[Guide] The Art of War

The weather is game breaking and more annoying than it has strategic or tactical value.

One game, I was preparing as DM the army 30 minutes before the start of a battle.
15 minutes later both sides were equal in strength and THEN 10 minutes before the first fight the weather changes and the other side doubles its strength.
A waste resources + time, because there was no way to win, so I retreated all units.

Even during the battle the weather can change which is even more frustrating if you have already put hours into a war trying to get the upperhand when suddenly the weather spoils everything.
 
Yes, and because it can have such dramatic effect on a battle, you have to at least try to consider it. I think it keeps you on your toes more than anything, such that even if you have a slight strength advantage, excrement (censor blocked that other word) could happen -- or you could just have double the units your opponent has and get a guaranteed win. :D
 
I don't fully understand weather yet, but going to try to get in another battle to check it out some more... along with re-reading this guide some more.... but I like the idea of it. It's nice that a battle will have some "random" values put into it, and it's even more nice that the random feature is something we can see. (and not something hidden behind the scene).
 
About the amount of time battles take, undefended battles or battles with significant strength difference (double or triple) for me take around an hour. The battle I described earlier with slight strength difference but no change in the direction of the bar movement went for about 2 hours. I have no idea how long a battle could take if it swung back and forth.
 
If one side has a significant advantage on one of the slot types the disadvantaged side will lose units there very quickly, or at least it feels that way.

It matters if a type of slot is completely empty, but if you have numbers overall, then I think the idea that the disadvantaged unit type if you have, say, fewer melee units is just perception. I have been in battles where the enemy kept doing Call to Arms to destroy our melee units, so we beefed up on all the other unit types, and let melee go quite weak, and still won handily.
 
I have 20 min before a battle, and we are down a lot. Should I get horse archers which cost 75 but will get the initial weather bonus or riflemen who have one more attack than horse archers (same cost) but won't get the weather bonus.

I am not familiar with how often it changes to know what to do.
 
The weather can change 10 minutes before a battle, it can change during a battle and a double weather change can happen after 5 minutes.
 
After observing several battles, I have a few comments.

Progress Bar

This moves at a constant rate through the fight. I've screen-shotted it and counted pixels for an entire battle, and I've used a ruler on my moniter for a few other battles. It always moves at a constant rate.

The progress bar always moves from strong army to weak army, even on turns when the weak army gets to attack.

It takes 24 rounds (which is exactly 1 hour) for a battle, provided that the "strongest side" does not change hands during the fight. In order for the progress bar to backtrack, the weaker side has to become the stronger side.

Which side attacks?

I'm still looking for a good predictor for this. All I can tell is that the stronger side attacks much more often than the weaker side. One simple theory is that

<chance of side A attacking> = <strength of A> / ( <strength of A> + <strength of B> )

Statistical analysis shows that formula is wrong. A attacks much more often than that predicts. I don't have enough data to get a good formula yet.

Attackers -vs- Defenders

Attacking cards, whenever possible, attack defenders of the same type (meaning melee, mobile, ranged, or navy). In a dozen or so battles, I have not seen a single violation of this.

It seems likely that each card on the attacker's side has an equal chance to attack. Statistics aren't significant either way for me on this claim, yet. However, it is very clear that the strength of a card has no bearing on the likelyhood of that card to attack, nor does it have any bearing at all on the damage done by that card.

For multipage battles, I see no distinction between units on different pages.

Who gets the medal?

Again, I'd like more data on this, but it seems to be always the strongest player. (For comparison, when building wonders, even if the current culture minister supplies 5/6 cards for a wonder, the other person might get credit when it's built.) This is mildly complicated by the fact that the strongest player will often change in the fight. If anyone has clear examples of a non-strongest player receiving victory credit, I'd like to hear.

Weather

On average, I see less than one weather change per battle. However, I have seen three changes (four types of weather) within a one hour battle. Overall, I feel that it is usually safe to assume that the current weather will persist.

So what does this mean?

Well, the theory that you should always put all units in heroic stance can be questioned. If you are still stronger in normal stance, then you will win in 24 rounds, regardless. Each attack that the opponent gets in those 24 rounds will do triple damage if you're in heroic, though. But doubling your strength more than doubles your chance of attacking, so I am pretty sure you will end up taking less damage overall in heroic. A solid conclusion awaits a proper formula to predict the odds of each side attacking.

Often, I find myself a few minutes prior to a battle, choosing which units to build/buy to send in to a fight. Or, I have to choose whether I as defense minister should withdraw some of my allies from the fight. Well, suppse the opponent is weak on mobile, for example. If I fill all our mobile slots, while leaving other slots open, then this will increase the odds that our mobile will attack. And mobile attack mobile whenever possible, which means I'm increasing the odds that his mobile (which are already weak) will get hit. Which means there's a good chance our mobile will gain a x2 flanking bonus early in the fight.

So if you see your opponent weak on a type, fill up your own army with that type, and if possible withdraw unnecessary cards of other types.

Similarly, suppose the opponent is full of melee, while having many empty slots in other types. This means that when he attacks, it will probably be with melee, and therefore your own melee are much more likely to be attacked than your other troops. In this case, I think it would be best to put all your own melee on defensive. (Unless you have a really big stack of melee, whose strength is contributing significantly to your army.)
 
...

Attacking cards, whenever possible, attack defenders of the same type (meaning melee, mobile, ranged, or navy). In a dozen or so battles, I have not seen a single violation of this.

...

