Sun Aug 01, 2010 8:12 pm
Guide to which troops to build
First thing you need to learn quickly is what attributes do, and how they affect your troops.
- Attack: Each point you have in attack will add 0.5% to each unit's own attack. That means that your Sword's 75 base attack is really +10% more from your default Attack value of 20, totaling 82.5 per Sword instead. That means that Attack will be very important for all units.
- Defense: Works the same as Attack for a unit's Defense value. This too will be important for your entire army, but might need to be adjusted for different tactics. I will explain a bit later.
- Speed: This is arguably THE most important attribute for the entire game. Each point will add 1% to your unit's Speed stat. This stat lowers your army's time to reach their target, increases their speed to run across the battlefield to reach enemy lines faster, and determines whether they strike first in combat or not. All army builds will benefit greatly from this attribute.
- Fortune: I do not know the exact math behind this stat, but I know it increases the chances of your units getting a lucky Power-Strike, which doubles their Attack.
That about sums it up for the effect of attributes to your army. These need to be kept in mind when building your units as some stats will benefit the tactics of a particular unit more than others.
Troops
- Sword: These guys will be mostly fodder for cats and cav, but they are cheap so losses will not hurt as much. While they are cheap to make, more important than that, they are cheap to maintain since they consume just one crop each.
- Cav: These guys pack a serious punch. They are extremely fast, and will be able to raid much higher numbers than other units.
- Bow: Not the most valuable unit in the game, but they are great for armies that are starting out. They will give great support to your Swords while you get more Cats.
- Cat: The nastiest unit of them all. It has incredible range, and power that cannot be matched by any other unit. It is very expensive to build and maintain, though.
No one unit will be the best in the game. They all have strength's as well as weaknesses. We will touch those in the next section.
Army Builds
These are the more common effective army builds you might encounter as you wage war across haypi.
- Catapults: There are a good number of reasons why Cats make for such a great army to build. Their extreme range and superb attack will be able to obliterate any other unit before it reaches their lines.
However, there are a few key elements to consider. First, they are slow. Very, very slow. This means that they will fire after the oponent's units move. If they have a good number of Bows, which are much faster than cats, they will start killing your precious Cats before they get a chance to strike back. The only way you can fix this deficit is by making Speed your primary attibute. Max it, max the tech, and get the lvl 15 Horse and Manual treasures as soon as possible.
Attack is also very important. Since the longer the oponent units take to reach your Cats, the more damage they will take, many players choose to build Cav armies to counter the popular Cats. If they built their army right, they will reach the other side of the battlefield in two turns...ouch! The only real way to counter that counter is to have LOTS of attack power to kill as many, or all, the oponent's Cav in that one turn you will have to make a difference.
So if you like Cats, and you want to build an army of that alone, then you MUST max Speed and work Attack next. You may wish to work Fortune instead for Power-Strikes, but these are unreliable. The only real excuse to make a Speed/Fortune build is because you want to do lots of hunts for treasure, but even then, you should probably switch to attack once you get all lvl 15s.
- ...and some Swords: Doing a straight sword army will probably be a terrible idea, but they are pretty invaluable to pair with Cats. This is because they can be used as a meat-shield wall for incoming Cav armies. By sending your Sword forward and sitting your Cats back, you will ensure that those charging oponents stay at a safe distance for your Cats to continue doing their work.
What is better about complementing your Cats with Swords is that they also get an attack modifier of +50% against Cav. Meaning that those horses will be hurt terribly from both the Cats and the stronger-than-normal Swords. As if that wasn't enough, Swords are much cheaper than Cav. You could have 4 Swords for each Cav the oponent has if you two had exact stats.
But Sword get an additional bonus. Sort of like the icing on the cake. They have high defense against Bows, who get a -0.33% to their Attack when shooting at Swords. Neat, huh? No other unit gets a -% modifier against non-structure units.
