Other Common Strategies
There are many ways to further differentiate the gameplay depending
on your preferences. Many of them are common to all basic styles.
- Training/Untraining
- Trained soldiers are 50% more effective at their specialized area than untrained soldiers, but they can ONLY hold the type of weapon they specialize in. Untrained soldiers can fight with EITHER an attack or a defense weapon, so they affect both of those areas of your army's stats at the same time.
- Trained soldiers are harder to kill than untrained soldiers.
See more below in Casualties.
- Therefore, if you have an excess of soldiers, training will
maximize your power by enabling you to use your weapons at their
strongest.
- On the other hand, if you have many more weapons than you
have soldiers, untraining all of your soldiers will allow you to
pick up one of each in attack and defense, thus optimizing your
power for a limited number of soldiers.
- Mercenaries
- Mercenaries can be hired as cannon fodder that will shield your valuable primary (gold-producing) troops against casualties. They're easy to hire, all they ask is 2,500 Gold and free access to your pizza and beer. Of course, since their primary function in battle is to suffer the casualties, one wonders how they're going to spend the gold you pay them. But that's their problem, not yours.
- A limited number of mercenaries is available at any given
time. Each turn, a number of mercenaries make themselves
available for purchase in the Training section, and it is a race
to buy up the mercs. If you are not quick enough, you may not be
able to snag up enough to cover your losses. Plan ahead, and buy
mercenaries as soon as you can afford them!
- Weapon Cost Effectiveness
- Cheaper weapons are more cost effective. The trade-off
is that you need more soldiers to hold those cheaper weapons,
putting more soldiers at risk of death, and reducing your
training flexibility.
- Casualties
- During battle, your fighting force will inevitably suffer
casualties. Many factors affect the amount of casualties:
strength of the attack or defense in relation to the enemy, size
of the fighting force (total attackers or total defenders), and
weapon armaments.
- The most effective way to reduce casualties is by training
unneeded soldiers to the side which incurs the fewest battles:
if you are a ranker or banker, train them to attack so that the
minimum amount of troops are on defense, thus minimizing losses
when you get attacked. If you are a slayer, train them to
defense. In either case, leave enough to hold all of your
weapons.
- Further reduction of casualties may be possible if you avoid
having untrained soldiers (those that you receive from clicks,
unit production, and officer bonuses). An untrained army will
suffer roughly twice as many casualties as a trained army of the
same size. If at least 75% of your soldiers in an attack or
defense are trained soldiers, your casualties will be greatly
reduced. Mercs do not count toward your trained or untrained
total in this case, as mercs decide to get killed at a rate of
their own choosing, since they're the ones that signed up for
this job.
- Covert Operations
- Upgrading your Covert Skill as soon as possible is a good way
to increase your effectiveness in executing covert operations,
as well as intercepting operations against your army.
- Spies and sentries will die if you are unable to defend an
attack against your army. Reducing spy/sentry casualties is only
possible by minimizing the number of spies and sentries you
train and increasing your defense to evade attackers.
- Sometimes, sabotaging your aggressors (or the threat itself)
is more effective than diplomacy or simply outgrowing their
onslaught. Learn to use the sabotage mission to your advantage.
However, sabotage is the most hostile action in the game, and
can sometimes start a deadly war. Use it wisely, or be prepared
to lose everything.
|