The forces of good

When you start a shard. A good location for a good karma, good units build is where there are forests.
* Forest can include the faerie forest location (units) more on that later
* Unicorn exploration events. More on that later.
* Second ring forest may include elven provinces.

The first hero should be the scout. The ranged one that can use bows and crossbows.
Why? because of 2 reasons:
* Only scouts can gain the diplomacy perk (important one here) alliance with the elves or dwarves (extremely picky each of them) is easier to get once you have this skill leveled to lvl 2 or 3
* Diplomacy at lvl 4 is required to have a chance to tame the unicorn if the hero is exploring a forest.
(to manage this hero specialization should be archer, which is scout-scout)

secondary hero likely first the commander. Who can take the advantage of ranged units such as elves or dwarven engineers.
Other heros can be turned into commanders by second specialization.
such as the warrior, "champion", mage, "enchanter" and the scout, "ring leader"

allying with non human races of good karma nets you some lvl 1 units that are significantly better than the equivalent from your castle.
these can be found from the second ring onwards. So you dont know if or which race you will find.

* Halflings: its really easy to get the quest to ally with these guys. So starting with a scout is not required at all. Upon meeting them they can give you the quest to ally with them regardless of your status. The quest is kill 15 brigands. Easy.
The halfling unit is a cheap slinger that is better than the ones on the castle.
good: they are cheap. bad: they are not too powerful. Can be upgraded to a forager (starts with scavenge to loot more) or upgrade to a scout, a rogue halfling that is more capable also in melee.

* Elves: To even get the quest you need 50 points of karma, not realistic to get early. Positive at least 1 and diplomacy lvl 2 is enough also. So starting with a scout and netting the diplomacy skill is required.
The quest is to rescue an elven maiden that is held at a wizards tower. If these towers are on the first ring they are easy (3 shamans + 1 sorcerer) so if you plan to make this alliance do not plunder the capital and first ring wizards tower. It is rng related you may want to save scum before the attempt.

Elves themselves are really powerful archers (but expensive) likely commander make them better by the ranged tactics perk. They also can upgrade to a different unit. Rangers have better hth skills and druids have more resistance and can cast spells with the ammo. Otherwise similar to base elves.

*Dwarves: dwarves can be found on mountains and similarly require +50 karma or +1 and diplomacy either 1 or 2.
Mission is to find an axe that is in a bandit lair. these can be found in provinces that were originally defended by brigand outlaws. rng as well so save scumming possible. Also you may leave these without plundering if you want to find dwarves in your future.

Dwarves are a better swordman or pikeman lvl 1 unit. More expensive and better stats including resistance.
Can upgrade to guardsman or engineer. Guardsman is a hth unit with quite awesome stats for a lvl 1.
Enginneers on the other hand are hth units that are also ranged. And very good at ranged. Not only they have range 5, they also have armorpiercing. On top of that they can repair machines and make machines next to them hit harder.
In my mind the correct aproach would be to choose ballistas as one of the lvl 2 units in the castle and catapults as one of the lvl 3s. Try to get your dwarves into engineers and at least cover for the ballistas to shoot.
Commander heroes give extra ammo wit ranged tactics which is nice for machines, and also extra attack.
If your secondary hero is a commander the 2 options i see is Commander-Commander, "General". Can give extra range at ranged tactics lvl 5, and logistics is interesting at lvl 5 because 50% army upkeep reduction.
Commander-Scout, "tactician" is a likely choice as well because all ranged troops will have more attack and the hero gains the ability to shoot as well. That can give you the option to shoot with him at a good distance away.

These decision can be done similarly for the elves.

Other races you may want to ally with are the neutral ones, lizardmen are good lvl 1 units and the centaurs. Maybe diplomacy can help to get the quest, im not sure.

The openings i tried with the scout are going right away recruiting 2 pikemen and keeping the slinger as the 3rd unit and the militiaman as the garrison. You spend a lot of money right away and you upkeep is bad. But the survivability of your units is better. You would want to priorise getting the cash to get your healer which can be hard.
The other opening i tried is to get the militiamen turn 1 and attacking a free settlement with 3 militias as army. is possible to win the battle against like 4 or 5 unit free settlement(lord difficulty) and you will lose some of them nevertless they are cheap to replace.

The actual army should look like a bunch of pikemen and a healer or 2 keeping them alivem while the scout shoots over them. Similarly you can use the swordmen, better stats but more expensive. The reason i perefer pikemen is for future strategy. If you want a repetable provincial guard that is strong pikemen by themselves allow patrolmen (medium lvl) and combined with lvl 2 guardmen allows guardmen prov guards. That spends only pikemen as requirement at lvl1. Swordmen require to combine with crossbowmen to allow the relevant p guard. I also want to have archers to land the hunters p guard (free to mantain), so the lvl 1 roster would be:
*Militaman-Pikeman-Archer-healer*
Militaman as garrison unit at least are cheap.

We want to start in forest we want to find faerie forest locations. To access the recruitment here karma at least +1 required.
This location not only give you fairies (lvl1), also dryads (lvl2), its a good reason to start in forests, so you can recruit these lvl 2s ahead of schedule, because lvl 2 units of the castle require a lot of investement.
At first these 2 forest creatures are unimpressive, but with leveling, the fairy can heal at range which is more convenient than the touch distance of the castle healer. and they cast haste as well which is awesome at first and at any time during the game.
Dryads can get cool skills during lvl ups such as poison immune. Which help agains various types including the late game monster guards. They also have magical attack that can overcome units with good conventional armor such as executioners or knights and they can hurt ghosts. Their stamina is low so the haste the fairies cast can recover them 4 points of stamina.
Replacing the line of armored troops with dyads, fairies and maybe militias will make all the hero army speed 2 which is relevant in the army mobility mapwise.

