Key Issues on Combat Mechanics~

[Darkbrady]

Disclaimer of Sorts; Read the Fine Print
While this guide is written with the intention of helpin' and sharin' information about the mechanics, it should be known that our understandin' of said mechanics is ofc limited and not perfect. See this as educated advice given based on the currently known information. Sayin' that, it should be made clear that due to Evony's most awesomest habit of changin' mechanics w/o a single word to the playerbase, any or all of this information could become completely outdated and wrong at any time. Even right now. And although I will do my best to keep this updated w/ current infos, don't expect it to be instant and most importantly don't blame me. No flames, trolls, lawsuits and angry PMs need to be sent becasue you lost troops based on infos written herein that were made outdated while I was sleepin'. Keep in mind that anyone out there who notices flaws or changes in any information given herein can bring it to my attention and I will do my best to prove or disprove any changes and make any appropriate updates. Happy, safe readin' folks.


Key Issues in Combat Mechanics

Firstly, I'd like to note that this is intended to be an beginner-goin'-intermediate level guide. I shudder to think about how much detail would be required to go into any kind of Advanced guide and don't think I'm nearly qualified enough to consider tryin' it. I also don't expect someone who's a complete newstart to come and see this guide and instantly pick up on it. This is aimed at those who are already in the game, advancin' and are either havin' problems in a combat situation or would simply like to further their knowledge of the system to any degree.

There are hundreds of threads askin' for details on why an attack failed, or what exactly would be a better way to deal w/ it.
A lot of responses tend to fall on the same things again and again. Havin' some guide of baseline guide to cover some of the more typical problems and the issues dealin' w/ them or even how to deal w/ them seems like somethin' we're missin' here.
I'm not tryin' to jus' write this up and expect it to be perfect; the mechanics are far too complicated to be explained from a one-man view and w/o several other viewpoints, not to mention how often they change unannounced. There are plenty of people who're more than qualified to read this and comment, criticise, argue or even correct parts and I urge you to do so. Any type of guide like this needs to be as correct as we can get it, as a community.
After readin' it through I feel that it is somewhat lackin'. I understand that the initial write up will be so, and could defintely use some beefin' up and have plenty of additions. Hopefully I will be telt what I've missed and have many other viewpoints and considerations to add.

I'll try start from the ground up.

Update History~
Terminology and Shorthand~
Scaled Warfare Notes~
Movement in Combat Notes~
Rainbow Formation Notes~
Technology Notes~
Heroes Notes~
Valleys Notes~
NPC Notes~
Cities Notes~
Units Notes~
~Foot Troops
~HB Units
~Seige Engines
Examples and Breakdowns~
Final Notes~
Credits~

Update History~

Included stats/icons for wall defences~
Corrected notes on ATs and Catas Ranges~
Added notes on Scout Wars~
Included external guide to advanced scout tactics~
Radically corrected Hero attack formulas and added a note on the hero statistics page~
Edited valley notes~
Clarifed Rainbow notes and included example battle report~
Have begun introducin' various scale warfare example reports for each unit~
Created "Examples and Breakdowns" section~
Added notation on scout layerin' mechanics issue~
Cleaned up some typos and grammar~
Added numerous more battle reports, mainly 'phracts and archers~
Added hero attack difference example report~
Created "How Ranged Units Work" section~
Added fine print...at the top...read it...~
Included Range Deductibles in "Movement" section and am out of characters on that post~

Terminology and Shorthand~
Jus' for those who might read this and not know otherwise.

• AT: Archer Tower
• B'listers/Balls/'Lista: Ballistae
• Cap: Capture/Conquer
• Cav: Cavalry
• Cleaners: A wave of suicide troops sent before the spearhead to remove some traps and otherwise soften up the defence
• DT/Rockfall: Defensive Trebuchet
• HB: Horseback units
• HBR: Horseback ridin'. A technology that increases HB and Seige movement speed.
• Loyalty Spam: Fast, weak attacks in small numbers that hit jus' hard enough to reduce loyalty on a city in preparation for capture
• Nerf: The devs alterin' the mechanics to make somethin' crap for any given reason
• NPC/Barb: Barbarian Town
• 'Phract/Armoured Pony: Cataphract
• Pony/Horse: Cavalry
• Rainbow: As described below
• Spearhead: The main assault wave against someone; will typically contain the heaviest hittin' units in all the waves.
• t/a/d: Traps/Abati/Rockfall
• Valley: Land spaces on the map that are not Cities. These include Flat, Grassland, Swamp, Lake, Forest, Desert and Hill
• Wave: A march of units sent to attack someone

Scaled Warfare~
There are numerous scales to warfare. Skirmish, Open, Large and Massive.

