Barya

### Basic information

**Barya** is a faction in Songs of Conquest. It is described as "a gold loving merchant nation armed with gunpowder, machines and mercenaries".

### Magic

Order  > Destruction  > Chaos

Barya has excellent access to Order essence. Although Arleon might seem to have greater potential for Order magic with their Shields of Order, Barya has more flexibility of troop choice when choosing to build toward Order magic, and gain access immediately and easily in the form of Pipers. Although Destruction is their second-most-common essence, it is noticeably lackluster for a secondary essence, with only Tinkerers able to generate two unless Brutes are improved through the Foundry, and few other troops, let alone easily accessible ones, producing even one. This adds up to Barya being a bit weak on spellcasting overall, mostly depending strictly on buffs from Order spells to supplement their martial abilities. Only Dreaths and Artificers generate Chaos essence in Barya, and only one, so unless you plan to primarily use the Bihgli wielder and have multiple stacks of those units, you are unlikely to be able to count on Chaos magic in Barya. Tinkerers and Artificers also rather oddly gain one Creation essence when fully upgraded through the Foundry, though this would seem to be of very little consequence except in very niche builds. Barya's signature spell will thus be Rally, with some possible Dyad spells of Fury, Burst of Strength, and Justice. Although Destruction is harder to come by for Barya than other factions with their secondary essence, Barya nevertheless has arguably the easiest access to Rapid Fire when built for, which has devastating synergy with Barya's two extremely powerful reloading ranged units. Finally, Apocalypse and Onslaught might be accessible with great effort, but are probably not worth it for Barya.

### Units

Note that the upgrade cost from a base unit to an upgraded unit is always 150% of the gold difference between the two plus 100% of any non-gold resource difference (thus it will cost more in gold to upgrade a unit than it will to buy the unit already upgraded).

### Strategies

Note that the following are not necessarily high-tier meta builds, only builds that seem to work well based on the way the game is designed.

#### Human Build

The Barya Human Build focuses on rushing Veteran Pikeneers and Veteran Musketeers and turns Barya into a defensive powerhouse, especially if you run with Sanaz. Other wielders that work well with this build are Silkspool, Aleah, and Mehry. In this build, you will be generating a lot of Order Essence, which will further improve your defenses and early on help your Pikeneers reach the enemy. Try using the **Aim** ability on your Veteran Musketeers while they're reloading or right at the beginning of combat before the enemy is in range, then unleashing huge damage with Rally. You can mix in Artificers later on if you want. Although not as tactically useful as Veteran Pikeneers, they bring in Destruction Essence while still benefiting from Human improvements and Sanaz's special, allowing you to cast Rapid Fire more easily with devastating effects from your **Aiming** Veteran Muketeers and possibly some Hellbreaths. Roping in Steam Pipers isn't a bad idea either as their buff will be useful and they generate good Order Essence.

#### Harima Build

The Harima Barya Build will rely on Pipers and Dreaths early game before bringing out Brutes and Sassanids as soon as possible, and focuses on Barya's highly aggressive high-troop-damage playstyle. Use Soughtfor to really shred with this build. You will need a lot of Ancient Amber to buy your Scarred Brutes later on, but the true heroes of this build are your Shadows, which are possibly the highest single-target damage output troop in the game per stack. Two or three stacks of these played tactically-aggressively can negate any defensive strategy from another player. Use the mediocre Destruction Essence you will generate to supplement using Aggression and Sabotage. The obvious weakness of this build is that it takes time to come online and is extremely fragile to sustained conflict. It will be difficult to get through a large number of neutral fights early game without losing a lot of Sassanids and invalidating your later build, so the key is to shore up your early game weaknesses with the right strategy using Dreaths until you can afford to go ham on Sassanids.

#### Apocalypse Build (Theoretical)

This build is not for the faint of heart as it requires some chance and is highly specific, and still results in your own troops possibly taking unacceptable losses. Research Chaos Essence, run Everthink (Bihgli would also work theoretically if you ONLY use Brutes, but we really want that Magic Resistance), stack Magic Resistance, Essence Burst, Channeling, Destruction Magic and especially Chaos Magic, but don't stack too much Command too early as more stacks will mean more overall damage taken from your signature spell. use Brutes and possibly Artificers and/or Dreaths to help with Barya's weak Chaos Essence generation. Cast Apocalypse. Your high magic resistance will protect you from most of the damage while every enemy troop takes full damage, ideally (You don't need the Magic Resistance skill if you are only using Brutes on Everthink as the Magic Resistance stat caps at 80% with all bonuses, so the Brutes' natural 50% and Everthink's 40% will already push them over the top). Barya is the only faction in which this is feasible without significant chance being involved as they are the only faction where Chaos and Destruction Essences are both accessible through troops and research. Any other faction would need to find artifacts, points of interest, and pray for the right magic skills to force this strategy to work, and by then there are other far more useful builds.

### Trivia

* Barya was known as Doneria during the game's early development. This changed on June 18th, 2020: "[...] we are changing the Doneria faction name to Barya. A lot of people were reading the name as something related to Döner kebab. We didn’t want to risk people losing their in-game immersion due to fast food connotations. So, with the game still in development, we felt it was easier to change the name sooner rather than later."
* "Barya" is an anagram for "Araby", which is an archaic name for Arabia or the Arab world.

## References

1. ↑ https://www.pcgamer.com/songs-of-conquest-is-a-mix-of-heroes-of-might-and-magic-and-total-war/
2. ↑ https://www.lavapotion.com/blog/2020/6/18/development-update-22
3. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araby