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    Your Elvenar Team

The Crack Guide to Fighting

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
I already have the Battle Simulator as the last link in the Appendix of the Battle Knowledge section. I don’t feel comfortable actually analyzing the Battle Simulator for others though. It’s a massive effort on their part to even have built one at all. If I were to analyze something, I would need to put it through the ringer and see what happens, but I have no reason to on something that was done with volunteer effort and offered freely to all. They already know what their AI is and isn’t capable of because they have the source code. So it’s not like they need or are asking for a volunteer QA dept to help them test and refine the product. Plus, any shortcomings inherent in the Battle Simulator is still going to be better than anything I can come up with myself (right, @Zoof?). Hence, I have only explored it superficially and know it exists, but have not devoted more time to it. As you’ve said, if you know how to fight, there isn’t a need to use it, similar to the Spire Wizard if you know how to solve the logic in the Spire. It would just take even longer for someone like me to slog through the encounters using it than not. I’ve told my FS these tools exists, but have it left it up to them to decide for themselves if it is useful.

Maybe you should start a new conversation about the Battle Simulator to see what others have to say about it and bring awareness to it if people don’t already know it exists? You sound like you know more about it than me.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
I have made a slight tweak on slide #17 regarding use of Rangers during Autofights.

It used to say:
When autofighting mid-to-late game, your mileage may vary using Rangers as AI sometimes uses the extra movement to park a Ranger in an adjacent row, thereby blocking another Light Range’s shot.

Now it says:
When autofighting, Rangers tend to target by enemy initiative order. This means with Light Range enemies present, the Ranger will cross into other lanes to shoot at an enemy Light Range unit instead of the Mage unit it’s lined up across, thereby potentially blocking another Light Range’s shot after him.

What seems to be causing them to stray is the fact that there are enemy Light Range present and your Rangers are targeting by Initiative order. Since Light Range act before Mages, your silly Rangers will go off chasing a Light Range enemy instead of killing the mage he's been assigned and getting him out of the way. Since Rangers are the first "good guy" unit to act whether you are a human or elf, all enemy Light Range units will still be alive, unless other Rangers have killed them first, which is very unlikely since Rangers can't one-shot kill Light Range units with one shot, even with buffing unless it's like the first 5 provinces. This is more endemic to Rangers since they have +1 movement over Archers and Crossbowman, and therefore can stray very far no matter their starting position (similar to Mist Walkers). Archers and Crossbowmen can only stray if they are in short positions (II & III).

This creates a bit of cascading snowball effect like a Rube Goldberg machine gone astray, especially if you also have Frogs in your lineup. Then the Frogs end up targeting the Mages that are still alive, which is a horrible matchup for frogs, instead of maybe the Light Melee you've tried to assign them to. They waste their shots pinging off the enemy Mages and then when it's the enemy Light Melee's turn, they get to snack on your units with full strength because you never made it that far to touch them yet. And this is very bad news for your squishy™ Blossoms and Light Range.

The good news is autofighting is making a whole lot more sense now and the randomness of it all is greatly diminishing. Now it's applying a counter strategy after understanding what the heck it is doing so hopefully prevent them from chasing things with swords while they're sitting in tanks.
 

Gkyr

Chef
People have been looking for this?
Then you will find a more complete explanation of it in crackie's Fighting Guide.

Wheel (2B).png
 
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samidodamage

Buddy Fan Club member
People have been looking for this?
Not that I've seen? I may have missed something.
There were posts discussing including the Combat Pentagon in this Fighting Guide back in June (p1 of the thread). That was instigated by me since I was not able to get the links (that were already in the guide; I just didn't recognize them as such) to work. Some remedial education for me, and it was fine, lol!
There was also discussion of a different graphic several of us had seen a few years ago showing that Pentagon concept applied to the troop selection window in a way you didn't have to go find the pentagon graphic just to learn the strengths/vulnerabilities of the different unit types. Never found that graphic, but crackie worked up another one and included it in the guide.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
People have been looking for this?
It's not in my Fighting on Crack tutorial, but it's in the Know Thy Friends and Enemies entry in Battle Knowledge (1st one after Table of Contents). It goes a little into why the Combat Pentagon can be slightly misleading sometimes and how the Unit Stats Overview is more accurate. It also shows how to tell unit strengths using the Army Selection Window instead of Combat Pentagon like @samidodamage said. helya's first post in Battle Knowledge also has the link to Battle page that has the wiki for the Combat Pentagon.

Unless you mean how to actually pull up the Military Help window, as in covering what buttons do and where?
 
Having low-level armories for the BB sound great, but I need armories that produce orcs given that if I need to negotiate or cater I need thousands of them not to mention how many I need to upgrade buildings. Right now I need 5200 to get each workshop to the next level. They also cost population. What do you sacrifice for the fighting city. It's my favorite part of the game. For reference, I just opened Constructs.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
Having low-level armories for the BB sound great, but I need armories that produce orcs given that if I need to negotiate or cater I need thousands of them not to mention how many I need to upgrade buildings. Right now I need 5200 to get each workshop to the next level. They also cost population. What do you sacrifice for the fighting city. It's my favorite part of the game. For reference, I just opened Constructs.
The low-level armories are temporary to be spammed out and potentially deleted after a Brownie feed. They are to temporarily inflate your training size. I maintain large, permie armories/breeding grounds.
 
OK, I'll find some room for temp armories I'll have to work those in at the beginning and end of Chapters when I have the most room. I'm also trying to think of big things that don't really help me in any significant way. I wish we could teleport AWs.
 

Khalani

Member
First of all, thank you crackie for all the information and assistance in learning the battle portion. It is very much appreciated. What I still seem unclear about (well the biggest thing lol) is how to know which troop to use. Example is mages. How do I know which one is really the best one to use on which troops? Do I need to understand which level of enemy troop I am up against before I can know that?
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
First of all, thank you crackie for all the information and assistance in learning the battle portion. It is very much appreciated. What I still seem unclear about (well the biggest thing lol) is how to know which troop to use. Example is mages. How do I know which one is really the best one to use on which troops? Do I need to understand which level of enemy troop I am up against before I can know that?
Check out Know Thy Friends and Enemies post in Battle Knowledge section.
 
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