Nice guide, but with all the changes, I have become confused. I am late in the game, the last chapter as a Human. Everything is pretty much maxed out with 6 armories with lots of AW. Most at level 6, Needles at 16, Dragon Abby at 11, I craft the useful buildings for Offensive and Defensive bonuses as much as possible. In the bad old days (with just a training camp), the tournament was simple, build the troop types best fitting tournament and then try hard to select ones that were advantaged or even (with preference for advantaged) in each fight. Generally I could usually drop 4 buildings down for each fight, but found it better to use 5 when it would make a big difference and 3 other times. Mages rock for Humans. in the old steel tournament, many fights had Zero losses and I'd complete 30-35 provinces instead of 18-24 all using just autofight. The only real issue was getting enough time instants and supplies or other sources to get troops. Then the game changed (twice) ...
The training ground and Merc camp are relatively new to me, but are close to max level now. The only really limiting resource is Orcs I am considering troops to build and use. Reading the guide, I am still unsure. I have the three trainers working as follows:
Training Center: 50% Priests, and a mix of Crossbowmen & Paladins (as needed)
Merc Center: Wardens & Frog, but it seems that keeping inventory of Frogs is easier, so mostly Wardens
Training Grounds: Cerebruses, they die like flies but I think they are the best light troops
In my production scheme, I like Rangers better than Crossbowmen, but I can't produce enough rangers and when I use time instants, my Training Center get them due to its higher production rate. In fights I do the same thing I did before, choose the best category, but without troop structure in tournaments (just 3 types in each tournament e.g. Light Melee, Heavy Melee & Heavy Range in Steel), there is little structure for customized preparation for the new tournament design. I do a few more manual fights, but I am never sure I actually did better by fighting it out. So far, I've been accumulating buildings so I can drop 6 to 8 at a time periodically rather than half that number every time. My questions are:
1. Is my troop manufacture plan a good one, or should I be building different "go to" troops? My choices today are:
a. Light Melee - Cerebrus
b. Light Range - Wardens (augmented with Crossbowmen as an alternate)
c. Mage - Priests
d. Heavy Melee - Paladins
e. Heavy Range - Frogs
2. Should I consider investing in "Grounds of the Orc Strategist"? Are Orc strategist better than Frogs?
3. In the new Tournament schema, at some point, I need to cater rather than fight. Today I go until I lose in different categories based on type matchups and experience. Is there some quick and dirty rules I should follow? In the old schema, I kept track of losses in diamonds for instance.
4. How should I mix my troops? today I go most often with 3 of one type and 2 of another. Occasionally 5 of one type. In a split stack, I put the Melee units in first with the mages always last. I have one "go to" unit in each of the 5 categories, Is there any real advantage to adding complexity and having both Frogs and Orc Strategist available for example?
5. Do manual fights reduce losses? In a manual fight. my plan is basically to kill one enemy at a time and the normal combat game of range strikers hiding from Melee and Melee chasing range strikers down. Mix into that mix a desire to spread minuses to most of the opposing troops and the complexity can become high. Some people really enjoy directing the fights, me? .. not so much
6. Fight bonus buildings plan - is every other tournament with 6 buildings better than every tournament with 3?
Some of these questions, experience may answer (3-6), but many may already have good answers from someone of greater experience. All thoughts are appreciated