[Guide] Detailed combat guide

[Gerontius]

This is a guide to combat, understanding how it works and how to use the http://www.settlerscombatsimulator.com/uk. It uses an advanced battle from "The Valiant Little Tailor" as an example but is suitable for absolute beginners.

Contents:

Part I - Understanding Combat
Zoom to Section I.1 - The Basics
Example Battle
Knowing Your Enemy
Knowing Your Troops
Troop Attributes (HP, Damage, Accuracy, Initiative, First Strike, Attacks Weakest etc)
Combat Sequence (First Strike, Last Strike, why can't I kill Wild Mary/Chuck/Metal Tooth? etc)
Using Multiple Waves

Zoom to Section I.2 - Applying The Basics
Using the simulator
A Possible Strategy
Understanding the Strategy

Part II - Doing it Yourself
Zoom to Section II.1 - Creating Your Own Strategy
Understanding Strategy

A little explanation...
My main reason for writing this guide is to help people to be less reliant on adventure guides. The guides are great and we all use them, but some people seem lost without them and follow them blindly when a little work can optimise battles and save you a bunch of recruits, especially on the new Fairytale adventures.

Ultimately, this guide will be in two parts. The first part covers the basics of combat. The second part will cover advanced strategies and teach you to develop your own rather than just following the guides. It's still under construction. Sorry...

This guide does not cover blocking. Here's Tage's excellent explanation of blocks. Maybe I'll add some thoughts about designing your own blocks in future, but for now I'll leave it as a challenge to the elite gamers out there!

[Gerontius]

Part I - Understanding Combat
Section I.1 - the basics

Example battle
The example battle for this guide is the fight with the Unicorn boss from The Valiant Little Tailor (Das Tapfere Schneiderlein).


Knowing your enemy
Full details of the enemy troops can be seen by hovering over their portraits after clicking on the enemy camp. I'll explain what these attributes mean in a bit.

50 Boar
Attributes: HP 100 : Damage 30-60 : Accuracy 85%
Initiative: Normal

80 Wolf
Attributes: HP 40 : Damage 60-100 : Accuracy 85% :
Initiative: Normal

60 Fox
Attributes: HP 30 : Damage 10-40 : Accuracy 95%
Initiative : First Strike
Skills: Attacks weakest

1 Unicorn
Attributes: HP 30,000 : Damage 250-400 : Accuracy 90%
Initiative: Normal
Skills: Splash damage

Simulators and guides often use shorthand to refer to enemy troops. For example, you might see these troops referred to as something like "50BO 80WOL 60FOX 1UNI".

Knowing your troops
We also need to know what our own troops are capable of!

Your units, together with the shorthand that is usually used for them in guides and simulators are:
Recruit (R) - Militia (M) - Soldier (S) - Elite Soldier (E) - Cavalry (C)
Bowman (B) - Longbowman (LB) - Crossbowman (XB or A from the German, Armbrust) - Cannoneer (K)

Here are the details for a few key units. Check out the rest yourself!
Details of the skills are in the next couple of sections.

Recruit - Don't do much damage and don't have much HP, but they're cheap and quick to build. Often they're used to shield more powerful units, or are sacrificed in a first wave to weaken a strong enemy.
Attributes: HP 40 : Damage 15-30: Accuracy 80%
Initiative: Normal

Bowman - More damage than a recruit, but less HP so will fall like dominoes to a strong Splash Damage attack. Still quite quick and cheap to build. Often they're used to shield longbows or crossbows from Attacks weakest units or are sacrificed in a first wave.
Attributes: HP 10 : Damage 20-40: Accuracy 80%
Initiative: Normal
Skills: Cautious - won't be attacked until all melee units are dead. Overridden by Attacks weakest.

Cavalry - Tiny damage and HP, but have First Strike and Attacks Weakest skills. This makes them invaluable if you have a lot of weak units in an enemy camp that you want to kill before they get their attack in or which are hiding behind a strong defensive unit (eg Wild Mary or Night Spawn).
Attributes: HP 5: Damage 5-10: Accuracy 80%
Initiative: First strike
Skills: Trample - another name for Attacks Weakest. I'll just call it Attacks weakest in this guide.

