FWIW, what I have is:

Black Dragons deal 415 effective damage each, and average .2075 effective damage per leadership.

Thorn Warriors deal 2.6 effective damage each, and average .325 effective damage per leadership.

This is assuming that both units have base crit rates and that neither is beyond the +60 or -60 attack cutoff. In practice, Black Dragons will be beyond the cutoff often, so expect them to deal something like 25%-33% less damage then this on average.

Now, the real benefits come in when you add items to Thorn Warriors:

Thorn Warriors with +100% damage +1 +1 damage deal 7 effective damage each, for an average of .875 effective damage per leadership.

You can thorns even more insane, with crit and +attack bonuses you could easily double or triple these numbers. The only comparable item boost I know of for dragons is the -leadership item, which (IIRC) is -20%, meaning dragons max out at .26 effective damage per leadership unless against high level units where their higher attack can add a bit more in.

Wait on first turn, let enemy move, you'll be in range of at least one enemy unit on their first turn. Your units aren't inhibited by any of that stuff unless you purposefully move into them.

Only if enemy units are positioned right. Thorns can easily hit more than 2x the damage of dragons with their base attack. And concentrated damage is far, far more important than spread out damage. Your dragons could be counter attacked by a 50% dead stack that would be 100% dead if it was hit by thorns instead.

If I may mention the Thorns special ability: After killing a target you can get an entire new stack of thorns. Permanently. Can't remember the size, but IIRC it was something like 2/3rds of the parent stack? Yeah, thats a permanent +66% damage and health boost if you need it during a long battle. Probably slightly less since some Thorns will die by that time, but still a huge benefit.

Defense reductions won't matter much since the Dragon already has more than +60 attack in most cases. %health loss doesn't help much unless you are letting the stack sit around for several turns, if you want the stack dead NOW you want upfront damage.

Resistances and defense of the dragons is worth mentioning though. It's the main advantage of high tier units that they can last longer in a long battle. Though after +defense, Thorns do have comparable if not greater base effective health per leadership.

The ratio is 15/20/10 from the game file.

I find it so amusing u guys comparing the BD vs thorn

yes sure maybe in damage wise they can compete EVENTUALLY

but here is the real key question

if you have the option to choose

between a BD or thorn warrior in your army what would you choose?

I bet everyone would take the BD if not either you are being stupid or just want to prove me wrong


just a simple facts besides the math

thorn hunters are hard to be ressurected(time back, demonologist life steal)
BD cannot eb healed by barely die due to high HP and def

BD does have WAY better abilities than a thorn warrior can dream off
BD doesn't have any penalty vs fire


if your so full of yourself then go with a thorn hunter/warrior/royal thorn

into demonis and KILL it without losses

and even with losses let's see how hard it is

it so much easier with BD's

so don't give me that crap of damage per ldrship or w/e

BD>thorns in any way

Depends on many things, sure plants arent good vs dragons. But i had fun with them in Red sands mod for Ap/Cw : cleared most of Verona and Montero with - Monstera(new plant unit in red sands), Royal thorns, Thorn hunters, fauns and Dryads. I played warrior and had crown of blackthorn, 2x(+1 dmg) and some bonuses to dryads. There were huge stacks of low lvl enemy in those locations and they are easy to control with dryad sleep and fauns. And steamroll with summoned units form monstera and royals, hunters were high dmg units with 3-5/8lds and nice crit%.
But after that i got to orc islands took Trigger and decided to go 100% crit with orcs+paladin and had fun also.
But all plan army whole game would be pain in ass to maintain, but doable i think. True dragon enemy would devastate you, so would fire room in tower of Eventus, but all in all 90% of game battles would be manageable (i`m not sure now but if monstera/royal thorns and hunter thorns are in archer group of units trigger would be great for them also + fauns = 4 range units for 100%, nice idea might try it out).

As for taking dragon army, true they are easy to keep alive, but also soooooo boring :-)
I had version of shrek build and it was interesting to do, need : warrior, Moldok companion ,x2battle axe weapon in game, orc veteran , orc hunter , orc , paladin , 5th unit may vary (shaman, royal griffins-gets bonu from orc hunters, ...). Point is that all melee units have +$0%dmg and orcs great speed and initiative from Moldok, mass haste and in first turn your units are making havoc in enemy lines. With warrior counterstrike+frenzy skill it gets really interesting :-)
4x dragon army +rune mages = great fun , shrek build also = fun , my mini shrek build also = fun ... there are great ideas and builds. 3x plan army with dryad/faun support is also fun to go but not whole game.

yes but that is with a mod
try it with a vanilla one;)

and that is also on CW IIRC?

and you are highly reliant on your summons

and i think hero battles will be a pain in the ass also

(fireball/firespells) the burning effect will devaste plants

Shrek build? How can you call it a Shrek build when you don't even have an OGRE in it! :)

But yes, hasted Orcs with Adrenaline was quite a deadly mix with Moldok. Orc veterans were so good, I even used them to No-Retaliate Driller. Woot!

Of course, I'm splitting hairs, but the battle axe only offers 20% damage to melee units (if you had 2 of them 40%!), and sadly, Shrek would not have been included in that offering :) It only worked on a moderate large selection of level 1-4s including the Orc Veteran.

There was a berseker axe which offer 30% critical chance to axe wielding enemies only. Great for demons and goblins. By the way, in WotN it works for... JARLs. Yeah. I had 99% crit chance jarls. But they were too slow... my horsemen was still generally better. :(

I just gave example for plan army, here is no monstera unit but faun and dryads are still present and items i mentioned. But problem is that when you get access to this units in elf lands it`s no fun to play them. In Ap/Cw this build could be done from start Verona ad have great fun for next 50-70 battles with it.
Summons are just icing on cake, benefit of this build is that all enemy units 1-3 lvl are perma sleep and you use faun to sleep some 4th lvl stack also ,and all plants to kill rest. Then you pick rest of enemy army stack by stack, resurrecting fallen plants with faun as you go.
Also with black thorn crown+ 2x(+1) dmg items plats will have insane dmg/lds : hunters 4-6/8lds , royals 42-82/380lds , monstera 62-102/500lds (1BD have 110-130, for same lds you can lead 5monstera with potential 300-500 dmg) , fauns 5-7dmg/60lds, dryads 3-5dmg/20lds. Plant build can have interesting play and tactics, but as any other it takes certain preconditions to work best (right items, units available...).

@ckdamascus
Yes but it`s same as leading +40 larger army all time, and with high crit% it is +60% more dmg then without those items.Highest attack bonus item is +7 for Ctahu claw(7x3,33% =22% more then battle axe, but you get it at end of game, i got 2battle axe on Rusty anchor and verona)) but for warrior who have high att to begin with, +dmg% items are better due to limitation on 60 att over enemy def.
And as i said it`s mini shrek build and all units i listed are included in bonus from battle axe (4 melee units and griffins just to pick up chests and summon nuisance to enemy at end while i resurrect my losses), and orc units have low lds cost so +40% dmg is great for large numbers of them FOR THE HORDE!!! :-D