Skirmish warfare is almost exclusive to Valleys and beginner players who have a beef w/ each other. This will typically include mainly warriors, pikes, swords and some archers as the elite units. All that can really be done in these types of situations is try to outnumber the enemy. The more archers the better.

Open warfare will be small/large cities and more standard alliance wars. This will see the introduction of HB units and archers will become a more standard troop. Pikes and Swords will taper off and warriorbombs become popular. These fights will be the beginnin' of the usage of rainbow formations and be when folk start learnin' all about the mechanics we're goin' through right now. HB units will be considered an elite unit or a very expensive waste and replaced w/ archers.
Usin' the below mentioned mechanics and the preset actions, one should be able to look at his enemies army and base upon the report whether they should use warriorbombs, archer armies or hit hard w/ ponies.

Large scale warfare is when the rally spot march limits start to restrict your combat ability and force you to consider alternative options than 99k archers + rainbow. This is where HB units start to shine as they can punish enemy swarms of archers w/o needin' to reach into massive amounts of troops. Tactics become an issue here because the rainbow mechanics get more complicated when dealin' w/ such large numbers, ATs tend to be maxed out and have heavy amounts of layers in front of their archers. Seige is viable on smaller scales here, but not often seen as it tends to be late in the game when players can even start trainin' seige and don't always have a large enough amount by this point.

Massive scale warfare is the superwars you hear about. Millions of defendin' troops gettin' hit by 100k rams and three follow up waves of 100k 'phracts; superalliances reinforcin' and packin' heavy in all directions. This type of warfare is also known as Cold Wars, in some situations. Tactics do play a role in this, but less about the mechanics of the game and more about timin' and co-ordination. Numbers become far more important here than comin' up w/ the perfect surgical assault. This isnae the type of warfare I'm really tryin' to discuss.

[Darkbrady]

Movement in Combat~
The single most important thing to know about combat mechanics is that units move forward each round towards the enemy but that they do this in different ways, dependin' what unit they are. This is important because units will not (with exception) ignore enemies in their path and will stop to attack them each round. This leads to the issue of the Rainbow Formation (see below). Units will also attack each turn, and based on their range and attack against the enemies defence and life, will do varyin' amounts of damage or kill them.
This is also an issue where speed can be pretty important, becasue it affects how quickly your troops move past traps, or reach their target enemy or destination. It can also mean your troops can reach large groups of enemies too fast (See Compass/HBR in technology). This is the one thing that leads to the most casualties in battles and more often than not is the answer to why attacks on NPCs failed.
Also, always remember that movement preceeds attacks. All units on the field will move before their attack phase of that round, unless a specific mechanic (such as stand and shoot) dictates that they stay still.

Movement will also affect archers damage. Ranged units will recieve deductibles based on the distance of their target, which makes the enemy speed an issue. The faster the enemy will run through the optimum range and into melee range, the more of a threat they are, while the slow units that will spend several turns into optimum range (such as raams) will give the archers plenty of time the wreak havoc on them. The deductible is as follows:
100%~51% range = 50% damage
1%~50% range = 100% damage (optimum range)
0% range (melee) = 25% damage

