Understanding Obtaining FE+ Troops In Ages before Contemporary Era

This might be a bit of a long post, because there's a lot involved with how this works and rather than saying "just do this" I'm going to try and explain everything that's going on.

If a "just do this" post *is* what you want, look here: https://forum.us.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/higher-age-units-guide-v1-22.37109/

Ok so the process of getting these troops in Contemporary Era+ I've explained before and is relatively straightforward.  Save what you can for techs, and only progress the continent map and research tree when the story tells you you have to.  The reason you can't do this normally in PME or earlier is because of "hard tech blocks" that once they come up you cannot pass without progressing to the age in question.  At the end of each of the CE and PME continent maps there is one of these blocks.

So how do you get by these quests?  You have to stop them from appearing at all.  Starting in Contemporary Era the story occasionally "breaks" depending on your actions.  Story quests have prerequisites and if you've done something unexpected like fighting ahead on the map past where the next quest would be, it skips that quest - if later quests have that quest as a prerequisite, the story can disappear entirely.  This can be useful to get 3 recurring quests in an age that's not the last - but in this case it's going to be used to skip a "hard tech block".  By completing the last province of the CE continent and moving onto the next map while skipping the optional provinces not required before you advance the quests, it'll skip to Dictator's Death, and then the story will disappear.  Presumably "King of the Desert", the CE blocker quest, requires either you to have completed another CE quest that you skipped or to control the whole map.

So your story's gone, that's all well and good - but how do you get the FE troops then?  At various points, the story is eligible to return without you having completed prerequisite quests - just for being at the right spot on the continent map and not having a Story Quest.  We'll call these "resume points".  FE has a few of these.  So we're able to rejoin the story in time to get FE troops.

Now I mentioned that Postmodern Era also has a blocker, "The End of This Chapter".  I also didn't mention the story "breaking" before Contemporary Era.  So...  this one needs to be avoided via an anomaly in the PME story.  At one point near the end of the PME story, they want to give you a choice as to whether to cover up the actions of Colonel Lang or to tell the truth about what happened, "Your Choice: Truth or Dare?".  Apparently in order to make it eligible to abort, they had to flag it as a Side Quest.  This allows "resume points" checking your quests to see that you don't have a Story Quest and as such let you pick up story from that point.  So the core point for getting them before Postmodern Era is to simply never complete or abort "Your Choice: Truth or Dare?".

Ok so that's it for the extra complications in terms of quests...  But there is another detail to deal with - you do have to somehow manage to take all these continents!  To take ME through FE up to hover tanks by negotiation requires ~40k PE+ goods!  That's a lot of goods to purchase, so you might want to fight as much as possible.  

But for large segments of the map you'll be using units 1 or more eras out of date.  Accordingly you need significant amounts of boost.  The attack of units isn't much of a problem in my experience (i.e. if you have the 3 main attack buildings that should cover most of what you need to 2-shot enemy units), but given the awkward armies you're often using the defense of your attacking units is of paramount importance.  So in preparation for attempting this, you may wish to focus on stacking event buildings that offer defense for attacking army.  You will also need a source of a significant number of rogues.

To fight with rogues on continent map you need to move your "real unit" to the corner and keep it far enough away from enemy units that they don't pick it to attack.  Continent map does not prioritize rogues over non-rogues like the AI you're used to from GvG/GBG/Neighborhood battles.  But it does prioritize proximity to a large degree - so parking the real unit in the corner while you fling forward the rogues does often work.  Rapid Deployment units have a tendency to occasionally blast your real unit before you can move it.  And that's a big part of where the need for defense comes in.

Overall summary of process:

BA-LMA: 

• Skip some unnecessary techs - not crucial to reach Hover Tanks or if your target age is Progressive Era but the more you skip the easier it'll be to reach OF troops in Industrial.
• Try to build up rogues and defense bonus for attacking army.  
• Be as caught up as you can be on Story Quests before Colonial Age (you should get stuck on a quest requiring you to build Colonial buildings)

Colonial Age: 

• Carefully enter it researching a minimum of techs.
• Complete Industrial Story and as much of Progressive Story as you can until you get stuck (there's some quests requiring you to build Industrial or Progressive buildings).

Industrial Age+: 

