Question Barracks of Mercs troops ?

[Pauly7]

I autofight almost everything, except during marble and steel tournament there I (partially) manually combat more than half the battles.

I was referring to fighting tournaments and catering spire.

 

[CrazyWizard]

I was referring to fighting tournaments and catering spire.

oh that 2, I am tired lol

 

[DeletedUser]

I still can't quite figure out what you're trying here. When you say you think Acrobats and Treants are doing well compared to the others, are you picking the right troops for each battle, or just indiscriminately using the same ones and seeing how far they go?

I'm on PC and it's exactly what i do, hover and chose. The problem is when i have fights where it looks like Rangers or Archers should work well, they don't. Sword Acrobats work better. I lose fewer SA's than the other two. My Ranger is 2* but Archer is 3*

I don't use any buildings. And i will not take that into account just yet. First i will figure out how the fighting and the troops works. Then i can see about other stuff, boosters of any sort. I need to know how it works without boosting, otherwise i will not know what the boost do - And i don't know anything about how it all works; So one thing at a time

Ohh, and looking at Gems, Treants should also be good in this tournament: https://elvengems.com/tournament/crystal/

And i forgot the Banshees, they're also good

They are shown on the site as well. I just don't understand the way it's split; What is beginner, is that low province number a.s.o. ?

 

[BlueBlou]

I think a lot also depends on the boosts generated by your AWs. I will never get the same result as our expert battlers here due to that and due to us not having the same star level troops. Light melee might actually work better for me in some situations than it would for them. Just an example.

 

[Deleted User - 341074]

Ohh, and looking at Gems, Treants should also be good in this tournament: https://elvengems.com/tournament/crystal/
And i forgot the Banshees, they're also good

Elven gems is rather outdated on this.
Banshees are pretty bad as far as mage units go. Possibly the worst. No matter what bonuses they get, if the enemy gets to hit them twice before you can use your banshee you'll get worse results than you getting to damage them first.
Range>everything

They are shown on the site as well. I just don't understand the way it's split; What is beginner, is that low province number a.s.o. ?

Beginner is what they used to recommend when you haven't unlocked intermediate troops yet,
intermediate is what they used to recommend that you use if you haven't unlocked the advanced units yet
and so on.

Again though, really dated information.

 

[CrazyWizard]

Elven gems is rather outdated on this.
Banshees are pretty bad as far as mage units go. Possibly the worst. No matter what bonuses they get, if the enemy gets to hit them twice before you can use your banshee you'll get worse results than you getting to damage them first.
Range>everything

Beginner is what they used to recommend when you haven't unlocked intermediate troops yet,
intermediate is what they used to recommend that you use if you haven't unlocked the advanced units yet
and so on.

Again though, really dated information.

I found a usecase for a banshee in manual mode last marble / steel tournament lol.
It was a rare maybe I should have a handfull of them just in case. but yeah they suck!

The usecase was?
If I cannot avoid damage by any normal means, the banshee has the biggest debuff + highest HP so for that 1 single round single usecase they are "usefull" lol

Ohh, and looking at Gems, Treants should also be good in this tournament: https://elvengems.com/tournament/crystal/

Elvengems uses my red/blue/green table I made years years years back.
http://crazywizard.info/en/bb_unit_humans.html#lr
http://crazywizard.info/en/bb_unit_elves.html
I wanted to provide statistics but also wanted you to use your brain so I never divulged what those colors mean,
Those colors mean somthing but ignore strategic advantages units might or might not have.

A "green unit" is not always the best. but grab those tables and lay them next to the elvengems advise there and you see the always advice the green unit lol, even if it's the inferior unit. someone claimed that advise was made by "experienced" battlers. but I call it BS based on my experience and what I have seen in there advise. its just a dumb copy paste without knowledge of the meaning of that copy paste.

So even when it wasnt old, it was bad advice. units are more than base stats, they also incorporate special powers and strategic advantages like range. those are not used in those base statistics

 

[DeletedUser]

Can't be all that bad @SoggyShorts since as i wrote i have seen Banshees perform rather well

Though as i wrote the Blossoms work well too

EDIT: The Banshees has only been tested in my chapter 11 city. I haven't produced them in my chapter 15, where i haven't got enough speed on Training Grounds yet.

 

[DeletedUser]

But what is of any use these days then @CrazyWizard when it comes to tournament types and troops ?