General - Often forgotten. He does a solid 120 Damage every turn which can make the difference between loss and victory (or in getting a kill on a lootspot).
Attributes: HP 1: Damage 120-120: Accuracy 80%
Initiative: Normal

There are several different types of General available each with a maximum number of units they can carry: Normal, Battle Hardened, Master of Defence, Grim Reaper or Dracula (200), Master of Martial Arts or General Log (220) Veteran (250) and Major (270). "Fast" generals travel to adventures more quickly, recover more quickly from defeat and are important for blocking (not covered in this guide).

Don't panic if your general is killed: he recovers after 4 hours, or 2 hours if he is a Fast general.

Troop attributes
Hitpoints
Hitpoints (HP) is the amount of damage a unit can take before it dies. It can take incremental damage across several rounds of a single battle. If the HP is reduced to 0, the unit is dead. For enemy units, a dead unit is dead for good and does not return to life even if the battle ends in a loss. Injured units, which have lost only some of their HP, still attack at full effectiveness. If an injured unit survives to the end of the battle, it immediately returns to full HP. This instant-healing is most relevant to enemy boss units with high HP.

Many new players think attacking in 2 or more waves at the same time should mean damage is carried across between waves. It isn't. Two waves is just two separate attacks with the normal instant-healing of injured enemy units in between.

Damage
Damage is always represented by two numbers, e.g. 15-30 or 5-10. The unit delivers either the lower amount of damage or the higher amount of damage (not some value in between). Accuracy is the percentage probability of the unit delivering the higher amount of damage. Some units have a 100% Accuracy rating, meaning they always deliver the higher amount of damage. For some units, the two damage values are the same making the Accuracy rating irrelevant.

For most units, the higher amount of damage is double the lower amount of damage. In this case, you can quickly work out the average damage done by a large number of units. It's equal to [lower damage value] * (100+Accuracy)/100. e.g. For a Damage of 20-40 and an Accuracy of 70%, the average damage is 20 * 1.7 = 34.

For a few units, the higher amount of damage is NOT double the lower amount. In this case, working out the average damage is a bit harder. It's equal to [lower damage value] * (100-Accuracy)/100 + [higher damage value] * Accuracy/100. e.g. for Foxes, with a Damage of 10-40 and an Accuracy of 95%, the average damage is 10*0.05 + 40*0.95 = 38.5.

Note, you can of course use this full calcuation for any unit, e.g. Damage of 20-40 and an Accuracy of 70% => 20*0.3 + 40*0.7 = 34, exactly the same as the simplified calculation.

Final note, these are of course only average values of damage done per unit and the actual results of combat are of course more difficult to work out, which is why you need a simulator. But knowing average values can help as a starting point for setting up the simulator.

Initiative
Initiative is which of the three phases of a round the unit attacks in: First, Normal or Last. See Combat Order below for more details.

Attacks weakest/Trample
The Attacks Weakest skill means the unit attacks the enemy with the lowest base HP. If several enemies have the same HP, it attacks the lowest level enemy available (eg B, then LB, then A). Attacks Weakest overrides the Cautious skill of your B/LB/A, which normally means they're attacked last. For your cavalry, Attacks Weakest is called Trample, but it's the same skill.

Splash Damage
Splash Damage is a very important skill. When a unit without Splash Damage kills an enemy, any extra damage the unit would have delivered is wasted. So, a unit which does 100 points of normal damage who goes up against 100 enemies with 1 HP each will only kill one enemy per round. With Splash Damage, any excess damage is carried onto the next enemy. So, a unit which does 100 points of Splash Damage who goes up against 100 enemies with 1 HP each will kill them all in one round.

Combat sequence
Combat lasts one or more rounds, each round having up to three phases. Within each round, troops attack and are attacked in a specific order.

Phases
The three phases in each round are First, Normal and Last. The troop's Initiative attribute specifies which phase they attack in.

Combat in each phase is carried out separately and dead troops are removed from the battle before the next phase. This means a troop with First Strike can kill a Normal enemy unit before it ever has a chance to attack. Or a Normal unit can attack a Last Strike unit before it can attack.

Dogs are a common First Strike enemy unit and are a total pain when you first face them! The Nords adventure has lots of Last Strike enemy units making crossbows really useful and cannons largely useless.

