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Thread: Things to work for and things to avoid

  1. #1
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    Things to work for and things to avoid

    Some guides on game play

    I usually do this as a little series in our guild via the guild mail box, but certain things come up so regularly it's worth having a small section on here dedicated to covering it. What may be obvious to a more experienced player isn't necessarily so obvious for newer players just joining the game.

    (The Gold/Coin Production Trap)
    (The Importance of Storehouses and Their Effects on Production)
    (Generals)
    (Generals. Using Resolute General in Elite (10+ adventures) Quickly)
    (Various Ways to Skill Ghost Generals)
    (Skilling Explorers)
    (Using Explorers)
    (Advanced Concepts. How I Rank Generals)

    Understanding Combat.

    (The Basics)
    (Intermediate Concepts)
    (Advanced Part 1. Using a Sim)
    (Advanced Part 2. Designing Blocks)
    (Advanced Concepts. Skilling Generals)
    (Advanced Concepts. Substituting Generals You Lack From a Guide)
    (Advanced Concepts. Why it so often doesn't matters how exactly you skill a general.)
    (How I skill my generals)

    Some tricks to conserve building licences.

    Below is a series of posts based on the central theme of conserving building licences.

    (Cutters and Foresters)
    (Guild Quests)

    Last edited by DLCatlord; 31.10.23 at 17:43.

  2. #2
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    The Dangers of the Gold Chain.

    Many players become caught in a subtle trap of thinking that they can produce gold coins via the gold coin production chain. At level 24, all of the buildings are available, so why wouldn't you just make them and produce 1,000's of coins a day?

    On the surface it all looks and sounds good, so why doesn't it work? Lets take a closer look and identify some of the challenges it brings to the table. The worst thing about this trap is that players often feel something is going horribly wrong, but it's very hard for them to put their finger on it as they're too close to the problem.


    1: The Searching

    It takes a tavern geologist 4 hours and a fast geologist 2 hours to locate gold deposits. This is already a warning sign, as you need your geologists to locate vital other resources to aid in your development.

    Stone, Marble, Copper, Iron, and Coal need to be located and renewed, so while you have geologists tied up on locating gold, your other production chains and materials for upgrading are grinding to a halt. To look for and to locate gold under these conditions, you need far more than just tavern geologists.

    If you still want to do this, then I'd recommend you have at least 6-9 other types of fast geologists before you even consider tying them up with gold searches and renewals of gold mines.

    2: Building Licences

    Another unapparent one comes back to building licences. Early on, these licences quickly become a premium, so tying up 10+ with mines, gold smelters, and coinage trying to produce gold coins means you will quickly run out and start to fall short in other areas of production. This means you will either need to beg from your guildies, or buy your shortfalls off the TO thus spending those precious coins you're producing.

    There's no really good solution for this except to buy more building licences via gems using real life $$, otherwise you'll need to wait until later on as you add more buildings that aid production but don't tie up licences which will take time.

    3: The production chains are costly and slow.

    Each step to make your gold coin, takes time.
    a: The mines are 12 minutes + travel time to a storehouse per round.
    b: Your gold smelter is another 12 minutes + travel time and work preparation. It also needs two times the amount of nuggets that it will produce. (unbuffed 2 nuggets and 8 coal = 1 gold ingot per building level of the Gold Smelter.)
    c: Coinage takes 24 minutes + travel time and work preparation to produce 1 coins unbuffed from 4 gold ingots per level of the Coinage Building.

    Again, there's no good solutions for this. Quality buffs will help, but the cost of say rainbow snow isn't likely to be covered by the coins you'll produce. Gold Fever isn't quite as long lasting nor as heavy a boost, but it's not expensive to procure. It will boost mine production.

    4: Materials

    If by chance you do happen to solve the first three difficulties, materials is going to be nasty. Coal is heavily tapped by other chains, so to produce enough you will likely need to add more coking plants which means more foresters and pinewood cutters which in turn means even more building licences.

    See section 2 for tips.

    Conclusion:

    Producing gold coins isn't a winning strategy early in your settlers career unless you are going to spend real life $$$ to buy extra licences and geologists. Even then, there's far better things you could use those gems for. At higher levels when you do have spare licences and geologists, feel free, but lower levels and without spending money, it's just a trap that's sucked in and chewed up far too many players.
    Last edited by DLCatlord; 31.05.20 at 03:49.