Rainbow Formation~
We get plagued w/ this question in the H&Q boards. A rainbow formation is sendin' anywhere between 1~1k of each unit that moves faster than your main attack force. The reason for this is that enemy troops will halt their advance to tackle the units in the rainbow formation before continuin' on to hit your main force.
This gives you at least a full extra round to achieve your task. If your main attack force is archers, (keepin' in mind that archers stand and shoot, allowin' all non-seige units to run ahead of them) you get a full extra round w/ no one attackin' you and in which your full force can fire a wash of arrows at the enemy. If you're usin' ponies, then you get a full extra round to advance forward w/o havin' to stop/be killed.
To make a rainbow formation, send 50~1k troops of each unit (the higher numbers for the large/massive scale battles) as layers in w/ the wave of your achers. A typical example of a full rainbow formation w/ archers would be:
50 warriors
50 scouts
50 pikes
50 swordsmen
50 ponies
50 'phracts
99,700 archers
Try never to send 1 of each unit as a rainbow against an enemy with traps because the traps autokill units at the beginnin' of the round and will wipe out most (if not all) of your rainbow before they even start the battle. Keep enough troops to survive several rounds of trap spread.
Workers and seige units are often ignored as layers purely because of their speed which increase march times, but there are situations where you can use them effectively as layers, despite their speed in battle.

Clicky on this link to view an example of a successful rainbow formation against an NPC10. Heavy pikes and swords w/ light scouts, warriors, ponies and 'phracts rushed forward in front of the archers, slowin' down the enemy warrior horde enough for the archers to wipe out a massive amount of them. By the time the warriors reached the archers there was only enough left to kill a few before they all died. Note that this example could potentially reduce losses of archers by up to 10k, by havin' an extra 10k archers to attack and a much higher attack hero and/or buffs.

This is jus' about the most overpowered tactic in the game at this time because it allows waves of archers to get in several rounds of damage from the safety at the back at the mere cost of only a few fodder units. Expect this to be used in almost every attack against you and expect to require usin' it in nigh every attack you send short of valley warfare.

Technology~
There's not much to say about this:

Military Tradition increases attack rate by 5% per lvl; essential.
Iron Workin' increases defence rate by 5% per lvl; essential.
Archery increases range by 5% per lvl; essential.
Medicine increase life by 5% per lvl; essential.
Engineerin' increases the durability rate of Walls and ATs by 10% per lvl; consider it important to get, but it's not your top priority.
Mechanics increases your repairable rate of defences by 100% per lvl. This might sound like much, but the base rate is 3%. Increase that by 100% to 6%. Lv10 Mechanics increases your repairable rate of defences up to 30%. This means that defences will be automatically, instantly and freely repaired on a rate up to 30% immediately after each battle. However, this rate is reduced based on the size of the attackin' force. It's very possible that if you get overwhelmed, you wilnae have any defences repaired. Consider this a last priority tech.
Compass increases your foot troop movement speed by 10% per lvl. HBR increases your horseback and mechanic movin' speed by 5% per lvl.

The last two are tricky. Havin' them too high can greatly alter the outcome of a battle for the negative. Advancin' forward before a set time, or too fast can wind up bringin' you closer to a threat force when you might otherwise have been able to deal w/ them before they reached you.
For NPC5 farmin', HBR and Archery combos are essential to get right. Go here for a guide on Archery/HBR combos to suit your current stage in the game. As for Compass, the standard consensus is to keep it at lv9 most of the way through until you have a high lvl hero, as lv10 can hurt you badly on NPC10 raids. However, havin' lv10 Compass doesnae mean NPC10s will be undo-able for you; it jus' means you need a high attack hero earlier.

Considerin' that most players past a certain point will have maxed techs, for the sake of this discussion we'll assume that both attacker and defender in all scenarios both have maxed techs. Always remember to accomodate any differences, though.

Heroes~
Intelligence and Politics; we're not here for these issues at all. They have zero effect on a combat field and should never be sent out to a battle; hopefully they will never be left to defend your city either.
We want attack. The highest attack rates possible. Attack rates reduce your troop trainin' time. Lord Bx.C has supplied the exact equation for the troop trainin' reduction times for your readin' pleasure.
ReducedTrainingTime = BaseATK * ( 0.9 ^ Research ) * ( 0.995 ^ HeroATK )
(for those that don't know, the ^ is a common way of doing exponents in many programming languages... 2 ^ 3 = 2 to the 3rd power = 8 )

When you get the result, (always) round down (even if the fraction is over 0.5). That will give you the exact number of seconds it will take to create that troop type.