Attack/defence order
Within each phase, each troop also has its own attack and defence order.

Enemy troops are attacked by your troops in a specific order, except when that order is overridden by Attacks Weakest. This order used to be displayed in the in-game graphics, but recent "improvements" to the game have removed this vital piece of information and you can now only find out the secret order by referring to simulators such as http://www.settlerscombatsimulator.com/uk

The example battle above shows the old graphics with the correct troop order. In this battle, the Boars are attacked first until they are all dead, then the Wolves are attacked, then the Foxes and finally the Unicorn boss. However cavalry will attack the Foxes (who have the lowest base HP) first, then the Wolves, etc.

The enemy troops also attack in their specific order during their phase of combat (First/Normal/Last). So, in the example battle, the Foxes attack during the First phase, then the Boars/Wolves/Unicorn attack in the Normal phase in that order. Knowing this can sometimes be important in setting up your defences.

For your troops, they are attacked in this order:
Recruit - Militia - Soldier - Elite Soldier - Cavalry - Bowman - Longbowman - Crossbowman - Cannoneer
except when this is overridden by the Attacks Weakest skill.

During each phase of combat, they also attack in this order except for Cavalry (First Strike) and Cannons (Last Strike).

Your General attacks last during their phase (normal for most generals, first strike for Master of Martial Arts and Dracula). Also, the general is only attacked when the rest of your force is dead. He isn't targeted by Attacks Weakest even though most generals have only 1HP.

Attacks in each phase are simultaneous
Now the tricky bit: if there are several troops attacking during a single phase of combat, they attack in order but also simultaneously!

For example, even though the battle report shows your troops attacking and killing enemy troops, those "dead" enemy troops are still able to attack during the same phase. It's only at the end of a phase or a round of combat that dead troops are actually removed from the battle so they can't attack back.

If the Last phase of a round of combat finishes and there are still troops left on both sides, a new round of combat starts again with the First phase. The above process repeats until all troops on one side are dead. Any injured units on the winning side then recover to full HP and the battle is over.

Bosses
Most boss units, like the Unicorn, sit behind all their troops so are only attacked once all the other troops are dead. Some boss units, like Wild Mary, Chuck and Metal Tooth, stand in front of their troops and you have to kill the boss before any of the other troops are attacked (unless you use cavalry). Remember you have to kill the boss outright in a single battle as an injured unit returns to full health before the next battle. Lots of people get very confused by this at first and think the game is bugged!


Using multiple waves
A lot of the more difficult enemy camps or camps with boss units cannot be defeated in a single attack. Instead, you have to attack in multiple waves.

This is really important: THERE IS NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT ATTACKING IN WAVES

Waves are just separate battles with the basic idea being that you soften up the enemy in the first (and sometimes second, third and fourth) wave, then send a final attack to finish them off.

Sending two generals separately or one immediately after the other doesn't change the outcome - your forces don't combine and injured enemy units still recover at the end of the first battle. You can send waves two seconds or two years apart with two different generals or the same one twice and the result will be the same!

[Gerontius]

Section I.2 - Applying the basics

Using the simulator
Here's a reminder of the battle we're looking at:

50BO 80WOL 60FOX 1UNI

Go to http://www.settlerscombatsimulator.com/uk. There are two columns of troops, the first column is your army, the second column is the enemy.

For the the enemy troops, select the adventure you're on from the menu button that reads "Home Island". The column of enemy units will change to show the troops you will face on that adventure. You can just type in the particular enemy camp you're facing, or you can use the "Choose camp" button to select the camp from a clickable Map view.

Sadly, the "Hall of Fame" button from the old simulator has been lost, which was a great way to get some ideas for strategies. Hopefully, understanding this guide will allow you to make full and efficient use of the "find best attacker" options to work out your own.

A possible strategy
For this particular battle, you might use a three wave strategy like this. I've included the maximum losses you'll suffer in brackets and the min/max/average enemy losses for each wave, too:

Wave 1: 200B (200B)
Min/max enemy losses: 43BO/47BO (average 45.7 BO)
Wave 2: 200B (200B)
Min/max enemy losses: 7BO 80WOL 8FOX/7BO 80WOL 31FOX (average 19.6 FOX)
Wave 3: 18R 52B 1E 179K (18R 52B)
Min/max enemy losses: 52FOX 1UNI

You'll see that the only troops you lose are R and B, and your precious K and E are saved for the final wave. Hooray!

