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    Your Elvenar Team

Squad sizes and Auto-Fighting. Seriously!

BoxWarrior

New Member
Personally, I am not all that interested in the nitty gritty of Battle! So, I always choose to use the Auto-Fight since I still want the benefit of a Army and to make the achievements. I feel that since there IS a Auto-Fight feature then it should be just as capable of making the goals as the Manual Battle choice.

However! Ever since the first chapter I have noticed that EVERY battle I have attempted always pits my squads against enemy squads at least three to four times the size of mine! Sometimes even more! And since I was unable to unlock Paladin very late I was stuck only having Barbarians and Crossbowmen going up against all sorts of unfair squads including Heavy Combatants and Mutants and Mages! I'm like WTF!?!? How can anybody get to a decent fair fight status when your hindered by space limits and Army training and types of units when the Enemy is never fair?

My only choice, for now, is to mine Marble like a Mole and sell it enough to get the other goods so I can buy the Negotiations to expand! But it's taking forever! There must be a easier way.... Without buying Diamonds.

Any comments? Suggestions?
 

michmarc

Well-Known Member
Note that while you always bring 5 squads, the enemy can bring anywhere between 1 and 8 squads. If they bring fewer squads, those squads are bigger: The total number of troops brought by the enemy is always (about) the same.

I'm guessing your real problem is overscouting. How many provinces have you unlocked? With the short scouting times, it is very easy to over-scout early in the game and get to where battles are impossible. Especially before you unlock all of the units (Ch 6?) you should not scout any more provinces than is required to unlock the next chapter.

The size of the enemy squad is fixed when you scout, but your squad size will increase as you research more Squad Size Upgrades. Additionally, the start of most chapters have a reduce scouting cost research and the enemy squad size is directly related to the cost you pay to scout the province. (But note that completing that research does _not_ affect provinces you have already scouted -- only new ones.)

So if you have over-scouted, just hold off scouting until you can catch up. And in most of the first five chapters, negotiation is vastly easier than fighting (mostly because the right units haven't been unlocked yet).
 

onebigscot

Member
Why is over-scouting even a "thing"? Let us play the game. I'm with Box Warrior...if my troops are limited in strength and size then there should be a way to strengthen them to compare at least somewhat to enemy troops. If I have to wait to research to get two and three star troops, do the enemy troops continue to get stronger? Are the developers trying to discourage newbies?
 

Enevhar Aldarion

Oh Wise One
If I have to wait to research to get two and three star troops, do the enemy troops continue to get stronger? Are the developers trying to discourage newbies?

On the world map, not as quickly as in the tournament or Spire. I do not know the exact number of scouted provinces before you would have to fight 3-star troops with your 1-stars, but in the tournament, the first 5 provinces for all six stages will always be 1-star enemies. Provinces 6-10 will always be 2-star enemies. And Provinces 11+ will always be 3-star enemies. And I think the Spire is almost all 3-star enemies, unless you are very early in the game.
 

Moho

Chef
My only choice, for now, is to mine Marble like a Mole and sell it enough to get the other goods so I can buy the Negotiations to expand!
That is the only way.

Build your troops to win the fights you can win. To be able to handle larger Squadsize armies, you will need to acquire and upgrade buildings that confer superior attributes to your troops. This is a slow process and one can benefit from it later in the game.

Also, you will need to join a fellowship with active members who can give you the necessary advice and not only.
 

Darielle

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
Why is over-scouting even a "thing"? Let us play the game. I'm with Box Warrior...if my troops are limited in strength and size then there should be a way to strengthen them to compare at least somewhat to enemy troops. If I have to wait to research to get two and three star troops, do the enemy troops continue to get stronger? Are the developers trying to discourage newbies?
There is a way to strengthen them. Craft the 5-day buildings in the MA, and that will give you a big boost.
 

Fayeanne

Well-Known Member
Why is over-scouting even a "thing"?

To encourage players to play through the game and not just obtain all 63 expansions straight out of the starting gate? Like an RPG, the enemies get more difficult as you go through the game, so you have to keep "leveling your characters" to match. You can't just sit at level 1 the entire game. (Of course in this case, "leveling your characters" means going through the chapters and advancing your city.)

Having said that, it does seem to me that there are too few world provinces available now that tournaments have been changed and events keep asking for clearing encounters. Of course, if the game added more "filler" encounters, that would just mean more encounters you'd have to clear to get expansions, so...

If I have to wait to research to get two and three star troops, do the enemy troops continue to get stronger?

Not on the world map. The more you advance your city, the easier the provinces get on the world map. But there are additional ways to improve your troops there than just the two and three star researches. Squad Size researches improve your odds on the world map. Each Advanced Scouts technology reduces the difficulty of all encounters you scout after researching it. And so on.
 

onebigscot

Member
Like an RPG, the enemies get more difficult as you go through the game, so you have to keep "leveling your characters" to match. You can't just sit at level 1 the entire game. (Of course in this case, "leveling your characters" means going through the chapters and advancing your city.)

