Combat~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BasicsYou have to unlock the unit types through technologies. In particular, note that you begin the game with some Paladins / Treants in stock, but will not be able to train replacements until quite a bit later on. So be careful when using them in early game.
SquadsYour units are grouped into squads. This means each "unit" that you see during battle is actually multiple units in a squad. Different unit types have different squad sizes. For example, you start out with an overall squad size of 6. Your Axe Barbarian / Sword Dancer units have a size of 1 so 6 of them fit into a squad. But your Paladin / Treants will be just 1 per squad at a squad size of 6.
You can view your current squad size and other details by examining your Barracks. Click the Barracks to open the interface, then hover the mouse over various parts. The Camp tab will show you how many individual units you have if you hover on each unit type; the numbers beneath the icons are squads.
The number of units you presently have in a squad determines the attack power and HP of that squad on the combat field. During combat, as the individual units start getting whittled away in the squad, the squad will deal less and less damage. This applies to enemies as well, so one strategy might be to spread out your damage to weaken as many enemy units as you can.
An interesting side effect of squads: The bigger your squad size, the more powerful the unit, but the more losses you will suffer. This is due to the way HP works. An example would be easiest. When you have a squad size of 6, the HP bar looks like this:
0% |--|--|--|--|--|-- 100%
As the unit takes damage, whenever his HP reaches one of those vertical markers, the squad loses an individual unit (shown via the skull icon in battle). So you start out with 6 units in the squad; when the squad suffers roughly 16% damage, 1 unit is lost, and so on. When the squad is at half health, you've lost roughly 3 units.
Now picture that you get the squad upgrade and now your squad size is 9. Now that same HP bar looks like this instead:
0% |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|- 100%
Now, when the unit suffers roughly 11% damage, you lose 1 individual unit from the squad. When the squad is at half health, you have lost around 5 units.
In terms of percentages, the damage the unit suffers stays roughly the same as you progress through the game, but the losses increase exponentially. Whereas early in the game, an enemy archer might hit your squad and deal 20% of its health and kill 1 unit, later in the game, an archer will hit your squad, deal 20% of its health, and kill 34 units. Thus, the larger your squad size, the more time-consuming it will be to replace units that you lose during combat.
Bear in mind your "Squad Size" statistic shown in your city affects only world map Province battles, and some Ancient Wonders. Your Squad Size does
not impact Tournaments, the Spire, or any other combat situation. Thus, when the game says "increasing Squad Size makes battles easier" this applies
only to world map Province battles, not anywhere else.
BuildingsUnits are constructed at the Barracks, Training Grounds, and Mercenary Camp. Each building has a number of training slots. These slots are for your convenience only: they allow you to queue up units to be trained in order. When one slot is finished, the next one will automatically start training with no intervention from you. Unlike with Supplies and Goods, you do not need to collect the units from the previous slot before the next slot will train. Thus, you can queue up a bunch of slots and then go to bed and come back in the morning and collect all of your newly minted warriors.
Upgrading your Barracks, Training Grounds, and Mercenary Camp sometimes increases the number of slots you have in that building. Upgrading them will also increase the speed at which units are trained in that building. Upgrading these buildings has no effect on the combat proficiency of your troops, though.
ArmoriesArmories increase the size of each training slot. With no Armories your training size is 6. This is the same size as your squad when you first start out, so in the beginning, every time you train a slot, you will be training a full squad. This does not remain the case as the game progresses, however; your squad size increases exponentially while your training size increases linearly. What this means is very soon each slot in your Barracks will only be training a small portion of a squad (more or less depending on how many Armories you have). Thus, if you go into battle and lose 3 squads, it may take you days to train them all back again. This means training rates drop off dramatically the further you advance in the game (unless you build lots of Armories). It is recommended to be training units whenever you can spare the Supplies, even if you aren't presently fighting battles; thus you can be storing them up for when you want to use them.
How many Armories you should build depends on your play style. You will almost certainly want to always have at least one, but you can build more if you wish to train units faster. It's totally up to what works for you. Having fewer Armories will not make your units less powerful; it will just make it take longer to train more units.