• Continue carefully dealing with tech only as fast as you have to to complete story.  Extreme option is to win Police Stations from events, daily challenges, or expedition so you don't have to use up techs on researching them.
• Finish PE+ME story in whatever manner you prefer.
• Only negotiate with Che Guerrero when required to take one of his provinces in PME, don't take the other yet and don't fight any sectors inside.  This is necessary to receive the MG Teams that you'll be using to fight for the next while.
• Proceed with story as directed along the peninsula where you negotiated for a province from Che.  Fighting or Negotiating is fine with the other leader.
• Receive 5 MG Teams (and some commandos).
• After finishing the one side and being directed by story, conquer Che's other province by whatever means you prefer (you can fight him now if you prefer)
• Finish PME story up to "Your Choice: Truth or Dare?".  Do not complete or abort this quest until you are done trying to get units above your age or are in Postmodern Era.
• Complete the Contemporary Era map without advancing story while not scouting the 2 optional provinces (in the north-west) that are unnecessary to get off the map (in the north-east).  Once you've scouted the first province of the TE map it is safe to advance story (possibly earlier, but if it doesn't work out you may not be able to get Hover Tanks til Contemporary Era) - it should just vanish for the time being.  Complete TE map as you please.
• TE story can be resumed at "Meet Miguel Mantos" immediately after scouting Rio Roxo - and possibly other spots.  Doing so may enable you to win troops useful to fight the rest of TE and FE continent with but may also require more techs.  If you wish to skip the entirety of TE story, you should do the same as CE and take only what you have to and get off the map before advancing story.
• Only negotiate with Joy Danba in the first province in Future Era.
• Upon finishing your negotiations for her entire province, FE story should be ready to resume telling you to scout the next provinces.
• Follow story as directed until you reach the point where you need to scout Kalabuye and Bisoraba (the two provinces adjacent to Botuku).
• Do not touch Kalabuye until Joy Danba has given you 3 Hover Tanks.
• Continue on with story as you please.  You will get 1 more Hover Tank and some assorted other troops.  Tech count permitting, you may continue following story until about halfway through the OF continent map winning a great deal of additional advanced troops.

Guild Battlegrounds through the Ages

We've had Guild Battlegrounds for over a year now - and I've played it in many different ages.  Some of my comments will be theory - but most of them will be extrapolated from experience.  I'm going to try and present it all as a table.  Some setups against some defenses you may need to go into the battle and hold back a non-rogue or two for the first round of combat before pressing auto.

