Hehe, I don't mind sharing an edge myself. I am the only one obsessive enough to carry these out to extremes anyway. As Createure said, there is a grinding part involved :)
Allright, I'll point out things that are true, but I won't prove them here. I do have the mathematical proofs, but if I posted them, noone would even read my text wall and I would get complaints about people hating math and feeling like they're back in school. I can put those in a proper guide another time
1)
Production: Production time is attack time. You can make over 100 troops per city per day. The more you produce, the more points you will earn. If you can't produce nonstop, it probably means your standing army is too large.
2)
Choice of units: T1 cavalry makes the cheapest units to produce, but with T2 you can get more points out of your production time, only do this when you can afford it
3)
Choice of commander: Heroism is everything, but the bonus is dependent on base attack. T2 cavalry have the highest base attack. This value actually *lowers* your troop casualties, so T2 cavalry is the way to go. I use one T1 commander so I have the option of speed if I ever needed to (future tournaments? War? etc.). Also give them
charge and
forced march of course...
4)
Many commanders: The more commanders you use in one army, the lower your casualties will be. One commander with heroism potentially cuts your casualties in half, 5 commanders will cut them in six. This is true up to a certain army size. After 60 troops or so, the casualty-reduction effect will lessen, which means you will be attacking less efficiently. It doesn't matter which division the troops are in, as long as they have the charge bonus.
5)
Size of hits: As said above, small hits are preferable, but not realistic. You won't have the time to make hits on gatherings and lower. 100 troops a day means you can kill 1000 or more. If you try to do that with gatherings, you will not have enough time to travel, let alone RL time to spot the targets and send the troops at the right time. For this reason I hunt throngs, hosts and legions.
6)
Type of terrain: Plains obviously. People know this. What most people don't know is that if you by accident attack a building with cavalry, your casualties will be increased by as much has 150% (so 2,5 times as much). Terrain is a big factor. Spearmen will get a penalty on plains (15%), so attack spears on plains preferably. You might think this is silly, with cavalry and all, but NPC monsters don't really have varying defenses. Only camp humanoids NPCs do.
7)
Type of target: Wild dogs are best, but in a way they aren't. Ever seen a wild dog legion? I don't think they exist. I only find them in horde or lower, which means you can never spend all your troops on them. The next best thing is giant rats, with wolves coming FAR behind. Wolves suck, actually! So... rats. Rats are actually fully spearman, so attacking them on plains is good.
8)
Scouting: Scout your targets. Oversending
increases casualties when sending more than 60 troops or so. You can lose most of your commander casualty-reduction bonuses by sending 20k cavalry against a host of rats. Seriously, people lose 3x more troops than they need to, doing hits like that. Use a calculator to figure out exactly how much to send (example below).
9)
Search grid: Just randomly dragging the map around means you cover the same spot many times. Make a list of coordinates sorted by distance from your cities. These coordinates are the centers of max zoomed maps that don't overlap. Make sure the settings are right so you can spot rats or at least can click on NPCs to see what they are.
10)
Target locking: If you send troops, an NPC will not despawn. Even better, if you send a single scout, they won't either! Want to keep a legion of rats around for a rainy day? You can, with a scout. This is doable with targets of about 100 sq distant. Long travel times with scouts help you there. Even easier is if you have a remote town that doesnt attack and gives 100 hr travel times or more. That will really lock in the legion good.
Below is an example of a hit with only two commanders (still training the others)on a legion of rats. Mind you, the efficiency is lowered due to the size of the hit. I could get better ratios on a host and especially on a throng (you can kill a throng with less than 60 so it wont get any better after that). See how I calculated it so one guy survived? It can't get any more efficient than that. If I had sent more guys, more also would have died.
By the way, the report is formatted by the Tally board made by Eaque. It's not for me to share the link to it, so I just copy paste it.
Report #6032 : Innoble VS NPCs
| Date |
27/12/2011 03:04:21 |
| Location |
635|-531 |
| Terrain combat type |
Plains |
| Terrain specific type |
Stone Circle |
| Stratagem |
Attacking |
(Defender) |
|
| Army : |
Division :
|
Type |
Quantity |
Casualties |
Survivors |
| Troops |
Ratlings |
965 |
965 |
0 |
| Troops |
Rats |
1791 |
1791 |
0 |
| Troops |
Diseased Rats |
955 |
955 |
0 |
| Troops |
Elder Bucks |
637 |
637 |
0 |
|
Innoble (Attacker) |
|
| Army : Andromeda Cavalry |
Division : light cavalry
|
Type |
Quantity |
Casualties |
Survivors |
| Commander |
Light Cavalry Commander |
150 health |
99 damage |
1 |
Division : heavy cavalry
|
Type |
Quantity |
Casualties |
Survivors |
| Commander |
Heavy Cavalry Commander |
200 health |
99 damage |
1 |
| Troops |
Charioteers |
496 |
495 |
1 |
|
Edited by Innoble - 03 Jan 2012 at 09:11