TechnologiesThere are two technologies that directly affect combat:
- Squad Size Upgrade: These technologies will increase your squad size, which increases how many units are in a squad. This will be elaborated upon below. Note that when you research one of these upgrades, your Army Camp will start showing that you have fewer squads than what you had previously. This is because more individual units are now fitting into a single squad--in other words, the squad requires more units to be full. So don't worry, you haven't lost units.
- Advanced Scouts: This technology caps off the end of every chapter; you have to research it to progress to the next chapter. This technology is also explained in more detail below.
ScoutingHere is an important tip for beginners: Early in the game,
never scout more Provinces than what you need to open the chest at the end of your current chapter! (The Technology Tree window will show you the number of required Provinces.) Unlocking the "Advanced Scouts" at the end of the chapter only cuts the difficulty for Provinces that you scout
after unlocking the technology. If you scouted them in advance, you are shooting yourself in the foot as you are going to have to slog through unnecessarily difficult battles.
Another tip:
scout Provinces in order of difficulty. In other words, first scout the ones that say "Very Easy" or "Easy" on them. Do all of those before you move on to "Medium" ones, and avoid "Hard" and "Very Hard" (you are not intended to clear those Provinces). The higher-difficulty Provinces will become lower in difficulty as you unlock "Squad Size Upgrade" and "Advanced Scouts" technologies, so leave them be until they drop in their difficulty rating.
Unit TypesThere are five unit types: Light Melee, Light Ranged, Heavy Melee, Mage, Heavy Ranged. Every unit, both yours and those of the enemy, falls into one of these categories. Each unit type is said to be "specialized" against two other types, and no two types share the same pair of specialization
s. If you draw the types on a pentagon and draw arrows representing specialization
s, you will see the pattern. (Note that units are specialized toward particular unit
types, not toward particular units.)
Every unit type is always "about even" (that is, "neutral") toward its own type--this means a unit has no advantages and no disadvantages against its own type.
Unit SelectionWhen you are selecting units to enter battle, the interface displays some important information.
First, when you hover your mouse over one of
your units, you will see icons overlaid on the unit portraits of the enemy units that your unit is either specialized against -OR- is neutral to. This latter part is a danger that you need to be aware of. A unit that is merely "about even" with the enemy is not specialized in any way against that enemy, so don't be misled by a whole bunch of icons showing up on neutral enemies. Where possible, you ideally want to use units that are specialized, not merely "about even" with the foe. (Though neutral units are still useful in situations where the enemy has a mixture of lots of different unit types and your unit is specialized against some and neutral against the rest.)
In the browser, in order to see the exact nature of a particular unit against other units, click on the blue "i" on his portrait (you can do this with enemy units as well) and the game will list the two unit types that the unit is specialized against. There will be a row of stars beside these specialization
s. These stars are basically ratings, but I find they are not really all that accurate. Instead of merely going by the number of stars, point at one of these rows of stars and the game will specifically tell you exactly what benefits the unit gets against that foe. Notice that some benefits are offensive in nature (listed as "+XX%" damage) and some are defensive (listed as "-XX%" damage). You can use this information to guide your strategy: such as to try to get units with a -80% defensive boost to soak up all of the hits from the enemy, and so on.
Note: Underneath the unit portraits are one to three tiny little stars. These are
not specialization ratings. They are the unit's level. Every unit has one to three levels. You yourself gain these levels by researching them in the Technology Tree (these level increases apply retroactively to your existing units). Higher level units will have some improvements over lower level units, such as higher health; in addition, level 3 units typically gain some sort of special feature such as a debuff that is applied when they attack.
Note: Enemy squad size is influenced by how many enemies there are in that particular battle. If there are very few enemies, their squad sizes will be bigger; when there are many enemies, their squad sizes will be smaller. Thus, if you go into a battle where there are only one or two enemy units, their squad sizes will be much larger than a battle in that same Province with five or six enemies. This is something to note when trying to compare your squad size to that of the enemy. The idea is the overall difficulty for each battle in a particular Province remains the same regardless of how many enemies there are. With fewer enemies, the enemies will get fewer turns in comparison to you, so each enemy is stronger to compensate for this. When the enemies outnumber you, they get more turns than you do, but individually they are weaker.
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Unit TipsLight MeleeThe main problem with Light Melee is you will tend to have high losses when using them, even against units they are specialized against. There are several reasons for this:
- Although they are meant to be used against Light Ranged and Mages, both of these unit types are ranged, which means the Light Melee has to chase them down. Battle field obstacles, as well as other combatants, are often a great hindrance with this.