Era	Important Armies	Pros & Cons
Iron Age	4-8 Ballistae + 0-4 Rogues - Good against enemy Ballistae and Archers 1-2 Legionnaires + 6-7 Rogues - Good against enemies without Ballistae 1-2 Mounted Warriors or Soldiers + 6-7 Rogues - Good against enemies with a mix of Ballistae + faster troops	+ Untransformed Rogues kick ass - Reliance on melee units means much damage taken at high attrition unless you work on your defense - Artillery have a hard time keeping up against heavies at higher attrition as much of their strength against them comes from the flat bonus which doesn't scale
Early Middle Ages	4-8 Catapults + 0-4 Rogues - Good against enemy Catapults 1-2 Armored Infantry + 6-7 Rogues - Good against enemies without Catapults 1-2 Heavy Cavalry or Mercenaries + 6-7 Rogues - Good against enemies with a mix of Catapults + faster troops	+ Untransformed Rogues kick ass + Weak-statted Mounted Archers aren't much of a threat to your more durable units - High movement Mounted Archers can occasionally pick off your less durable units - Reliance on melee units means much damage taken at high attrition unless you work on your defense - Artillery have a hard time keeping up against heavies at higher attrition as much of their strength against them comes from the flat bonus which doesn't scale
High Middle Ages	4-8 Trebuchets + 0-4 Rogues - Good against enemy Trebuchets and Crossbows 1-2 Heavy Infantry + 6-7 Rogues - Good against enemies without Trebuchets 1-2 Knights or Berserkers + 6-7 Rogues - Good against enemies with a mix of Trebuchets + faster troops	+ Untransformed Rogues kick ass + Strongest low-age artillery with crazy range and slightly higher relative attack compared to the defense of units of the age - Reliance on melee units means much damage taken at high attrition unless you work on your defense - Artillery have a hard time keeping up against heavies at higher attrition as much of their strength against them comes from the flat bonus which doesn't scale
Late Middle Ages	1-2 Heavy Knights or Great Sword Warriors + 6-7 Rogues - Good against enemies with a mix of Cannons + faster troops 1-2 Imperial Guards + 6-7 Rogues - Good against enemies without many Cannons 4-8 Cannons + 0-4 Rogues - Good against enemy Longbows	+ Untransformed Rogues kick ass + Fast units are starting to get more durable - Combination of Dug In on enemy artillery and less range makes this among the weakest low-age artillery relatively.  They also still have a hard time keeping up against heavies at higher attrition as much of their strength against them comes from the flat bonus which doesn't scale - Reliance on melee units means much damage taken at high attrition unless you work on your defense
Colonial Age	1-2 Grenadiers + 6-7 Rogues - Good against enemies without too many Field Guns or Musketeers 1-2 Dragoons, Champions, or Rangers + 6-7 Rogues - Good against enemies with significant numbers of Field Guns or Musketeers	+ Untransformed Rogues kick ass + Grenadiers gained a range and no longer have to take retaliation - Combination of Dug In on enemy artillery and useful amounts of defense on Musketeers make this among the weakest low-age artillery relatively.  They also still have a hard time keeping up against heavies at higher attrition as much of their strength against them comes from the flat bonus which doesn't scale
Industrial Age	1-2 Howitzers + 6-7 Rogues - Good against enemies without too many Riflemen or Breech Loaders 1-2 Jaeger Infantry + 6-7 Rogues - Good against enemies without too many Howitzers 4-6 Breech Loaders + 2-4 Rogues - Good against enemies with many Howitzers.  May consider adding in a couple Riflemen/Howitzers/Jaeger Infantry if there's a couple things you need to kill off when they get close.	+ Every unit other than the Fast has range - lopsided attack bonuses can be taken advantage of + You can also get many ages of troops ahead here; Up to PME are available from getting ahead on the story.  Note that you either need to be careful or be prepared to spend diamonds to revive them if you're going to use them.  Choices you make on PME map will affect how many/what type of troops you can get.  Make sure to do your research if you're planning to try for them. + Well matched unit abilities make Industrial an age where almost any fight is possible if you choose the right counter.  Fun age to manual battle in. - Many of the units do not behave as well as you might hope in auto-battles making it an age of high losses for auto-battlers
Progressive Era	1-6 Conscripts + 2-7 Rogues - Good against enemies without too many Snipers.  Snipers will get to be slightly less of a problem as you get to higher boost though as they're reliant on a *large* flat bonus. 1-6 Armored Cars + 2-7 Rogues - Good against enemies without too many tanks.  Will need to position your cars for the first round of battle usually. 1-6 Tanks + 2-7 Rogues - Particularly if you stack defense; Tanks have defense naturally higher than any unit in-age's attack so if you have defense boost ~twice as high as your attack boost you may be able to take advantage of that	+ 3 good options for general purpose units depending on what you're fighting and how your stats are built.  If you engineer the fights so that after your last Rogues are turned, they're taking the first "real" hits you're in good shape. - An era of high losses (I want to say attrition, but that has other meaning in game now), there pretty much just isn't *clean* wins.  Two wave battles can also be problematic because of this. - High defense on Tanks may make fights at high attrition impossible unless you've kept up on defense boost yourself so that they're not doing much damage to you either.  MG Team from story + Rogues could patch this issue to some extent if you're careful.
Modern Era	1-6 Bazookas + 2-7 Rogues - Good against armies without too many artillery.  Despite their bonus against artillery and Dug In, they are very very slow - they're best against armies that will come to them, turn the rogues, and then they can blow them up before the problems start.  But they're *really* good against those armies.  Paratroopers can also be an annoyance due to their ability to hide in trees combined with your slow movement. 1-8 Mechanized Infantry/Champions/Battle Tanks + 0-7 Rogues - Good against pretty much anything if you go into battle to position them right for the first turn.  The heavy of the age has the same defense as it did in PE, so they've caught up some in their ability to handle them.  May take heavy losses from ignored Bazookas on auto 4-8 Mechanized Artillery + 0-4 Rogues - Good against Bazookas and enemy artillery.  Dreadful against Paratroopers.  Mediocre against Battle Tanks and Mechanized Infantry. 8 Paratroopers (No Rogues.  Period.) - Move first + hit first is a powerful combination that'll get stressed more in later ages.  It can work here to some extent too.  Main issue is their attack isn't that high - so they might not be able to 2-shot things reliably enough at high attrition - particularly Battle Tanks and Mechanized Infantry.  Still something worth playing with some.	+ Every unit has its moments - even if most people hate to use paratroopers ;) - Can get bloody - not quite as much as PE but still lacks abilities at times to get clean wins and two wave battles may be a problem
Postmodern Era	1-2 MG Teams + 6-7 Rogues - Contact! means every Rogue turned (by anything other than an artillery) also gave you a free shot.  Good against anything without too many artillery. 4-6 Rocket Artillery + 2-4 Rogues - Good at handling enemy artillery 1-6 Universal Tanks, IFVs, or Champions + 2-7 Rogues - can help with some of the problem setups that have too many artillery for your MG teams and not enough artillery to use your own artillery.	+ Contact! + Rogues are a powerful combination + Can get very advanced troops potentially - but the method is somewhat obscure (and I've never tried it yet). - Artillery have low attack making your top choice to deal with Artillery + X struggle a bit with some setups.
Contemporary Era	1-2 Anti-Aircraft Vehicles + 6-7 Rogues - Good against everything.  Only caveat - some defenses you have to go in and hold back your AAV on. 1-3 Assault Tanks + 5-7 Rogues - Taking advantage of Reactive Armor this can be used on some very high attrition fights.  They can't do more than 4 to you - so you don't need quite so much attack boost to make it a "fair" fight.  Arctic Orangery crit can also help tilt things in your favor. 1-8 Champions + 0-7 Rogues - If you're a defense stacker Champions have higher stats than Assault Tanks and may take even less damage. 8 Strike Teams or Attack Helicopters - Move first + hit first.  Not usually overly impressive in this age, but can help in places.  Note that Attack Helicopters only move first if the defense has no Strike Teams.	+ Contact! + Rogues are a powerful combination + Can get very advanced troops - not so obscure this time, but you should still do your research if you're planning on it - it's important to have as many unresearched techs as possible if you want to get far, and map decisions matter in some places. + Missile Artillery on defense is pretty safely ignorable to some extent due to "One Shot".  AI also usually does not make good use of MIRV. + Flying is a powerful new ability even if it's not often important yet due to the issues with the in-age artillery.