 

[Deleted User - 341074]

Can't be all that bad @SoggyShorts since as i wrote i have seen Banshees perform rather well

In just about any situation that your banshees "did rather well," your blossoms would have done better.
It's just like how your sword dancers are winning fights. Sure, they won the fight, but with XXX losses and if you had used other troops the losses would only have been Y

But what is of any use these days then @CrazyWizard when it comes to tournament types and troops ?

The advice already provided by multiple players in this thread is a good start:
Range>Everything else.

 

[Gargon667]

Ohh, and looking at Gems, Treants should also be good in this tournament: https://elvengems.com/tournament/crystal/

And i forgot the Banshees, they're also good

Forget the tourney info on elvengems, it is info for tourneys that have been changed half a year ago and have nothing to do with current tourneys.

And no banshees are not good, they fall into the cannon fodder category.

 

[Gargon667]

So even when it wasnt old, it was bad advice. units are more than base stats, they also incorporate special powers and strategic advantages like range. those are not used in those base statistics

I would say the advice was good enough back then. People that need tactics better than that don´t need elvengems to get that Not saying it wouldn´t have been fun having an expert section, but for most people the advice was fully adequate.
Now it would be better if they took it down, people believe what they read there... If they don´t want to make new tourney guides they should just keep a general section only.

 

[Pauly7]

I'm on PC and it's exactly what i do, hover and chose. The problem is when i have fights where it looks like Rangers or Archers should work well, they don't. Sword Acrobats work better. I lose fewer SA's than the other two. My Ranger is 2* but Archer is 3*

If you were up against 5 mages and you put up 5 sword acrobats then you will have much bigger losses than you would if you had put up 5 rangers, even without using any ELR buildings. I'm trying to work out if you're somehow looking at the raw number of troops that you have remaining. Remember that there are much less mage units to 1 squad.

Terrain can make a bit of a difference. If you have a clear battlefield then it will give some extra help to your melee troops, but I can't imagine terrain ever turning over that kind of a difference, even if you had a level 35 Victory Springs (which I don't think you do.)

 

[Pauly7]

And i forgot the Banshees, they're also good

Banshees are bad. They're one of the few kinds of troops, along with Barbarians (human LM) that I don't normally even bother sending out as cannon fodder in early provinces.

 

[CrazyWizard]

I would say the advice was good enough back then. People that need tactics better than that don´t need elvengems to get that Not saying it wouldn´t have been fun having an expert section, but for most people the advice was fully adequate.
Now it would be better if they took it down, people believe what they read there... If they don´t want to make new tourney guides they should just keep a general section only.

That wasn't my point, it told you to build and use units of which others where clearly better.
Like my personal trope, dryads anywhere where there were heaby melee involved, it's not that dryads are bad. but a 2x dryad is better then a 3* elven archer?
That dryad is great vs that knight neutral good vs other heavy melee but it sucks balls vs that counter unit.
The Archer has - defence special power which could deal much better with for example the steinling. as it's able to penetrate that units defence.

Not to mention that in most cases the dryad had a lower training time and most people did own a needles.
So the best advise would have been to field archers not dryads as there more versatile agains non-knights and train quicker in 99% of the usecases.

It's the clear winner.

It's you as an advisor (elvengems in this case) to choose the best unit. choosing that unit pure on base stats ignoring all other benefits is a bad advise. so it was not about how you advise your readers but what you advise.
If I want a tax advise I don't care about the details, I just want to be told what to do. it's your job as an advisor to have the know how and show me the best option.

But what is of any use these days then @CrazyWizard when it comes to tournament types and troops ?

It's complicated as there are no longer "clear" enemy setups. it's a lot more difficult nowadays for people to learn as the only clear place is the world map. so you have to try, try and try and pay an enourmous price in the learning process. the first few provincies can be ignored they do not teach you anything. the next few are awesome and after then it becomes painfull to learn as casualties increase a lot.
Right now you cannot lear 1 thing at a time like in the past, you have to learn everyting at the same time which makes it overwhelming for newbies. and there is hardly any advice that can be given without clear pictures of the enemy setup.

the best way is to start with manual and see what happens, try, try try and see what does and what does not work. you can later apply this to autocombat.

