TROOP EFFICIENCY: HOW CROP MAKES YOU STRONG

Before reading: An understanding of how a units statistics are calculated is necessary. If you don't know how to do this, please read THIS GUIDE first.

We often have discussions about what unit is the best, but in the end, it's obvious that each unit has a role in the army. Arguing that a cat is better than a cav is like arguing apples and oranges....or is it?

This guide is an attempt to relate all the troops  efficiency in a given scenario, based off of one common link they all share, crop consumption. In other words, how each piece of crop consumed by your army translates into actual power and strength, in a given situation.

To begin, let's see how much attack power is actually produced by 1 piece of crop,  depending on which unit it's feeding.  For sake of argument, all units will be assumed to have max stats (including enhancements).

ATTACK POWER PER 1 CROP CONSUMED

Infantry: 160/1 crop

Archer: 64/1 crop

Cavalry: 94/1 crop

Cats: 64/1 crop

To arrive at this number, the units max attack capabilities are divided by its consumption cost, so a cav, which deals 375 damage, but consumes 4 crop, is actually only producing 94 attack per crop it eats. 
What is interesting is that a cat and archer produce identical power for every piece of crop they eat. This being the case, what is making one unit better than another?
To discover this we must investigate further.

As every unit has strengths and/or weaknesses vs specific units, let's determine what the actual attack vs specific units is like.

ATTACK VS INF PER 1 CROP CONSUMED

Infantry: 160/1 crop

Archer: 58/1 crop

Cavalry: 94/1crop

Cats: 64/1crop

ATTACK VS ARCHERS PER 1 CROP CONSUMED

Infantry: 160/1 crop

Archers: 64/1 crop

Cavalry: 146/1 crop

Cats: 64/1 crop

ATTACK VS CAVALRY PER 1 CROP CONSUMED

Infantry: 272/1 crop 

Archers: 64/1 crop

Cavalry: 94/1 crop

Cats: 64/1 crop

ATTACK VS CATS PER 1 CROP CONSUMED

Infantry: 250/1 crop

Archers: 64/1 crop

Cavalry: 159/1 crop 

Cats: 64/1 crop

ATTACK VS TURRETS PER 1 CROP CONSUMED

Archers: 40/1 crop

Cats: 43/1 crop

Infantry are still our most powerful unit per crop consumed vs any unit, though cav are clearly quite exceptional at killing archers. Note that the ranged  units are less efficient vs turrets than they are normally, and that's pretty inefficient. Making up for this of course is their range.
Even where those two units are not dealing the same damage, the difference is negligible. Let's keep going and examine defense.

DEFENSE(+life) PER 1 CROP CONSUMED

Infantry: 310/ 1 crop

Archers: 88/ 1 crop

Cavalry: 218/ 1 crop 

Cats: 66/ 1 crop 

From the looks of our research so far, it would appear that the archer unit is generally superior to the cat and the inf is by far and wide giving the most attack and defense out of any unit, by crop cost.

This information is cut and dry. All intel is based on the max stats of any unit, so to be prudent, you should determine your specific intel based on your own units stats, as well a your opponents (as well as you can)

It is important to remember that there is a threshold for each unit meaning that level difference can very well skew this data. For instance, a high level  inf may actually be faster than a  lower level cav, but one thing is always true, these efficiency ratings are ALWAYS accurate in describing YOUR units. No matter your level or tech etc, these rankings are always in this order.

To use this intel, plan for which units will likely be attacking which units and plan you army around getting the most bang for your buck in a given situation.

This is the guide that i have been looking for. A+!! well written and put together! good job!
from,
Kwai

Just want to throw this out there, although the attack per crop consumed is the same per arch and cats in the barracks, from experience I can definitely vouch that arch have MUCH less attack than cats with the same pp worth of troops.
For example, in one hit 115k of my arch killed 7.3k cav. This is the equivalent of 23k cats and I'd expect those amount of cats to kill ATLEAST 15k cav.
(my attack was around 160 for that hit)

Yes, I have found archers suffer attack penalties. For instance, it rrally takes anywhere from 8-10 arcs to kill 1 cat, but only 1 cat to kill 1 cat. Same with cav, my attack means I multiply cats by .86, but archers don't do nearly that well.

This is a great guide, but arent there a lot of other factors that havent been considered? Range doesnt show up anywhere up there, and is one of the main advantages of catapults.

Yes there are surely other factors, but this is simply comparing units power by their crop cost.

The thing of range is this: only 50% of troop types really ever use range as a factor, and even then, it doesn't really affect the amount of damage they deal or take. And it's very hard to use range as a concrete factor, being that speed plays a big part in how range works as well. For instance, an archer with less range than a cat may actually "outrange" a cat due to its speed. Another example is a cat with Max range may very well be dealing identical damage to a cat with the smallest range possible.

In other words,while range is a vital battle stat, there's really no common ground on which to judge each units range capabilities against another's. There's simply too many variables when you consider battlefield commands that would cause the data to be corrupt or misleading. The raw power output I'm evaluating here is rocksteady. It never changes, no matter if a unit attacks in a turn or not, you can see clearly what type of results will come of every action before it happens.

Crop consumption is a common trait that all units share. Every second that Troop exists they must be constantly fed, and their consumption cost will always remain the same, no matter how the unit is upgraded.

Variables that affect the range of a unit:
Meatshields
Opponents speed
Opponents range
How an opponent commands against your ranged units (i.e. cats move backwards and can't be hit etc)
This list is much longer, but hopefully you get the idea....

Edit: after thinking a bit, a Better way to say it be, this is a guide about the efficiency of a unit AFTER range has been factored into the battle. It's extremely primal data.