To put it simply, Rogues are the masters of the expand and exploit parts of the 4x genre. There is not a single class or situation in the game that the rogue is -ever- outclassed in expansion options and ability, and the rogue's ability to raise an army is second to none.

Also, because hero sniping is the funniest thing to do in multiplayer in the game.

Pick a Rogue if you want:

-To avoid rebellion. Any race, any place!
-To be mobile. A flying army is a fast responding army.
-To have early and easy access to Sabotage. Walls and machines are no threat to Rogues.
-To expand at the speed of light.
-To build an army by adventuring.
-To see a weak early game shift into an insane lategame.

The first thing when you're creating your character, is, as always, their Race and what magic you want to focus on.

Rogue has an issue of having lackluster access to ranged options. Their later units are universally melee, and their early units are only crossbow users at best. As such, Dwarf is a lacking choice, and Draconian is somewhat situational, having access to AoE being a double edged sword when your units are encircling the enemy. Draconian flyers, however, are perhaps the best Racial T3's for rogues in the game.

High Elf is great for general ranged combat, with storm sisters and archers both being standouts, but you're not going to take much else from them. They're a solid choice if you don't mind squishy units, having a pretty even power curve all game long, and making backstab abuse easier.

Orc, I've yet to really experiment with, but from what I have seen, they're an alright choice that doesn't really have a solid edge for Rogue. I can't really suggest them, but they're by no means terrible.

Humans get access to an early healer in the Priest unit. Their ranged is solid, but not amazing as well, and their melee avoid the high elf issue of being obscenely squishy. Human Irregulars are absolutly obsoleted by Scoundrels almost from the start as well. They're a bit better than orc from what I've seen.

Goblins are a double edged sword. Their damage favors poison heavily, which rogue already does, pushing you dangerously close to single element damage when blight is resisted rather often come endgame. On the other hand, Swarm Darters are the most powerful ranged unit in the game for Rogues, due to their ability to ignore Line of Sight penalities. They're even squishier than high elves on the other hand. Goblins also don't mind blight, letting you play a Destruction magic focus and completely flood the map with blight. Of all the rogue races, goblins have the best early game by far, but they can fall off massively later.

Explorer is a must take for Rogue. There's no way around it, the effect it has on your combat prowess is simply too large not to. Assassins gain the ability to traverse massive swaths of land both in and out of battle, and scoundrels need it for machine hunting.

Other than that, Rogue has the best synergy with Creation, Destruction, Expander and Earth.

Creation gives the rogue access to healing and Terraforming. Iron Will removes the penalty from settling in poor territory, but temperate terrain is good for everyone. Creation is mostly just taken because it has a high potency heal for sustaining your exploration, and a resurrect to revive your scoundrels to continue exploding machines.

Destruction is best taken as goblin, though you can certainly make use of it as anyone else by using bards and shadow stalkers to offset the penalties. Hasty Plunder and Scorched Earth are both excellent justifications to take destruction adept, giving you the ability to deny your enemies cities and keep your economic edge. Its mastery skills give you potent damage spells, which rogue lacks, and wreck, which makes juggernauts into easy kills. Blight can be an issue if you're not playing goblins however.

Expander meshes with Explorer nicely, allowing you to grow your empire at a breakneck pace, but doesn't offer any particularly noteworthy combat benefits. Being able to rebuild quickly while using Scorched Earth from destruction can be a brutal combination that allows you to make war against you a highly unappealing prospect.

Earth gives you access to regenerating city walls and Earthquake. Rogue's lacking ranged options can make city defense difficult, so every edge you can get in defending your city with racial archers is much appreciated, and regeneration is one of the largest in the game. Earthquake is an impressively noteworthy spell because almost all of Rogue's lategame units will be flying or floating, allowing you to earthquake without hurting your forces at all. Earth elementals also add some useful tanks to your army to round out your forces if you're playing as High Elf or Goblin.

Rogue's early game is... for lack of a better word, lacking. Your hero needs levels to be good, but... thankfully, has the tools to get them.

You're going to want Iron Grip and Courtesan Ambassadors, and possibly Quick Dash as soon as you can get them. Iron grip basically allows you to have any race in any ciy without risking revolts, and indirectly increases gold gain. Quick Dash is a heal, and a haste buff in one, making it quite solid, given it can make your units attack up to five times in a single turn.

The real breadwinner is Courtesan Ambassadors though. By ALOT. Courtesan Ambassadors make it so that every neutral city is one tier more friendly with you than normal. As city purchase price and the odds of them immediately opening their borders to you is determined directly by your friendship value with them, this allows you to buy cities on the cheap.

For your first few turns, focus on building up your hero, and generally playing as usual.

Now that you've.... hopefully.... managed to not lose your entire army to a wandering brigand, and are in a position where you can reliably fight, lets cover the units who are about to join your ranks.