Tomorrow Era	2-8 Combat Drones + 0-6 Rogues - Rogues absorb unavoidable hits in first round of combat.  Combat drones blow *anything* up in 2 hits while ignoring artillery.  For best results, fight manually - but you can auto a great number of fights with them as well.  Their biggest issue is many Stealth Tanks as they'll take retaliation when hitting them. 1-8 Stealth Tanks + 0-7 Rogues - Good against most things - main problems are enemy Stealth Tanks and Ultra APs as you get up in attrition as they'll both get in some painful retaliation.	+ Combat Drones have *crazy* high attack.  Easily can abuse them against most armies to hit significantly higher attrition than possible in other ages with similar boost. + Stealth Tanks are a generally useful Hiding unit  - Defending armies with many Stealth Tanks are difficult to deal with.  At low-medium attrition you can use Microwave Blasters.  At medium-high attrition I recommend *carefully* using some OF story troops like Sub Cruisers or Hydroelectric Eels in combination with Rogues.
Future Era	1-8 Hover Tanks + 0-7 Rogues - Best you've got against pretty much anything.  Other armies can be used against some things as minor improvements.	+ Hover Tanks do everything - Nothing handles 3+ Hover Tanks on defense acceptably at medium attrition.  You have to start cherry-picking fights to change out tough fights instead looking for the easy ones.  Not good if you're just trying to power through a specific sector! - 2 units are utterly useless (Satellite Spotters + Drone Swarms) and 1 autos poorly (Exoskeleton Soldier)
Arctic Future	1-8 Battle Fortresses + 0-7 Rogues.  Reactive Armor 3 means your units are automatically pretty tanky taking 4 hits to die without any investment in defense.  Can reach relatively high attrition even if it's not ideal for many things.  Arctic Orangery can help with the mirror (We both do 3 damage to each other normally; but I can crit for 5 and save a shot!) 2-8 Plasma Artillery + 0-4 Rail Guns + 0-4 Battle Fortresses + 0-4 Rogues.  So this looks rather like many armies but the concept is rather straight forward: Plasma Artillery deliver the beats and can fire every turn unlike Rail Guns from FE, but they can't do more than 3 damage to a Battle Fortress (so you may want some Rail Guns to help blow through that), and they can't shoot flying things (so you may want some Battle Fortresses for that - Rail Guns can help a little with that too - but only every other turn).  And you may want to fill in some slots with Rogues to absorb some unavoidable hits. 4-8 Combat Drones or Dragon Drones + 0-4 Rogues - Takes advantage of many Plasma Artillery on defense.  Combat Drones are easier to use, and *still* have enough attack to be relevant (and more than Dragon Drones on that note)  But they can't crit and occasionally Dragon Drones' multi-hit ability is useful - especially if you fight manually. 8 Recon Raiders - Move first + hit first.  As long as there's not too many Battle Fortresses on defense, you've got a good shot. 1-8 Hover Tanks + 0-7 Rogues - As long as there's not too many Plasma Artillery on defense; Dragon Drones are squishy, and stealth is reasonably effective against everything else.	+ Good all-round age with many useful army setups - Some strange units that have stats that hardly seem fitting for the age - Battle Fortresses on defense are going to be bloody
Oceanic Future	4-8 Turturrets + 0-4 ? + 0-4 Rogues - Similar to the Plasma Cannon arrangement in AF, this bumps up to be the most important army in OF due to the power of Mortar.  In addition to the things that Plasma Artillery cannot hit, Turturrets cannot hit stealthed units.  So ? may be C.R.A.B. Mechs to take out an eel or it may be Plasma Artillery if range is deemed important or it may be Sub Cruisers as a generally decent all-round unit from the age. 4-8 Gliders + 0-4 Rogues - If there's many artillery on defense and you can't out-artillery them for some reason.  There's finally a proper upgrade to the TE Combat Drone to get the AO crit back - its attack stat is not nearly so impressive compared to OF defenses though, and it loses a bit in attack range that might make it harder to hit the precise thing you want on the first turn. 1-2 Sub Cruisers + 6-7 Rogues - Can retaliate against anything but the artillery and Scimitars reliably - and Medusa can't move and are generally exposed at the start - mostly it only needs to avoid Turturrets 8 Hydroelectric Eels - There's many bushes on the OF battlefield to hide in.  You can generally plan to hide your entire army and pick off the enemy; watch out for the few enemy anti-stealth units.  Mostly a manual-battle strategy. 1-8 Hover Tanks + 0-7 Rogues - Stats are a little low, but Hides on Plains is still a very powerful ability to compensate - most anti-stealth units in age are highly limited.  Defense may also still be relevant in combination with the stealth as its not that far behind the in-age Force Field unit.  No Rogues is sometimes desirable to not catch splash damage from Turturrets transforming your rogues.	+ Solid answers for any army + Good Contact! unit + Powerful artillery with new Mortar ability + Decent Flying unit + Decent Hiding unit - Despite a very diverse slate of 10 units, most of them are just novelties and not all that useful
Virtual Future	4-8 Rocket Troops + 0-4 Rogues - Turturrets taken to the extreme against an age with weaker overall units.  Works well against everything but Ninjas.  Mortar is absolutely devastating.  No flying unit in-age to fear. 8 Ninjas - Move first + hit first 1-8 Ronin Bots + 0-7 Rogues - Force Field can help augment your defense to make them continue to feel durable if you haven't completely ignored it.  No amount of defense will make them feel good against any amount of Rocket Troops though.	+ Rocket Troops rock - Ninjas on defense are a pain - 2 units are pretty much useless
Space Age Mars	8 Sentinels - Move first + hit first + avoid any artillery.  Great against lots of stuff.  Your bread & butter army. 8 Rocket Troops - Mortar is still an awesome ability and Steel Wardens are so slow that VF Rocket Troops can win against a Max-Attrition 12000% boosted 8 Steel Warden Defense - even with no boost of their own to speak of!  Also usable against small amounts of other ground troops.  Tesla Walkers having the same initiative can mix in if you see a use for them in a fight. 2-4 Steel Wardens + 4-6 Rogues -  Force Field can help strengthen any investment you've put into defense.  Not bad all round units. 2-4 Sniperbots or Tesla Walkers + 4-6 Rogues - they're not bad units per se - but not really necessary either.  Occasionally they might be a minor improvement over one of the other armies.	+ Great fighting age with reasonable answers for anything  + Potential for super-high-attrition crazy setups either taking advantage of Flyers + AO Crit vs artillery or Rocket Troops vs slow things.
Space Age Asteroid Belt	4-6 Nail Storms + 2-4 Rogues - Pretty good against most things - can get bloody if there's many Nail Storms on defense - especially if one of them makes it to rubble. 8 Sentinels - Move first + hit first - Yup, still.  Now without AO crit.  For the toughest fights this is what I've had the best luck with. 2-6 B.E.L.T.s + 2-6 Rogues - can handle Nail Storms that make it to rubble better than most things - can't hit Hover Hammers though. 2 Hover Hammers + 6 Rogues - generally not as good as Sentinels - but you'll be winning a bunch of Hover Hammers from GE, GBG, Events, etc and against some of the B.E.L.T. heavy defenses these are usable to save you some Sentinels for when you need them. 8 Rocket Troops - can still handle 8 Shredders akin to SAM but struggles more with other stuff mixed in - mostly due to higher base stats.	- No good answer for 8 Nail Storm defenses at medium-high attrition.  Hoping for good damage rolls from SAM Sentinels and Keen Eye procs is generally your best bet.  Manual battle is recommended so you can bail if you get bad rolls before they get a chance to destroy your Sentinels. - Most units are pretty useless

