Aeroagg's Advanced Combat Mechanics

[AeroAgg06]

I would post this in guide section but i guess i do not have forum rep required for that yet. If you all enjoy this i hope it gets moved to guide section

Evony Age 2 Advanced Combat Mechanics


Disclaimer: Much of the following has been taken from other peoples guides (mostly Spawn and Hellfire) and placed into my own words. I have supplemented some of this guide with my own finding that I have picked up along the way. I chose to create this guide because compiling all this information took a long time to pick out of all of the other guides floating around and i think this fills in many spots that other peoples guides are missing. While there are many guides out there on combat mechanics, I hadn't yet found one that covered all the bases that I was looking for. This guide is for people who are at least decent at understanding mathematical logic, but can be understood by new players (with the exception of some of the Evony terminology I used) as well as experienced ones.


Introduction: Before you know what ideally to send in Evony, you should have an idea of how the combat mechanics work. This will help you decide how many troops and of what type when you are attacking. Now some enemies have cookie cutter attacks such as a level 5 NPC can EASILY go down with 500 ballistae without taking any losses, but when you start looking at enemies such as a Level 10 or Level 12 NPC, then you have some serious work to do to minimize losses and maximize effectivity.
With this, you should hopefully be able to work out an attack (or know that you can't yet) no matter your hero size, army size, technology levels, etc...


1. Scouting

Scouting is the first step and most important step to setting up a good attack. Without knowing what the enemy has, you will never be able to effectively setup a counter to what he has. By knowing what type of units and how many of each he has, as well as his tech levels (for most servers any good enemy will have level 10 tech levels by now, but not always the case) you can setup a solid counter.

Now to get a good scouting report, first of all you better have enough scouts to break through any defending scouts (only applicable in PvP, barbarian cities have no scouts and you can just send 1 if you like.) Also make sure to send a hero, preferably one with high intelligence rating to help improve your scouting. The third thing, that I have not yet confirmed, is that the level of your Beacon Tower from the town which you scouting originates plays a factor in how well your scouting does. And the 4th and most important is your Informatics technology level (this is one of the cheapest and easiest techs to reach level 10 and should be done so early in your civilization.)


2. Heroes

When selecting a hero for combat, 3 stats are important to look at: Attack, Intelligence, and Leadership. Attack will help increase the damage that your troops inflict upon the enemy. Intelligence will increase the defensive characteristics of you own troops, mitigating the damage they take. Leadership (the most important of the three IMO) is a multiplier/reducer of your three stats (Pol/Att/Int). If you have 50 Leadership and 150 Attack, only 75 Attack will be used in the battle because 50 Leadership dictates at 50% effectivity of stats. For a regular hero (not a historic hero) his leadership will be the same as his level (I am not sure as for historic heroes, if a leadership above 100 gives a boost beyond 100% effectivity)

When purchasing a new hero, I try to look at the combined statistics of Intelligence and Attack, placing a little more emphasis on Attack, because Defense rating eventually caps out at 50% damage reduction (more on this later.) (Intelligence + Attack - Level) should be over 120 (after redistribution of attributes) at a minimum for me to consider him worth keeping in the long run. I generally will take a chance on a hero of level 30 or more within about 10 of this number, hoping that a redistribute can make him fall under my minimum requirements, but if he doesn't, I have no problem dropping him. If you are connected through facebook, the holy waters required to redistribute come free and often.

Note: Early on when just starting the game, you will probably have to settle for less because with a smaller inn (less heroes to choose from) and a greater immediate need for heroes, it will not be worth the wait. Just take what you can get and dismiss them later when you get better heroes
Don't forget to level your new heroes as well

3. Combat Movement
Once you have a sizeable army built, it is time to start attacking. Keep in mind to always save enough army to defend against retaliation and ambushes. You don't want to go off to war and lose 95% of your army to win, just to have someone sneak in right behind you and grab what you worked so hard on.
The first step to understanding what to send is understanding how troops move, when they stop, who they attack, how much damage they do, how much they take, etc... Everyone should have a table of unit base characteristics as well as a table that includes modifications based upon technologies (all equations I use later are based on base stats and include tech level in the equation.) The key stats to know the modified value of your units are the Speed and Range (which are exactly what they sound like.) Speed is how fast your troops move across the field, and Range is how far beyond their current position they can attack. Below is a table that accounts for level 10 compass (100% boost to infantry speed) and level 10 Horseback Riding (HBR - 50% increase to mounted and mech speed)



The first unit to move in combat is the unit with the fastest modified speed. If both players have equally fast units, the defender moves first. The unit that moves, moves its complete distance or until bump, whichever comes first. i.e. 10,000 cavalry with level 10 HBR will move 1500 spots on the map or until it comes into contact with an enemy. Bump is when a unit runs into an enemy unit. Assume your cavalry are moving forward, but enemy warriors are only 1100 spots ahead of you, therefore your cavalry will only move 1100 spots and the warriors, when it is their turn to move, will not move at all since they are already at bump range.