  3. #3
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    Conserving Building Licences (Cutter/Forester ratios)

    Fine Tuning your island when you're new is critical to making sure your island continues to develop and grow. The more storehouses you have, the faster goods will be produced with the ideal being to have a storehouse in the middle of a hexagon of production buildings.
    I've already gone over the gold coin trap, and why it's not a valid chain to pursue (especially early), but this time I'll touch on one of the least understood areas of the game, the ratio of foresters to cutters.
    Most players will have far too many foresters servicing their cutters, but how many is too many and what's the correct ratio? It differs from types of wood, but here's my ratios and they've withstood the test of time.


    Pinewood - 8 foresters 23 cutters (roughly 1 forester per 3 cutters)
    Hardwood - 6 foresters 15 cutters (roughly 1 forester per 2.5 cutters)
    Exotic - 4 Foresters 6 Cutters (2 foresters per 3 cutters)


    It doesn't mean you need to have all of that to have the perfect production chain, but it's all about the ratio of cutters to foresters, so if you have 6 pinewood cutters say, you will need at least 2 foresters to satisfy the cutters and keep them producing. Should you wish to maintain the forest on your island, you would need to increase the foresters slightly, or to make sure that they are regularly buffed.

    Last edited by DLCatlord; 29.05.20 at 09:39.

  4. #4
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    Generals

    One topic which comes up time and again is about generals. How to skill them, and what are the best generals to have? These are two of the more common questions and both can have a huge impact on what generals to concentrate on getting. Ignoring quartermaster generals which are only used to transport troops, there's currently 24 generals in the game, some of which are the same as each other, to all intents and purposes. Loosely categorised, these generals will fall into a few categories. Premium, Suicide, and Blocker. Some generals will span more than one category, and obviously if your best general happens to be a Tavern General, he's your premium attacker. Bearing that in mind, let's have a quick look at them.

    Premium Generals: These are generals you'll use time and again in attacks to finish off camps or sectors with blockers delaying other camps. Each has a unique ability which makes them the General of choice for certain adventures or styles of adventuring. You can win generals over time from events, but if i had to rank generals in order of preference, the list below would be it.

    1: %Champion Nusala(NUS) Premium/Suicider - Most consistant hardest hitting first strike general.Loses ground in harder Elite adventures, but always manages to sneak into most as a suicider.

    2: %Younger Gemini General(YGG) - Premium/Suicider - Most consistant lethal attack of any current general.

    3: General Boris/General Sylvana(Bor) Premium/Occasional Suicider - This is a general you'll use time and again. He also adds extra XP per camp he's involved in attacking. He can be used in suiciding, and hits at 700-1000 damage and has first strike, flanking, and splash.

    4: Older Gemini General(OGG) - Premium Highest number of troops of any general. Also has first strike and first aid which lowers losses in adventures.

    5: *Major General(MG) - Premium Second highest number of troops of any general. Nearly as good as OGG, but OGG is better in every category.

    6: Champion Anslem(ANS) - Premium/Secondary Suicider - Hits as hard as Nusala. His ability to reduce the enemy troops to their minimum attack heavily reduces losses. Not as versatile in suicides as Nusala as he doesn't have first strike.

    7: $Resolute General(RG) - Premium - Like General Loudmouth, RG excels at any camp where Vargus does. The losses are higher than GLM, but occasionally lower than Vargus in lower adventures, but in adventures where elite units are used, RG becomes the best of the three hands down due to using Swordsman, not mounted Swordsman as their defensive unit.

    8: $General Loudmouth(GLM) - Premium/Secondary Suicider - This general slightly outperforms Vargus inasmuch as he will have less losses vs the same camp, but is much harder to come by. he was only released once in 2021, and hasn't appeared since. He has 10 less units than Vargus.

    9: $Champion Vargus(VAR) - Premium/Secondary Suicider - Lighter hitting than Nusala and Anslem, but not by much. His skill of preventing flanking makes him valuable, but it reduces his effectiveness as a suicider although still useful in places.

