Winning fights pt 1: The army

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his." -George Patton

Seems simple enough to understand, but I have seen far too many alliance mates needlessly throw their troops away. They see honor in fighting to the death, but I only see them handing a victory to the enemy.

One I hope to make clear in the following posts is ATTACKING = WINNING. This is not always possible, so let's start with the "defense" army.

Defending suffers from one key problem: you cannot do waves. Your troops are there at the mercy of whatever your attacker throws at you, so your army must be prepared to fight "as is." The other important point here is that if you are not using waves this is the army you want (mostly).

2000 Hoplites
1600 Swordsmen
336 Carabineers
500 Gyrocopters
100 Rams
30 Cooks

Total upkeep 22,708

Notice anything missing? That's right, Mortars and Bombers. Each of these two units deserve their own discussion, but for now you're going to have to trust me. If you can't use waves (or aren't going to), Mortars and Bombers are more of a liability.

You may have also noticed how few Carabineers this army has. This is intentional. They will run out of ammo and be safely in your reserves after 12 rounds, while your flanks will break down around round 14.

Also noteworthy, since you have no Bombers, you are going to lose 30-40 Gryocopters per round (which is why you need so many). 300 is probably enough Gyropcopters to kill off 200-250 Bombers, and your opponent is unlikely to have more than that. Still, Gryocopters cannot receive more damage than they deal (the worst they can do is an even fight versus other Gryocopters), so having more can't be bad.

The main issue here in using this army for attack is that Rams simply can't damage even moderate level walls. For high level walls (higher than level 26 or so), you must use Mortars. But for moderate level walls, Catapults will serve you better ("funneling" will be covered in a future post).

Making this army in to a real deal Holyfield attack force only requires adding a few units:

2000 Hoplites
1600 Swordsmen
336 Carabineers
500 Gyrocopters
100 Rams
30 Cooks
50 Catapults
30 Mortars
300 Bombers

Total upkeep 38,358

The vast majority of the difference in upkeep comes from Bombers, however properly used Bombers are one of the biggest keys to out-damaging your opponent. Still, when building for a war, make the Bombers last.

In part 2, we will look at how to properly use this army, with a bit more explanation for why these are the units you want.