Damage Calculator

Ok so I haven't posted in a looooong time.  I was posting elsewhere.  Then I was on a break.  Then I came back and was posting elsewhere again.  Well I'm back again - possibly with a flurry of posts coming up over the next couple weeks.  For this one I just wanted to throw up a handy link for a spreadsheet I've worked on for a while:  FoE Damage Calculator

So a rundown:

1) To try numbers for yourself, File->Make a Copy.  You may want to check back now and then to see if I've made corrections or improvements.

2) "Age at a Glance" tab is meant to be a quick & easy start to using it.  There's drop-downs for your unit and the age of units you want to see it against.  This allows you to compare using above age troops against your current age for instance.  It automatically incorporates most flat bonuses; you just have to specify the %s based on your stats and the armies you're trying to optimize for.

The first table shows stats based on the numbers you entered.  i.e. How much damage you do/take *now*

The second table at the bottom shows how much total boost you'd need to hit various breakpoints.  If you're just past a breakpoint that means in another attrition or two you'll be just behind that breakpoint.  If you're nowhere near a breakpoint forward or backward it means you probably need to add much more to make a significant difference.  Remember to check all the units you make use of as they're likely to have dramatically different tables.

3) "Manual Calculation" tab allows you to do a much more detailed calculation specifying all parameters yourself, including the HP of each unit which scales down their attack value (on "Age at a Glance" all units are assumed to be at full HP as most will be).  If there's a specific situation you want precise answers on this is the page to use.