    10: Ghost General(GG) - Premium - This general is often overrated, but it does have some very useful features. It boosts Hp of accompanying units by 20% and lowers the accuracy of the enemy units by 50% which helps to lower losses. She arrives in adventures faster than any other general, but the Cloaked General whose speed she matches. Her attacks finish faster than most generals which can help with making blocks safer. That all sounds good, so why so low? This general's negatives are low damage and not quite perfect accuracy but even worse than that is that it has last strike. Last strike makes this general more of a curiousity that players will outgrow. The fact it has 1-Up is nearly pointless with it only hitting at the end of each round. It's long term usefulness, as better generals are released, is highly questionable. There are adventures that she shines in, and can perform quite well which is why I still rate her as a premium general. She's also been readily available, so many players have her in large numbers.

    11: Steadfast General(STG) Premium/Suicider/Blocker - As a premium attacker, she comes into her own on the high difficulty rating adventures, however her biggest use is as a blocker where she ranks extremely high.

    12: General Tremble Beard(GTB) - Premium/Occasional Suicider - This general adds 200% to any XP he's involved in attacking. He also adds star coins. His let down is no skills to boost accompanying troops and disappointingly low troop numbers. This is why he rates so low in the list

    13: General Mary Christmas(Mary) Premium - This general adds 100% XP to any camp she's involved in attacking. She's often used in scout runs to maximise adventure scores. Can cause added losses.


    14: Loner General(LNG) - Premium/Possible Suicider - This General is highly accurate and skilled with Master Planner will do over 2000 damage. He also has high troop numbers and adds 50% attack to offensive units accompanying him, so why is he so low on this list? The short answer is he lacks flanking, nor does he give it to any of his accompanying troops. That oversight makes him dated compared to other generals. He will shine in certain adventures. That plus his first strike, higher troop count, and higher than average damage is why I rate him as a premium general. Having said that, you will not find any adventure where he's the star of the show. He does okay vs Nords, but Nusala which is about his closest comparison just does it better.

    Notes:
    % Due to suicide options, these generals are extremely damaging in packs. The more you have of them, the more likely it is you can do zero/ very low loss adventures.
    * Major General would be my go to if I had no OGG. With at least 1 OGG, MG's usefulness drops him much lower in the list. Having said that, MG can be bought using beanstalks from the Merchant (Epic tab)
    + General Loudmouth, Resolute General, and Champion Vargus all remove flanking or the targeting of the weakest unit and force the enemy camp to have to attack your defenders first. Any one of these generals is useful in a wide range of adventures and will come up time and again. While I haven't widely tested it, it may well be that RG may be the best choice in certain camps purely because he has more support troops. If you're looking to add GLM or RG to your adventures, look for guides with Vargus and match the defense units of the attack for quick simming.



    Secondary Suiciders:
    Ignoring the generals above which can also be used for suiciding, these secondary suiciders can also be lethal in packs.


    1: Master of Martial Arts (MMA) - Suicider - Three of this first strike general will deal roughly the same damage as Nusala when comparing single unit suicides. Well worth knowing as many players have these in large multiples.

    2: Frosty General(FRG) - My initial reaction to this general was it looked awesome. Comprehensive testing has show it to be otherwise, but it's still useful as a back up suicider to YGG and like YGG it's deadly in bunches. It looks good. It hits hard, and has higher HP than even YGG, but it lacks flanking. This single lack of an ability removes it from a premium spot and places it firmly in second tier suiciders and while it boosts defensive units attack which sounded good, it doesn't give them flanking either making these boosts less useful.

    3: Cloaked General (CLG) - Loot Spot/Suicider - This first strike general is wildly inaccurate, but occasionally he will hit every bit as hard as a YGG. His worst hit is still equal to MMA's best, which is why he's on the list of second tier suiciders. Like the Ghost General he has the fastest travel time, combat round, and recovery time of any general making him very useful for Loot Spots(LS). He lacks flanking which is a gross oversight, and that also relegates him away from being a premium general, and into obscurity. Nowhere near as useful as an MMA suiciding unless it's vs a single troop camp.

    4: Field Medic General (FMG) - Suicider - The best 200 unit suicider in the game where first strike is unimportant. His ability with first aid heavily reduces losses.

    5: Lord Dracul (Drac) - Suicider - This first strike general is useful here and there, and there's still some guides about the place which use him.

    6: Veteran (Vet) - Suicider - This very occasional suicider can still be dragged out and have them cobwebs dusted off them on the odd occasion for a suicide involving more than 200 units (265 max if skilled)


    Blockers:

    1: Tavern General (TG) - Blocker - His slowness in combat rounds makes the tavern general the best blocker in the game. There's only a few adventures where STG outperforms the TG.

