Guide to which troops to build

@Erraven

Don't know that you'll want my opinion, but I would say that you have just been extremely lucky with your archers.

Before I say anything more, what are your attributes, equipment levels, and tech levels?

max speed rest in defense. I just split my defense a little and put some in fortune though because i'd like to see lucky strikes. I wasn't getting any before. Nobody shoots at the archers when a ton of cav are about to tear into them. Haven't seen it yet. max atk, def, speed, and range techs and max equips. I use them more for strategy because they're cheap and can take out units blocking my horde of cav from their cats. I'll soon try to take higher level forts with only cavs and archers. Go ahead and state your opinion. As long as you're not offensive, i'll hear it. I've been using the cat army and somewhat recently the cav army. So far the archer/cav setup is working well.

@Erraven

Don't know that you'll want my opinion, but I would say that you have just been extremely lucky with your archers.

Before I say anything more, what are your attributes, equipment levels, and tech levels?

Yes you could easily argue that i had superior equipment, techs, level, but I've faced maxed equips, techs, lv10 turrets, and thousands of cats with this army. They're cheap for a reason. I'm by far not saying this is the best setup. There's cav route, a range route, and the mix i'm trying. I'm beginning to believe none are specifically better and that when two decent armies are matched from different routes, it'll depend on commands and overall stat superiority. (sorry for posting twice in a row)

Then why did you say it did take a long time to make

Because it did take me a long time to write it. I take it that you are not particularly well acquainted with sarcasm.

Nobody shoots at the archers when a ton of cav are about to tear into them.

Like I said, you've been lucky. Any decent player worth his/her weight in gold knows that ranged units should be taken out first (as long as their meat shields are able to take a hit, that is).

First let's see at your army's stats....

Considering that you either didn't tell me your army size (or I overlooked it), yet you went with Defense as secondary attribute, I will assume that you have an army composition mostly made of Cavs with a smaller number in Bow. If it was me on your seat as general, I would scrap those archers for either all Cavs or replace them with same crop worth of Cats. Here's why:

1 - At max speed and marching, your Cav will travel 825, you Bow will go 344, and your Cat will go 138. With max shooting, this means that your Cav will hit at max range of 873, Bow have a max range of 1,064, and Cat have a max range of 1,098.

I want you to quickly notice the numbers for Bows and Cats. While bows are technically faster in terms of stricking, they are in much greater danger than Cats. Not only will Cats reach further, but they also stay 206 spots further out of reach of your enemies' units.

If you face a Cav only army (and no turrets involved), the field length of that fight will be no more than 1,020. If you move your bow forward only once, you will be hit by the Cavs on the first turn. 1,020 - 344 bow movement = 676. This means dead archers for sure.

You may say that's what your own Cav is for, but you are still at a great disadvantage. Lets look at other numbers for the explanation.

1 Cav = 2 Bow

Cav base attack 175
Bow base attack 60 (pure fail here)

1 Cav Attack w/ a base 20+45+tech (since most cav players go for Def as secondary) = 268
2 Bow Attack w/ same stats = 92 (x2) = 184

So in terms of punching power, one Cav seriously brutalizes it's same value worth of Bow. Lets assume you have an army of 25k Cav and 10k Bow. You are looking at a combined Attack of 7,620k (6,700k Cav + 920k Bow). In contrast, an oponent with the same crop strength as you focused on Cav only (30k Cav) will be delivering 8,040k. Big difference if you ask me, but we all know that's not the only factor to consider.

Of the two, you are left most vulnerable to be hurt by his attack than he is to yours. Why? Well, simply because the Defense difference between the two armies is much greater than the attack.

Lets say you are both lvl 15 and the Solo-Cav player went 100 Speed/57 Def (I did). Let's also say you went with 100 Speed/40 Def/17 Fortune (mistake, but I won't knock it).

His Cav Defense is 57+45+tech = 299

Your Cav Defense is 40+45+tech = 285
Your Bow Defense (and this is where you will really hurt) is = 41

That is a combined 8,970k Vs your 7,535k (7,125k Cav + 410k Bow). A whopping 1,435k defense disadvantage. That's not good at all, mate.

So. The way combat works is that the highest Speed unit goes first, getting hit in turn by whomever survives. Should the unit in the receiving end survive they get to hit back. That means that melee fights get two rounds of combat in one round. If you are the attacker, you will hurt a lot because that Cav player will go first (since you have the same Speed).

If I wasn't clear:

Turn 1
- He moves forward 700ish spots (I haven't narrowed down the math for that yet, but I'll figure it out soon enough) and will hit first (you will take a lot of damage cause you have less Def and unit total than he), and will take a bit of damage in return.
- Your surviving Cav will move forward whatever difference there was left to complete the 825 movement to hit them back (doing the same amount of damage they did before), then more than likely get wiped out to the last man.
- THEN your Bow will hit with their puny Attack that goes against a beefy Defense. Likely, they kill only a fraction of his Cavs.

