Favorite troops?

[crackie]

I'll have to go see what the colors are? I've never noticed that!

I had an autofight teammate ask me what troops I would use in a combo of mostly blue guys. I was confused, wondering which unit is even blue, frogs? I haven’t even seen frogs since they changed the tourney format and they were mostly grey frogs in the old Crystal Tourneys. She meant Ancient Orcs. I said the Ancient Orc guy is green! But yeah, she meant his class type, which is blue for light melee. I realized I also ignore these colors classifications, which I think manual fighters tend to do, but autofighters rely more on (general statement) bc they tend to ask me combat questions in reference to color.

@Deborah M I am in chap 11 with Elf cities. I manual fight one city and autofight the second. I use almost all units, except maybe drone riders, because even within one class, they vary in what they specialize against. For example, Banshees are for Heavy Range but Blossoms are for Heavy Melee. Both are mages. Some units, like sword dancers (light melee) and Vallorian Valors, I use in much lower frequency so I use free units from other buildings (Tides, Bulwark) to remove them from my production queues so I can train the ones I use most. My favorite unit is the Blossom Mage.

Anyway, I brought up the color classification thing because you will have better results autofighting if you look past general class matchups. For me, the more important factor is the enemy’s initiative and movement numbers and who else are they fighting with. When autofighting, you can’t control troop movement and AI has a tendency to just push all units forward except for artillery mages (Priests, Blossoms, Abbots, Thornrose). This means it generally becomes a close combat melee brawl situation. When I autofight, I estimate how many rounds I have before it becomes a melee brawl, and that is dictated by their initiative and movement.

For example, Light Melee (blue) is weak vs Heavy Range (orange) and Heavy Melee (red). In both early Spire and early tourney, I might be able to kill an Ancient Orc guy with a frog. However, by mid Spire/Tourney, it will take two frogs at my current buff level. Finally, in the higher provinces, it might take 4 frogs to take one guy down. If you are using 4 of 5 units to take down one guy, you are going to be in bad shape. Therefore, I cascade troop types, using frogs in early battles, switching to heavy range golems in mid-level battles, and finally use the detested heavy melee like Treants in upper Spire/tourney encounters. Frogs->Golems->Treants is the order of their attack strength as well as their health level. If it takes more hits to take down an enemy, they will live longer to retaliate so you need to be able to absorb more damage too. Their movement dictates how quickly they reach your more vulnerable range units. A War Dog can practically cover the whole map, but a bandit only has 3 movement. Both are light melee. Even though Blossoms are a bad matchup against light melee, a bandit doesn’t have enough movement to reach my blossom so I can potentially kill her before she kills me and walk away unscathed. A War Dog could maul her in one shot though and she can’t kill him in time by herself. I generally will pick more melee units when I autofight than manual fight to accommodate for AI’s style of fighting. When I manual fight, I avoid melee units as much as possible.

Your units will have more promotions and buffs from late chapter wonders and techs, but the general idea is to NOT always use the same unit against the same class type for better results. Obviously, the more buffs you put down, the sloppier you can be about picking units. Hope that helps!

 

[Darielle]

It has always baffled me on how anyone can make enough goods to cater all the way up the spire! And do it Every Week!

I did that every week until I hit the sentient chapters. In chapters 13-14, I cut back to about half and half ... the ones that don't require a lot of sentients are still negotiated. Catering (or negotiating with the spirits) is fun. I like strategizing. As the sentient requirements increase, I'll fight more, but I'll miss it if I can never negotiate.

 

[i8sh]

Like many have said...all units are useful in the right situation. I auto-fight lower provinces and manual the higher ones. If I had to chose 1 unit, it would be a toss-up between either the Ranger, Frog, or Priest since they are very versatile and useful in more encounters than not. I would lean however towards the frog only because of its higher initiative compared to a lot of other units.

Chapter 15 human: 3* Frog is king and very deadly if matched with either the 3* mortar or 3* Orc Strategist (3 frogs with 2 other HR) if < 1 blossom mage and <1 Knight (avoid if banshees/priests). This is a great combo because the frog will strike 1st (and add an increased damage bonus) then the others will hit and leave a defensive bonus. This will wipe clean most light melee and light ranged units and will weaken heavy ranged before they strike. Best use though is to mix with a mage to take out dogs (might need to manual set up the mage strike and to make sure the frog targets the dog and not another unit like the thief).

 

[crackie]

I auto-fight lower provinces and manual the higher ones.

Me too! There isn’t much difference in troops saved manual fighting in the early provinces since you outnumber the enemy enough to make it a simple killing either way you choose to fight. After the first day, I also do my rounds in reverse order bc you want to have enough troops for the biggest fights and it’s easier to quickly timer through enough troops for lower provinces, but it will be blowing a ton of timers to make enough troops for higher provinces (though I haven’t had to emergency timer troops in a long time).

OP said she autofights though and it’s hit or miss after the first round (when the board isn’t yet disturbed from starting position) who AI targets. I’ve watched aghast as AI autofighting sent my archers to walk past an Enchantress to go after Steinlings, who has a defense bonus against light range . AI doesn’t really pick targets by best matchups despite our efforts to match them. From my observations, they target by initiative and most injured, but I don’t have any numbers to back that up. Hence, my autofighting strategy is to see when it becomes a melee brawl. Everyone can reach everyone in a melee brawl so positioning goes out the window and that’s kinda how AI fights.