    2: Steadfast General(STG) This dual purpose general can be skilled as a blocker and I've used her in quite a few guides. In some cases she outshines even a TG where it comes to pulling off a lengthy block and MOD can rarely match her, but he's easier to come by.

    3: Master of Defense (MOD) - Blocker - While Steadfast General(STG) tends to be slightly better and in more places which is why I ranked him 3 rather than 2, he's more readily available


    Secondary/Infrequent Blockers

    1: General Log (Log) - Rarely used - Maybe in an occasional shotgun block. (multiple generals with a single unit extending the time for attacking generals to get past the interception area)

    2: General Grim Reaper(Grim) - Can be gotten free during the Halloween event. Basically a repackaged BHG.

    3: Battler Hardened General (BHG) - Cheapest general for gems. Frankly keep saving as the day when BHG was premium are long gone.

    4: General Bighelmet (GBH) - A more expensive version of a BHG.

    5: Mad Scientist (MAD) - Well named as you'd need to be mad to use gems to get one. An overpriced general with no real saving grace except you can suicide block with him.
    Last edited by DLCatlord; 27.05.23 at 23:07.

  5. #5
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    Conserving Building Licences (Guild Quests)

    Joining a guild is optional, but being in one generates a variety of advantages. Having players to talk to online, others to buff your production chains, and to do small trades to assist in completing quests is a quick rundown on a few of them.

    Being in a guild allows you to do guild quests which happen to be the largest generator of Guild Coins. These coins can be used to purchase a variety of premium buildings which would otherwise cost gems or large sums of coin newer players can ill afford to purchase. The more active the guild, and the more players within the guild that complete it, the greater the bonus guild coins generated for the players that participated within the guild. These quests happen daily, so try to get on at least once a day to complete the quest and save up the coins for buildings, especially where you have shortfalls in your production.

    All of these premium buildings require no building licence which allows you to increase your production in other areas where you may have shortfalls, so it's in your best interest to complete the guild quests, especially if you're new to the game, or not planning on spending real life cash on purchasing gems.
    Last edited by DLCatlord; 31.05.20 at 03:25.

  6. #6
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    Understanding Combat (The basics)

    How combat works is often a mystery to even experienced players, so without getting too complicated, hopefully this guide will increase your grasp of the topic, and shed some light on how it works.

    Assuming that the skill Confident Leader was not selected while skilling the general, a combat round will vary from 7-20 seconds. For now only Ghost and Cloaked General are at 7 seconds with Tavern Generals being the slowest at 20 seconds. Every other attacking general is 10 seconds. This knowledge is used in part in designing adventures with blocks, which is a whole other topic in itself, but for now leaving blocks aside, let's dig into the combat round itself and how it works.

    A combat round has three phases, and damage is applied at the end of each phase.

    Phase 1: First Strike units - All of your first strike units, and those of the enemy including generals/bosses will attack during this round. Damage is applied simultaneously, before moving onto the next phase of the combat round.
    Phase 2: Normal Units - Most of your units will fit into this category.
    Phase 3: Last Strike Units - Last strike units including generals/bosses.

    Understanding how and where damage is applied is also important. Regardless of when damage is applied, defensive units are attacked first (Some bosses are considered defensive units) unless the unit has flanking in which case, the enemy unit(s) with the least HP will be attacked first. Splash is also important at this point, because without splash the maximum amount of enemies killed per attacking unit is 1 regardless of how much damage that unit can do.

    First Strike Units (Usually have the lowest HP and are therefore the most likely to be hit by flanking enemy. All attack during the first strike phase, and their damage is applied first)

    Basic: Cavalry
    Elite: Knight, Mounted Marksman

    Defensive Units (All attack during the normal phase)

    Basic: Recruit, Militia, Soldier, Elite Soldier
    Elite: Swordsman, Mounted Swordsman

    Offensive Units (Normal phase)

    Basic: Bow, Longbow, Crossbow
    Elite: Marksman, Armored Marksman

    Heavy Units (Last Strike phase)

    Basic: Cannoneer
    Elite: Besieger

    The other thing to take into account is accuracy of the general and of the units with that General and how that ties back to damage. Any unit with 0 accuracy will still inflict it's minimum damage. Some units such as say Caltrops (0-20 damage) will be rendered harmless by Anslem whose skill "Dazzle" reduces accuracy of enemy units to 0%
    Last edited by DLCatlord; 26.01.23 at 14:27.

