Like my General Strategy Guide for Conquest of Elysium 3, this Guide will point out some base essentials and more obvious mistakes that Players are likely to make.

If you're a Veteran of Conquest of Elysium 3, then this Guide will be going over stuff you already know, in which case feel free to share your wisdom in the Comments section, I'm sure the freshers will appreciate it.

Sometimes you can get away with it, but more often than not you will cost yourself the game. All it takes is one deer or stealthy brigand and it's game over. So make sure you have a few units guarding it before you go off to explore the unknown.

This largely applies to your First Citadel (commonly referred to as Base, Home or Starter), but you should make an effort to guard all Citadels you acquire as these are excellent recruitment centres for yourself, and also for your opponents.

While there is an element of denial involved here, it also means that each new Citadel you acquire is one more Citadel you need to lose before you're eliminated from the game.


Leaders are your bread and butter, they're the Commanders of your armies, most of whom play a pivotal role in tapping into your Class specific Skills and Talents. However, most Leaders are actually quite vulnerable, especially when alone. As such, they should always have some Bodyguards with them to help secure their survival.

To do this you will need to select your Leader and then go into the Transfer Units screen which is found on the Actions Bar located on the right hand side of the screen. You can then start adding Units to your Leader, though there are a few ways to do this.

The primary method is selecting each Unit individually.
The secondary method is double clicking to add all Units of that specific type.

A third method is holding down the Shift key and selecting a start and finish unit.
This is a good way to manage large armies composed of several ranks.


There are a lot of Resources in Conquest of Elysium 4, and not all of them will be usable by your Class. So what does your Class need?

Pretty much everyone can make use of Gold and Iron, but the Barbarian, Baron and Senator Classes are especially thirsty for the stuff. Quite a few Classes who like Gold have a much stronger thirst for Iron such as the Dwarfs, Enchanters, Pale Ones, and Trolls. However, some of these, the Dwarfs and Pales Ones, along with Burgmeisters and Warlocks, want to get their hands on Gems. Whereas Necromancers and Voice of El are after their own unique Resources, Hands of Glory and Relics respectively.

For this reason, it is best to determine what Resources you're actually after before you get started, and to try and avoid killing Neutral Units guarding a resource you cannot use, and let your Opponents lose Units and waste Action Points trying to capture them instead.

If you are in a position where you can readily defeat the neutral guards, and keep a hold of a negligible resource tile, then do so, as explained in tip 6, it's a great way of denying opponents access to the resources they need.


Never fight a battle unless you're sure that you can win, and/or that the rewards outweigh the cost of victory.

This one seems like it's a no-brainer, but it's one that gets overlooked quite a bit. Indeed, by it's very nature this game encourages a high stakes risk and reward system, but it can be difficult to determine the right amount of acceptable risk for reward. This is especially true at the start when you only have one Citadel, two Leaders, and a small rag-tag band of misfits in place of an army.


If an important Resource square such as an Ancient Forest or Old Castle looks abandoned, then chances are good that it isn't, and that Stealthy Units are hidden there. Some stealthy Units are weak such as Brigands and Goblins, though more powerful Units such as Forest Trolls and Wraiths could also be hidden from view.

You can move Units with the Acute Senses Skill such as Scouts close by to look before you leap, at least until your army is strong enough to just not care who or what is hidden from view.


Roughly a third of the Classes have some means at their disposal of destroying specific Resources, and everyone is able to destroy Ancient Forests and regular Forests via the use of a Pyromancer or pyro-like ability. So if you can't make use of it, then no one should. Either destroy it outright or sit on it and deny your Opponents access to it.

You had best be careful when dealing with the Enchanter, and Necromancer classes, both of whom can weaponize specific Resource tiles, downgrading, or outright permanently removing them from the game.


You should make use of the ability to right click on any stack of Units to find out useful information about them. This can tell you how many hit points a Unit has left or what spells enemy wizards have at their disposal.

Of course this also extends to actual world related information, and uncovering the Fog of War as soon as possible will leave you in a much better situation when it finally comes time to start conquering Neutral controlled Resource squares.


Trade is more useful to some Classes than others, if you require a special Resource then Trade is very important to you, and if you make use of Gems then Trade is crucial to you. Make full use of it, try not to forget about it, and remember that even if you have no use for it yourself, denying your opponents access to it is itself a very powerful asset.

Buying at overprice is a solid way to ramp up the amount of Resource your buying, and worth it if you have an overabundance of Gold, which if you're having too much of anything, usually is Gold.


Occasionally, you'll come across someone, or something, that is so beyond your capabilities to deal with that fighting them right now would be tantamount to suicide. Most of the time though, you'll just want to choose to fight those otherwise costly battles on your own terms. So what should you do? Why you boldly beat a hasty retreat of course.

You can run away from and/or delay a stronger armies approach by detaching a single Unit from your army each time that you move to a new square. This will force the enemy to expend all their Action Points to fight one battle per-turn to pursue your army, or their march upon your intended position of defence, while at the same time granting you continued sight of their approaching army.

Never forget that while Hammers (armies that hit hard) and Anvils (armies that can take a beating) are strong archetypes, so are Kites (armies that move swiftly), use your kites to lead the opponents hammers and anvils around by the nose (known as kiting) and away from your more fragile assets. Do remember that the very best kites are always within sight, but lay just out of reach.

Update (07/08/2019) - Added some additional information, cleaned up some of the paragraphs, corrected a few grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.