of the commander of the reinforcements who arrived at Gladius but were trapped by the subsequent warp storms. They employ some of the weakest infantry units in the game but they are also some of the cheapest, allowing players to field large armies of disposable troops whose only limits are their upkeep. Provided that they survive the early game, they can snowball into one of the strongest factions around via the use of lots and lots of vehicles, such as Basilisks and eventually Baneblades, their strongest unit. Their hero units, the Lord Commissar and the Tank Commander, are focused on buffing nearby units except for the Primaris Psyker who is focused on slinging deadly abilities from a relatively small distance.

  • The humble Guardsmen are initially extremely weak but can get some upgrades that significantly increases their effectiveness (at least compared to their fragility) such as access to Frag and Krak grenades (8 of them thrown at a time is going to hurt), or being able to heal 50% of their health every 10 turns.





Necrons

Awoken in the middle of the shenanigans happening on the surface, the proud lord of a Necrontyr dynasty tries to assume control of the situation under the initial belief that the Old Ones are still around. The Necrons are one of the easier races in the game as they do not require food, only require energy for what essentially amounts to reactivating their old equipment and all of their units regenerate health over time, which makes them significantly more difficult to kill. They can only colonize on tiles with a Necron Tomb on them, significantly limiting their strategic city deployment options, but thankfully they always spawn in the proximity of an outpost. One of their earliest research upgrades allows the infantry units to teleport to other cities and Monoliths using influence, and eventually they are able to build Tesseract Vaults. Their hero units, the Necron Lord and the Cryptek, are generally focused on supporting nearby troops with extra durability, except for the Destroyer Lord who is difficult to kill and makes nearby enemies more susceptible to damage.

  • Their deadly gauss weapons scale in damage by 5% of the unit's hitpoints, up to +1.2 damage at 24 hitpoints while the tesla weaponry trades some usefulness against tougher units for extreme effectiveness against infantry via increased attacks and damage, but no armor penetration or health scaling.





Orks

The mean green menace arrived on Gladius Prime months before the present time to loot it, doing what they do best. Orks are a faction that relies on fighting for its economy, and all their units cost influence to maintain, with the benefit that every time they attack an enemy they gain influence, and every killed enemy grants the player some ore. They're rather prone to morale loss and they don't have a very strong late-game presence, but they have some of the more powerful hero units such as the Warboss who is one of the most threatening melee combat units in the game, the Painboy who can permanently augment other ork units with bonus damage and damage reduction, and the Weirdboy who can be used for surprise attacks via Da Jump. They also have a WAAAGH mechanic where all units deal more damage the bigger the influence stockpile, up to +25% attacks.

  • Orks have a very good early game roster and in player vs player scenarios they can rush the opponent before the opponent can retaliate in time, but they are vulnerable to morale loss, especially if their hero units get sniped.





Space Marines

Stranded on Gladius Prime, they're desperate to get things back under control. The Space Marines are the starter faction with a focus on elite and expensive units. They are limited to one city that can develop even further than any faction's city, and have access to global abilities that allow them to establish their presence anywhere on the map, including dropping Fortresses of Redemption that provide an ironclad control over adjacent outposts (and providing the bonus percentage output to the HQ). Instead of food and ore they use Requisition. The Captain is a decent tough combatant that eventually gains access to free orbital strikes, while the Chaplain is THE most durable hero in the game and is focused on supporting nearby units as well as giving your city fat stacks of Loyalty. The Librarian is... just there.

  • Space Marines are oriented towards defense rather than offense until they get more offensive tools such as Apothecaries (who are a game-changer for keeping your expensive elite units alive) and Drop Pods.
  • One of the cheesier strategies in the game involves finding an enemy city (often by researching and using Orbital Scan) with only max range 2 weapons early on and dropping a Fortress of Redemption (with its range 3 gun) outside the attack range of the city, gradually diminishing its health while the opponent's units can barely damage the Fortress as anti-tank units are expensive and not easily available early on. The ensuing damage to the city economically cripples it as all its outputs are reduced in proportion to the damage the HQ took, and by the time the Fortress is destroyed the opponent has already been set back significantly. It is not advisable to use it in multiplayer.

