One of the most frequent questions I've gotten is what to fight with after my last two posts have focused on how you can grow your economy. At the end of last round I did some more exhaustive testing of different auto-battle options at different boosts to establish what works and what doesn't.
Why are these recommended boost numbers so high?
The boost I'm recommending for most units is often more than 3 times higher than the opponent target's boost. There's a few contributing factors to this:
- Two wave battles require fairly clean wins of the first wave. Being badly outnumbered in the second wave is a recipe for disaster.
- Artillery are weaker by Late Middle Ages (comparatively) than they were in Iron Age - especially defensively - which makes it more critical that you kill as many units as possible as fast as possible.
- Generally speaking you want to lose as few units as possible so you can also train less units and place less strain on your supplies (which can instead go to buying goods expansions or fancy space-efficient decorations for additional boost).
Day 1-5 (EMA opponents)
If you have some boost from your main city you can often fight through these without training anything with just 10-20 "Quantum Units at Incursion Start" from your main city. Or you can dump ~46k Coins and ~34k Supplies to build an EMA barracks (5 seconds), train 10 units, and sell it which should give you a good amount of substitutes as your troops get injured.
Which units should you use?
Catapults are the primary choice if you have a decent amount of boost. You ideally want ~150-330 sword and ~260-490 shield to feel confident that you can dispatch the enemy armies quickly and take the odd hits from angry Mounted Archers. You may want to swap to a different army against opponents with many Mounted Archers. Also note that Trebuchets do not have significantly improved defenses and fear Mounted Archers just as much as Catapults - so if you've upgraded to Trebuchets early you still may want to sub them out against Mounted Archers.
If you find Catapults are too squishy for you (i.e. you actually lose some units), any of the other units should be just fine too against the small one wave armies in the early days.
Armored Infantry require the least boost to cap out, but may occasionally struggle to run down a Catapult and lose a unit. 10-90 sword and 130-220 shield should be comfortable.
Mounted Archers are probably the most powerful option if you're trying to fight with little boost of your own. They'll usually do "ok" on auto, but with your control you can keep them out of danger on the first turn and then charge in wiping out most of the enemy army, minimizing the retaliation you take.
By day 6, when HMA opponents appear, you should be able to have any troop you want to have and your starting EMA units may be starting to struggle to keep up. Interesting options include:
Trebuchets or Cannons
Artillery have the highest chance for clean fights, but if you don't have enough boost or poor luck can fall apart quickly to massive casualties.
Trebuchets have longer range than Cannons and as such, with enough boost, will outperform them by taking less hits occasionally. This is probably the best option through day 8 at least before your opponent's boost starts jumping but if you stick with them all the way through, you will need much more boost for the day 11 boss. I'd recommend at least 1600 Sword & Shield to usually 2-shot Imperial Guards and usually take 3 shots to die from enemy Cannons on day 11 boss encounters. It would take ~2700-3200 shield to start taking 3 shots to die from other enemy units.
Cannons are perfectly serviceable and need a little less boost than Trebuchets do. They may take a few more casualties on days when you have more than enough boost. If you want to fight day 11 boss I'd recommend at least 1250 sword and shield to usually 2-shot Imperial Guards and usually take 3 shots to die from enemy Cannons on day 11 boss encounters. It would take ~2300-2800 shield to start taking 3 shots to die from other enemy units.
The most dangerous encounter to relying on either Trebuchets or Cannons is 3 Fast, 3 Artillery, 2 Ranged // 4 Heavy, 3 Light. It's quite possible to lose 4 artillery in the first wave with bad ordering making the 2nd wave a struggle to finish. You may be able to get around this by manual battling this single arrangement. 2 Fast, 2 Heavy, 4 Artillery // 1 Heavy, 6 Light can also inflict significant losses to artillery, but I never saw auto-battle fail it outright (at equivalent to ~1400 sword, 1300 shield).
Imperial Guards
The easiest unit to max stats on, they will be reliable wins on day 11 boss encounters with about 700 sword, 1200 shield. Of course they'll still have 1-2 casualties every fight even on easier encounters so you will need to train many more units if solely relying on them. Rather I'd recommend having a small number of Trebuchets for easy fights they can win cleanly and only breaking out the Imperial Guards on the final day or two if going this route.
Longbow Archers
An in-between option, longbows are strong and reliable if you have enough shield. They will still win many fights cleanly, but a few less than artillery do overall. They are less prone to collapsing to massive casualties though if you have sufficient shield for them. I would recommend at least 630 sword, 1400 shield to always 2-shot Imperial Guards and have some durability (~7 artillery hits or 3 other hits) on day 11 boss encounters. The higher your shield, the better an option this will become (it would take ~1900 shield to minimise damage taken from cannons and ~3500 shield to minimise damage taken from almost everything).
Heavy Knights
Another in-between option between Artillery and Imperial Guards, Heavy Knights are of medium difficulty to cap out. I'd recommend about 600 sword, 1600 shield to maximise performance against most opponent units on day 11 boss encounters. They will not have as many clean wins as Trebuchets, Cannons or Longbow Archers, but they will have equal reliability and less casualties compared to Imperial Guards.
My choice
For now I'm planning to rest on Catapults into Cannons ; my base QI boosts are 300+ and I'll plan to build 900+ boost in the settlement. We'll see if I wish I had Imperial Guards for backup on day 11 next round. I expect to kill off ~300 Cannons and will be training ~500 to be safe until I'm more confident in my estimates.
If at some point I have much higher shield than sword from main city boost I would choose Longbow Archers.