Crows are simple scouts. However, unlike most units, they're summoned via spell and can be spawned in next to your hero. If you have downtime on your spells, you're going to want to be casting this often. Their purpose is to act as a cheap method of scouting for neutral cities, and collecting loot, something you shouldn't trouble your hero with unless you have to. You need levels on your rogue hero afterall.

Scout with them, and dismiss them as needed. Don't bother fighting with them unless you have a severe numbers advantage, they're virtually unable to hurt armored units at all.

Scoundrels are basically supercharged versions of your standard irregulars. They're simply better than normal irregular units. While they might stat a bit weaker than your race's standard irregular (Comparing to high elf initiates, they have 1 less HP, and do 1 more melee damage). They posess both Fast Healing and Sabotage. Sabotage is a killer ability, and getting it this early allows them to overpower cities, able to simply blow clean through a wooden wall. They also easily destroy dreadnought siege engines, making them a cheap answer to juggernauts. Human and Goblin scoundrels are the best of the lot, with Humans packing Throw Net, a stun ability, and Goblins having the edge on damage over other races.

With patches, and the Corrupted Killers research, Scoundrels can evolve to Lesser Shadow Stalkers, then to Shadow Stalkers proper, making massing them from underdeveloped cities an amazing tactic. As they're T1's, they level fast and build fast, quickly reaching gold medal and evolving, making them beautiful camp clearers after you have Corrupted Killers and Irregular Training researched.

Use these to fill out ranks if needed, but you'll mostly be using them to break enemy dreadnoughts or break into defended cities. Like all irregulars, they're not masters of combat, but they're strong enough to clear basic camps in bulk, and can quickly spiral out of hand once you have the relevant abilities.

Now that you have a few levels on your hero, some gold, and have probably made it to about turn 10 or 15, it's time to turn your expansion engine on.

Rogue's single greatest strength is the ease with which it overpowers independant cities. You have wall climbing on our hero, cheap scouts to find cities, and the ability to flat out buy cities for less than everyone else. It's time to get your invade on.

Send scoundrel parties out to scout around, overrunning smaller cities by blasting through their walls and flipping them, and throwing your gold at the larger primary race cities. You should be able to rapidly expand in all directions using only t1 and t2 units and throwing your gold at the cities around you.

Since Scoundrels can tear down walls, and your hero can bypass them easily, you can take cities with far less resources than other classes, leaving your gold reserves free to buy out more cities. Scoundrels also recover faster, making them stronger at securing the areas around cities than other irregulars.

In summary, once you've gotten off the ground, focus on omnidirectional expansion. Nobody does it better, and nobody does it cheaper.

With your expansion engine kicking into high gear, you're probably thinking to yourself something like "How do I staff all these cities."

The answer to that, is bards, who also happen to be your next tech.

Bards are our first mass recruit unit. They're certainly not the best, but they come early, and act as advanced irregulars. Throw these at brigand camps, patrolling brigands, and generally use them to secure your territory, converting whatever they can. They have the HP to take a few hits, and you can always find somewhere to put new units. High elf bards deserve special mention as they have access to longbows, which makes them far and away more lethal than bards from other races. This is a double-edged sword, as on autobattle, they're more likely to kill, but it also makes them great in armies.

Bards are recruiters first and foremost. Treat them as such.

Assassins, however, are where you start getting into the real meat of rogue combat. With the ability to flat out walk through city walls at gold, and kill whatever's on the other side without even giving them a chance to retaliate (They can OHK archers), assassins allow your expansion engine to not only flip neutral cities quickly, but easily overrun the cities of other players, walking in and killing the inhabitants, only to replace them with whatever your bards have acquired. Dwarf and Orc assassins are the best of the lot, with dwarves bringing extra projectile resistance, and Orcs bringing Tireless, which makes them able to counterattack without losing actions next turn.

Assassins are basically improved scoundrels without the sabotage power. Use them to take land once they hit gold.

In a word, Assassins.

Now that you've gotten some cities, and have started to really grow, you're probabl running into other players.

Throw assassins at what you can take, but leave their heroes be. Assassins can simply run into a garrison and rip it apart, letting you quickly expand even through player teritory. Which you will be doing becausr Rogue is an engine of expansion. Cover them with bards and whatever entourages your bards have acquired who aren't busy performing guard duty.

Six assassin squads played right can reduce a batle to 3v6 early by simply using their retaliationless attack, which still does full damage regardless of how far you move, letting one pull aggro while the other circles around for a standard attack backstab to finish the unit off, letting them punch well above their weight class.

As for your hero, they should be getting their own assassination attack, as well as First Strike, and some damage improvements by now, letting them flat out slay anything that dares attack them. Most units can't take two hits of a rogue hero, and Pass Wall is either in their hands, or just around the corner, letting them function as a super assassin.

Just keep expanding, nobody fills garrisons as fast as a rogue.

Succubi are what I consider the turning point for Rogues. They're a T3 unit who are an immense threat to many T4's and quite literally the bane of enemy heroes.

