I am pleased to bring you the Expert guide. This guide will focus strictly on combat, and combat mechanics mainly using palace sieges as a the main source of this guide.
In other words PvP combat mechanics will be discussed in the much later Masters Guide. This guide is focused on explaining the importance of legions, CHAMPIONS talents, legacies and their stats like control and help you get to know these basics to implement later for PvP.
Before I proceed I want to shout out WEI and SteveLiu from Heroic Saviors server for collaborating and sending me their previous palace reports it helped when comparing all of ours to find the most about combat in this amazing game!
With that out of the way let’s begin!
1.) THE WAY COMBAT FLOWS
- Combat has a set rhythm to it with sprinkles of randomness to make it feel more like a real battle. When sieging the pattern goes like this:
YOU: Artillery, strategist and specials attack
ENEMY: Archers
YOU: Cavalary and infantry
ENEMY: Infantry and Cavalary
YOU: Archers
ENEMY: Strategist
END ROUND 1
Now why is that important you may ask. I’ll tell you. Your artillery is the first branch of your army to attack. In other words if they dont break the enemy rampart in the first round you will suffer higher losses. Then your strategists and specials attack. And specials make up a healthy bulk of any army. These mostly include Qing troops and 100-man leader troops. So it is important to have many specials as since they attack first they will dwindle down the enemy army making way for you to have less casualties.
- Now you know the turn system for sieging a palace let me explain the basic mechanics that are going on during these battles.
-100-man tactics study adds 100 more participants per branch to do combat per turn. So studying that will help you take less losses. The more your troops participate the quicker you weaken your enemy so they won’t kill as many of your troops.
-Control stat from champions also add to participants. It is not known for certain if a control stat is 200 that it will increase participants of each branch by 200 troops but know that control does affect participants of each branch of your army.
When you attack a palace always have a legion created. To do this you have to study legion in war tab of laboratory. It is my personal assumption that all champions talents, legacies and control stats are combined during combat. But it is also a possibility that just the commander of the legion stats and legacies and talents are the only effects added during combat. So it is not yet known which is which. But just incase always send your most strongest battle champions that have talents that affect your troops and legacies that make your troops stronger.
-Strategies. During combat if you tap on log button of a battle report you will see detail and log in upper right corner. Tap detail button and you will see at the bottom activated strategies, if any that activated for your or the enemies troops during that round.
The most common strategy that activates for palace troops is “Calvary Enhanced, Attack on the Rear(Strategy:Infantry)”
That strategy has a high chance to activate especially on the first round of attacking a palace. It is the reason the yellow turbans Calvary attacks your rear troops like your light Calvary or partisans, whoever is at the very rear is the target of thay strategy. As the name suggests the enemy Calvary will attack your rear during that turn. Many strategies follow the same name so they are self explainable. The enemy has access to same strategies during combat as you do but they very rarely activate expect for the rear attack from Calvary strategy.
-DMG types. The chain goes like this as far as kills go (highest to lowest):
Charge>Penetrate>Normal>Absolute
Thus it is advised to drill troops with charge or penetrate over normal or absolute types of DMG. Abolsute is lowest for kills but highest against rampart HP, so drill enough siege to take down a 5 million HP rampart in first round and then focus on charge or penetrate type troops.
BUT as you imagine normal isn’t useless. Charge goes best with Cavalary, penetrate goes best with infantry and Normal gets more kills with archers then other troop types.
Fire is strong as well, it is a all around damage output with no down sides unless the enemy has high fire armor.
2.) TAKE ALL THE PALACES
- the very first round of a palace fight will be when your losses are the highest. This is because the enemy is as full strength so until you break the rampart each consecutive round you will lose max amount of troops possible until you weak their troops.
Specials are your meatsheild. They are first ones to die. So expect to lose alot of specials. Infantry will be next in line of all your specials die.
- When taking palaces there is also a pattern. Your EXPs gained will increase x10 per palace you take. So taking 1st palace (I had war buff for extra EXP’s) I got 5.7 million. Which is a instant level 30 for your champions. For my 2nd palace I got 51.2 million EXP’s. Which is an instant level 40 for your champions.
So following this pattern it can be assumed taking a 3rd palace which has yet to happen on Heroic Saviors server thay the EXP’s will be around 520 million which would again following the pattern of taking palace one and two would give champions an instant level 50.
- So as you can see the rewards of taking a palace is respect, rank increase, progress to becoming Emperor which is endgame of this game if you been following along with three story!!! And sweet JUICY, DELICIOUS EXP’s. Oh and I guess you can like collect taxes and train some troops every now and again or something like that, no one cares about that lol. RIP the dream to lower troop drill tax below 200%.
3.) PALACE ENEMIES
- What I am about to explain is based upon attacking a palace with a town in the same city. Cross city palace attacks will attract more yellow turbans and increase your losses. Better to mobilize your legion to the nearest town, preferably in the same city as your target palace before attacking.
PALACE #1:
-total enemies number 15,801
(9,500 are fodder troops)[bandits, bandit archers and yellow turbans]
(5,800 are heavy troops)[specialized yellow turbans and Calvary]
(501 elite troops)[ sorcerers, generals and elites]
My losses were 21,000(rounded). My 100- man tactics was level 2 at the time. 7 strategies activated for me. strategies as in the ones discussed earlier in this guide
PALACE #2:
- total enemies number 127,001
(55,000 fodder)
(63,000 heavy)
(9,001) elites
My losses were 28,000. My 100- man tactics were level 10. 14 strategies activated for me.
Now you may be wondering. Wait. The second palace had over 100,000 more troops then the first palace but your losses barely increased at all???
I wondered the same thing. So let me explain why that is.
My participants per branch increased by over 1,000. The champions I sent in legion for palace 2 compared to palace 1 is that they had stronger legacies and troop focussed talents. I did not, repeat did no invest into any war studies that increase damage or HP or armor since palace 1. Which means the differences came from champions, increased troop diversity and my level ten 100- man tactics study. Of course my army size was different as well but as far as losses are concerned it was lowered due to those factors. I brought 160,000 troops to palace 2. But as we know size doesn’t affect much because out of say 10,000 spearman only 2,000 or 3,000 depending on the discussed above variables will participate in combat that round.
So short story is I killed them at a faster rate then I did with palace 1 due to my increased particpants per branch thanks to my smart investments of special resources and choosing of legion champions THUS the yellow turbans did less damage to my army.
3.) WHAT ABOUT PALACE #3?
- We are far off from being ready for palace number 3. As soon as I took palace number 2 only a couple hours ago I sent a recon to a palace close to my town and found disturbing things.
Brace yourself. Conquering palaces scale tremendously. I dare not think of a 4th palaces army.
PALACE #3 RECON Number of troops: 475,000
(210,000 fodder)
(240,000 heavy)
(25,000 elite)
Estimated Losses range anywhere from a lowest of 35,000 to a upper 100,000. Depending on your war study at the time.
PALACE #3 Also introduces new units. We had normal black winds. We shrugged them off they only had 1 or 2 dying palace #2 and log showed they did little damage. But with palace #3 units like black wind assassins and hand cannons and others appear. These will no doubt require special preparations or you could face losing most if not all of your army. At least at my current strength which is considerable I like to think.
OK. That was the mechanics of combat discussed in this expert guide. This was alot more detailed then I thought it would be but it was worth researching the reports to bring you the new player a insight to the challenges that await you.
Use the knowledge to not do what I have seen and that is many get to impatient and attack with to see siege that their troops all die before breaking rampart.
Until next time DragonLL out!
…PS NIKEA it would be great to have a replay for all scenes not just the main mission!