The Engineer's Handbook

The engineer is a useful unit that when properly utilized doubles the firepower output of a dreadnought's juggernaut's and cannons. Also, they can toss nets and use a blunderbuss, but those are minor in comparison to what they can do with machines.

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Juggernaughts start combat with their mortars on cooldown. If you have an equal number of engineers to dreadnoughts, The idea is to keep the juggernaut always refilled by the end of the turn. The reason for this is so that at a moments notice the engineers can run out and throw nets at a unit attacking the juggernaut and the still maintain the ability to continue mortar fire for that turn.

Now, shots per turn fired is an important thing, lets look at the math
each cannon and juggernaught can fire .5 shots per turn. Each engineer bumps that shot value to 1 per turn. However, you may not have more engineers than you may have machines, and you may not have more than 6 per army. So you could go with 3 cannon 3 engineer for 3 per turn fires OR you can go with 4 cannon and 2 engineer for two guaranteed shots per turn and one shot every other turn. In fact, if your going to be dropping a unit to add a hero, its better to drop a cannon than it is to drop an engineer in terms of shots per turn, especially if they are a dreadnought hero.

The 4 cannon and 2 engineer mix allows fire to be maximised at the start of the engagement. If the engineers refill all of the cannons right after firing, all four cannons will be able to run continuous fire for 2 turns. With 3 cannons, your percentage of time at full fire goes up, but your overall firepower drops by .5 shots per turn.

The Iron Golem is a solid hunk of healthpoints, useful for patrolling the edges of the battlefield. If you are low on mana or for some reason or can't summon elementals, they are a good replacement. They can also be used to stand in doorways to prevent attackers from attacking the door itself, but other than that, they have fairly normal armor and resistance compared to other units. Useful, but don't build an army only out of these.

The cannon is the engineers bread and butter weapon. Keep in mind that it has slightly lower damage than a point blank musket round, but what it lacks in firepower, it makes up for in splash damage. The cannon suffers mostly from lack of line of sight so if your an air adept, now would be an excellent time to break out the seeker spell. Other than that, it is actually a good idea to give the cannons to a rogue hero with stronger than steel to get armor piercing in some circumstances. This is of course only if your not going to be using wizard hunters and extermination squad bonuses from the dreadnought.

The Enemy of all druids. The Destroyer of crowds. The Decimator of hordes. I present to you the flame tank. The flame tank has explosive death, but the Dreadnought's explosive squad makes that death trigger twice. Now as far as fiery pain goes, a gold level flame tank while not only dishing out healthy amounts of damage can also immolate its foes. Immolation, combined with the dreadnought's choking gas spell can significantly reduce enemy armor and resistance. Also, the flame tank and the fire elemental have a very special bond. If you have an army of flame tanks and an off army of fire elementals, you can march those elementals in a shoulder to shoulder wall that is backed up by the flame tanks to cause much more pain. Iron gollems can flank the corners, but the firewall is the fiercest dreadnought tactic in the book, but also sadly the easiest countered by resistance.

Keep in mind flame tanks cann't be brought back to life with the repair spell, and that the skin of oil fire spell should be used in conjunction with the flame tanks to cause even more than usual amounts of pain.

Juggernaught's are damnably expensive. That is why if you ever get late enough into a match to bring a juggernaught army to the field, its always a good idea to craft a hat that allows -50% upkeep costs, and to put all of the juggernauts and flame tanks in with the hero and put all of the engineers, fire elementals and support units in a side army that accompanies the main hero. Juggernaughts also need support to prevent flanking. Juggernaughts looks frightening,but if they get surrounded, they stop firing and even though broadside is effective, its not lethal, and it only fires once. Scoundrels with the ability to sabotage are the worst to get surrounded by. In the war of the juggernaughts, its also good to keep in mind that you are dealing the most damage and collateral damage to achieve your aims is acceptable. With explosive death, its even desirable. (more on that with the spy drones) Keep your juggernaughts well stocked with engineers, protected by flame tanks and elementals and musketeers and they will win you wars.

The delightfully destructive spy drone is one of those units that you want to die. Although they are useless in large fights with lots of range, they can be quite painful. Their death blast deals half the damage of a juggernaut shot, so heads up when enemies clump! you can also overcharge them for a more powerful deathblast as well. One thing to note with spydrones is that they can deal damage to walls and doors with their death, and early game, you can sail a stack of these little monsters into an enemies capital for an easy cap most of the time. People dont worry about spydrones, but most of the time they don't click on the stack and realize they got 6 of them incomming!