Succubi are flying, far moving superbards. Seduce, their mind control skill, is on a three turn cooldown instead of once per battle, so a squad of them can easily jump on a hero and mind control it. They also have access to the superb Throw Curse, which has sniper range, no cooldown, and cuts down either enemy actions, or their resistances.

They can easily fly right into a city with a hero garrison, steal the hero for your side, as well as half the garrison, and off the rest. As they level, they also get lifesteal, and reeneration, meaning they never have to rest, hopping from city to city, taking over enemy heroes and garrisons.

When you get succubi, you should no longer be building bards. They obsolete bards for recruiting, and for stats, leaving them just with their morale aura.

Succubi are probably the strongest T3 in the game in terms of overall usefulness, with their ability to turn an entire enemy stack into allies, and the ability to tank damage well while doing it. With a 2 to 1 advantage against melee units, they cannot even be attacked.

As for rogue spells, since by this point, you should be building your warchest, Rain of Poison Blades is your standard nuke spell, Blind and panic aren't terribly great. Poison Mastery is a wonderful buff to your assassins and scoundrels, letting them do their job better.

Corpse looting and Treasure rading let you make the gold you need to manage your army and buy more and more land. Guild of Shadow Thieves is a great way to destroy enemy economies in turn, leavin you as the only one able to mass buy cities.

Smoke screen is a situationally amazing spell, granting massive defense against ranged attacks to both sides. While it certainly weakens your hero and many of your irregulars, it works wonders with assassins.

Creating Brigands and forcing cities into revolt slows the advance of enemies, due to their need to defend the homefront from an endless army of bandits and rebels. A city afflicted by both of these spells is little more than a liability, and will drag other cities down in turn. Plague of brigands delivered via a succubus flying to a lightly defended city is a nice way to disable the enemy.

Moving Target is basically damage immunity. +8 to defense is simply a massive number. If applied to a unit with lifesteal as well, killing them is nigh impossible.

And age of Deception is simply an amazing PvP spell, letting you easily ambush players, steal their units, and sneak off. Druids have an easy counter to it in being able to enable truesight on their cities however.

Network of Scrying Eyes is very much a map situational spell. On larger maps, its power increases severely, and on all maps, the ability to see the defenses of every city, and cast on any city you want can be a game winning perk.

By this point, you've expanded like wildfire, taken over countless cities, have a massive empire, and are likely facing a coalition of players who are after your rich lands.

It's time to start sniping their heroes. Seduce has a massive hit chance against heroes, and squads can easily take them over. You shound be taking advantage of this by having packs of them engage enemy heroes, seducing them, and either getting them to self-terminate, or winning the battle and stealing them away. If the enemy army lacks access to hero buffs, it's difficult for them to take over cities with garrisons without deploying actual armies.

When you see an actual army, your primary goal should be to heckle it, throwing succubi and assassins at them to kill their units or mind control them and moving them to defend your cities. Rapid attacks from succubi squads all over the place will quickly drain out their casts per turn, and if they don't, you'll simply grow ever stronger. If they field machine squads, throw scoundrels at them in bulk.

You almost certainly have a gold, mana and production advantage, take advantage of it. Your units may not be as strong, but their units make a nice substitute.

The Shadow Stalker is an interesting pseudo-T4, in that its roughly on par with the Succubus in terms of potential, as well as cost. Compared to other t4's, it is immensly easier to mass, but pays for it in other areas. Their true strength is in just how resistant they are to damage, able to absorb 60% of physical attacks, resist projectiles in all forms, and ignore frost and poison damage outright.

They have backstab, can further reduce enemy damage when they hit them, and possess Pass Wall, letting them effortless invade enemy bases.

However, they die extremely quickly to magic, posessing only 60 HP, less than Succubi. Their job is to tie up enemies, engaging them in melee and pounding on them. Since they resist ranged, and physical both, they're almost impossible targets for archers and standard melee units. Treat them as such, letting them be the first to attack, opening units up for your others to fight. Don't mass them, the're too easy to counter with spells and abilties, deploy them as shocktroopers to block for succubi and assassins. They don't do a very good job against dreadnoughts though, since flame tanks will wreck them. However, flame tanks die to scoundrels easily, so it works out in the end.

The game ranks Shadow Stalkers as T3, but they are more or less T4's, as they have damage on par with a T4 and often higher, access to Mind Control Immunity, and the standard Class T4 perks from levelling.

Rogue is, in my eyes, the most fun of the game's classes, due to its versatile, expansionist nature. You end up sprawling over much of the map, and the game becomes about trying to hold terrain from all the players who want you dead, much like ancient rome.

The ability to steal enemy heroes is just flat out hilarious as well, and a very quick way to annoy and infuriate your friends when invisible succubi are stealing heroes left and right, with the heroes simply dissappearing into the air, only to reappear many turns later, laying siege to them.