 

[Fayeanne]

Which kind of troop is your favorite against light melee, light ranged, mage, heavy melee & heavy ranged?

Caveat: Most of my fighting is done with my Human city in Halflings chapter. So I don't have 3-stars on all of my units yet, which impacts some decisions. I also manual fight a lot.

But ultimately there are a lot of permutations because the enemy rarely has units of just one type. So it's not as simple as just "use this unit on that unit;" plus, you also have to ask things such as: does the enemy have four Light Ranged units or only one? This impacts the decision-making as well. And so on.

But assuming a battle where the majority of the enemy units are...

- Light Melee: I usually use Paladins because their 2 range allows them to attack without getting hit by Strike Back, and my Paladins are 3-star whereas my Vallorian Guards are not. However, it really depends upon what other enemy units there are. I'll use Frogs and/or Mortars (typically a mix since, again, I don't have 3-star Frogs) against a combination of Light Melee and Light Ranged.

- Light Ranged: Orc Strategists. But I only use them against masses of Light Ranged. They're decent against Light Melee because of Strike Back, but not as great as they are against Light Ranged, which they tear to pieces.

- Mages: I like Rangers but mine are not 3-star yet, so they are somewhat frail. I often substitute Crossbowmen instead because they are 3-stars. Sometimes I use a mix. Rangers are great for their extra movement and their Strike Back, but my Crossbowmen apply a debuff and my Rangers do not, which can make a difference. If the enemy composition calls for using Light Melee instead of Rangers/Bowmen, I use Cerberus. (Or negotiate.)

- Heavy Melee: Either Rangers/Bowmen or Priests, depending upon what other enemy units exist. Heavy Ranged will prompt me to use Priests. (My Priests tend to perform better than my Blossom Mages, but obviously an Elven player would have to use Blossom Mages.)

- Heavy Ranged: Banshees are okay here, but I prefer Priests for their range. When the battle includes enemy Light Melee, I use Paladins instead.

You're probably noticing a pattern here: I like range. Also, out of all of the units I find that Paladins deal with their counter units the best, so I am not afraid to throw them against mixed enemy unit compositions. Also, Mortars/Frogs are nice as support units mixed in with other allies since their massive range allows them to strategically focus-fire any desired target regardless of its position on the field. (This is still helpful even on auto-fight since the computer does not need to move them, but you're at the mercy of what the AI decides to target first.)

 

[ajqtrz]

My favorite troops are: Blossom Mage, Frogs, Valorian Veteran, Poison Dryad, and Dogs. But of course, this does not mean I use them all the time. It depends, for me, on two things.

First, how far in the tournament have I gone? I begin with my Barrack troops for the first 6-10 levels of the tournament and use them because they battles are easy and the troops can be produced a lot faster, even though they aren't as strong as the Mercenary Camp and Training Grounds. My idea is to spread the pain out over all my troop types as much as possible. Usually I look at what I'm facing and select based upon the number of each type. The few times I've done this in the Spire it works there as well. I auto-fight everything and if I do lose (about 1-3 times a tournament) it's the terrain and I just cater that one.

Over all I set the troops against by matching them against their weakest opponent. Since the training grounds and mercenary camps have the strongest 5 star troops I use those in the tougher fights and match each 1 to 1 against the troop they are strongest against. If there are three types in my opponent I pretty much ignore the "odd" one and concentrate on taking the other 4 out. Here are some combinations I use.

melee/melee (4-5 total)
Frog princes and Blossom Princess. This is my "Royal Combination" and almost always ends in 0 losses for me until I get to level 20 or so, at which point it's still very light losses. I match the number of frogs to the number of light melee and the number of blossom princesses to the number of heavy melee AND, for some reason, putting the frogs first seems to make a difference.

light melee/heavy ranged (4-5 total)
Gruff Orc Warrior and Vallorian Valor Again, the number of each is in response to the number of light melee (Gruff Orcs) and number of heavy ranged (Vallorian Valor). Losses are usually light to moderate but since I produce these in abundance they are easily replaced. This is in accords with my philosophy to use a wide range of cheap troops as much as possible.

light ranged/light melee (4-5 total(
Frog Princess and Senior Orc Strategist. Again, the number is set by the number of the enemy and if there is an odd one, I ignore them as usually my troops are so strong against the other 4 I have no problem with the odd one -- though he/she/it does raise my losses.

Those are three examples. One further comment is in order. In general you can have favorite troops but being your favorite is a recipe for disaster if you insist on using them all the time. I did that in the mid-game with my Archers and found that I often didn't have enough Archers to do the tournament to any degree. Once I re-thought my "favorite" I learned my favorite troops suddenly changed to the ones that will win with the least amount of losses and who would be most easily replaced.

AJ

 

[Deborah M]

@ajqtrz That sounds pretty much how I was thinking. I also use the Barracks troops for the first 10 battles in the tournament. I'm very lazy with them since they are all equally against 2 enemy types. I just breeze through those by choosing 1 of each and auto-battle. I'm sure that sounds crazy to some but it has worked for me for years so it is just that much less time spent battling. Of course if I run out of any Barracks troops then I use Paladin to fill their spot. Paladin really is a great troop! They have so much lower losses that I always have plenty of them. I may choose more wisely since I want to battle the Spire now that I realized it isn't hard after all this time. I just want to train fewer of the less wanted troops so I can train more of what seems recommended