Oh and for those that are interested in a miscellaneous and slightly still useful fact.... 1 level of research is roughly equivalent to 21 hero ATK points, as far as time reduction is concerned
(0.995 ^ 21 is 0.900087427)

Because of this, gettin' timers down will feel like a fast increase at first, but slow down a lot after that. Also becasue of the rate it's done at, gettin' timers to 0s is extremely hard; warriors requirin' an attack of over 400.

Now, for the battles, the simple explanation is that the higher attack the better. The more of a positive difference between the attack of your hero and the defendin' hero, the more troops of theirs you'll kill and the less casualties you'll take. Very high attack heroes can come off w/ minimal casualties against otherwise overwhelmin' enemies. As you can see from the formula below, the potential your troops can achieve from hero attacks alone is massive. Workin' on heroes and lvlin' them as high as possible will add enormous sums of extra attack to your units and can totally change the tide of the battle.
HeroBonus = BaseUnitATK * HeroATK / 100
TechBonus = BaseUnitATK * MilitaryTradition / 20
(Round down both of these results before continuing)

BoostedUnitATK = BaseUnitATK + HeroBonus + TechBonus

B/100 x (H + T + 100)

B =unit's base attack
H = Hero's attack
T = Military Tradition %



To demonstrate the difference in hero attacks, this is a scoutwar report: both techs are the same, no buffs were used and there was almost identical number of troops also utilisin' the valley mechanics. The one and only difference was the hero attack, but you can see the sheer difference it made.
Hero Attack Difference Example

Considerin' the sheer range in how much difference attack rates can be for heroes, for the sake of this discussion we'll assume that both the attacker and defender in all scenarios both have heroes w/ equal attack rate. Always remember to accomodate any differences, though.
By gettin' the enemy players name (and ideally hero name) from battle or scout reports, you can look up the statistics page and find out the exact current stats of that hero; this way you can get an ahead notice of what you'll need to prepare for.

[Darkbrady]

Valleys~
Valleys are the most basic combat zone. They don't involve traps, walls, bonuses on either side and the distance started is based at the distance of the max range of the unit w/ the greatest speed (typically ponies) unless there are ranged units involved, in which case the battle starts at the range of the greatest ranged troop. Valley warfare mechanics is what the Excercise function utilises to give it's results, and as such is typically considered heavily innacurate down to the sole fact that few battles are met on a Valley.
Most Valley battles are against NPCs. Simple scoutin' attempts will reveal enough information on them to plan a solid assault, although it's rarely any trouble after a certain point in the game.
A large difference w/ Valley mechanics and City mechanics is how ponies move. In both they make the highest value unit their priority, but in Valleys they literally ignore every other unit and go straight for the high value unit (since ponies are rarely enough in Valleys, the high value unit will typically be archers) however don't take this to mean that archers are useless to use in valley fights against ponies; jus' expect losses to be higher than normal. A way to protect your archers is by slightly ignorin' the above rule; pilin' on a big horde of manshield in front on the archers will help kill off enemy ponies before they reach your fragile archers, as well as slow them down enough to let your archers get a good amount of damage in.

Since ponies are inherently designed to be the enders of archers, this is pretty convinient. As most cases go, a standard wave of maybe 15~20k ponies against any NPC controlled valley is almost guaranteed to win; killin' any and all archers before turnin' around to finish the rest. No rainbow required, which also makes cappin' valleys be a quick proccess.
Deaths of your ponies in these valleys will be decided heavily by the number of pikes. A high number can increase deaths up to 5k+ in bad cases, but are typically less than 300.
As far as cappin' enemy valleys goes....they're rarely, if ever, reinforced because of the march slot that takes up and the doubled upkeep costs. Sendin' a single scout to cap a valley is actually enough on the condition that they don't decide to reinforce it. If they do decide to reinforce it you have yourself some pvp valley warfare!
This will consist of your standard excercise engine battles and will be capped at a maximum of 1,25m troops on the defence (if you...really feel the need), but no super defence bonuses here like wall bonuses or defences! Details on troop vs. troop are comin' up!