DLC

Tyranids

The first DLC faction of the game, the Tyranids on Gladius Prime broke free from an Adeptus Mechanicus research laboratory and are wreaking havoc on the planet. Their whole gimmick is spamming cheap, disposable units while spreading like wildfire and rendering all the terrain they conquer into infertile bedrock, but since it's technically a terrain feature other factions can "clean" it to restore it back to normal. Tyranids only require Biomass (the combined resources of Food and Ore) and Influence. Any unit can be reclaimed by a building to give back some of their biomass as well as rush the ongoing production of that building at the cost of influence, and making cities is generally cheaper in exchange of the cities being smaller. Tyranid units do not suffer any morale penalties as long as they are within the range of a synapse creature, which makes them terrific opponents overall. The Tyranid Prime is a very deadly melee combatant that can turn well-armored enemies into mince-meat thanks to its level 6 ability to halve a target's armor, and also boosts nearby Tyranid Warriors, while the Tervigon is a living Termagaunt incubator that constantly produces cheap, disposable Termagaunts to act as cannon fodder, being essentially a walking production building that produces Termagaunts and boosts them. The Hive Tyrant is an aerial menace that eventually gives just enough loyalty to every single Tyranid city to negate the loyalty penalty for an extra city.

  • You can use unit production buildings to aid in the production of other, more important units at a small influence fee, while also reclaiming the unit's costs.

Chaos Space Marines

The second DLC faction of the game, this particular warband got lost in the Warp and were dumped on Gladius Prime, which is seen as a deliberate act from the Chaos Gods. They start off with cultists that can be sacrificed to boost the population growth of a city, and the population of the city can be sacrificed to gain different bonus outputs. Some of their gimmicks rely on RNG being in their favor, as every time a Chaos unit kills another unit it has a chance to gain a boon (that has to be unlocked first) or transform into either a thing that shouldn't be named, an extremely fast melee bruiser with one of three abilities changing every turn, or a Daemon Prince, a deadly hero unit with very deadly anti-infantry abilities. They have access to a lot of different boons ranging from extra attacks to bonus movement or bonus health but many can't overlap as they are from different Chaos Gods. A significant amount of their units are the Chaos version of their Space Marine counterparts, such as Obliterators being a rough equivalent of Devastators. The Chaos Lord is a tough combat hero who passively boosts the chances of nearby Chaos units to receive boons, and has a devastating finisher attack, while the Master of Possession is a support hero that can heals units at the cost of its own health, buff nearby Chaos units and eventually summon random Daemons. The Warpsmith is a pretty decent support for vehicles and can lower the ranged damage reduction of targeted tiles.

  • Chaos Cultists are also city-builders, which allows Chaos Space Marines to have a strong early-game advantage by having a very early second city.


T'au

The third DLC faction of the game, they got lost during one of the Spheres of Expansion and landed on Gladius Prime. They are extremely versatile, having units that are fit for multiple situations, are good for setting up overwatch lines, and their cities get a loyalty boost for every unique building without a duplicate, which gives them a decent head-start early on. They can also recruit Kroot Hounds and Vespid Stingwings to their side, gain resources using Influence, and slightly reduce the amount of loyalty an enemy city has. Their hero units are the Fireblade, who has some pretty decent infantry buffs and can eventually give every city loyalty (just like a Hive Tyrant!), the Ethereal who is extremely fragile but gives some really powerful boosts to nearby T'au units, eventually culminating in an extra action for all nearby units and the Commander who isn't anywhere near as fragile and can give specialized buffs to nearby T'au.


Craftworld Aeldari

The fourth DLC faction of the game, the Eldar are a mobile type of faction whose infantry units are glass cannons, dealing some of the hardest hits in the game for units of their type at the cost of being fragile and short-ranged. Their city populations also grow slower. Almost all of their infantry units are capable of moving after attacking, which allows for stronger positioning options, and they gain extra speed. They also gain access to the Webway Gates strewn across the map, which can be activated to allow Eldar units to immediately teleport to them at the cost of influence, but activating them is a risky gambit as nearby neutral units will often become hostile to it and try to destroy it. They can also be converted into cities afterwards, but they have poor defenses (only one D-Cannon) compared to other city HQs. Their hero units are the Autarch, a combat-oriented hero that can eventually double the flat output of all resource tiles under control, the Spiritseer, a support hero with multi-purpose abilities that benefit friendly units and harm enemy units, the Farseer Skyrunner, a combat support hero with a lot of mobility, and an Avatar of Khaine, who is a monstrous juggernaut in melee that also buffs adjacent Eldar units. Oh, and they all deal bonus damage to Chaos units.