Note: Archers are an exception to this rule. Archers will move their 500 spaces (with compass 10) if they are not in attack range of any enemy units. If they are in attack range, they "stand and shoot." This means that as long as they can hit something without moving at all, they will hold their ground and shoot (see targeting under Combat Fighting section)

The standard starting field size is 200 units longer than the base range of the longest ranged unit on either side. Archers have 1200 base range so if they have the largest range on the field to start the battle, the field size will be 1400. The exception to this rule is if there are any Traps/Abatis on the field, if so, the field size starts at 5200.

Note: Fighting does not occur until all units have moved, but where the units before them moves, can alter how far other units move.


4. Combat Fighting

After units move, they begin to attack each other. This is the second of 3 phases in each round. (1. Move 2. Attack 3. Remove Dead). The first unit to attack will be the fastest speed units on the field (tie still goes to defender.) This importance of this, is that if cavalry (99k attack 1 pikeman, that is the only attack that the cavalry get that turn, and whatever the cavalry's army has left, will ignore the pikeman and move on to the next target.(see Layering) Melee units will attack the first units they get to. If they run into multiple enemy types at the same location, they will attack the enemy with the highest combined attack (think Base Attack * Number of Units). This is why the rainbow can be so very effective (see Layering section.) Ranged units work differently. Ranged will attack opposing ranged units, ignoring melee units (if ranged are in range). If AT's are in range, this will always be their target, regardless of how many there are. If no AT's are in range, they will attack the highest combined-attack ranged units from the enemy army that is in range. If no enemy ranged units are in range of your archers, but melee units are, the archers will shoot the fastest speed unit first. Your Ballistae and Catapults will continue to move forward attacking units by Ranged priorities. They do not Stand and Shoot as archers do.

Note: Remember that if archers are in range of ANYTHING, they will not move. Archers will not move to get to higher priority targets, they will just shoot at the highest priority target that is already in range.

IMPORTANT: All units have the opportunity to fight. If enemy cavalry decimate all of your archers, all of your archers still get to take one last attack before being removed as dead fodder.

[AeroAgg06]

5. Enemy Fortified Range

This is a short section but VERY IMPORTANT. Enemies that you fight at their city will have increased range of approximately 4.5% per wall level, so with level 10 walls, enemies will gain a range bonus of 45% and this adds just like the archery range bonus. AT's have 2535 Range and Archers have 2340 Range while defending with level 10 walls and level 10 archery

6. Respawn Rates

This section shows the importance of timing your wave well. Timing waves well can be easily achieved through Camp Time (last section of this guide). The respawn rate for NPC units in Evony is 1/3600 per second. Assume that the NPC had 100k warriors and you cleared them. If you come back in 45 seconds, you will find that there are now (45/3600)*100,000 warriors in the city (1,250 warriors). If you came back an hour later all 100,000 will have respawned. This is why you need to time your attacks well. On a scale of 100k warriors it is a non-issue but when you look at taking a level 12 NPC, there is 1,120,000 warrior, 162k swords, 100k cavalry, etc... and they will all respawn at this rate.

Note: If the enemy has 200k cavalry and you only kill 125k of them, the respawn rate is still base upon the 200k cavalry number, not off the 125k that you killed. So if you came back 1 minute later with your next attack wave, you will find the 75k remaining cavalry that you didn't kill plus (60/3600)*200,000 cavalry in the town. The respawn will continue until they unit reaches its original number.