Unlike the pure Cat army, the Cat/Sword army can benefit greatly from Defense as well as Attack. You want some Defense because the oponent's Cav will still be much faster than you, but likely, will have low Attack because they themselves have a lot of Defense instead. By building a max Speed, and balanced Attack-Defense Cat/Sword army you will make sure your Sword losses will be minimal while still be able to obliterate those horses.
- Charge!: Despite what we have said above, a mono-Cav army is extremely dangerous since they can reach the enemy lines much faster than any other unit, and they pack quite a punch. However, as you can see from the previous two examples, they can still be easily countered.
A pure Cav army can be devastating without spending attributes points on Attack. They already pack a hefty 175 Attack, plus they also get +0.20% against Bow, and +0.50% against Cats. This means that you want two things for a Cav army; you want to get to the enemy fats, and you want to take whatever punishment they dish out. This is why its important to spend points on Speed and Defense when building a Cav army. Attack points can be overlooked in this case. T
hat said, since Cav has such high Speed already, you may wish to not max your Speed attribute. Spending 90-80 points on speed will give you extra 10-20 points to put in any other attribute you wish to give your Cavalry an edge most other armies will not have. Those extra 10-20 points of Defense may be the deciding factor in wining against another mono-Cav army.
- What about the Bows?: These guys are the weakest of the bunch. Their attack is not the best, they get a -% against the cheap and numerous Swords, and, like all ranged units, they get another -0.75% against melee units once they reach their lines. They really are just not worth it.
However, they can give you a little extra support against Cav if you do not have an established Cat force early on. It is a good idea to have a few of these if you are planning on building a Sword/Cat army, but keep in mind that these Bows should only be temporary. Once you have a good amount of lvl on your buildings, you should start replacing Bows with Cats.
- Mix and Match: Mixing units is a bad idea in general. Not only will not be able to build your attributes well enough to propperly support you army, but you really will be lacking power when facing the specialized armies mentioned above.
Just save yourself the hurt, and don't build all units. Pick a tacktic that you like best, and stick to its build plan.
- Attack: Each point you have in attack will add 0.5% to each unit's own attack. That means that your Sword's 75 base attack is really +10% more from your default Attack value of 20, totaling 82.5 per Sword instead. That means that Attack will be very important for all units.
- Defense: Works the same as Attack for a unit's Defense value. This too will be important for your entire army, but might need to be adjusted for different tactics. I will explain a bit later.
- Speed: This is arguably THE most important attribute for the entire game. Each point will add 1% to your unit's Speed stat. This stat lowers your army's time to reach their target, increases their speed to run across the battlefield to reach enemy lines faster, and determines whether they strike first in combat or not. All army builds will benefit greatly from this attribute.
- Fortune: I do not know the exact math behind this stat, but I know it increases the chances of your units getting a lucky Power-Strike, which doubles their Attack.
That about sums it up for the effect of attributes to your army. These need to be kept in mind when building your units as some stats will benefit the tactics of a particular unit more than others.
Troops
- Sword: These guys will be mostly fodder for cats and cav, but they are cheap so losses will not hurt as much. While they are cheap to make, more important than that, they are cheap to maintain since they consume just one crop each.
- Cav: These guys pack a serious punch. They are extremely fast, and will be able to raid much higher numbers than other units.
- Bow: Not the most valuable unit in the game, but they are great for armies that are starting out. They will give great support to your Swords while you get more Cats.
- Cat: The nastiest unit of them all. It has incredible range, and power that cannot be matched by any other unit. It is very expensive to build and maintain, though.
No one unit will be the best in the game. They all have strength's as well as weaknesses. We will touch those in the next section.
Army Builds
These are the more common effective army builds you might encounter as you wage war across haypi.
- Catapults: There are a good number of reasons why Cats make for such a great army to build. Their extreme range and superb attack will be able to obliterate any other unit before it reaches their lines.