  • Because many of their units are fragile it's important to explore using tougher units and then move the other units in.
  • The Avatar of Khaine is available relatively early on at tier 4 but has a huge influence cost, so if you're feeling particularly safe you can save up some resources to make it.


Adeptus Mechanicus

The fifth DLC faction of the game, the Adeptus Mechanicus employ tough and powerful units and has a varied amount of global powers such as boosting the outputs of all buildings on a tile, damaging any visible enemy unit on the map depending on how many units of a certain type there are, or give an advantage to certain types of units with a drawback. They gain an increased amount of output for every duplicate building on a tile (for those buildings) with an output loss for every diverse building on a tile. Their hero units are the Skitarii Marshal, a hero that can give very strong damage buffs to allied units, the Tech-Priest Manipulus, a support hero that can heal nearby units and stun enemies (making combat heroes like the Warboss and Tyranid Prime weep in the process as it can start stunlocking at rank 3), and the Tech-Priest Dominus, a combat hero in a faction that allows it to be buffed into doing insane amounts of damage in a turn.

  • Cybernetica Datasmiths can be used to convert Kastelan Robots to your side a bit earlier than when you can make them and only for an influence cost, giving you a decent advantage early on, but the accompanying neutral Cybernetica Datasmiths should be eliminated before that or else they will reprogram it back.

Adeptus Sororitas

The sixth DLC faction of the game, the Adeptus Sororitas are a starter faction which focuses on moderately elite, reliable units that are boosted with their Acts of Faith and Sacred Rites to perform even better. They have many tricks to restoring morale or mitigating morale loss, and they have a number of powers, hero abilities and unit abilities to buff/debuff units to shift combats in their favour. They have a fair amount in common with Space Marines in their playstyle, using requisition as a resource, being dependent on a capital city, albeit they can found other cities which are limited to the initial surrounding hexes in size. Their hero units epitomize their buff-synergy design, they are the Canoness a frontline support hero that can strip ranged defences off a target, the Dialogus a backline support hero that can halve the cooldown on a units Acts of Faith ability, and Saint Celestine herself as a beatstick support hero thats capped at one.

  • The Adeptus Sororitas are fairly forgiving in the early game compared to most factions thanks to their power armoured infantry, but their recurring theme is handing out support buffs like candy once the mid-game starts. Also like the tabletop the Trinity of Bolter, Melta & Flamer still defines them, which makes the faction as a whole short-ranged, with the exception of the Exorcist and Castigator. The former of which is a serious anti-vehicle workhorse for the Sisters.