Understanding the strategy
This strategy, as with most you'll find in different guides, is based around the idea that R and B are quick and cheap to replace so can be sacrificed to soften up a strong enemy before sending in the big guns. It also uses basic 200 unit generals for the sacrificial waves since most people have several of those and it doesn't matter if 2 of them are injured and need to recover for 4 hours.

It is possible to defeat this camp in a single wave using a Veteran general. Sending 250S results in victory at the expense of losing around 200S!

200S would take a long time and a lot of resources to replace and would represent unacceptable losses to most players. So, the 400B are sent to their deaths instead. B are used instead of R because the B do more damage and kill more of the enemy troops in each wave even though they're then decimated by the Unicorn's splash damage. Check this out for yourself on the simulator.

These first 2 waves of 200B each kill most of the troops protecting the Unicorn. In the last wave, 179K are brought in to do big damage to this high HP boss unit. The R and B are there to protect the K from counter attacks so that there is no chance of losing any of these valuable units.

How do we know there's no chance of losing any K? Mathematics!

After the first two waves, the maximum number of troops remaining are 52Fox and 1Uni. Let's go through what happens round by round and phase by phase in the final battle.

Round 1, phase 1
Each Fox attacks weakest with 10-40 damage at 95% accuracy. Our B have the lowest hitpoints (5HP each) so are attacked by the Foxes and each Fox kills 1B - no more no less. All of our 52B are definitely dead.

We could have used an extra 52R to replace the 52B in this last wave. Since R have 40HP, and there's a chance a Fox will only do 10HP damage, there's a chance some of those 52R will survive and our total losses would be lower. However, with 95% accuracy for the Foxes it doesn't make much difference. In real life, you'd probably use R instead of B, but this example strategy is intended to be educational, not perfect!

Round 1, phase 2
Our B were killed in phase 1, so are removed from the battle and do not get a chance to counter-attack in phase 2. Our 18R and 1E do get the chance to attack, and will kill a few Foxes, but the damage they do is pretty insignificant.

The Unicorn also attacks in phase 2. It does a maximum of 400 points of splash damage 90% of the time, so it probably kills exactly 10R.

Round 1, phase 3
Now it's our turn to do some damage with our 179K!

K do a minimum of 60 damage and Foxes only have 30HP, so each K definitely kills one Fox. All 52 Foxes are dead and the remaining K attack the Unicorn. There are at least 127K left to attack once all the Foxes are dead, so let's see how much damage they do.

K do 60-120 damage at 90% accuracy. If you remember the formula from the early part of this guide, that means that each K does on average 60*1.9 = 114 points of damage. That's a total damage of around 127*114 = 14,478HP against the Unicorn. The Unicorn has 30,000HP in total, so we've got no chance of killing it, but we've cut it down by about half to 15,000HP remaining.

That's the end of this round. Onto round 2.

Round 2, phase 1
All the Foxes are now definitely dead and have been removed from the battle. So nothing happens in phase 1.

Round 2, phase 2
We've got 8R and 1E left. They attack the Unicorn, but their damage is insignificant.

The Uni counter-attacks, probably doing his maximum 400 points of damage. We know that's enough to kill 10R, but we only have 8R left. What happens?

8R have a total of 8*40=320HP between them. So once those 8R are dead, there is only 80HP of splash damage left. This splashes onto the next unit in line, the Elite Soldier. The E has 120HP, so he will be injured, but will still have 40HP left. There is no chance he will be killed.

This is a really common part of a lot of strategies and an important way of saving a few R here and there. We could have just used 20R in the attack rather than 18R. But odds are we would have lost all 20. This way, we lose a maximum of 18R with no risk of death to our 1E or any of the 179K

Round 2, phase 3
Our 179K all attack the Unicorn. They do an average of 179*114=20,406HP of damage. Since the Unicorn only has around 15,000HP, that's far more than we need and the Unicorn is dead at the end of round 2.

It is conceivable that the Unicorn isn't killed at the end of 2 rounds: all of our K might have done only their minimum 60HP of damage. But the chances of this happening are so vanishingly small that it would happen once in a thousand million attacks! If those odds concern you, you're a little bit weird...

