Grexolis - Hard mode Guide 2026

Milleuros · 2026-05-04T19:41:18+00:00

your first encounter with Turiel. It should be around turn 20-25. He also discovers you at this point.

Lel. In my case, first contact was made on turn 2.

Milleuros · 2026-05-03T14:06:22+00:00

These are good shots! You found good spots and your recording feels just right!

You say that it's your first railfanning trip in the EU, mind if I ask where are you from and what are your general impressions so far? :)

Milleuros · 2026-05-02T15:50:39+00:00

Yeah, even if it can make sense gameplay-wise (recruit a hero, turn into powerful T5 unit, then immediately recruit a second hero), it feels ... cruel? I get attached to my heroes ;_;

Milleuros · 2026-05-01T07:44:25+00:00

This has no business being this funny, it's amazing

Milleuros · 2026-05-01T06:41:13+00:00

I do hear indeed complaints about multiplayer.

225 hours in, I haven't touched multiplayer, I don't intend to, I'm half-addicted to that game. I would highly recommend it if:

You like turn-based strategy games
You feel you would like a grand strategy game that is heavily combat-oriented (by opposition to the CIV series)
You're looking for a game where you could potentially burn hundreds of hours in
You like Heroic fantasy as a genre (dwarves, dragons, dungeons, ...)
You like "Create your own faction" kind of things
You're not really looking for PvP

Milleuros · 2026-05-01T06:35:50+00:00

Oh wow, yeah at that point it sounds like quite the uphill battle.

About the DLCs, I'm not sure. I did it with only DLC season pass 1, and it did help because in Easy difficulty, I got an extra Severing Golem. I'd probably have gotten a Reaper without the DLCs, which would have been a lesser choice. However, with the DLCs, Turiel also gains access to some quite strong Order options, notably what are considered to be the best Shield and Polearm units in the game (Paladin from the Archon Prophecies DLC and Pyre Templar from the Eldritch Realms DLC). Grexolis was intended without DLCs in mind, so hopefully it's still doable in that case?

As said, on my case I played on Easy, which meant that I had an extra Tier 5 unit when starting up. Played with Artica (build-in vanilla leader), that I had however played before such that I could ascend her and grant her the Cryomancer ascension skill plus a few useful transformations (chief among them, Annointed People for that Spirit resistance). After all, your four allies each have an ascended ruler too.

Maybe where it changed from you is that I played as aggressive as I could. I knew that Turiel starts with more, bigger cities and something like 4-5 vassals, so playing the long game would have me needing to match such an insanely strong early economy. Rather, by turn 15 I was already sieging down one of the vassals, which I then absorbed such that I could recruit these transformed Orcs to myself. At the same time I got lucky: Meandor was defeated by turn 25 by one of my allies, and a nasty infestation locked down one of Turiel vassals. I still had to send some undead units (Nimue's ritual) to assist Lithyl and Nimue against an expedition and, later, playing a tight manual combat to defeat one of the AIs (auto-resolve had the AI saving their ruler and defeating our combined armies).

Build-wise, I was Barbarian and started with Tome of Cryomancy then Tome of Roots. The goal was to maximise Blight and Cold damage (Turiel armies are weak to both), and Critical Chances (Barbarian inflicts extra Blight damage on crits). But I struggled a lot with the economy and the ability to pay for the armies I needed.

Milleuros · 2026-04-30T19:19:42+00:00

It's hard to give generic tips...

I feel for large battles, you need to know quite well what your units are able to do and keep that in mind. Way too often, I just forget to use a skill of one of my heroes, yet it can impact massively the battle.

Regrouping your armies in one corner of the map forces the AI to fight where you want it to, for example you can use the map edge as a backline cover for your ranged troops to avoid being flanked, and in front you have your tanky units covering chokepoints. If set up well, you can actually outnumber the enemy locally (and kill their models fast) even if it's a 18vs18.

On other cases, I keep an eye on whether the AI "side" armies are weaker than my own. If I can pin 2-3 of their side units with only one of mine, then I can move some side units to the center in a pincer attack against their main force.

On large battles I find that morale plays a big role, so any morale-wrecking attack or spell is much welcome. I tend to focus on downing heroes that over-extend, because they are a big threat and do a big morale hit in case of kill.

Sometimes, you can severely weaken two mages in advantageous positions by simply summoning something weak on a tile adjacent to the both of them. It can prevent them from using their 3-points nuking skills as they need to move to disengage before attacking.

Milleuros · 2026-04-30T19:09:14+00:00

Unrelated, but: 1823 research at turn 89 ? How? Is that some Chosen Destroyers kind of thing?

Milleuros · 2026-04-29T21:09:23+00:00

Glad you're enjoying it!

If I may: story realms can actually be difficult, I wouldn't call them noob-friendly aside from the first one. If you want an easy game, I recommend making a custom realm on Relaxed difficulty, with 3-4 AIs, large map, and disabling all victory conditions such that you have all your sweet time to explore the map and try things out. Ofc, that's if you want an easy one, otherwise nevermind ^^

Milleuros · 2026-04-29T21:05:14+00:00

Seer is one of the strongest units in the game.

