Dragons Lair

"Whatever you do, don't disturb the eggs!"

The Dragons Lair can train Dragons, An airborne late game offensive unit.

Strengths
Flight

The dragon flies in the air, giving it a unique advantage of agility over all other units in the game. Dragons can be used for vision, to scout, to harass, and to fight, although they are not good in direct engagements (discussed in Weaknesses). Specifically, dragons are often used to kill workers while they are mining to stop the other player's economy, to kill retreating units and obviously, against ground units that can't kill air units.

Weakness
Costs

Even though the building it self doesn't cost a lot, it has a prerequisite of a Fortress. This is an expensive upgrade to the Castle, not only because of the costs, but because of the halted production of Workers while the Castle is upgrading. Unless the player has enough Workers while the castle is upgrading, it is an expensive price to pay as it lowers gold income and/or building production. The total price of making a Dragons Lair and upgrading the castle to a fortress is 500 gold.

Ballista

The Ballista is a unit essentially designed to hard counter dragons, as it does a very high amount of splash damage (30!) to flying units. If all your dragons are in the same location, ballistas do a significant amount of damage, making dragons essentially useless. Therefore, it is necessary to eliminate ballista using melee units and not bunch up dragons where they can be hit by splash damage.

Development
Version 1.8: Dragons Lair and dragons added to the game.