End of battle
The battle ends in a victory and our (probably) injured E returns to full health and walks home with the general. We've won!


One important thing to learn from the strategy is that the final wave assumes that there were 52Foxes left after the first 2 waves. The precise number of B needed to absorb the damage from these Foxes were used in the final wave.

However, 52Foxes was a worst case scenario result from the first 2 waves. Chances are, you would have killed more Foxes in wave 2 and could then use fewer B in wave 3, replacing them with K to really sock it to the Unicorn! On the other hand, there is a small chance that more than 52Foxes could be left standing after wave 2, in which case you'd need to add some more B to compensate.

Guides don't usually tell you things like this - the range of possible results is enormous and it would be impossible to cover all possible outcomes in a single guide. But if you understand a multi-wave strategy used by a guide, you can modify later waves if a first wave went particularly well (or particularly badly!). It often won't make much difference, but if you can save yourself 2 or 3R in every adventure with just 5 seconds extra thought, it will soon build up.

End of Part I
This ends Part I of the guide.

You should now understand how combat works and how to use the simulator.

Importantly, with a little thought you should now be able to work out why guides use the strategies they do and be able to make minor changes to the recommendations if you have a different general or a different number of troops than the guide recommends. You'll also be able to react and save yourself some troops if a first wave goes better (or worse) than would be expected on average.

Basically, I don't want to see anyone on the help channel saying "that guide uses a Veteran with Crossbows and I only have an MMA with Longbows".

Well, work out the changes for yourself then! Is this a strategy game or is it a spoon-feeding exercise?

[Gerontius]

Part II - Doing it Yourself
Section II.1 - Creating Your Own Strategy

Work in progress...

Spoiler

Understanding strategy
Deciding how to set up multiple waves is really where complex tactics start coming in to combat, and some of this depends on personal choice.

A good strategy balances two competing goals:
1. Minimise losses of expensive troops
2. Maximise damage by wise use of expensive troops

For example, sending in 270 cannons or crossbows will certainly maximise damage - but you will lose at least some of those troops which will be costly and time-consuming too replace.

Guides will be based around personal choice of the guide makers of how much they're willing to lose. Or a "value" is assigned to each troop type so that relative losses can be compared.

For example, a guide/simulator might decide that 1 recruit (R) is worth 2 bowmen (B) or 4 militia (M). On this basis, a decision is made that winning the fight losing 200R is as good a result as losing 100B or 50M.

Minimising losses of expensive troops
First, you will suffer at least some losses in almost every battle. This cannot be avoided. Low value units like recruits (R) and bowmen (B) are quick and cheap to replace so you want most or all of your losses to be made up of these low value troops.

Almost every strategy you come across in guides is based around the idea of sacrificing low value units and not putting your high value units at risk except against powerful bosses.

Maximising damage by using expensive troops
On the other hand, your high value units do more damage, and will kill enemies in a smaller number of rounds. This so you want to put as many of them as you can into a battle But you want to use as many high value units as you can without risk of them dying to do maximum damage; this finishes the battle quicker and minimises the number of low value troops you lose. This approach does result in losing more troops in TOTAL, but settlers/bread, bronze swords and bows are quick and cheap to replace compared to steel swords and crossbows.

So you will almost always see large numbers of R and/or B (and C for some special battles) being put in the first wave, all of which will die. You might also be happy sacrificing the medium units, M and LB, and this is often a matter of personal taste.The aim of this sacrifice is to weaken the enemy to a state where you can bring in your high value units without risk of them being killed.

Another popular strategy when attacking with multiple waves is to use only the 200 unit generals for the initial sacrifical waves. The idea behind this is that people will have several 200 unit generals available and so do not have to wait for generals to recover between waves. However, sending in a veteran in the first wave or two can save you some troops even if you then have to wait for it to recover. For the epic fairytale adventures, you've got 12 days to finish them, after all, and you're going to need to queue up some troops in the barracks and perhaps sleep now and again. Again, this is down to personal taste and your gaming schedule.

Finding a Strategy for a Complex Boss Battle
This is a step by step guide for finding a strategy for defeating a boss with lots of accompanying troops. The example battle is the final boss battle on Valiant Little Tailor.