- Their 1 attack range limits how many Light Melee can surround and attack any single target, which is especially troublesome when the enemy flees into a corner or is surrounded by obstacles or other units.
- Another irony is that their Strike Back capability is typically useless against their favored enemies unless the AI commits suicide.
- Add to this that Light Melee gets absolutely pulverized by both of their counter-units (Heavy Ranged and Heavy Melee).
Overall, Light Melee is the weakest unit type by far. I personally suggest avoiding using Light Melee in most situations. But if you are going to use them...
Axe Barbarian / Sword DancerThey have a moderate movement range, moderate attack damage, and moderate health. Their initiative is also pretty average. This is your quintessential "middle of the road" unit.
CerberusThe key selling point of these guys is their long movement range (at later stars they can almost cross the entire map in a single move, barring obstacles) which helps compensate (slightly) for the overall failings of Light Melee. However, keep in mind they are less durable and will die even more easily than your Barracks units. Still, if you are going to use Light Melee at all, these are the ones I would use.
Drone RiderHonestly, I don't see much point in this unit as it is nearly identical to your Barracks Light Melee. The Drone Rider does have one tile additional movement range, which is handy but not enough to be a game changer like with the Cerberus. Feel free to mix these in with your Axe Barbarians / Sword Dancers if you wish, but don't expect drastically different results.
Light RangedTheir attack range is 4. Heavy Melee movement range is 2. This means Light Ranged can attack outside of the range of Heavy Melee. If the Heavy Melee enemy has an attack range of 1 (which many of them do), the Heavy Melee will not be able to damage your archer. Every turn, just keep moving your Light Ranged back so that they remain outside of the range of the Heavy Melee.
Light Ranged are specialized against Heavy Melee and Mages. Target Mages first where possible; most of the time, an archer at full health can kill an equal-squad Mage in a single shot, so you're best off if you can hit them before they hit you. You might have to bait the Mages out of hiding, however, if they are hanging back behind other units.
Light Ranged tend to have the highest initiative of any unit. This means they get to shoot first, but it also means they get targeted first. They have almost no defense so you need to keep them out of harm's way.
When one of your archers' turns comes up, always point at all of the enemies and check their movement ranges before moving your archer. Careful placement of your Light Ranged is key.
Crossbowman / ArcherPretty standard all-around useful units; you unlock these fairly early on and they remain useful for most of the game (or until you get three-star Rangers).
Note that the movement range plus attack range of a Crossbowman / Archer is such that he can strike the enemy directly across from him on his very first turn in battle if there are no terrain obstacles in the way (and assuming the enemy doesn't get to move first, which rarely happens). On many maps this can be utilized to take out Mages before they can even get out of the starting gate.
RangerThe king of Light Ranged once you unlock all of their stars: they get slightly longer movement range and Strike Back capability. However, they come later in the game, so until you unlock their third star, your Barracks Light Ranged might actually be more useful due to the debuffs they apply. For this reason, you may want to try using a mixture of Crossbowmen / Archers with Rangers earlier in the game.
DryadDryads have one use and one use only: Mistwalker bait. Enemy Mistwalkers are the strongest unit in the entire game, barring none, but they have one weird quirk: they will almost always target a Dryad if they can reach one. So when facing Mistwalkers, use one or two Dryads to draw fire away from your more valuable units like your mages.
Heavy MeleeThis is fairly unique to Heavy Melee, but don't be afraid to use these guys even against units that they are not specialized against, if you are facing a mixture of enemy unit types. Heavy Melee have extremely high health and deal good damage even against non-ideal targets, so they are better at dealing with being at a disadvantage than the other unit types. For example, if you are facing a mixture of Light Melee, Heavy Ranged, and Light Ranged, go ahead and load up on Heavy Melee even though the archers are specialized against them. Just focus on and kill the Light Ranged first. The same applies to battles that have Mages in them.
Heavy Melee units also have very low initiative so they tend to be targeted last, which also (ironically) aids their survivability if you are using them alongside other unit types. For example, if you are using a mixture of Light Ranged and Heavy Melee in a fight that happens to include some Mages, the Mages will tend to shoot your archers first (which, for Humans, have a defense bonus against Mages), sparing your Heavy Melee (which are weak against Mages). This might not always be a good thing since most other unit types have lower health and defenses than the Heavy Melee, but it does come into play.