That's what I'd like to do. I need knowledge points to research/advance, yet it takes (mostly) encounters to get knowledge points. Research is expensive.
 

NightshadeCS

Well-Known Member
There are buildings that provide KP, and the tournament is really the best place to get KP, since you can get 5 from every encounter in the second round.

This game is a marathon, not a sprint. It may not be your style, but it is designed to be played for years. There are some who have perfected the strategy for speeding through as fast as possible, but even they have to take about a month per chapter after chapter 5.
 

kriz-te

Member
if I scout a "hard" province early on in the game, will that province always be set at "hard" for me, no matter how I level up my troops? I feel like some of my provinces for tournament are harder than others, and maybe I'm imagining things and it's just what @Enevhar Aldarion explained: 1-star, 2-star, 3-start enemies the more provinces you clear.
 

Iyapo1

Well-Known Member
If you scout a hard province early on in the game, the difficulty will reduce with squad size upgrades. With enough upgrades it will eventually be easy.

This does not have any impact on tournament tent difficulty.
 

Enevhar Aldarion

Oh Wise One
if I scout a "hard" province early on in the game, will that province always be set at "hard" for me, no matter how I level up my troops? I feel like some of my provinces for tournament are harder than others, and maybe I'm imagining things and it's just what @Enevhar Aldarion explained: 1-star, 2-star, 3-start enemies the more provinces you clear.

The difficulty of a province only matters for completing it on the world map. The tournament has a totally different difficulty scale. If you are close to completing an advanced scouts research or squad size increase research, watch your unscouted provinces drop in difficulty, while the scouted ones do not. Also, every province you scout slightly increases the cost and difficulty of unscouted provinces until you hit the point they increase in difficulty.
 

Gladiola

Well-Known Member
I am a new player (chapter 2!) and this is what I've observed. I also auto fight. I don't really enjoy seeing the little people get slaughtered, so it is not the best use of my time. I negotiate when it seems like auto fighting will cause more casualties than it would cost to negotiate or when replacement time would be too much.

For the world map provinces, completing a squad size research will cause the difficulty label of the province on the map to decrease (from Medium to Easy, for example), even though the enemy troops and negotiating cost stay the same, as long as it's already been scouted. This is because your troops are now relatively stronger against the enemy that is the same size it was before. Only the label changes. The actual enemy numbers never change after it is scouted.

Finishing researches, increasing boosted production %, and adding city expansions (and I guess later on Ancient Wonders?) makes tournament encounters harder. (Also I have read it makes the Spire harder, but I am not there yet.)

When you complete an advanced scouting research at the beginning of a chapter, all remaining unscouted provinces will have less enemy troops and lower negotiating costs than if you had scouted them before finishing the research. (Does anyone know how much less? I guess we could set up two accounts and compare, or maybe more than two would be required even if matched for the same boosted goods/province distribution in order to account for randomness.) Thus completing an advanced scouting research will cause the map labels to change but this time it is because the underlying enemy size and catering costs actually did change.

It seems like probably the game devs want people to take their time and not rush through the game by fighting and acquiring lots of KP before their cities are developed, probably so we will spend more diamonds on the way.

Based on what I have seen so far, an effective long-term strategy seems to be to limit scouting to just those provinces required to complete chapters, and build up rather than out (upgrade building levels but not add city expansions) for as long as possible in order to focus on getting goodies from the tournaments and events to improve cities and be more effective in fighting and producing goods. Not rushing to complete world map provinces will slow research progress as well as available expansions, which will keep tournament and Spire squad sizes consistent with city development. The one thing that doesn't seem to play a part in tournament difficulty is building levels in your city (other than Ancient Wonders), so it seems like focusing on upgrading building levels as efficiently as possible and making careful choices about the mix of buildings in limited space is very important.

Does this align with the experience of more longstanding players? What else should people who want to Auto Fight and cater think about?
 

NightshadeCS

Well-Known Member
For the world map provinces, completing a squad size research will cause the difficulty label of the province on the map to decrease (from Medium to Easy, for example),

This is somewhat true. There is actually a hidden difficulty value (i.e., a number) in the game with thresholds where the label will change. In early chapters, there is usually enough of a change that the label will also change. However, the further you go, the greater the change has to be to change the label. There will be some cases in which provinces get easier, but not by enough to change the label.
 

NightshadeCS

Well-Known Member
It seems like probably the game devs want people to take their time and not rush through the game by fighting and acquiring lots of KP before their cities are developed, probably so we will spend more diamonds on the way.

This is absolutely true. :cool:

Based on what I have seen so far, an effective long-term strategy seems to be to limit scouting to just those provinces required to complete chapters, and build up rather than out (upgrade building levels but not add city expansions) for as long as possible in order to focus on getting goodies from the tournaments and events to improve cities and be more effective in fighting and producing goods. Not rushing to complete world map provinces will slow research progress as well as available expansions, which will keep tournament and Spire squad sizes consistent with city development. The one thing that doesn't seem to play a part in tournament difficulty is building levels in your city (other than Ancient Wonders), so it seems like focusing on upgrading building levels as efficiently as possible and making careful choices about the mix of buildings in limited space is very important.