4) There was a *lot* of data entry to support the "Age at a Glance" page - I can't be sure everything's 100% correct right now.  If you notice anything that seems strange, please call it to my attention :)

An Introduction to Manual Battling in GE

OK so now I've covered a general solution to the first difficulty of expedition by negotiation, and a specific solution to clearing all 3 difficulties in Early Middle Ages.  What I'd now like to offer is a primer on fighting manually in most of the early ages (Iron Age, High Middles Ages, Late Middle Ages, and Colonial Age although things are starting to change significantly by this point).  Fighting in these ages share most of the same strategies with minor variations.  The Mounted Archer in Early Middle Ages throws a wrench in the strategic assessments as you won't see units quite like it again until Progressive Era but if there's none of those in the fight or if the battlefield isn't too flat, the strategies will still hold.  In the case of expedition you can surrender and restart to attempt to get another battlefield if you wind up with a bad start due to Mounted Archers rushing your fragile troops like artillery.  Before we get too far into this I should note that to accomplish this without a large collection of rogues or a high military boost you will need a city significantly oriented towards military barracks; say 10 or so barracks of your current age oriented towards the types of troops you're likely to damage in the strategies of your choice.

First off the troop types (from here on out I'll refer to troop types usually instead of a specific troop):

Age/Unit Type	Fast	Light	Heavy	Ranged	Artillery
Iron Age	Mounted Warrior	Soldier	Legionnaire	Archer	Ballista
Early Middle Ages	Heavy Cavalry	Mercenary	Armored Infantry	Mounted Archer	Catapult
High Middle Ages	Knight	Berserker	Heavy Infantry	Crossbowman	Trebuchet
Late Middle Ages	Heavy Knight	Greatsword Warrior	Imperial Guard	Longbow Archer	Cannon
Colonial Age	Dragoon	Ranger	Grenadier	Musketeer	Field Gun

Fast units have bonuses against Ranged units but are weak to Light units.  As their name suggests they have high movement.  They have middle of the road base stats for attack and defence which tends to put them at a disadvantage against Heavy units as well.  Towards colonial they will start to bias towards more defence than attack.  As such the only time you really should use them is if you're facing a large number of Artillery and Ranged units and their closing speed is important.

Light units have bonuses against Fast units but are weak to Heavy units.  They also gain defence bonuses in bushes and forests.  Use the terrain bonus when you can but don't go out of your way to be on good terrain.  They have moderately fast movement speed that allows them to be used against everything but Heavy units well.  Towards Colonial they bias more towards attack than defence and become more capable of dealing with stray heavy units.  If there's one or two Heavy units on the field they can take them out by ganging up on it one turn as only the first attack will be retaliated.  In colonial, Rangers gain the ability to hide in forests and are unable to be attacked in this state except by units directly adjacent to them.

Heavy units have bonuses against Light units but are weak to Ranged units and Artillery units.  They have defence bonuses on flat terrain.  Since flat terrain is by far the most common you should usually be able to keep them on it but as with Light units, don't avoid a square you need to go to just because the terrain is wrong.  Despite Artillery units having bonuses against them, the high base defence of Heavy units protect them from taking too much damage, especially if you have some military boost.  The main problem with artillery is getting to them as Heavy units tend to be quite slow.  If the battlefield has a reasonably flat path all the way across though they can usually get to them in time.  In Colonial, Grenadiers gain the ability to attack with a range of 2 and avoid retaliation.

Ranged units have bonuses against Heavy units but are weak to Fast units.  Truth be told, Ranged units with moderate boost can two shot anything their own age, including the Fast units strong against them.  But even with high levels of boost anything can two shot them too!  This makes their biggest problem opponent Artillery units which can in general hit them before the Ranged units have hope of being in range of the Artillery.  Fighting either with or against Range units primarily becomes a game of who hits first.  Do your best to stay out of enemy units range until you're ready to start killing them - first strike makes a BIG difference.  Mounted Archers as mentioned are different than other Ranged units in these ages.  Their combined movement and ranged can allow them on relatively flat battlefields to hit slower opposing units before they can move.  This makes bringing Artillery in against a defence of Mounted Archers a risky proposition.  If there's only a couple Mounted Archers I sometimes still risk it though.

Artillery units have bonuses against Heavy units.  While nothing has bonuses against them, it's really not needed.  Anything can two-shot their low defence.  Their bonus against Heavy units just allows them to do about the same amount of damage against Heavy units as they do against Light units or Fast units.  Towards Colonial their attack increases slow down dramatically.  Starting in Late Middle Ages they gain a 'Dug In' defence bonus against long distance attacks.  Combined this means that they start requiring more and more boost to keep using them the same way as you can before Late Middle Ages even against a zero boost opponent.

Before I get into further details - what do I mean by boost?  Boost is provided by buildings in your city and scales the base stats of units you are using to attack or defend your city.  In all cases in this article I'm referring only to the buildings that affect your boost while attacking which are: Statue of Zeus, Cathedral of Aachen, Castel del Monte, Drummer's School, Speaker's Corner (a one-time event building), and select barracks in Contemporary Era or higher.  In the case of the great buildings, it is not enough to merely place them and let them sit.  You will need to put some effort into levelling them to get worthwhile amounts of boost via swap arrangements such as GB chains, clubs, and private swaps or via self-donation and alerting your guild or global when they're close to level and the rewards are worth donating for.