Only start learning in the marble and steel tournament and start with some manual fighting at province 6-7 and above. the first are to easy and do not teach anything.
Marble and Steel are fairly easy making it a much more fun experience. planks should be avoided at all cost. it's depressing with all the mistwalkers all the time.
Manual fighting makes it visual what does and doesnt work and teaches you something as a result, but it's also slow and boring so keep it limited.

And as soggy said, onces you unlock "boosters" range becomes king, a dead enemy cant hurt you. and range pretty much guarantees a first strike.
when you can boost that first strike into oblivion you can cripple the enemy so extremely hard it becomes laughing stock.
A 205% strong enemy can be crippled to 20%, and it's not hard to imagine that a 20% enemy ain't that hard to defeat. but if the 200% enemy strikes you first then you becomes the crippled and it will becomes near impossible to win. this is why melee units "suck" once you unlocked all units and boosters as they are often stiking last as they cannot reach the enemy before the enemy strikes first.

If you cannot boost your units. range is still king but the combat triangle actually starts to make sense. your goal is still to hit first, but the bulk of a treant can somtimes make more sense. as long as your enemy ain't to strong.

and for autocombat use 5x the same style units and pick once with the least amount of weaknesses. we aware that heavy ranged is very weak to makes and even 1 enemy mage can ruin your day in one of the higher provinces.

 

[CrazyWizard]

Can't be all that bad @SoggyShorts since as i wrote i have seen Banshees perform rather well

Though as i wrote the Blossoms work well too

EDIT: The Banshees has only been tested in my chapter 11 city. I haven't produced them in my chapter 15, where i haven't got enough speed on Training Grounds yet.

once you get the hang of it, it's all about damage prevention. your banshees can win and smash the enemy to slitherines. but doing so it also makes itself vunerable. this leads to higher losses. in province 1-10 this doesn't matter much. but in later provincies where the real tournament prices are delivered the size of the fielded units grow significantly you might need to field up to 100 or 200 troops of banshees. at that point even the smallest loss is a darn lot.

30% of 200 troops is 60 troops. it looks like a clear victory as you lost a limited amount on the loss bar but in reality you just lost maybe a day's worth of unit production.
Other units might be able to do the same fight with a 5% loss. this allows you to fight another 6 times with the same loss of units as you would have done that 1 battle with lets say banshees.

priests and blossom mages have a range of 5, this means you can hit a thief, knight, swamp monster ect and stay out of that units range is his turn. so you hit him but that unit does not hit back. this gives you 2 hits or more to kill that unit before becomming vunerable and suffering casualties yourself.

Sorceres and banshee have a range of 3, this means that every single unit in game, that has not been killed on the first hit. will strike back in there turn leading to casualties. and if your fielded units are big enough even the smallest amount of damage can be a lot.

 

[Lelanya]

So ... rolling up my sleeves.... here goes.
The original core Gems staff literally recorded hundreds of battles in each tournament type. The advice given was for the troop type that the game favored at that time. I also tested this, with manual and auto fight, and although three specific troops might be good there was often one that the game favored over another even though two looked good on paper.
Things did change on some servers when the province layout changed. This is something that many players didn't notice when it occurred. It made a big difference when we fought tourney with encounter 1, 3, 5 and 7 for a year and a half and then it changed to 3, 4, 5 and 6. The trouble with a site like Gems is that there is so much information, and new items needed adding all the time, it's hard to adapt to minor tweaks as described above.
I used to fight a fresh province each time tourney came around, with a random sampling of each type of encounter, to mentally prepare. I never, ever trained only one troop type. I built up what had gotten run down and then raised my minimum if possible, taking at intermediate level the same number of all barracks types, with wardogs for mages and orc strats for those pesky mistwalker combos. I'd keep about a third to half of the others. For example: if I were aiming for 100 squads of axes, bows, priests, knights, mortars, dogs and orc strats, then I'd aim for 35 to 52 dryads, banshees and orcs.
All battles are about reach and mobility. You can have the best troops but if they have range 1 and get pinned behind terrain you will take a beating. Your best teachers will be those fights that have 4 different troop types: pick 2 troops, 2 to 3 spaces apart, one that matches 4 opponents and one that matches 3. For example take dogs and knights this week, dogs for mages and light melee, knights for light melee and heavy ranged. They are a powerful combo. Good luck

 

[DeletedUser]

Thank you all

@SoggyShorts

In just about any situation that your banshees "did rather well," your blossoms would have done better.
It's just like how your sword dancers are winning fights. Sure, they won the fight, but with XXX losses and if you had used other troops the losses would only have been Y

That was actually some of my initial questions; Which troop of the same type is the better one.