I thought this initially as well but I had a recent battle where my naval units attacked one of the other slots while the enemy side was still filled. This happened a few times in this one battle but I've not seen it before so I'm thinking maybe it's some special rule kicking in or a glitch.
 
someone posted on the official boards that alternating heroic and fortify will gain you some sort of advantage, but i don't see this to be the case at all.

Once your 2.5 min segment is selected, the damage is calculated and doesn't change at all. The only thing that matters next is who has the biggest advantage in total strength which means you want everyone at heroic before the timer is up and you advance to the next round. Once you advance to the next round, the damage is calculated etc.

Lather, rinse & repeat.

The above strategies are good, but ONLY if you already have a significant total strength advantage. You don't want to put groups in fortify when you are close to even or behind.
 
On a side note, there are certain times in the game where attacking isn't always particularly advantageous.

right now the top units in my game are Riflemen, Artillery, Tanks and Cruisers. these units are pretty even attack/defense. vs in earlier phases where you have choose attack vs. defense. Do i build Phalanxes or Legions for example?

later on you can build Gunships and Bombers which are decidedly pro-attack.
 
One suggestion. If you have full stacks of doom of each type and a ton of empty slots. Why not fill the spare ones with single units set to heroic? In the event that that stack gets attacked, it is going to lose the one and only casualty anyway, so you basically get the extra heroic strength risk free. Not to mention your opponents are going to waste an attack at killing a single unit rather than several in one of your main stacks.
 
One suggestion. If you have full stacks of doom of each type and a ton of empty slots. Why not fill the spare ones with single units set to heroic? In the event that that stack gets attacked, it is going to lose the one and only casualty anyway, so you basically get the extra heroic strength risk free. Not to mention your opponents are going to waste an attack at killing a single unit rather than several in one of your main stacks.

As I mentioned, if the opponent is weak on one type, then you want to focus on that type to eliminate it entirely, giving yourself a x2 bonus. This means reducing the odds of other types attacking. If the target has almost no mobile, then I don't want single units in my melee slots. Once their mobile are entirely eliminated, then feel free to fill the empty melee slots.
 
I have noticed in 3 consecutive battles that even when there are overwhelming odds to the winning side, as long as the loser didn't withdraw all troops, the weaker side will get an attack when the arrow is just about to the top (what would be the 3rd or 4th last turn).
 
someone posted on the official boards that alternating heroic and fortify will gain you some sort of advantage, but i don't see this to be the case at all.

LOL, well, I know from experience you can make a battle last 8 hours by alternating that way. No big advantage if both sides are doing it, usually. It may be a good delaying tactic if you are hoping for a favorable weather change.

If you have the upper hand, though, it pays off to switch troops to heroic while the other side moves. I think it increases the chances you will get multiple moves (and of course provides a more powerful attack). Then switch to normal or fortify when it seems like the other side is likely to get the next move.
 
I'm still baffled by damage inflicted, though.

For example, in a fight currently in progress. Our side has 9000 total strength, and theirs has 3000. Our units are all super-heroic (gladiators). Their side are a mix of heroic and normal. When we attack their heroic riflemen with heroic troops, we kill 9. When we attack their normal riflemen with heroic troops, we kill 4. When they attack our heroic riflemen with normal troops, they kill 22. Why are we suffering such vastly larger casualties than them?

Incidently, it doesn't matter whether they attack our riflemen or our men-at-arms (the civ doesn't have gunpowder, but there's some leftover riflemen from another civ). It's 22 casualties either way.
 
I think it is the game's way of evening things back out so that one Civ with a massive army doesn't always just keep a massive army.

I think it evens out because your force with overwhelming odds might attack 3 or 4 times more than the other Civ.

Honestly i think combat is pretty stupid in this game. It doesn't seem like there is a whole lot of strategy involved. Most of the time you just want the highest total attack power on the battlefield.

I'm still baffled by damage inflicted, though.

For example, in a fight currently in progress. Our side has 9000 total strength, and theirs has 3000. Our units are all super-heroic (gladiators). Their side are a mix of heroic and normal. When we attack their heroic riflemen with heroic troops, we kill 9. When we attack their normal riflemen with heroic troops, we kill 4. When they attack our heroic riflemen with normal troops, they kill 22. Why are we suffering such vastly larger casualties than them?

Incidently, it doesn't matter whether they attack our riflemen or our men-at-arms (the civ doesn't have gunpowder, but there's some leftover riflemen from another civ). It's 22 casualties either way.
 
I'm still baffled by damage inflicted, though.

For example, in a fight currently in progress. Our side has 9000 total strength, and theirs has 3000. Our units are all super-heroic (gladiators). Their side are a mix of heroic and normal. When we attack their heroic riflemen with heroic troops, we kill 9. When we attack their normal riflemen with heroic troops, we kill 4. When they attack our heroic riflemen with normal troops, they kill 22. Why are we suffering such vastly larger casualties than them?

Because you have Gladiators. Stance affects casualty rates. The number of guys killed in each stack is a constant, but it might also be a range (Bombastixx has posted about this on the 2k forum). Heroic doubles the damage from attackers, and triples the damage taken by troops on heroic. Gladiators makes you super-heroic, so you take, what? 6 times damage? Don't forget that you can't kill more guys than there are in a stack, so the damage can't be more than that.
 
No, gladiators has two effects listed in the documentation. It causes heroic troops to have triple strength instead of double. And it prevents troops from retreating. It does not according to documentation influence damage taken in any way beyond the effect of heroic.
 
That bears investigating, then, because as we know, sometimes the documentation is less than accurate.
 
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