I'm going to assume you've got access to a Major General (MG), a Master of Martial Arts (MMA) and all troop types.

The enemy troops are:
60 Royal Militia (RM) - 160HP, 70-90 Damage, 95% Accuracy, Splash Damage
80 Royal Longbows (RLB) - 60HP, 80-140 Damage, 95% Accuracy, Splash Damage
60 Royal Cavalry (RC) - 40HP, 10-60 Damage, 95% Accuracy, Attacks Weakest, First Strike
1 Evil King (RK) - 30,000HP, 200-300 Damage, 80% Accuracy, Splash Damage

Here's the link to the simulator: Even 270E are totally decimated by the high damage, splash damage longbows

It's obvious this battle is going to take several rounds and we'll need to clear away the RM and at least some of the RLB before trying to attack the EK.

Those RC are a pain, too, effective killing 40R in the first phase before you can do anything. Maybe some cavalry or a suicide MMA wave would be a good idea.

Look To the End - Killing the EK
Before we work out how to cut down the defending troops, let's look to the final battle with the EK. He has 30,000 HP. A quick simulation shows that even with 270K you can't quite guarantee killing him in a single round. This is to be expected as the average damage done by 270K is 270*60*1.9=30,780HP.

So, we're looking at 2 rounds of combat to defeat him. In that time he'll probably do 600HP of splash damage, killing 600/40 = 15R. We can save up 2R by using only 13R and adding 1E. 13R+1E have a total HP of 13*40+120=640, so the E might be injured by definitely will not be killed over 2 rounds.

Filling up our MG with 256K on top of those defensive troops and we do indeed kill the EK in 2 rounds.

So we know if we kill all of the defending troops, we can kill the EK with minimal losses. The question is, do we need to kill EVERYTHING else first, or do we have some room for manoeuvre? The best way to check options is to work out the minimum number of K needed to guarantee a 2 round victory and see how much space that leaves us on our general to attack/defend against the EK's allies.

You can find the minimum number of K needed with a few quick simulations. Or, we can use a little maths to get us in the ballpark area. We want to be doing at least 15K damage each round to kill the EK in 2 rounds. To be on the safe side, let's say we're doing 16K damage. To do this amount of damage we need N cannons where N*60*1.9=16,000 => N=140.

The simulator shows us that 140K does definitely give us victory in 2 rounds. A few more simulations and we find that we need a minimum of 133K to ALMOST guarantee it.

This means we have around 70 troops extra we can use to mop up any remaining troops accompanying the EK.

[Gerontius]

Reserved4

[Rafnir]

My main reason for writing this guide is to help people to be less reliant on adventure guides. The guides are great and we all use them, but some people seem lost without them and follow them blindly when a little work can optimise battles and save you a bunch of recruits, especially on the new Fairytale adventures.

Killste's thread of collected adventures has several millions of views. You really don't think the guides in that thread are about as optimised as it's possible to get them???

Your intentions are good, but if considering the reason you give, it's a waste of time. That's undoubtly why no one even cares to reply. Sorry.

[Gerontius]

Updating guide since it may suddenly become very useful for people who still haven't taken the time to understand how combat works and need spoon-feeding from guides that are about to go out of date.

Also starting to update links to the new simulator

[JoeInca]

Please help!! Im trying to set-up a 2 wave attack using 250r in first wave, then select MG and tick "best attacker" which relates to the second wave only, when I click "Start simulation" nothing happens....I get no results for either wave coming back......what am I doing wrong?

[Errol_Chin]

Gerontius,

A huge thank you for this. I now understand how this stuff works. I have played around with the simulator that Asipak had written (which was amazing in its detail and those databases of previous simulations are very sorely missed), but that mainly just to work out how to continue when I had messed up a block, or if I just didn't have the troop availability that a guide required.

Having found myself in a BLT in a whole world of splash damage trouble with a dramatically reduced Cannon availability (doubly so after I found out that one of the simulators I thought was updated for splash damage wasn't) this guide has helped me create and then refine my own attacks. About to try my first multi wave attack which should guarantee no loss in the second wave after min bows attack. Might even have a go at crafting some blocks now I can figure out how many rounds a battle is likely to go.

[The_Brick]

Great overview, thanks for this.
waiting for Part II now