About getting the unicorn.
Just like skipping the castle upgrade recruiting dryads in the forest, is possible to get a lvl 3 unit for free in the forests. Is not guaranteed however.
To even have the chance the hero must have diplomacy of at least 4 (so only scout-scout, "archer") and rng can say no. I dont think save scumming work.
If you have the diplo and a free lvl 3 unit slot in his army you can get this unit quite early. A big power spike.

Another lvl 3 unit you can get ahead of schedule is the minotaur. Minotaur mazes as you explore them give 3 choices: begining, middle and deep. Deep has around 9% chance of giving you the recruit option. That is potentially very early and these are neutral units. On the other hand while you go deep in the maze minotaurs can attack the hero. And he will likely die.
If you dont mind having to revive the hero you can gamble this.

lvl 2 units of the castle that are good are
- the monk, a ranged healer that is really good at what he does, comes with meditation that can recover ammo.
- guardman that is a quite beefier melee unit that can eventually gain first strike
- pegasus, a flying unit resistant to magic. Good against mages. Will take advantage of astral energy spell to add more resistace and to gain another move to return to the heales after melee. Similarly to harpies they can get the ability to move after hitting so haste cast by fairies or the hero makes this better.

machines are good combined with dwarves so ballistas at lvl 3 and catapuls later are a choice.

The neutral lvl 2s horsemen and horse archers are suprisingly good with the +karma scout.
the pathfinding perk can make these fast units more likely to flank the enemy and if you also chosen the monks, they can heal from distance.
Horse archers give also a related building nomad camp that allows the nomad province defense for plains, if the plains also has horses resource then that will give +12 gold. Also this camp allows the hero to buy nomad bow and arrows that are not bad at all.
The 2 units combined can get you the hipodrome for more gold and the cavalry province defense at some point.

lvl 3 units
* cleric is very good. If you go for this guy you can skip lvl 2 monks. They are the best at healing and they can gain the spell resurrection that allows you the revive a fallen unit. Keep in mind that necromantic heroes can use the body lilke casting a skeleton or something so par someone on the body to prevent that.
* Knights are strong melee units wit bad magic resistance. They can gain first strike at some point.
*griffons are neutral and are not a bad choice. If you took pegasus they unlock a building for a late game province defense.

lvl 4 units.
* Paladin is a quite good unit, but obviously very expensive to upgrade the castle to get them. Armor, resistance very high and can get first strike eventually.
* Elephants are a powerful lvl 4 unit, neutral. Good choice but not if you are going thematic good units. Lots of hit points and can insta kill a smaller unit with the trample skill.
* Treemen are a lvl 4 good unit that you can get if you find the acorn to summon one. You cannot count on getting these at all, its rng after all. Slow but very resitant hth unit.

*The eggs. There are a bunch of eggs that are very common to get. Spiders can immobilize units and thats very handy. Slugs are slow firing posionious creatures quite good to get earlly. Basilisks are melee units that need some lvl ups to get +1 mobility or regen.
The best of them are the phoenixes and hydras that are lvl 4 neutral monsters but very unlikely to land these.

Since we want to land those dryads and fairies in the forest we wont have a lot of gem income as a result. So the mage hero is not at his best.
However since we are not evil and we sshould ignore necromancy or demonic magic the choices for first lvl spells is obvious.
We then are guaranteed to land magic weapon to restock ammo, cure wounds, astral energy, web, slow, haste and the rituals fair wind to speed up the hero on map, extravaganza to cure unrest.

lvl 2 choices
* mages guild (wizardy) eventually gets dragon form upgrading this to lvl 4. My choice of mage hero in good karma is the enchanter that can have for example ranged tactics (is a commander) if you have elves or dwarves and casting things like mass attack they can hurt. however in this case thinking ahead i want to have dragon form. The unit to be targeted can be enchanted with haste before hand to speed it up and cure a bit of stamina.

* Illusionists guid. i usually dont pick this but mass attack is good. Also sleep combines with the enchanter and at lvl 4 enslave mind as well.

* Temple of life. Very good with the enchanter because word of life heal more the most turns it is on.
mass defense at lvl 3 combines and lvl 4 not at all. So no need to upgrade past lvl 2

* Sphere of stone. I pretty much always pick this one. Mass slow is great at lvl 3 regardless. And lvl 2 helps in regard to summon gargoyle even with non mage heros to cover weak units. The lvl 4 do not combine because require spell power which a wizard-wizard (mage) would gain more advantage of.

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To even gain good karma you can build the buildings in the castle with the white circle icon in contrast with the red one.
Likewise spells that have the red icon like summon imp gives bad karma also.
Adittionally the choices you make on random events also affect karma. This is relevant to qualify to recruit the forest creatures and to keep your good units in postive moral.
Moral is good to have as high as possible to avoid the unit panicking and also very high morale makes the unit hit harder.
So morale boosting items are good for the scout hero to have a percentile addition for his arrow damage.

Bottomline: good unit roster has good defense and healer that are very nice to have. You miss the evil mages that are good at debuffing enemies and also lose the evil spells that are quite nice. Its a tradeoff. Fun stuff.


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