  7. #7
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    Understanding Combat (Intermediate)

    Some players remain unaware of how combat actually works. Some even watch a replay of a fight, but don't appreciate the subtle nuances of what they're seeing. In this series of videos vs Nords I hope to better explain to people exactly what they're looking at, and why I ranked Nusala #1 and YGG #2 in my list of best generals. I also hope to show why even though I still rated Loner General on my list of premium generals at last position. It comes back to lacking flanking which I'm hoping you can more easily see over these three videos I'll be including in this post. First off let's meet the protagonists and the enemy.


    (Click here for full image)

    The first thing I'd like you to notice about the enemy is that the Valkyrie are the only normal unit. All of the rest have last strike, meaning that they're heavy units. If we can work out a way to remove any Valkyrie in a camp during the first strike round, or perhaps with a suicide attack , then we can use offensive units to remove the rest all before any of the armies within a camp gets a chance to react! The other thing you may notice is that the Valkyrie have the least amount of HP. That makes them vulnerable to flanking. So any unit with first strike and flanking will automatically have an advantage vs Valkyrie.

    So keeping this in mind, the first choice general is Nusala. Not only does she hit quite hard, she also has first strike, flanking and splash. He skills give flanking and splash to offensive units. Perfect!


    (Click here for full image)

    (Nusala in action vs Nords)

    If you watch the video carefully, you'll see Nusala destroying the Valkyrie by herself and her damage goes so far as to remove units in the next formation. The next round sees the crossbows polishing them off. If there had been another formation of defenders within the enemy camp they would have taken out the group with the lowest HP first due to flanking. More on that later.

    In comparison let's look at Loner General and why he's inferior to Nusala despite having similar skills which allows him to affect offensive units by increasing their damage. This becomes more apparent in higher adventures than The Nords, but the Nords is still useful in highlighting where his issues lay.

    (Important exception. LNG is lethal vs single unit camps with normal or last strike attacks where his lack of flanking ceases to be an issue. Additionally he increases the damage onto units such as AMM so he can be better Nusala under the right conditions. This is why he still rates as a premium general even though those exact conditions tend to be rare.)


    (Click here for full image)

    (Loner in action vs Nords)

    Watching carefully, you'll notice that the cavalry destroy the Valkyrie and that Loner general expends his damage onto the unit with the highest HP rendering his attack mostly harmless. However the follow up by the crossbows tears through the rest of that unit and into what was left from the cavalry charge. The additional damage from Loner paying dividends.


    (Click here for full image)


    (Click here for full image)

    (YGG and OGG in action vs Nords)

    This attack is a classic example of the destruction to an enemy camp that YGG brings which is why he ranks so highly in the Premium General stakes. he also gives defensive units +10% accuracy and flanking. His high accuracy and massive damage renders the unit accompanying him as unimportant. The follow up by OGG finishes the camp off. If you watch the attack carefully you'll see that OGG's damage goes onto the unit with the least amount of HP (flanking skill again) and that the crossbows start from the unit with the highest HP and work through those then into the next group before finishing off the last of the units that OGG's attack left standing.


    (Click here for full image)

    The last general I tend to use in Nords is General Tremble Beard to take advantage of his increased XP gain of 200%. In every other regard he's not a great general, but with books, we can at least make him somewhat useful even if only as a suicider. By giving GTB Master Planner(MP) we increase his accuracy to 100% meaning he will always do his maximum damage(485). We can increase his damage with Juggernaut, plus add Garrison Annex to increase his maximum troops from a pitiful 160 to 175. Add in Unstoppable Charge to give any first strike unit additional damage plus splash and under the right circumstances he can be useful. Overrun is likely wasted on GTB as you're unlikely to ever find a boss camp you can use him on, but maybe you can use him to suicide on one. The skill only affects bosses, so in retrospect it may well have been better to place those books in Hostile Takeover to generate some additional recruits or in Rapid Fire. Not because you'd seriously use GTB with Bows, but more so you can save on Tomes by using manuscripts instead.

    I hope the reader walks away from this with a better understanding of how combat works. The next topic I'll be covering in combat is more advanced getting into how and why I skill generals as I do.