I agree with this. Scouting provinces can increase after Orcs chapter with less of a detriment, and once you get into very high chapters, there is not much drawback anymore to scouting 24/7. Early chapters, though, it is good to maintain the pace set by the game.
 

SoggyShorts

Mathematician par Excellence
When you complete an advanced scouting research at the beginning of a chapter, all remaining unscouted provinces will have less enemy troops and lower negotiating costs than if you had scouted them before finishing the research. (Does anyone know how much less?
25% iirc.
The next time you are about to unlock an advanced research tech pick a map province and check the coin cost of scouting it then check the same unscouted province after the tech.
Does this align with the experience of more longstanding players? What else should people who want to Auto Fight and cater think about?
Yep. Staying no more than 1 chapter ahead of the number of provinces to unlock seems to keep world map fights reasonable mid to late game, but
there comes a rough patch in chapters 3-4 where combat is quite difficult so not scouting ahead is very important. Once you clear that hurdle into chapters 5&6 you can scout more or less freely as long as you stay under 200 cleared provinces. This is because there is a hard cap at 222 provinces where you can't move forward until unlocking chapter 8 buildings and that could screw you in events.
After that roadblock in chapter 8, you can scout 24/7 up to 525 cleared if you like.
 

Sprite1313

Well-Known Member
I agree with this. Scouting provinces can increase after Orcs chapter with less of a detriment, and once you get into very high chapters, there is not much drawback anymore to scouting 24/7. Early chapters, though, it is good to maintain the pace set by the game.

I agree. This killed me early on. I overscouted very quickly, and found that I was up against "very hard" provinces and was negotiating away all of my resources to keep pace with what I wanted to do. Live and learn.
 

Shadenir

New Member
Combat is really the only thing I have a problem with in this game. I like everything else, the balance in resources, resource growth, city expansion rates, the Fellowship mechanics... I can't really think of anything else I don't like, but the combat is really starting to seriously bother me.

I use auto-fight exclusively. I'm not here for the indepth fights there are other games for that. That being said, when I go into the set up screen, and I'm told that my heavy ranged units a strong against the opposing force of 2 light melee and 2 light ranged units and a single heavy melee unit with squadsizes that are 40-50% larger than mine, and I've just won the last 3 encounters that were set up with the exact same ratios, I should not be getting wiped out. The outcomes aren't consistent, and this is an especially big problem in the spire, where 2 weeks ago I got halfway through the second area after the first miniboss guarding the gate, roughly 20-22 fights in, but now for the last two weeks I haven't been able to get more than 6 fights in, which is frankly infuriating.

If they need a resource sink to siphon resources to keep growth at the desired rates, there's got to be a better way to do it than just setting it up so I'm throwing my resources down the drain. It's not fun, and not just in the sense of fun being absent from the mechanic, it actively detracts from my enjoyment of the game. It makes me want to walk away and do something else. I'm in chapter 5, so I'm hoping this changes later, but right now, if anything was going to make me walk away from this game, this would be it.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
@Shadenir I have a Dwarf city that isn't too far ahead of you that I autofight. Specifically relating to the 2nd segment (High Halls) of Spire...it's hard for everyone because of the 2 waves, so don't feel bad! Players don't usually try to bare knuckle it. There are 5-day expiring military buildings you can craft in the Magic Academy (Enlightened Light Range, Magnificent Mage Multiplier, Unleashed Unit Upgrade), Dwarven Armorer you can win from the Spire, or a lot of people have a Fire Phoenix to feed that will buff their armies for battle.

As to the randomness of winning battles autofighting with similar enemy types and ratios, it's usually an issue of terrain from what I've observed. I mix-fight my main city. If this sort of thing happens, I'll go to manual fight to see where the snafu is. It's usually how/where the obstacles pop up that ensnares your army. There's an actual board that gets played out even if you autofight, but you just don't see it. It's a variable that is hard to account for autofighting.

Lastly, it's really hard to get an army going in these early chapters and you can't overcome it with the Needles wonder because I've tried. Fighting High Halls is really expensive in terms of troop replacement. The stack sizes grow pretty quick from halfway up Gateway (first segment) on. Even though I can win fighting, my little city caters the entire Spire to conserve troops. Provinces, tourney, and Spire are relatively still pretty inexpensive to cater, but it's hard to make enough troops to do everything. A bad roll in the high levels of Spire will wipe you out. Therefore, I cater Spire instead of fight as the "cheaper" alternative. In the end, it'll be a matter of playing style and personal goals (how much you want to get in tourney and how high you want to climb on Spire) that you'll have to juggle with your troop levels.
 
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