However, there are a few key elements to consider. First, they are slow. Very, very slow. This means that they will fire after the oponent's units move. If they have a good number of Bows, which are much faster than cats, they will start killing your precious Cats before they get a chance to strike back. The only way you can fix this deficit is by making Speed your primary attibute. Max it, max the tech, and get the lvl 15 Horse and Manual treasures as soon as possible.
Attack is also very important. Since the longer the oponent units take to reach your Cats, the more damage they will take, many players choose to build Cav armies to counter the popular Cats. If they built their army right, they will reach the other side of the battlefield in two turns...ouch! The only real way to counter that counter is to have LOTS of attack power to kill as many, or all, the oponent's Cav in that one turn you will have to make a difference.
So if you like Cats, and you want to build an army of that alone, then you MUST max Speed and work Attack next. You may wish to work Fortune instead for Power-Strikes, but these are unreliable. The only real excuse to make a Speed/Fortune build is because you want to do lots of hunts for treasure, but even then, you should probably switch to attack once you get all lvl 15s.
- ...and some Swords: Doing a straight sword army will probably be a terrible idea, but they are pretty invaluable to pair with Cats. This is because they can be used as a meat-shield wall for incoming Cav armies. By sending your Sword forward and sitting your Cats back, you will ensure that those charging oponents stay at a safe distance for your Cats to continue doing their work.
What is better about complementing your Cats with Swords is that they also get an attack modifier of +50% against Cav. Meaning that those horses will be hurt terribly from both the Cats and the stronger-than-normal Swords. As if that wasn't enough, Swords are much cheaper than Cav. You could have 4 Swords for each Cav the oponent has if you two had exact stats.
But Sword get an additional bonus. Sort of like the icing on the cake. They have high defense against Bows, who get a -0.33% to their Attack when shooting at Swords. Neat, huh? No other unit gets a -% modifier against non-structure units.
Unlike the pure Cat army, the Cat/Sword army can benefit greatly from Defense as well as Attack. You want some Defense because the oponent's Cav will still be much faster than you, but likely, will have low Attack because they themselves have a lot of Defense instead. By building a max Speed, and balanced Attack-Defense Cat/Sword army you will make sure your Sword losses will be minimal while still be able to obliterate those horses.
- Charge!: Despite what we have said above, a mono-Cav army is extremely dangerous since they can reach the enemy lines much faster than any other unit, and they pack quite a punch. However, as you can see from the previous two examples, they can still be easily countered.
A pure Cav army can be devastating without spending attributes points on Attack. They already pack a hefty 175 Attack, plus they also get +0.20% against Bow, and +0.50% against Cats. This means that you want two things for a Cav army; you want to get to the enemy fats, and you want to take whatever punishment they dish out. This is why its important to spend points on Speed and Defense when building a Cav army. Attack points can be overlooked in this case. T
hat said, since Cav has such high Speed already, you may wish to not max your Speed attribute. Spending 90-80 points on speed will give you extra 10-20 points to put in any other attribute you wish to give your Cavalry an edge most other armies will not have. Those extra 10-20 points of Defense may be the deciding factor in wining against another mono-Cav army.
- What about the Bows?: These guys are the weakest of the bunch. Their attack is not the best, they get a -% against the cheap and numerous Swords, and, like all ranged units, they get another -0.75% against melee units once they reach their lines. They really are just not worth it.
However, they can give you a little extra support against Cav if you do not have an established Cat force early on. It is a good idea to have a few of these if you are planning on building a Sword/Cat army, but keep in mind that these Bows should only be temporary. Once you have a good amount of lvl on your buildings, you should start replacing Bows with Cats.
- Mix and Match: Mixing units is a bad idea in general. Not only will not be able to build your attributes well enough to propperly support you army, but you really will be lacking power when facing the specialized armies mentioned above.
Just save yourself the hurt, and don't build all units. Pick a tacktic that you like best, and stick to its build plan.
Last edited by Drake99 on Sun Aug 01, 2010 8:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