You wouldn't want to use Heavy Melee in a fight that is nothing
but archers and mages, but when you are looking for a support unit to deal with a diverse enemy group, Heavy Melee is often the best choice.
PaladinPaladins have an attack range of 2. This might not sound like much, but it gives them a huge advantage in many ways. Here are some tips on how to make use of it:
- Attack Light Melee and Heavy Melee targets from two tiles away (meaning there is a gap of one tile between your Paladin and the target). This way the enemy units cannot retaliate unless they happen to also have an attack range of 2 (which few units do).
- Paladins can retaliate from two tiles away as well, which allows them to strike back against all Heavy Melee and even ranged opponents who get too close.
- Paladins can poke enemies over top of terrain obstacles (those little rocks and shrubs that block tiles). Stand on the opposite side of such obstructions and hit enemies from there.
- In narrow confines, you can line up your Paladins such that the first one is directly next to the target and the second is right behind him, allowing the second to hit the target over top the first.
- When chasing down long-ranged units like Heavy Ranged, the movement range of the Paladin is effectively 4 because he can move 2 and then attack 2 tiles past that. This allows the Paladin to catch up to enemies more quickly than a Treant.
- Barring any obstacles or interfering units, archers cannot stay out of the reach of a Paladin no matter where they shoot from. If they're hitting your Paladin, your Paladin can hit them. Compare with a Treant, where archers that choose their placement wisely can stay out of their reach effectively forever. (Though luckily for Elven players, the computer AI is not good at actually doing this.)
Treant / Orc WarriorUnfortunately for Elves, these two units are not overly worth using since their limited range puts them at a disadvantage. Having said that, Treants are quite durable, so you can use them successfully in a pinch, but you are generally better off with a unit with greater range.
Vallorian GuardPrior to unlocking these in the research tree, you can get access to some by crafting a "Vallorian Valor" building in your Magic Academy. I highly recommend these for Elven players, because they are basically weaker Paladins. For Human players, you already have your Paladins, so they are not as useful there. Also remember that until you actually research them much later in the game, your Vallorian Guards will be stuck at 1 star, so for Human players, your Paladins will quickly outpace them.
For Elven players, Vallorian Guards can be used like Paladins. They are a bit more frail, so they will tend to suffer slightly higher losses. Sometimes you may wish to mix in 1 or 2 Treants with your Vallorian Guards to help protect them (your Treants are a lot more durable), but don't be surprised if the Treants don't even get a single hit in while the Vallorians mop up the enemies.
MagePriestTheir attack range is 5. This allows them to shoot not only outside of the range of Heavy Melee, but also outside retaliation range of Heavy Ranged units and even Light Ranged when positioned correctly. Many of the tips for archers apply to these guys. Strive to never put them within striking range of the enemy.
The Priest's attacks apply a defense debuff on the enemy. This means stacking all of your damage onto a single enemy is most efficient; however, this might not be practical depending on the layout of the battle field (as trying to all gang up on a single target might put your Priests into harm's way).
SorceressUnfortunately, Elven players are at a disadvantage until they can unlock Blossom Mages because the Sorceress is a pretty poor unit. When you are forced to use them, use them carefully (manual battle is recommended). Their very short attack range means their positioning is not as important. Instead, focus on spreading out their attack debuff onto as many enemies as possible. This will help lessen your losses. Do be careful when attacking Heavy Melee that have an attack range of 2. The Sorceress can attack one tile outside of retaliation range, but if you're not careful when moving her, she'll often get too close and needlessly take damage.
Blossom MageThe Blossom Mage is basically a Priest with lower health and slightly higher damage and initiative. Sadly, the unit that players get isn't as good as the one that the computer uses against you (the enemy variety gets Strike Back). But for Elven players, you can use these like Priests, so they are useful for replacing your Sorceresses. For Human players, they are basically redundant with Priests. See the discussion above on Priests for strategies for using them.
BansheeThese units are not much different than the Sorceress and to add insult to injury, you get their star upgrades later than for the Sorceress. A Human player has no real reason to use these at all. For Elven players, the Banshee is a bit better at dealing with Heavy Ranged enemies than the Sorceress, so when facing large numbers of Heavy Ranged, before you get the Blossom Mage you may want to try Banshees.