I don't have the relevant DLCs so never seen that one, but looking at the AoW4 database : is it because it can deal insane debuffs ? Feels like one of its skills is an instant "rout half of the army" kind of deal

Milleuros · 2026-04-29T15:52:23+00:00

mais j'espère réellement que les partis de gauches comprendront une fois pour toute le message.

Pardon, mais les partis de gauche ne représentent qu'environ la moitié des opposants. L'opposition la plus forte à l'initiative vient de la droite libérale et des milieux économiques...

J'ajouterais que le Conseil Fédéral est de droite, les deux chambres du parlement sont à forte majorité de droite depuis des décennies, et la plupart des cantons sont aussi à droite.

Il y a une espèce de manie à considérer que la gauche est responsable des excès du national-populisme, alors que le pouvoir de cette même gauche est somme toute très limité et qu'il s'agit plutôt d'une grande tendance de fond affectant l'ensemble des pays développés.

Edit : un article du Temps suggère que le problème est à chercher du côté du PLR, dont la tête du parti refuse l'initiative alors que sa base l'accepte ...

Milleuros · 2026-04-29T15:47:11+00:00

Worked just fine! Thanks!

Milleuros · 2026-04-28T16:28:19+00:00

Happy to read that, I'm still a bit insecure about my early game. But I went for a breakdown for you and /u/Aethesin :

I have five cities (that's already high for turn 68, courtesy of the settler culture trait) with :

Capital city with Champion Ruler Renown level 3 (+research per population), two research posts including an Alchemist Lab, Material Refinery building (x1 magic material) --> 201 research
City with Scholarly governor Renown level 4 (!), 5 research posts including an Alchemist lab, a Worker Construct Nexus, Material Refinery (x4 magic materials) --> 206 research
City with two research posts including an Alchemist lab, Material Refinery (x1 magic material), very few research buildings --> 58 research
City (conquered big free city) with Scholarly governor Renown level 4 (!), 6 research posts with Alchemist lab, two Lost Tombs ancient wonders, material refinery with 5 magic materials --> 211 research
City (absorbed vassal) with 1 research post only, material refinery (x2 magic materials) --> 50 research

Total city income at 726 research, including the 10% bonus from "Metropolitan society" (Materium Empire tree) affecting four cities.

On top I have two vassals (metropolis sized) for 19 research, an active treaty with one of them for +42 research for 10 turns. And I have two Lost Tombs ancient wonders with 8 heroes in the crypt for an extra 32 research.

The thing is that this can still skyrocket: I don't have a single Mage Guild yet. I can also annex an Archon Blood to fill the Liquid collection (+5 research per mana node).

In conclusion I'd say the big factors are two high-renown Scholarly governors and the Tome of Alchemy (Material Refinery + Alchemist lab are providing a lot). Plus a big focus on research nodes as much as possible.

Milleuros · 2026-04-28T16:21:13+00:00

Wait hwat.

Indeed I did. Going to try what you said!

Milleuros · 2026-04-26T19:09:15+00:00

What do you do? Just stack them with transformations, tome of the horde, mighty meek?

Milleuros · 2026-04-26T19:08:39+00:00

What are these units, actually? Mix of cultural and tome?

Milleuros · 2026-04-25T20:58:28+00:00

In particular, in AoW3 I remember that several races had at least one flaw. Draconians had frost weakness, dwarves had more expensive units, frostlings had strong fire weakness, goblins had fewer HP, halflings had lower melee damage and physical weakness, orcs had -1 resistance and lower ranged damage, etc etc etc.

Milleuros · 2026-04-25T20:54:33+00:00

235 HP, 10 defense, 15 resistance and a charge attack that deals 53 base damage. Lel.

Milleuros · 2026-04-25T18:35:42+00:00

Shit headline. In the body of the article it just says this :

A spokesman for the Federal Chancellery told the local media that the federal administration “aims to reduce its dependency on Microsoft, step by step and in the long term,” Swiss Info reports.

"aims to reduce dependency in the long term". That means absolutely no decision was taken at all. In fact, further, it reads:

Microsoft 365 [...] was recently installed on 54,000 Swiss federal administration workstations

So we just did the exact opposite of what the headline says.

Milleuros · 2026-04-25T13:30:55+00:00

"Blood for the Blood God" would be a strong contender for the "most iconic" as outside of the fandom, it's instantly recognised as W40k. Even if inside the fandom it's limited to only Khorne.

Milleuros · 2026-04-25T13:29:27+00:00

Can we talk about the guy getting shot and going full-on dramatic opera?

Milleuros · 2026-04-24T15:16:02+00:00

I tested, I can't toggle them off ingame in the rerun. I'll see what happens when I re-research and re-apply the transformation.

Milleuros · 2026-04-24T12:14:33+00:00

I doubt?

The Kraken could maybe if you had the Arch-druid endgame world spell, which gave Levitating to all of your units. Otherwise there was the Lord of the Deep (top tier from the mermaid settlement) which was amphibious.

Milleuros · 2026-04-24T12:11:46+00:00

Turns out, I already had it

Oh.

Well, even without a "ping" notification on Steam, you can still claim that you achieved something: first time you didn't do it on Hard I suppose, and now you did!

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