Army For Beginners: Part 2- Troops Strengths and Weaknesses

Army can be overwhelming when first starting the game.  You will have tons of questions like: What troops should I build?  How many troops should I have?  What troops are the best for attacking and defending?  What do I need to build each troop?  Well, I am going to do a full overview of the information you need to know all there is to know about troops.  Due to the mass of content I am going to break this topic off into parts.


Also View...  Army For Beginners: Part 1: Types of Troops.


Part 2: Troops Strengths and Weaknesses.


With all the troops you have the ability to build the best way to figure out which troops to start building first is figuring out which troops are the most efficient when it comes to purpose, might gain, food upkeep, and the time it takes to train.  You also have to keep in mind: What do I need my troops for?


Training time, might gain, and food upkeep all work hand in hand.  The troops which give you more might take longer to build, but on the down side they also eat more as well.  You want to train the troops that keep your might constantly building at a fast rate, without breaking your food bank.  You also want to train the best troops to get the job done.


Here is a run down of Might Gain VS. Food Upkeep for each troop.

Now, while looking at the numbers to the left you want to decided what do you need your troops for:  Attacking, defending, or transporting?


Attacking


When it comes to attacking you also want to keep in mind your troops over all strength as well as up keep and time.  


Now militiamen are extremely weak, which makes them very bad fighters, but they are also extremely  cheap and fast to build.  They also only supply you with 1 might a piece.  This makes them a great contender for suicide runs!  A suicide run is the first attack you send to a wild or player to take out field and wall defences.  This will also help you keep your losses at a minimum.  Losing 1000 militiamen at 1 might a piece can go pretty much unnoticeable, compared to losing 1000 Heavy Calvary at 35 might a piece.


Now what should you use for your main attack?  Well you want to have something strong, and you always want to keep your loses at a minimum.  A lot of players tend to use Archers as their mass troop, which work out rather well.  With a higher level Fletching, Archers can attack from a distance instead of up close battle.  This makes them rather well for attacking barbarian camps and wilds.  It also allows you to attack barbs and wilds with less troops, as well, where as Swordsmen have to battle up close to the enemy and you need a greater amount of them to conquer with no losses.  So, archers are a mighty fine place to start.  They also only have a food upkeep of 9 and they have a might gain of 4, and they do not take too long to train.  This makes Archers very efficient for attacking barbarian camps and wildernesses.  NOTE: Fletching can be researched in your Alchemy Lab.


Ideally when it comes to attacking other players you want to send the troops that are strongest against the troops your enemy has.  For example, if your opponent has all Archers you want to send Swordsmen, or if your opponent has Calvary you want to send Pikemen, and so on.  Kingdoms of Camelot are currently implementing more of this into the game.  It will son be a necessity to attack with a mixture of troops rather than a mass attack, such as 90,000 Archers (which many players currently do).  So, it is best to start building up a little mixture of troops that will be used to attack other players.  Building up Swordsmen and Pikemen would be a great start.  They are both good against the main troops (archers, calvary, heavy calvary) that most players use, they train rather quick, and they also wont leave you constantly stressing for food (considering you took your troop upkeep into thought when building up resource fields and conquering wilds).




Defending


When defending you want to use the same strategy as attacking other players.  You want a mixture of troops to make it harder for the enemy to defeat your army.  Considering most players use Archers, Calvary, and Heavy Calvary to attack with it is best to be one of the few that has Pikemen, Swordsmen, and of course your Archers (that are used to attack wilds and barbarian camps).  Now these troops are still weaker than the troops that your opponent has.  That means that you will need a large amount of them.  This seems like just more work and resources, but you will soon see that it will leave your enemies wondering how to take you down, and that is what defending is truly about.  You want your enemies to have to go through some trouble and retraining, rather than just sending more troops than you have.




Transporting:  Supply Troops VS. Supply Wagons 


Here is the run down.  Supply wagons carry a lot more than supply troops do.  In fact, it takes 25 supply troops to carry the load of 1 wagon.  The food upkeep is much less for supply troops, you say?  Well let's see... 25 supply troops equal 1 wagon, and food upkeep for one supply troop is 2 verses the 10 food upkeep for one wagon.  Well the food upkeep for the 25 supply troops it will take to do the job will cost 50 food an hour compared to the 10 food upkeep of the supply wagon.  The 25 supply troops will also take more resources to train then the 1 supply wagon.  So, despite the deceiving lower food upkeep when you actually compare the load sizes supply wagons are more efficient to train.










Please View... Army For Beginners: Part 3- Importance of Food.