    Note. There is no wrong way to skill a general provided you put some thought into how you want to use it. Technically you could reskill generals based on every adventure you run, but that would get rather costly so it's a tradeoff of flexibility vs usefulness and possible increased losses.
    Last edited by DLCatlord; 07.03.23 at 11:39.

  8. #8
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    The importance of Storehouses and how they affect production

    When a player is first starting out and building licences are tight, they often neglect to place storehouses to increase production. A quick look at the diagram shows you where the best locations are. Always remember that the further away from a storehouse that a production house is, the less productive the settler becomes as his time is wasted walking to and from the workshop. Three well placed sawmills can be far more productive than ten poorly placed ones. Over a short period of a few minutes the effects are hard to see, but over the space of a year, those effects become very meaningful.

    This fact is never more critical than during an event featuring fields such as Valentines and Halloween.

    The basics is that production within the workshop is 35 minutes,so if your settler could teleport they would make 864 trips per field over the three week period. That's not a lot of trips, so surely walking a bit further won't matter right? Wrong. The further the settler has to walk, the less productive they become. On a plus side, the travel times are halved for event fields so 16 seconds becomes 8, 24 seconds 12, etc.

    As for the impact

    8 seconds costs you 2-3 trips over the entire period and that's your best result.
    12 seconds costs you 3-4 trips
    16 seconds costs you 4-5 trips
    etc etc

    Now for the second consideration. For events you really want to avoid uneven travel times if you're planning to use something like a Love Tree. The Love tree's buff lasts for 6 hours. If you do your buff from the tree a few minutes out from the end of it's cycle you get 11 trips out of the field. If it's longer than 8 minutes (or less depending on just how far the settler is walking) then you get only 10 trips for that field or fields, and yes over time staggered times will cause them to wind up on wildly different finish times, so overall it may well be better to have 3 fields at 12 seconds rather than 1 at 8 and the other 2 at 12.

    Hopefully this helps people to understand their production that little bit better. Happy settling



    (Click here for full image)
    Last edited by DLCatlord; 07.03.23 at 12:35.

  9. #9
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    Understanding Combat(Advanced Concepts. Using a Combat Simulator)

    So you've been looking through the guides, but alas the guides that are out there just don't suit our needs. We're missing certain generals, or we have generals we'd like to test out. So how can we go about testing our theories?

    Removing the social aspects and the pretty graphics of the game what you have is all based on mathematics. That means we can use a combat calculator usually called a combat sim for our generals to test them out. This can also help you to decide if that new general you just got is actually worth investing hard to come by books into it.

    I've designed several adventure guides, and my go to simulator can be found at
    (The Settlers Online Combat Simulator).
    It's updated regularly and widely used by many adventure guide designers. It also allows you to customise existing generals, and to export and import the lists. In a later post I'll get more into how to select the right general based on what's there at the camp, but certain generals will come up time and again as your likely best option. Technically you can use a single general to complete any adventure provided you don't care about your losses. The brute force approach isn't ideal and often leads to expensive failed attacks, so let's look at using a sim. As I've been doing Nords, we'll stick to that for now.

    (Using a Combat Sim)

    In the video I first off showed you some of the options of the sim, and then moved on to simming a camp. I first used the simulator's option 'find best attacker' to show me roughly what units would be best and at a light iteration of only 100 repetitions, before moving onto refining it.

    During my refining tests, I shifted repetitions to 100000 to reveal any potential outliers which happen when you get 'bad random rolls'. It revealed that there was some with the potential to lose cavalry if the fight extended into a second round. Adding cavalry was doing the trick slowly, but adding far more crossbows solved it.

    So for camp 23 of the Nords, several options in generals exist where you don't lose any units, so for the next sim, let's test out various generals on Camp 1 which is a far tougher prospect.

    As these are skilled generals I'm using, I'll reveal how I have my generals skilled during the video, and explain why in a later post.


    (Testing Nusala and YGG)

    (NUS) 1ES 75B 104XB Losses: 1ES 75B 33-103(avg 51.27)
    (YGG) 1ES 145B 9XB Losses: 155B


    So while not ideal, both generals could be used. The reason they're not doing too well is they lack the troops to be effective vs all of the HP within that camp, so lets add more numbers by using generals with access to more troops.We'll also test using Militia for generals that struggle to get it done with recruits. The main reason to switch out different troop types is due to speed. As it was, I dropped OGG back to 10 repetitions just to speed things along.