And that again raises my question to what i need the Training Ground for. Is there any troop in there that i just need to have or can perform as well as some other ones, so that it's good to have a third place to produce from ?

The advice already provided by multiple players in this thread is a good start:
Range>Everything else.

So Range, as in to at what range they can hit an enemy ?

@CrazyWizard

priests and blossom mages have a range of 5, this means you can hit a thief, knight, swamp monster ect and stay out of that units range is his turn. so you hit him but that unit does not hit back. this gives you 2 hits or more to kill that unit before becomming vunerable and suffering casualties yourself.

Sorceres and banshee have a range of 3, this means that every single unit in game, that has not been killed on the first hit. will strike back in there turn leading to casualties. and if your fielded units are big enough even the smallest amount of damage can be a lot.

This is the part that annoys me about these "ranged" troops; When i use them, they get the crap beat out of them. That's confusing. And we're always talking province 1-10, as i'm just starting my military career ;-)

That also ties into learning 1 thing at a time. What i meant with what i wrote, if that wasn't clear. I want to learn how the fight works without boost instants or buildings - Then i can add them later and see what difference they make and decide which i want to spend my time on getting.

This also means that i need to know the production facilities, how does what and what AW's boosts what - and again, which troop are the better of the same type. When all that's done a clear, then i can go deeper into the provinces and maybe, ONLY maybe - manual fighting. - But i really doubt that. I'm not into fighting and what i initially wrote, is that i want to make my time with the game more efficient, which can be done combining catering and fighting since it's different buildings used.

Military actually has an advantage here it looks, as to catering. I need a lot of factories for each tier where as for troops production there's only one facility for each needed and the Armories gives the capacity to all three.

@Pauly7

If you were up against 5 mages and you put up 5 sword acrobats then you will have much bigger losses than you would if you had put up 5 rangers, even without using any ELR buildings. I'm trying to work out if you're somehow looking at the raw number of troops that you have remaining. Remember that there are much less mage units to 1 squad.

Terrain can make a bit of a difference. If you have a clear battlefield then it will give some extra help to your melee troops, but I can't imagine terrain ever turning over that kind of a difference, even if you had a level 35 Victory Springs (which I don't think you do.)

That's again where it annoys me; Whenever i have done that, my Rangers take bigger loses. I don't understand that.

The last i part willing to pay my way out with more troops getting lost. I'm not into fighting, and again i'm just now learning how it all works. So as i wrote, MAYBE i will look into manual later. I might do the "look" as i have seen in some videos, where he puts just one squad and goes into manual to see how the terrain looks, and the resigns, goes back and select troops for auto fight.

And you now bring up the Victory Springs AW. When reading around, it's not one that many are happy about. How bad is it really ?

Back to my tournament this week.

I have maybe, sorry, didn't count exactly, catered 10-15 of the 60 fights from 10 provinces 6 rounds. I'm rather happy about that, that's more than i set out to do. But the less i need to produce of goods the better

But of course efficiency is my priority, so when i get clear on which troops are the best among a type, and also get a grip on which is really best against another, then the loses needs to be as low as possible

 

[CrazyWizard]

@CrazyWizard

This is the part that annoys me about these "ranged" troops; When i use them, they get the crap beat out of them. That's confusing. And we're always talking province 1-10, as i'm just starting my military career ;-)

That also ties into learning 1 thing at a time. What i meant with what i wrote, if that wasn't clear. I want to learn how the fight works without boost instants or buildings - Then i can add them later and see what difference they make and decide which i want to spend my time on getting.

This also means that i need to know the production facilities, how does what and what AW's boosts what - and again, which troop are the better of the same type. When all that's done a clear, then i can go deeper into the provinces and maybe, ONLY maybe - manual fighting. - But i really doubt that. I'm not into fighting and what i initially wrote, is that i want to make my time with the game more efficient, which can be done combining catering and fighting since it's different buildings used.

Military actually has an advantage here it looks, as to catering. I need a lot of factories for each tier where as for troops production there's only one facility for each needed and the Armories gives the capacity to all three.

First strike is always. but as said tournaments are more difficult to handle.
if you want to play without boosts then it's much closer to the triangle.