7. Layering (Rainbow)

Hopefully after reading the combat movement section, it started making you think of layering. The thought that "if I send 1 pikeman, can he occupy a 100k cavalry for a round", delaying him from reaching your 99,999 archers you sent with him, essentially giving them an entire extra round of shooting. This one round of shooting can inflict around 60,000 cavalry kills with a 200 Attack, 100 Leadership hero. Without a single pikeman making the cavalry stop for one more turn before reaching your archers, the 100k cavalry would reach your 99,999 archers reducing the archers damage to 15,400 cavalry kills (see range effects on archer in Attack equation section) and the cavalry inflicting enough damage to kill 196,000 archers (a complete loss.) Layering 99,998 archers with 1 swordsman and 1 pikeman vs. the same 100,000 cavalry will buy your archers 2 free shots, because one unit type can only attack one unit type per round (i.e. cavalry can attack pikes or swords in one round, but not both.) Below are examples of no layers, bad layering, good layering, and the occasional need to send a bomb wave (this will reduce an enemy unit enough to kill it in less rounds, improving your movements relative to enemy movements)

All of the tables are based upon attacking a Level 12 NPC with Swords/Cavalry/Rams (this combination changes daily, but seems to be easiest one to defeat). It is based upon my queen which is level 100, 252 ATT, 85 INT, and 100 Leadership. The enemy hero from other people's posts has been approximated around 300 ATT and INT, 100 Leadership. The final "correct" style of wave to send is based upon Spawn's guide on "Everything about Historic Cities," with the exception of my modification of the bomb wave. These tables do not completely take into account for losses of troops due to Traps since they are fairly random, but to compensate, I rounded attacker kills down to nearest thousandth and attacker deaths up to the nearest thousandth.

In the tables there is some nomenclature that needs to be defined. The first number next to a letter defines their position on the field. The second number defines the furthest point on the field they can attack during that round. The Range of one unit needs to be compared to the Position of enemy units and vice versa. When it says AA hits DC - 32,160, it means that Attacking Archers hit Defending Cavalry, and the Cavalry suffer 32,160 losses. The remaining troops are after deaths are cleared after combat for that round.

AA - Attacking Archer
DA - Defending Archer
AW - Attacking Warrior
DW - Defending Warrior
AP - Attacking Pikeman
AS - Attacking Swordsman
DS - Defending Swordsman
DC - Defending Cavalry
DR - Defending Rams
R0, R1, R2, - Round 0 Round 1 Round 2, etc...

The first table shows a 100k archer naked wave. A naked wave means completely composed of one unit type. You can easily see that the 100k archers are not very effective, killing only 48,000 cavalry



The second table shows what can happen if you send a few layers, but dont think out the entire process first. In this case the cavalry need to die faster than they end up dying and prevent many more losses than you would otherwise have inflicted. This is still a better option than naked archers. This kills 108,000 Cavalry and 33,000 Swordsmen, obviously much more effective than the first table was.



The third table adds a 50k Pikemen naked suicide bomb. This is to reduce the amount of cavalry the enemy has and allows your archers to finish them off in less rounds. Afterwards the exact same troop layering as table 2 was resent. This method kills 52,000 swordsmen and 108,000 cavalry. This is approximately the same effectivity that it would be without the pikeman naked suicide bomb when you incorporate the additional losses of pikemen. Remember that when you are taking a 12, clearing as much as you can each wave is important, you will not have a single wave break through by itself without other waves going first.

[AeroAgg06]

The fourth table shows a properly thought out attack with proper layering. It still includes the pikemen suicide bomb, and hopefully you can see why it is effective from looking at the results. The removal of the swordsman actually helps you. With swordsmen in, they have a faster move speed than the defending archers, and will allow the defending archers to remain stationary when you would prefer them to move forward. Worse yet, your archers will have to move forward to be in range of anything, and become in range of defending swordsmen but not defending archers, so your archers will continue stand and shooting the swordsmen until the swordsmen die or the defending archers move into range. By removing the swordsmen, it forces the defending archers to move forward and after your archers move forward, you achieve "Archer Tradefire." This means that they will peg each other until all of the defending or attacking archers are dead. This is what you want, especially since NPC town archers have 600 more range than yours. By removing the swords, you now kill 42,000 archers, 108,000 cavalry, and 52,000 swordsmen. This is by far the best option because by removing enemy archers, they no longer have ranged units to nail you with.



If you decide to use this method to attack enemy NPC's, remember the respawn rates of their units. Every time you attack them, no matter how closely timed the attacks are, they will have respawns. This means they will have the exact same layer types every time you attack, and even if they only have 1 cavalry, your 94,000 archers will stop to shoot him and waste an entire round. There is no way around this so make sure to compensate for it in your layering.