OK so...  the battlefield!  Once you've selected your 8 troops to attack with and pressed attack you enter the battle.  There's several key features you should know about:

• At the bottom left there's 6 buttons.  The flag is surrender.  You can only do this when it's one of your units' turn to move.  All of your troops will leave the battle in their current state (dead/alive, hp remaining).  If a battle is not going according to plan you should use this as soon as possible.  The swords button is automatic.  You can press this and then the red 'Results' button at the top of the screen to finish a fight FAST!  Note that this will typically involve you taking additional losses and is not recommended unless the battle is going to be very lopsided in your favour or if you're fighting GvG and time matters more than losses.  The 4 smaller buttons are sound-effects, music, full screen mode, and animation speed.  I recommend you switch the animation speed to 'fast'(3 arrows) to reduce frustration with how slow units trot along.
• Beside these buttons you can see the timeline.  This is the order in which all units in the battle will move.  You can highlight units in the timeline to see where they are on the map which can be useful to focus fire on units you can kill before their next turn and save yourself some damage.
• On the field to begin with you can see highlighted the range of your current unit's movement.  When you highlight a square you could move to a new highlight will show defining where you could attack from this square.  If you click one of the squares you could move to you will move there.
• You can highlight enemy units to see their movement and attack ranges.  movement will be a darker highlight and attack range a lighter highlight around that.  It can be confusing with 3 highlights (your movement, enemy movement, enemy attack) all overlapping but you get used to it after a while.
• Units that are in range of your movement+attack will have swords over their heads.  You can click one of these units to directly move and attack them from the square closest to your origin that it is possible.  This is usually not ideal, but sometimes it doesn't matter and is faster.

Some general advice:

• Combat in early ages is usually defined by the presence or lack-there-of of Artillery.  You should endeavour to either bring more Artillery than your opponent or none at all.  Usually twice as much is a clean option.  Remember that in Late Middle Ages and Colonial using artillery to take out artillery is more difficult and will require boost to do reliably in 2 shots.  
• Ranged units should not be brought if your opponent has more than 1 Artillery and you're not bringing Artillery of your own to take it out fast.  Stick to melee units in this case.
• Heavy units can generally hold their own against any balanced set-up, but are seldom ideal in teams with other melee units as their slow movement either makes them late to the battle or has them slowing down other melee that would like to be moving forward faster.
• Repeating this from the overview of the battlefield screen but it really is very important: Use the highlighting of the timeline and range of enemy units to pick targets and avoid unnecessary damage.
• The defensive AI will always attack if there's something in range.  You can sometimes use this to bait enemy units away from your squishier targets.  If there's nothing in range but a target just one square out of range it will often still chase that target even if it's the 'wrong' direction.  Fast units are particularly good at this style of baiting.
• When facing two-wave defences you should aim to annihilate the first wave and take 7-8 units into wave two even if they're the wrong units.  The last 4 fights of difficulty 3 are deliberately mismatched badly and you might need to find compromises in the first wave to get by them in ok shape with units that can still win against the second wave (or possibly wait for rogues).

And finally a handful of standard armies I've used many times in these ages:

