Crown Guard

Crown Guard puts the emphasis on troop composition over any single hero unit, your army is built from a roster of distinct unit types, and matching the right mix against an incoming wave matters more than simply fielding your strongest available unit repeatedly.

Cheap, fast units are worth deploying to identify what a wave is built around before committing your stronger, more expensive troops, since overcommitting early against a wave you haven't scouted tends to waste upgrades that would matter more a few waves later. Defensive upgrades to the crown itself are easy to neglect while focused on the army, but a beefed-up frontline still loses if the structure behind it can't absorb whatever slips through. Age of War runs a similar army-versus-army base defense with an added twist of evolving through historical eras.