NPCs~
Ok, I don't think I really need to cover this here; there are countless guides for attackin', farmin' and cappin' NPC cities that needn't be changed or altered. So instead of me tryin' to put together somethin' shiny and original-flavoured I'll jus' be a bore and link you to all the currently successful guides.
Lynorre's Guide to Farmin' NPC10s and Archery/HBR combos: Standard NPC farmin' guide that goes into plenty of detail and gives extremely important info on Archery/HBR combos in relation to b'listers vs. NPC5s.
Derven's Guide to NPC10 farmin' w/ minimum losses: Standard Guide to farmin' a NPC10 and how to cut losses
arislan1999's guide to 5min NPC10 conquers: Advanced Guide on cappin' NPC10s within 5 minutes.

Cities~
This is where all the action is, and where you'll spend most of your time fightin' folk. In Valleys it's the exact same either way, but in Cities, whether you're attackin' or defendin' makes a huge difference. The fact that defenders have a huge wall that needs to be breached (their durability based on their lvl + Engineerin') as well as all troops can potentially slow down attacks. It also prevents sendin' a single unit to cap the city, seein' as an attacker must win the battle within 100 rounds or face auto-defeat. Auto-defeat used to kill off all the units, but no more; your troops will jus' be sent back as they were w/ a defeat report. Anyone can tell you that defenders have massive advantages over any oncomin' attack.
The fact that your opponent can have an unlimited number of troops in their city versus your maximum troop dispatch of 125k/wave is the first of these advantages. Defences/Fortifications are the second of these advantages. The range at which a battle starts in a cityfight is based on the defence/unit w/ the longest range. This will typically be a defenders defensive trap.
Traps, Abati, AT, Logs and Rockfalls can all be built into your wall slots to create a trap-infested death-field for any attackers oncomin'.


Traps~
Life: [One Use]
Attack: [Autokills units]
Range: 5000
Spaces on Wall: 1
Defence: [N/A]

They set the range of a battle to 5k yards and will slowly kill off foot troops for each round they're alive. They also kill ponies and 'phracts, but at a severly reduced rate. Cleaner waves are usually sent in w/ intention to destroy as many of these as possible.


Abati~
Life: [One Use]
Attack: [Autokills units]
Range: 5000
Spaces on Wall: 2
Defence: [N/A]

They set the range of a battle to 5k yards and will slowly kill off ponies for each round they're alive. They affect no other troop. Because of this, cleaner waves of warriors are unable to get rid of abati, makin' them vital backup for defence to assure the range stays at 5k. Only ponies or 'phracts can clear these and are an expensive problem for attackers. As such, defenders typically consider Abati worth the slight extra expense and wall space over Traps; but still tend to have both.


ATs~
Life: 2000
Attack: 300
Range: 1300
Spaces on Wall: 3
Defence: 360

The defence mechanic. Will sit on the wall and shoot any attackin' unit from a relatively comfortable position. They also gain +4.5% range for each wall lvl, puttin' them at the highest ranged unit in the game, second only to defensive catas. Accompany this fact w/ the ability to stretch the battlefield out to 5k and you have a defence mechanic that can shoot and kill many invadin' troops before they're even in range to fight back.


Logs~
Life: [One use]
Attack: 500
Range: 1300
Spaces on Wall: 4
Defence: [N/A]

They will throw themselves at enemies and kill them off faster than traps, but need to be rebuilt and take up otherwise important slots for ATs. Generally not considered worth it.


Rockfalls~
Life: [One Use]
Attack: 800
Range: 5000
Spaces on Wall: 5
Defence: [N/A]

They set the range of a battle to 5k yards and will throw themselves at seige mechanics and kill them off every round they're alive. They deal enough damage to be considered worth it, but needin' to be rebuilt and takin' up a lot of wall spaces makes their value a point of personal opinion and much debate.


As a standard rule, expect to see 1k traps, 1k abati and about 15k ATs in typical enemy cities. There is obviously much variation, but this tends to be the norm, considered the optimal defence strategy.
This causes numerous problem, because that many ATs requires a heavy amount of damage to take them down.
The ratio of attackin' Archers:ATs hovers around the 1:5 region. Havin' more increases your safety and reduces losses. Havin' a 1:4 ratio is possible, but risky.
Ponies follow this same ratio for Ats, but they can potentially do it w/ far fewer deaths to their own, however this is at the cost of bein' more susceptible to rainbows and riskin' outright failure. Use ponies to take out ATs only when the enemy rainbow numbers are limited.