Turn 2
- His remaining Cav smell blood and move in for the kill. They will kill your 10k Bows to the last man.

Pretty grim. If you were the defender, you might have stood a better chance because your Cav would have hit first, but he still has the stats advantage in that fight. He might take more losses than when he defended, but the outcome of the fight would be much the same.

If you went with more Bows instead of Cav it would be way worse because Cav get a +20% attack advatage against Bow. Meaning that not only would they obliterate the small number of Cavs you put front, but they will get almost no damage from the Bows on the second turn while they could still wipe them out in a single turn. If not, (almost mathematically impossible) your Bow's attack would be cut down by 66% at melee range, so oyu would kill only a handfull of the steeds.

All that was just to illustreate the logic that Bows are no good against Cav armies.

You also said you spent some points in Fortune. The thing I have against that attribute is it's unpredictability. I used to have 60+10 Fortune, yet saw single doubles less than 40-45% of my battles, and much less % for multiple double strikes in a single fight. The extra chances of getting treasures were nice, but I rather have a constant attribute to back me up in battle rather than a gamble. Just not my play style, but it might be yours so I won't knock it. All I want is for you to understand the stat disadvantage you have in any fight you DON'T get a lucky double.

I have an equally grim break-down on how they compare to a Sword/Cat or Cav/Cat army, as well as how both those fights would look with 15 L10 turrets, but I will spare your eyes unless you want to see it.

All in all, Bows are almost never worth it. The only time they are acceptable is for newbies to learn the mechanics of ranged units. Even then, they should replace all Bows for Cats if they plan to stay ranged at around lvl 11-12.

They also might be usefull to have (between 1-5) on Cat armies to stop a Cav rush for an additional turn before they reach your guns, but you don't need this at this point. However, you WOULD need 1-5 Bows if you were to switch those for Cats, but I wouldn't recomend doing that unless you plan to reset your attributes as well.

Hope it helps you understand the game a bit more as well as the value (or lack thereof) of Bows in the higher tiers of gameplay.


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P.S. Not directed at you, Erraven, but hopefully the in-depth analysis I just gave you here helps to prove my claim of being the original author of this guide to any other reader that comes along. Not the only proof I have, but I don't see how it would not be enough.

I did not copy from you

ohhhh ohhhh thats just to good LOL

I don't take it personally, you explained your defense. Well I might add. I'm not going to stop using archers though as i've done the numbers myself. If people want to shoot at my weak archers, I let them. That's more of my cav army that's going to rip a hole in them. I do prefer them to hit my cavs though, they take forever to build. It still works well even with the slightly decreased defense that i sacrificed for fortune. I'm aware that it's not too reliable. I normally hate having my stat points in more than two stats, this fortune/defense/speed is an experiment. So far it's doing well. You did miss where I told you the amount of archers I was using. I posted it before.
When I mentioned earlier (may have been another thread) that i've used this setup against thousands of cats with max range and many level10 turrets, I didn't get a single lucky strike and didn't lose very much. He had max speed. He seriously thought he could win because he saw i had archers. I used 8-9k cav and 7-8k archers against 4k cats and many lv10 turrets. (not sure of exact count) Not my highest troop kill, but was the only one with that many cats to have 12 lv10 turrets that I killed with my cav/archer army. i originally only sent the small numbers to get him to bring out the rest of his army, but he didn't feel the need. In his defense and as a counter to my own post on this he likely had low attack. I'm sure his techs are good though bc all three of his towns that I cleared all had 15 lv10 turrets a few hours later. >.<
I don't suggest this strategy to noobs, or many others for that matter. I enjoy using strategy and like for my battles to take a lot of thought. I was replying mainly to a persons post about archers sucking. lolz, they do if not used correctly and in a high amount. In the beginning and probably forever, use either a cav army or cat army. Cav armies don't get much prestige, but overpower armies, are very fast, but usually take more losses. Cat armies are slow, but you're more likely to get prestige. My cav/archer is a hybrid that tries to fix both problems to a degree. (faster, if commanded well, take less damage, can depend on enemies choice of commands and who loses service first)

I enjoy good debates. I rarely post numbers though. lolz. keep them coming, just don't insult me.

Well the unit is there for a reason. As long as players who decide to use them are aware of their limitations, then more power to them for making it work.

That said, your army would have not stood victorious against my cav (13k to keep it equal, though I have several times more than that. That's why I said you've been lucky so far.

Regardless, you did build that army with a clear niche to fulfill, so you do get extra points in my book. Despite all the numbers I or any other player pulls out, your army will always be right if it works for you.

Cheers.

I have many times more than that as well, lolz. I was trying to get him to pull out more bc I believed at the time that he was baiting. He didn't pull out troops, but he did do a small amount of commanding. Seems he was all money and no strategy though. >.<

Meant to add that my target was lv 15 earlier and I forgot

Never build archers.