Under Construction

  • Imperial Guard: Lots of cheap guardsmen and other specialist infantry with low morale, compensated by long-range artillery, durable tanks with various upgrades, and aircraft. They can also build Imperial Bastions and Void Shield Generators to help hold chokepoints and can issue a variety of edicts to boost their cities output, either to speed up unit production of certain buildings or to increase the amount of certain resources or research that is produced for 10 turns. It's difficult to get a foothold at the start, but if they can survive the early game it'll be pure hell swimming through a sea of bastions and baneblades to get to their capital. Their strongest unit is obviously the baneblade.
  • Space Marines: Limited to only one city, their Fortress-Monastery, but can build Fortresses of Redemption to gather resources outside the reach of the Fortress-monastery and they treat food and ore as the same resource named Requisition. They've also got a single Battle Barge in orbit, from which they scan unexplored areas and deploy orbital strikes, and they can choose a chapter tactic that gives temporary buffs either to all or certain types of units. While simple on paper you can fuck yourself by putting your Fortress City in a bad spot and losing your deployed Fortresses of Redemption means you're losing defenses and resources at once. Having some of the best infantry in the game can only take you so far since if Space Marines start going into the negative on supplies it can snowball hard without other cities to fall back to. Their strongest unit is tied between the Land Raider and Stormraven Gunship.
  • Necrons: Necrons can only build their cities on top of Necron tombs and need energy to produce units and ore for upkeep and population growth. Influence can be used to repair units on the field, let infantry and heroes use Eternity Gates to teleport to cities or monoliths, and rush/speed up production of units. Tend to shred through armored units like butter and can stay in fights longer than most units. However their economy is so slow and Necron tombs aren't guaranteed to be near any valuable resources, let alone spawning anywhere safe. Hence why you need to rely on repairing your units in the field, as losing even basic units can cost a lot of time and money if you've been unlucky with where the tombs spawn. The Tesseract Vault is their strongest unit.
  • Orks: Ork infantry deal more melee damage when attacking and lose less morale, at the cost of taking damage when losing morale. The units have a high regeneration rate, gain ore when they kill enemy units, and increase influence by doing damage, but have an influence upkeep with the units doing more damage with high influence and having lower damage with low influence. Their cities have a higher growth rate than others, and can build fungus fields that heal units. Can steamroll both economically and in terms of manpower in the early game since Boyz will basically pay for themselves. However, this naturally means if you lose your streak by getting curbstomped or just by not fighting anything for a while you're going to have a tough time competing with what later-tier units from other factions can put out. The Gargantuan Squiggoth is their strongest unit.
  • Tyranids: Constantly makes new units. They consume biomass instead of ore and energy which allows them to make units. All tyranid units are disposable and can be recycled into biomass when they have outlived their usefulness. Most basic units slowly go feral when not in range of a synapse unit, and revert back to their original instincts which either weaken or kill them and eventually lose control all together. Even harder to get rolling than the Imperial Guard, but if you survive by mid-game you can start winning battles through attrition alone, and while they usually still remain squishy little things on the roster can survive Tyranids endgame units getting close. Tyranids can also make entire swathes of the map useless even after they've been killed off, so it's an almost paradoxical faction where people want to kill them off before they ruin half the map, but if you do your reward will usually just be a bunch of useless bedrock barring a few scant strategic resources. The Scythed Hierodule is their strongest unit.
  • Chaos Space Marines: As per usual, a lot of how good they are comes down to luck. Cultists and Space Marines can turn into anything from Chaos Spawn to Daemon Princes, and performing rites will give you bonuses depending on what God you dedicate them to. They also have access to a "Boons of Chaos" system which are basically stat enhancing mutations that a chaos unit has a certain chance of getting after killing an enemy unit, each unit can gain one of every unique mutation which can range from increased health to increased movement speed. One can unlock access to more mutations through research in the tech tree. The Defiler is their strongest unit.
  • Tau: Tau are probably the closest thing to a 'diplomatic' faction in the game, heavily relying on influence because of this. As in they can diplomatically hire neutral Kroot and Vespid units to fight for them, diplomatically insult other factions or even neutral units to hurt their feelings (morale) and put communist propaganda in their heads, and diplomatically just straight up buy resources instead of making them like everyone else. They can also spawn various types of support drones ranging from gun drones to shield drones as essentially free temporary units to support their troops, all while continuing the time-honored Tau tradition of shooting the shit out of everyone else and hoping they die before they can get close enough to hit you in melee. The KV128 Stormsurge Ballistic Suit is their strongest unit.
  • Craftworld Aeldari/Eldar: Characterized by slippery but agile infantry that can move after shooting, slow population growth, and the ability to remote-capture neutral Webway-gates, with the caveats that they can only build cities on said gates, and that the aforementioned gates are continually being destroyed by neutrals, other players, or your own idle misclicks, their units are deadly against soft targets, but die like they're made of tinfoil and goodwill, their psyker heroes are versatile, with abilities that have inverted effects on friends or enemies, the Avatar of Khaine is their premier early beatstick available at tech-tier 4, and with correct support will level a city in maybe three turns. Their vehicles (with the exception of war walkers and wraithknights) are all fast skimmers which means you can quickly move them where you need them to be while being able to ignore all sorts of rough terrain. The fire prism is arguably the most versatile tank in the game as it can switch between three firing modes freely which means it can deal effectively with any conceivable target. Finally you can also travel/teleport between webway gates (whether they're activated or not) with ANY unit, but it costs a fair amount of influence to do so and consumes the unit's action point. With an ample amount of influence this means you are the most mobile faction in the game. The Scorpion super-heavy grav tank is their strongest unit.
  • Adeptus Mechanicus: The new kids on the block, they have global powers that scale with the number of units of a certain type. They boost Skitarii units with Doctrine Imperiatives that boost one stat while reducing another, and then there are Canticles of the Omnissiah that scale with techpriest and robot units, which debuff and damage enemies. Skitarii units are irradiated and passively damage enemies who end their turn near them. Their builder unit, the Cybernetica Datasmith, can hijack control of the neutral Kastelan Battle robots which can lead to a midgame snowball for AdMech players. Lastly they have special "optimization" mechanics with their cities, buildings in a district gain buffs for every building of the same type in that district, and are debuffed for every building that is different, Ad Mech can also get an extra slot for buildings in some of their districts. This means you can dedicate one city almost entirely to producing one resource (like ore) and another city entirely to research if you so wish. The Knight Crusader is their strongest unit.
  • Sisters of Battle: Coming soon! (13.12.2022)
  • Neutral: The various hostiles and native creatures that attack everyone. Comprised of Kroot Hounds, ambulls, enslavers, psychneuein, rogue Cybernetica Datasmiths and kastelans, Neophyte Hybrids (Reinforcement Pack DLC), Vespid Stingwings (Tau DLC), Umbras (Eldar DLC), Lords of Skulls (Acts as a special event boss mob), and motherfucking Catachan Devils.