[Darkbrady]

Units~
Now onto the fun bit; a bit of discussion on individual units. As much as input from other sources would be, screenied battle reports will be a tremendous help for here (I'm lookin' at you, Jerbo!). I say screenies because system battle reports expire after 3 days and become useless clutter afterwards, whereas screenies will remain and be a valuable source of demonstration and information.

Foot Troops~
Standard, basic soldiers who march on foot. Most of any army will comprise of these merry men. Their strength lies mainly in their ability to train fast, cheap and vastly outnumber.


Worker~
Life: 100
Population: 1
Attack: 5
Defence: 10
Load: 200
Upkeep: 2
Speed: 180
Range: 10

Borin', useless, slow, weak individuals. All they achieve in this game is constructin' cities and bein' an early, cheap version of the Transporters. They serve little use other than bein' another troop in a rainbow (but will actually slow down the wave, because of their speed) and are little use as Cleaners becasue they do less damage, have less life and actually take longer to train than warriors. Worst troop available. I discourage ever trainin' any of them beyond what you need to build cities.


Warrior~
Life: 200
Population: 1
Attack: 50
Defence: 50
Load: 20
Upkeep: 3
Speed: 200
Range: 20

Everyone's favourite fodder. The suicide troop. The manshield of Evony. Their incredibly fast trainin' time and otherwise cheap costs set them up to be an ideal candidate for a horde troop. They don't have good stats, but considerably better than worker and enough to damage an enemy given half the chance. Even so, their primary mission in life tends to be to run headlong into traps, groups of enemies and cause as much damage as they can before they get killed, cleanin' the way for the real soldiers behind. Sounds harsh, but thas life. Use them as such and you'll use them to their full potential.

Warriors should be used as a rainbow troop or cleaner waves almost exclusively unless you're deliberately suicidin' them to shave off your honour.
Large Scale Warrior Attack-Fail
Open Scale Warrior Attack-Defeat


Scout~
Life: 100
Population: 1
Attack: 20
Defence: 20
Load: 5
Upkeep: 5
Speed: 3000
Range: 20

Scouts...amongst the weakest of the damage/defence bases and left to do their scout missions rather than real combat. Sayin' that, scout missions can often enough lead to scout wars. Defendin' cities scouts (with open gates, ofc) will take the initiative and attack enemy scouts invadin' them, in an attempt to prevent them returnin' a report. Luckily for the attackers, no other units are involved in this so it includes only the two armies of scouts and acts as a Valley fight (no walls or defences included). This is probably the most basic kind of battle as it only involves one unit and at a time when techs are all maxed comes pretty much down to numbers. Maxin' out the attack wave might be enough, but in a city where there's say...200k scouts, expect to have to send more than one wave. If there's over a million scouts you might not even get the report back based on the 10% rule and have to send several more waves before you can even find out how many they have. Only hope that they don't start sendin' them to you in an attempt to wittle your numbers, too.
Note that if you are scouted and the enemy kills 10% or more of your scouts but still loses the battle, that they will only get the report of the scout battle and not anythn' else from your city. The only way for them to get a report is to kill all your scouts or if you have no defendin' scouts when they arrive or if your gates are closed.

Outside scout battles, they would once have been used to spam attacks against walls to lower loyalty, but considerin' how sheerly fast they could do this it was considered unfair and as such, their ability to damage walls has been removed.
However, this doesnae mean that they're not a valuable combat component. Due to their relatively fast trainin' times and comparitavely cheap upkeeps, they can also be horded to a great degree and used as cleaner waves similar to the warriors, but w/ a different role. Where warriorbombs are designed to waste traps and overwhelm nearby foot troops, scoutbombs are aimed more at usin' their insane speed to rush at archers and overwhelm them to crush their numbers before any spearhead assault. A typical tactic is to send constant, full waves of 100k scouts to trash the archer defence so that the main assaults can walk in w/ less or no danger.

There's a lot to be said about scouts and scoutin' tactics. arislan1999 has compiled an advanced guide on endgame scoutin' and scoutbomb tactics in this thread. This will go into more advanced and thorough detail than I intend to cover in this guide, as it covers endgame tactics and massive scale warfare.