8. Attack Equation and Derivation

This was the hardest information to gather. The equations I am going to list will incorporate the following and will contain the following nomenclature

Na - Number of Attackers
Ab - Damage dealer base attack
Db - Damage receiver base defense
Ld - Damage receiver base life
Au - Unit vs Unit bonus (i.e. Pikes damaging Cav)
R - Range modifier (Archers do 25% damage @ 0 range, 100% damage 0<R<50%, and 50% damage beyond 50% range
Nd - Number of damage receiving units killed
Ah - Damage dealing hero Attack Level
E1 - Damage dealing hero Leadership
Dh - Damage receiving hero Intelligence
E2 - Damage receiving hero leadership
At - Military Tradition (in %, so if 50%, At = 50)
Dt - Iron Working (in %, so if 50%, Dt = 50)
Lt - Medicine (in %, so if 50%, Lt = 50)

The following table lists the Unit vs Unit bonuses (the Au). For Au, look up the value in the table.










Remember, Nd is the number of units that die. Even when units die, they still have an opportunity to attack in that round if they had not already. Units are not removed from the battlefield until after all combat is completed.


9. Traps and Wall defenses and Suicide Waves

Wall defenses all follow different rules.

Archer Towers - They cannot move, and they are the first units targeted when other range can reach them. They do decent damage and are the only wall defense that can attack more than one time without being rebuilt or repaired through techs. Having these, you should definitely have traps as well to expand the field size. You do not want to start combat with enemy ranged units being in range of your archer towers. The combat equations do not seem to follow quite the same for ATs, so don't base attacks on precise numbers when you are in range of ATs

Defensive Trebuchets and Logs seems to be fairly useless wall defenses to me. I keep 500 defensive trebs on my walls just in case someone sends catapults/ballistae at me, but that is usually not a wise way to attack a town so most don't do it.

Traps and Abatis are unpredictable wall defenses but some of the best out there. They take up the least wall spaces an offer many kills as well as expanding the field size to 5200 spaces. They also do decent damage. I generally fill my walls with decent amounts of these and TONS of archer towers.

Suicide waves are used to destroy enemy traps or weaken enemy units. The generally accepts suicide wave for level 12 towns is 35 waves of 3,000 warriors. This will cheaply clear 75% of the enemy traps and guarantee they are cleared by the cheapest/fastest unit you can build



10. Camp Time

Through Camp Time you can coordinate attacks from all over the map. This will allow you to attack a location that is 2 miles away from one city and 120 miles away from another and time the attack so that they hit within seconds of each other. Keep in mind that attacking from 120 miles away using camp time is good for a single set of waves from that city, but it will still take way too long to get a second set of attacks off.
Two misconceptions that are common about camp time are the followings:

a.) It doesn't account for mount speed. Now while this used to be true, this has been fixed, so you no longer need to remove your mount before setting up attack/camp times.

b.) That the attacks will land at the server time it shows it should: Now this is probably still a bug, but as of right now, the camp time attacks are based on your computer's clock and not the server time. If it shows the attack will land at 17:34:53, the attack will land when your computer clock shows that time, not when the server time shows that time. As long as you remember what time your attacks are landing, it shouldn't matter what point of reference you use, but I thought this was good knowledge to include.

I know many of you will point out where this is flawed, what I've left out, and where my "facts" are just "theory" but I would appreciate it if it was constructive criticism and not just useless shots taken. Feel free to add comments and I will be updating this regularly. Hopefully this can be made into a guide that will remain helpful

[0Spawn0]

I liked that your examples were based around HC12s , its interesting that you did maths to get tradefire when you killed Calvary in 2 Rounds just by removing the swordsmen layer.

Its a nice guide to understand attacking Lv12s since most of the information is based around it, of course overall a lot of this is recycled information.

But it is put well together.

[AeroAgg06]

yeah, like i was saying, most of it can be found in other places, but they are broken into many different guides... Figured it would be nice to have all (at least what i thought was all) in a single guide

[0Spawn0]

Heh I like the way your movement charts are set up, that's the biggest thing here, to be honest in detail to LV12 Historic Cites this is has the most clear information to understanding the key to Trade Fire.

Mind you had you used a Higher Level Historic as a example such as a 14 well then you would really have turned heads, that would have been nicer really as its a lot more phased and you could have had several more examples.

Still you have put this together very well and it is quite easy to read.

[Asmo]

I really like this guide hmmm... i hear sticky in the wind someday i think i'd like to see some players reactions to it and feed back soon.

[Warisart]

Asmo, yes, sticky it. This is a great guide +rep

[AeroAgg06]

hey Asmo, any chance you could move this to the Guide section for me? i didn't have the rep to post it there

Thanks!

[killerwave7]

I really like this guide and time to polish it some more (very minor things), in the 2nd table, round 5 there are still swordsman on your side but remaining soldiers shows 0.
Also might I offer that the 100k war bomb is much more cost effective and also reduces the cav's down by a considerable amount.

very nice though and you have done way more than I would have even expected lol +rep