Artefacts

One of the features that sets Gladius apart from Civ. Artefacts are hovering, rhombus shaped relics believed to be creations of the now presumably extinct Old Ones. Artefacts are scattered around Gladius Prime, and will give a certain boon or bonus to your faction/race and/or all units under your control. Artefact buffs stack on top of each other, so controlling artefacts is very important to your survival. It takes one action for one of your units to seize control of an artefact, but units won’t be able to capture them if there are units of the currently controlling faction next to the artefact. Artefacts can apply a number of different effects depending on their type, the ones currently in the vanilla game are as follows: increase the maximum hit points of all your units, give movement buffs, give loyalty buffs, increase sight radius, increase regeneration speed, or increase damage. It is also important to note that units may not occupy the same tile as an artefact! Enslavers can usually be found defending these ancient creations, so be wary and make sure you have the firepower to wipe them out.

Recommended Workshop Mods

  • Too Many Voices (TMV): A highly popular and respected mod which aims to add original voices to every single unit currently featured in the game. This also includes voice announcements for when a tech tree upgrade has been fully researched and quest line dialogue. The voices are generally of high-quality since they're done by professional voice actors, such as George_VA who has notably done voice work for various DoW mods. This is considered by many to be THE must-have mod as it enhances the immersion of the game and makes each unit feel more alive.
  • Gladius+: A popular mod that rescales everything (including units, terrain, and World UI) to tabletop proportions. This means tanks are bigger, infantry are smaller, and the terrain looks more realistic etc. It also adds in new HD terrain + environment textures, as well as additional team colours based on citadel paint colour schemes. All of the changes are visual-only, but the enhanced textures may put a strain on older computers, so only use this if your computer or laptop can handle it, or otherwise consider lowering your graphics.
  • Red Lasguns: A simple but beloved re-texture mod which makes all Imperial and Chaos lasers present in the game (including lasguns, multi-lasers, lascannons etc.) fire red-coloured beams instead of the regular yellow or blue. With this change it does look a lot more pleasing to the eyes.
  • Locknot's Expanded Setup: A useful mod which adds many more options to be able to further customize the game setup than what is already offered by the base game. This includes new World Sizes, 12 new player colors from the official Citadel Paints list, new game paces, new difficulties, new wildlife density options, and more. It's worth checking out.
  • More Artefact Types: A mod which adds in cut artefact types as well as adds back artefacts that existed in earlier versions. On top of that it also adds a few new ones. This encourages the player to further explore the entire map, which in the base game they had little reason too unless you set artefact density on high.
  • Faction: Iron Hands: A well-made mod which adds in the Iron Hands as a new playable faction. Plays similarly to the generic space marine faction but have some unique mechanics of their own, as well as new units and research. A custom quest line and intro has also been added which provides the player with an immersive experience. It's also important to note that it doesn't matter what colour you choose in the game setup as the Iron Hands always come default in their custom color scheme as well as having the distinct "Iron Hand" symbol/emblem on their various units. Worth a try for any fan of the Iron Hands or just space marines in general.

See Also

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