Bambur

From reading his Civilopedia entry, it seemed to me that Bambur would equip melee units with bronze/iron/mithril weapons, essentially acting as a city in terms of weapon supply. I figured this would be very useful(not only for equipping units converted with Domination, but for counteracting Rust too) but no such thing happened in my game today. Is he bugged, or should the civilopedia just be updated?

 

I think Bambur's skill is related to his abiltiy to cast the spell 'magic blade'. This can be very powerful early in the game.

Best wishes,

Bruenor

 

Bambur has the ability to cast ''Enchant weapon'', the enchantment 1 spell. This is very powerful in the early game, particularly when using an aggressive leader. Your melee units start with something like a 50% strength bonus. For this reason I thinkk Bambur is perhaps the strongest early game hero.

 

It's... not that hard to get Adepts, you know.

 

No it's not, but Bambur saves you from researching a beaker-heavy tech like Knowledge of the Ether, and then researching an even more beaker-heavy tech, Alteration (if you don't start with Enchantment mana). Both of these techs are utterly useless to you if you aren't pursuing a strategy that emphasises magic and are eating up your beakers without benefiting your weak early game economy.

Instead, you can research Runes of Kilmorph and get a very nice religion, which vastly increases your ability to expand while maintaining a high degree of research. You can then research Arete and get an extremely useful civic that massively boosts your production AND a hero.

Bambur can then lead a very potent early game invasion, buffing all of your melee units and cracking any defenders that are otherwise too strong for you to kill. You can research KoE and so on later if you really want but magic is over-rated in my opinion.

 

Magic is especially not worth investing in if you're Khazad, for whom RoK is the obvious choice anyway. With Bambur, they get Enchant Weapon without having to bother with magic. As Khazad, unless there's some specific spell you desperately need (Spring due to your lots of desert, for instance), it makes sense to ignore magic at first, eventually trade somebody for it and build adepts at that time.

 

Way of the Earthmother + Arete costs about the same as KotE + Alteration. You also tend to be able to trade for KotE, but not the other 3.

The Khazad get as much out of the first tier of magic as anyone else, they just need to stop researching magic before Sorcery.

Bambur's a lot better in wild mana where mana crystals are of pre-defined types instead of raw so you can't just decide "I'm going to make some enchantment mana."

 

Theres hella good spells in Tier 1.
Sanctify, Haste, Enchantment, Treetop defense, Spring, Wall of Stone, Blur, Rust, Skeleton.

Maybe its just my bias towards Raiders civs and rush civs but I love bringing adepts along with my stacks for all the little tricks they can play.

Khazad Treebuckets are also pretty good, if slow, and a couple of Enchantment adepts casting repair every turn lets you move and heal them as you drag them from city to city.

In fact, given that most of RoKs good points become obsolete or will stick with you if you switch away, I quite often change from RoK into whatever the situation calls for. One time this was AV for StW, another I'd accidentally popped Warhorses the turn after I got Iron Working so I switched into Esus for Hornguard and Shadowriders.

 

I fully agree with Senethro, you have to know when to quit. RoK is a good starter religion, but if you have to switch to another one later on.
bambur is not a main reason to go RoK, that's sure, but mines can be, and gold is always a good reason.

 

The main advantage spending your beakers on RoK + Arete instead of KotE + Alteration (or any of the other 3 similar techs) is that Arete allows the construction of the Mines of Gal-Dur. There are some nice Adept spells, but early iron weapons is probably better for a melee-focused civ like the Khazad. Bambur lets you pursue that path and still have access to Enchanted Blade.

 

Of course but I'm talking about the early game. Once you've got your use out of Bambur and researched a few magic techs then of course you are going to leave RoK in many cases.

 

Bambur gets "repair too, a spell that requires the dwarf-promotion and enchantment 1. It is quite useful as you can heal catapults and ships with it. For most civs Bambur is the only way to get this spell in the early game. And imo it's the most comfortable way for everyone.

 

I like staying in RoK until after I have Machinery, sometimes later. Arthedain's Defensive Strikes are extremely powerful...

Still, what it comes down to is that Bambur's civilopedia states something like "He's a blacksmith that hands out weapons to the troops". That could easily be mis-interpreted by someone... I know I did.