Heavy RangedThe Heavy Ranged category is somewhat unique in that all four of the units found within are useful in specific situations. Also, Heavy Ranged is the second-best unit type overall at dealing with its counter-units. For this reason, they make good support units.
GolemThese guys have relatively high health and hit pretty hard. They are very much like a ranged Heavy Melee, though not nearly as durable. Still, you can often use Golems as a support unit when facing a diverse mix of enemy unit types. (Most other unit types make poor support units since they tend to get slaughtered before they can contribute much to the battle.)
If you are using Golems in a fight that happens to have some Heavy Melee enemies and you are fighting manually, try to keep the Golems out of the range of the Heavy Melee until you take out interfering units. Then, when you have the opportunity, have all of your Golems gang up on the Heavy Melee in a single round; this will hopefully enable them to remove the Heavy Melee enemy without taking a hit from it.
MortarTheir insane range allows them to more or less ignore terrain obstacles and cherry-pick their targets. However, Mortars can be fairly poor if used exclusively on their own, even against units they are specialized against. This is because their damage output is not that great; this combined with their whopping 1 movement range and lackluster defense means they are easy for the enemy to pin down. For best results, add in at least one unit of another type (typically Heavy Melee) to act as a guard for your Mortars.
Having said that, Mortars make outstanding support units; you can mix them in with your Mages to help take out Light Ranged counter-units, for example, and even use one or two Mortars to take out pesky long-ranged enemies that otherwise like to hide behind terrain, since Mortars can pretty much hit the entire battlefield indiscriminate
ly. The AI is also reasonably good at using Mortars on auto-battle since they don't need to move.
Faineant FrogPretty much everything that was said about the Mortars can be put here. In addition, once you unlock all three stars for the Frogs, their debuff will decimate enemy forces. However, that happens very late into the game.
Orc StrategistPrior to unlocking these officially, you can get them by crafting a "Grounds of the Orc Strategist" building in the Magic Academy. I highly suggest these for Human players; they're somewhat redundant to Golems for Elves (but still useful in their own right).
Orc Strategists can be used like Golems (so see the section above), but they specialize in Light Ranged. They will mow down archers like they are made of paper. They also get Strike Back capability which is useful when they are facing Light Melee (and many other unit types as well). I would generally favor Orc Strategists when facing a large number of Light Ranged, and use greater numbers of Golems/Mortars/Frogs otherwise.
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Combat TipsBuildings to have for fighting: There are no standard buildings you can construct to increase your combat abilities, but there are some event buildings and Ancient Wonders that can help:
- Sanctuary / Martial Monastery: This Ancient Wonder directly boosts the power of your troops and is almost a necessity if you intend to do any fighting at all.
- Fire Phoenix: An essential event building. If you missed out on the event where this was the prize, you can craft the base and Artifacts in the Magic Academy and sometimes obtain the needed Artifacts in events and so on. This building must be fed to actually have any effect on your units.
- Unleashed Unit Upgrade / Enlightened Light Range / etc.: These are expiring buildings that you can craft in the Magic Academy. Once placed, they last five days and you can place multiple buildings and their boosts stack. Note that these buildings do not need a street connection.
Buildings to have for training: Armories help you to train more units at a time. You can add more Armories to your city if you find your training is not keeping up with your combat losses. Some other possibilities:
- Shrine of the Shrewdy Shrooms: This Ancient Wonder is like an Armory that gets its boost based on how many other Armories you have. It is useful because it will provide more boost than a regular Armory and it also does not consume population/culture.
- Dwarven Bulwark: An Ancient Wonder that increases your Training Size as a direct percentage of your Squad Size. Unfortunately its other feature is to produce what are almost the most useless units in the game: your Barracks Light Melee.
Know the unit types: See the tips above regarding which units to select for each battle. Early Tournament rounds are a useful place to experiment with these.
Range is king: Overall, ranged units have the advantage especially when using the "Auto-Battle" feature. Priests, Paladins, Rangers, Blossom Mages, Faineant Frogs, etc.
Manual battle to reduce your losses: Only possible on the browser (the app doesn't have manual battle), but once you are familiar with the combat system you can often achieve better results manually controlling your units than relying on the auto-battle.