    (Testing GG LNG MG and OGG)

    NUS 70M 1ES 109XB
    GG 61M 1ES 168XB
    MG 100R 1ES 184XB
    LNG 92R 1ES 152XB
    OGG 93R 1ES 201XB


    Note:
    1: While it may appear that LNG gave a slightly better performance than OGG, OGG will "rescue" far more troops as his natural first aid skill is 20% compared to LNG's 10% meaning that OGG will lose less troops once the dust has settled.
    2: This is certainly not the best method to attack this camp, these attacks would work. However as all of the troops there have last strike, it could very easily be weakened by suicide attacks by literally any general in your army.


    I hope this little series of videos helps people to get over the fear of simming. It can be quite rewarding to develop your own strategies in attacking camps.

    As always happy settling.

  10. #10
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    Understanding Combat(Advanced Concepts. Designing Potential Blocks in a Sim)


    Many players are terrified of blocks. They don't understand how they work, or they've messed up a couple of times so now they're too scared to try it again. So let's talk about how they work, and why so many use them. For this one, I'll show you how to configure the simulator I use which is (here)

    The first thing to understand is that not all camps can be blocked although technically you could use a shotgun block which is a series of generals suiciding on a camp to hold it in combat for an extended length of time to give your attacking generals time to either enter the camp you want them to attack or to leave the zone controlled by the camp you're blocking. Shotgun blocks are an advanced concept, but fairly easy to use. I have one in a guide for The Lost City using 2 x TG, and suggest you could add a third if you're struggling to pull it off. Three gives you 60 seconds which should be plenty of time.


    (The Lost City)

    The generals used to block have a path they walk to get to a camp. The basics is every 3 flags is 10 seconds. The revelie goes for 4 seconds for those that leave sound on. The longer a block goes for, the 'safer' it can be considered. For this test, I'm going to use the adventure Ali Baba and the Young Woodcutter. So lets look at the (G1) sector.

    G1 features three camps which need to be either eliminated or blocked for the sector to be considered beaten. One of the three camps can be defeated without losing any troops, so provided we can develop a long lasting block, we can use a general to eliminate it while having the main attacking general attack the leader's camp.

    A quick look at camp 4 shows that the enemy within groups have various skills, but nothing to be too concerned with. While the horsemen are first strike, they lack flanking, so they'll expend their energy onto the attacking general's defensive units. The desert marksmen have flanking, but lack first strike, so they can potentially be killed by our units with first strike. The shrewd thief also hits in the normal round and is low hp for a boss. There's plenty of generals that can get the job done, but Boris offers a boost to fast units and he also adds more XP(+50%) making him perfect for this job.

    Camp 3 is also vulnerable to MMM. GTB (200% XP boost) cannot quite carry enough troops to pull it off without losing some, but Mary (100% XP Boost) certainly can. As an added bonus, so can Boris without losing any troops even if somehow Mary accidentally gets intercepted by the camp we're trying to block.

    Below is a YouTube video showing the design process and how to use the sim


    (Adjusting the sim after calculating the attacks to sim the block)

    Camp 3: 110 Desert Marksmen 100 Stone Cannon
    (Mary) 215MMM (20 seconds)

    Camp 4: 120 Horseman 80 Desert Marksman 1 Shrewd Thief
    (BOR) 24MS 151MMM (20 seconds)


    The attacks don't last very long, and while the walk through the camp we need to block takes time, maybe we can sim up something that will work.

    So now let's move on to the critical camp.


    Camp 2: 180 Sword Wielder
    TG 197MS (280-318.07-460sec)
    MOD 198MS (150-169.23-250sec)
    STG 195MS (130-151.25-380sec)


    TG was the easy winner with his block lasting a minimum of 280 seconds which is over 4 minutes. More than enough time for the attacking generals to arrive. The MOD blocks the camp for a minimum of 2 minutes 30 seconds with STG blocking it for 2 minutes 10 seconds making them ideal for use in speed runs with scouting and obs active.

    The rest is just calculating the steps to avoid being intercepted.

    Below is a layout using two generals, but a third can easily be added


    General's Layout Close Up


    (For Full Picture)

    General's Attacks and Blocks



    (For Full Picture)
    Last edited by DLCatlord; 08.03.23 at 10:17.

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