• Artillery/Melee mix.  The strategy here is to have your melee form a defensive line just outside the range of enemy Ranged units and give your Artillery one turn to take out some of the enemy Artillery and Ranged unencumbered.  Typically Light units make good choices for the melee since what you're blocking out is usually enemy Fast troops and Light have bonuses against Fast.   A Heavy can be useful to plug flat spots in the line sometimes though and Fast have the advantage of being able to reach pretty much wherever they need to.  I have used near-exclusively Soldiers and Ballistas to complete difficulty 2 of guild expedition with no boost in iron age.  The last 4 fights of difficulty 2 I did have to surrender and restart several times to get battlefields that I could set-up acceptable blockades on.  Note that the Fast units you're trying to stop from getting to your Artillery cannot go over rocks or water and are slowed down by swamp.  After you position your troops highlight the enemy fast units to see if you succeeded in blocking them.  Sometimes you may have to resort to bait tactics with your last couple Artillery and last melee in the second wave of a fight to buy extra attack turns for the Artillery.
• Artillery/Ranged mix.  The strategy here is to use the high damage of Ranged units to knock out any melee that's getting close to your Artillery while your Artillery shields your Ranged by taking out enemy Ranged and Artillery.  Against many balanced setups this works with less headache than the Artillery/Melee mix but you need a moderate amount of boost to be able to take out enemy Fast using Ranged in two hits.  Sometimes this set-up can be used acceptably on auto.
• 8 of a kind.  When the defence is unbalanced (4+4, 8 of a kind itself, or just a notable omission of the unit needed to counter a good general-purpose unit), you can often take advantage of it by sending 8 of a unit that acceptably counters everything there.  This has the advantage that you have none of the weaknesses of other units to cover for.  Examples: 8 Heavy against a target with no Ranged and only 1 or 2 Artillery.  8 Light units against a target with no Heavy.  8 Fast or Light units against a target with only Ranged and Artillery.
• Light/Ranged mix.  This flies in the face of most of the other advice I've given but I did successfully make use of this on one server in LMA with no boost.  The motivator to try it in the first place was that I was using Greatsword warriors and Longbow Archers for recurring quests since they were obtainable early in the age.  8 of a kind Greatswords were able to handle most of the high-cannon set-ups and with only 1 or 2 cannons the high damage of Longbow Archers was enough to make up for their extra deaths.  I may have needed to negotiate a sector or two (Imperial Guards+Cannons would not have gone well).  Note though that LMA is where Artillery is beginning to become weaker.  I do not believe equivalent set-ups would be as successful in earlier ages.
• Rogue combos.  I've avoided discussing this for most of the post because I felt it important to stress the viability of fighting without having access to large numbers of Rogues.  Rogues are a special unit available unattached or from Rogue Hideout buildings obtainable during events.  By default a Rogue Hideout contains 2 slots with 3 unlock-able for diamonds.  Alcatraz can produce them if you have Rogue Hideouts in your town and is most people's main source for them.  At any rate, the combos of interest: 1 something + 7 Rogues - GvG/GE/hood AI will almost always target untransformed rogues before any other unit.  So essentially this becomes an 8 of a kind where the first 7 hits you take are free!  This works particularly well with and against melee units as you'll get a free retaliation as well.  2 somethings + 6 Rogues - when facing two waves often if you send only 1 something it'll wind up dead and you will have to surrender before taking on the second wave - so to be safe a second something is recommended in these cases.  It can be the same unit type as the first something, or it can be a different unit if you want a little something else available to you - most of the time for reliability if possible it's better to pick 2 of the same.  6 Artilleries + 2 Rogues - slightly different numbers may also be appropriate but the idea here is similar to the Artillery/Ranged combos.  You hold back the rogues out of range and then use their large attack value to clear melee coming close or use their free hit transformation property and offer them up as bait depending on the situation.  I will discuss Rogue-centric combat further at some other time.  Note that you should not try Rogue-heavy attacks against the Continent AI as it will ignore the rogues and go for the untransformed unit.

This has been a VERY long post and doubtless I've left out something important.  Feel free to ask questions or make suggestions if you feel there's updates needed :)

EMA Expedition Auto-Battle Setup

One of the things some of us have taken on since the advent of guild expedition is running it on many servers for the purposes of diamond mining.  Diamond mining is play alt-worlds to win diamonds to use in your main one.  Diamonds are the only thing that crosses between worlds on your account (note that beta and other regions are separate accounts and thus do not share diamonds).

Traditionally the optimum strategy for doing so has been to participate in events to get diamonds from quests and to place wishing wells.  Between events you log into the world once a day and collect your wishing wells which have a roughly 1% chance each of giving you 50 diamonds.

Running expeditions for diamonds is a little more work intensive but doesn't take quite so many events to get the ball rolling.  Still, the question I was most interested in at the time is what age(s) were ideal for setting up to run all 3 difficulties of expedition with the least amount of work.  I had one server where I was in contemporary age and found that to be an exceedingly simple age to clear quickly, but obviously getting a server to contemporary age to begin with is a lot of work!  In general, an Alcatraz, Zeus, Cathedral of Aachen, and Castel del Monte would make most any age doable, but these are all buildings that need serious levelling work to be effective.  Ideally I also wanted to avoid too much dependence on rogues as they can be difficult to obtain in large quantities without an Alcatraz and an Alcatraz is a serious extra investment.

The conclusion I ended up coming to was that because of how weak the mounted archer is in Early Middle Ages (it has lower attack than an Iron Age archer as a trade off for its mobility) perhaps an all armoured infantry set-up would be able to roll through the whole thing without even needing any rogues and at a reasonable level of boost.  As it turned out, it works!  Once I reached around 45% boost from Statue of Zeus and Cathedral of Aachen I was able to complete all 3 difficulties rogue-less.  My initial city that accomplished this was running clapboard houses for population and had 10 armored infantry barracks and 6 or so tanneries.  The first week I got it done every single fight I did with 8 armored infantry.  Most of the fights were done on auto.  Fights that involved many catapults or two waves I fought manually to make sure the troops that could get to the catapults fastest did so.  I would also surrender against catapults if the map lacked a flat path to them.  Since then on the servers where I'm doing this I've increased my boost further, added rogue hideouts, and started using unattached heavy cavalry won from expedition for a few fights.  This has resulted in almost every fight being won on automatic now.

How much does a difficulty 3 clear make per week in diamonds?  Averages for the 3 difficulties are 8 diamonds, 17 diamonds, and 27.5 diamonds for a total of 52.5 diamonds.  Effectively this makes clearing difficulty 3 of expedition worth about the same as collecting 14 wishing wells daily for the week.  Worth it?  I think so but it is a fair bit of effort, YMMV :)