Things to work for and things to avoid

[DLCatlord]

Various Ways to Skill Ghost Generals

One of the questions I'm continually being asked about is how to skill ghost generals. Much depends on where you're at in your Settlers career, but for many veteran players, they look for speed over losses. bearing that in mind let's look at how and why I have 4 different ways to skill them.


(click here for the enlarged version)

(alternative set up for TR using jog. It should give the same result if no canteen or GFH is being used.)


(click here for the enlarged version)

Set up 1: Battle frenzy is the most used set up for a ghost being used as a premium attacker. I use this particular set up in many guides including Bonaberti Business.

Set up 2: Sometimes ghosts are just better with cavalry units. Although rarer than with battle frenzy (about 15% of guides where she's the best option) they still crop up often enough that if you have extras you might consider skilling a couple this way.

The last two set ups are only for use with elite soldiers and not useful for any other unit as the skill cleave is unit specific.

Set up 3: Tomb raiders(TR) is easily the most popular co-op and ghost is often used by players who have plenty of additional resources. We are talking a significant loss of damascene swords per TR, so the last two set up are for players with resources to burn. Juggernaut is better than jog as in TR the ghost doesn't need to move around within the adventure so the additional general damage eliminates the chance of a second round on camp 2.

Set up 4: The Whirlwind(WW) is the second most popular co-op and also often used with ghosts for speed. this set up allows the ghost to travel within the adventure taking advantage of jog for additional speed. The additional losses in TR using the WW set up is very slight 0-2 per run and you gotta get unlucky to get 2.

I hope this post clears things up.

As an aside, if you're using ghosts for TR (or WW) and have an Outdoor Canteen and/or a Grand Field Hospital, seriously consider using the buffs as it will reduce your losses and speed up the overall run. See the spoiler below for additional information

Spoiler

The Ghost TR setup can be changed to jog if you don't have access to outdoor canteen and Grand field Hospital. Even then it may not matter. If you was to look carefully at the combat in the camps leading up to the leaders camp, you'll notice each time it finishes in 1 round and on camp 4 all of the trash mobs get killed in the first round leaving only the bosses. Therefore the key is in how fast those bosses both get killed. If it's 3 rounds you will lose less ES than if it's 4. With juggernaut it's 3 rounds, but it's so far untested with jog and both GFH and Outdoor Canteen. it may well end up that jog can be used if you prefer.

[topgearfan]

you have resolute general skilled with battle frenzy but combat sim indicates theres no difference on outcome of a battle skill or not.
does the battle frenzy skill even work on resolute general?

[DLCatlord]

Yeah it does depending on the adventure. BF only makes a difference after the second round due to increasing damage reducing the amount of units left to do damage to your units in the third round and higher. There's times where unstoppable charge may nett a better result too if the adventure uses a lot of cavalry units.

[DLCatlord]

Understanding Combat (Advanced Concepts)

Players sometimes get caught up in thinking that every general needs to be skilled exactly the same as to how the player that designed the guide they've decided to use did it.

That's actually not true as there's many times combat only goes for one round. How you skilled your general won't affect the result of the combat as there's no skill available using books that directly affects how much damage that gets inflicted on your units only how much damage your units dish out. The variation in losses is from the mobs contained in the camp your attacking and their accuracy and not in how your general was skilled if the fight went one round. Even Unstoppable Charge is unlikely to matter although there are times it will. (See below)

First aid triggers after the combat is resolved not during it and Overrun reduces the HP of bosses not their damage.

Unstoppable Charge may reduce losses by killing mobs before they get a chance to inflict damage as it increases the amount of damage that fast units do. However the increase is only slight so there's a chance it may end up not do anything.

The same with Battle Frenzy. However the longer the combat goes for, the more likely it is to have an impact in reducing both the length of the combat, plus the amount of damage taken by your units.

Hopefully this post helps players to gain a deeper understanding of combat.

Shout out to topfangear for his earlier question which inspired me to do a deper dive into another area of combat which players often struggle with. topfangear might already know this stuff, but it can be difficult to grasp