Units that you hate/love, but are forced to use?

[BB Shockwave]

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Of the new units, I have not really played and experimented with the Faun. The Faun can actually resurrect the plant units, and supposedly very efficiently.

It isn't clear if the faun himself can resurrect himself. If not, it would be a very weird combo requiring paladins and/or rune mages.

Not really - Fauns are only Level 2, you can easily resurrect them with the Resurrection spell.

Their ability is nice - I paired them up with Royal Thorns - only downside is, you have to keep the plants near them. Not that hard with Thorns, just watch out for enemy area attackers like Imps or Heroes with Fireball. (They love to target your Thorns).

The spawned Thorns - and their usual death also helps in increasing the Faun's initiative, which is their biggest flaw - they are very slow to act in underground/night battles. Also, the description doesn't say, but they can only put enemy units to sleep who have already acted that turn - this makes it somewhat limiting. You can pair them up with Dryads, or Evil Beholders for best effect, Nightmare does quite a lot of damage. They are moderate shooters themselves.

Haven't used them long, so cannot comment about Ent synergies. Guess you need to run after the Ents, which is fine since they have no melee penalty.

[atlatea]

@ckdamascus
I agree faun is easy to resurrect (as said by BB Shockwave above)

And you will require paladin for no loss game (especially for impossible difficulty) no matter which units you choose as your army.

Thorn army with thorn set is the most damaging army in the game, and as BB Shockwave said above, it has excellent synergy with faun.

As for faun + ent, it have good synergy, however it doesn't have the excellent synergy of thorn + faun. The use of faun for ent is only to resurect them, but both ent or ancient ent can root, this makes excellent synergy if you love ranged/shooter army.

And faun + dryad is for crowd control and increasing faun initiative which cover his weakness in night or underground. I'm not sure whether faun get the buff if dryad's thorns died.

Faun + dryad + paladin = dryad sleep/elven song, paladin second wind dryad, faun sleep, dryad sleep/elven song, next turn dryad summon thorn, and watch the slaughter. Nice combo, crowd control, opening moves, and your faun initiative is increased by 3. You can add ancient ent as your tank, main source of damage (their dmg/ldr is insanely high) and another crowd control (rooting), druids for more summon or hunter for ranged damage.

If you can delay the enemy via that crowd control, dryad + druid will summon too many summons that will hit very very hard by turn 6 or 7.

Perhaps you hate long round battle, but elves is the most untouchable of all races because of their crowd control, and watching the enemy never touch you at all while they helplessly fight the numberless thorns (and bears if you add druids) is fun. Yes, elves are wickedly cruel.