If you lack the power to blow your enemy to slitherines and break there defences the combat triangle makes a lot more sense.
But as said before with each attack improvement the combat triangle gets out of whack in favor of ranged.

Light melee still kinda sucks, but heavy melee performs much more like intended and in the old dys I sometimes just just the bulk of treants.

The first few battles your should not be able to loose, even if you field the wrong units. you start with an enemy thats 12,5% your size.

Your goal is to have as little weakness as possible on the battlefield, and some weaknesses are worse than others.
there is no "guideline" that can help you in the new format, it's just experiment, experiment and experiment. start experiementing at province 5-10 this is somwhat the sweetspot for learning.

Also unless your playing manual combat avoid mixing and matching, the AI fails miserable. so find 5 of the same units with the least amount of weakness and place those into the fray.
Also where possible use 3* units, there special powers make a lot of difference. the only exception is mage units who have special powers at each stage.

And train your combat wonders, it makes a huge difference, martial monestary/sanctuary and needles for starters are a must.
And if you are human, and you need heavy ranged units you are F***ed untill you unlock frog princes at level 15. mortars are just horrible. no attack strength en no penetrating special move means even with there superior range they just can't seem to win.

 

[Pauly7]

The last i part willing to pay my way out with more troops getting lost. I'm not into fighting, and again i'm just now learning how it all works. So as i wrote, MAYBE i will look into manual later.

I get that totally. Some people are not into manually fighting and don't want it to be part of their lives. It does take more time out of your day than the auto-fight. I was actually the same for a long time. It was only really when the new tournament style came in that I thought I had better get to grips properly with the manual fight. Before that I had only done it really sporadically. I still auto-fight the majority. These days (I think I may have said that previously) I only go for a manual fight if I'm a) above about province 15-20 and b) if the enemy line up doesn't look good for having at least 3 and a half of the same one of my troops (I count an enemy being the same troop type as mine as a half). If we're getting higher in provinces (above 30) then I'm looking for my 5 x the same troop type to be strong against at least 4 of the enemies or I'll go manual. It isn't a hard and fast rule. If I happen to have 5 active ELR buildings then of course 5 LR troops will be good on auto against much more unfavourable troop types, but you will learn about those later, as you say.

So manual may not be for you, but I hope you at least give it a few tries at some point. You could see it not as something you plan to do in the long term, but more something you try for a bit just to learn more. You can get a much better feel for what you need to do when you've seen a few of these fights play out and you can really see why the melee troops fail.

And you now bring up the Victory Springs AW. When reading around, it's not one that many are happy about. How bad is it really ?

I only really brought up Victory Springs as an example because yes it does boost LM attack power. If you have a VS on level 30 then your LM troops will have a 40% boost to their attack power. This is a good thing, of course, whenever you are using LM troops. The reason I, and others, have said it is not worth it is because we don't feel it is worth using LM troops in the first place. In the old days it was worth having anyway, but now that those extra 30 AW levels make the tournaments much harder then it's not worth boosting the troops that you will hardly ever (or never) use. It's secondary power is increasing the training speed of the Training Grounds, but as I said (and I think you just asked for clarification on) none of the Training Grounds troops are good enough for you to warrant wanting to speed it up at the expense of making the tournaments that much harder.

My VS is on level 6. I haven't deleted it, but I haven't considered levelling it up since the tournament style changed. By comparison my Needles, Flying Academy, Toads, etc, are now up towards level 30 or beyond. The only real case for having a good VS is if you decided that you wanted to invest heavily in training Orc Strategists, but that comes at a massive cost and I doubt that you would be willing to have enough armouries, etc, to be able to produce Orc Strats in big numbers.

 

[DeletedUser]

Thank you @CrazyWizard and @Pauly7

Now we're getting somewhere

If i here you right, then LM are of no use ?

But which will then as, and more, useful instead ?

I'm happy to hear that Training Grounds can be "excused" ;-) Then there's fewer troops to concentrate on and to know And i don'tneed to think about VS either- win-win

But i would then have to upgrade heavily on the production size capabilities. Armories only level 23 at the moment, but 5 of them. I think they can go to level 30 or so.

And yes, i have tried those mixed battle; They don't end well most of the time :-O

But will look into them later regarding manual. But for now i just cater them. Unless a more superior troop can be used. I have every upgrade of military, other than squad, up till chapter 15. Sonly a few is not 3*

What is weakness exactly and how does it compare ?