[edit]
There is a discussion on scout layerin' mechanics and how it works. There is some evidence that shows that scouts don't move until all other units are dead and therefore don't act as a layer, but other evidence that shows that they do move and act as a layer like all other units. Since both obviously cannae be true we can only conclude that there's a variable that changes their mechanics; we do not know what this variable is, though. Currently, it looks like scouts don't work as effective layers on Valleys or NPCs, but they do work on player cities. To view the discussion (that was originally about somethin' else completely and we threw it waaay off-topic ) go here.
[/edit]

Scoutbombs are pretty guaranteed to end in a defeat, but it's all about how many of the enemy you kill. Since scoutbombs are pretty specific to 100k scouts there's not much you can do to increase your success or damage; it really is all about numbers and attrition, although read the above guide buy arlisan1999 for the deeper details.
Ofc, never scoutbomb against someone who has heavy layers of swords or you're gunna find yourself w/ a lot of dead scouts for no real gain.
Large Scale Scout Bomb
Open Scale Scout Bomb
Open Scale Scout Bomb
Open Scale Scout Bomb

[Darkbrady]

Pikeman~
Life: 300
Population: 1
Attack: 150
Defence: 150
Load: 40
Upkeep: 6
Speed: 300
Range: 50

The foot troop geared towards offense. Fast, light troops that rush their enemy and hit hard. Their main target in a battle are ponies. Since ponies tend to be pretty far in front of the rest of the army, the pikes can get to them in nigh full force w/o enemy rainbows gettin' in the way. However, don't expect this to mean that they automatically kill ponies. They were designed to drastically increase losses on them, seein' as ponies will typically pass by the pikes and look for other units on Valleys, or charge straight to them in Cityfights, givin' the pikes all the chance they need to kill some off....before they die.
For pikes to kill ponies, the required ratio is roughly 3:2 at pikes to ponies.


Swordsman~
Life: 350
Population: 1
Attack: 100
Defence: 250
Load: 30
Upkeep: 7
Speed: 275
Range: 30

The foot troop geared towards defence. Slower, clunkier but act as a solid sheild. Well...sorta. Sadly, numbers play more of a part in the mechanics than quality, so swordsmen don't quite live up to their role. Tagged as effective against archers, they tend to die pretty fast, gettin' shot down by archers long before they can actually reach them to fight back. Bein' slower and weaker than pikes they're also less useful to send as loyalty spammers against cities than pikes or ponies and the fact that archers play a heavy defence role makes them an almost completely redundant unit.
Their primary use is to counter the trend of scoutbombs; bein' big, metallic, fat guys they do a good job of stoppin' scoutbombers dead in their tracks and killin' them off before the scouts weak attack rates can match up to them. This is indirectly essential as it protects your archers from otherwise certain deathrates.

Swordsman screenies; their primary function in life is to prevent scoutbombs. They do it seriously well, but note that the cost of this is that you require more swordsmen than archers otherwise the scoutbomb will skip your swords and fly into your fragile elf-ears. Sayin' that, don't forget that these lumps of cast iron are capable of doin' pretty great things, when given the chance
Open Scale Defence against Scoutbomb-Victory
Open Scale Defence against Scoutbomb-Victory
Open Scale Defence against Scoutbomb-Victory
Open Scale Swordsman Attack-Victory
Large Scale Swordsman Attack-Victory


Archer~
Life: 250
Population: 2
Attack: 120
Defence: 50
Load: 25
Upkeep: 9
Speed: 250
Range: 1200

The unit of the current Evony battle mechanics. They can outdo pretty much all opposition, even enemy archers or ponies, and w/ a solid rainbow defence they can do as such w/ little to no losses. Layered up and next to ATs at a wall make them absolutely lethal defenders, capable of downin' most attacks before they even get close. On the offense, they can protect themselves w/ rainbows and shoot from afar, killin' off enemy rainbows and movin' towards to shoot down the main enemy force.
Archers alone are capable of wipin' out the defendin' barbarians at an NPC10, and as equally as capable of shatterin' enemy assaults; they're the most solid all-rounder unit that move at a good speed and are cheap and quick to train. Typically battle reports detaillin' defeats sent in by players askin' why they failed so hard were against a large number of enemy Archers + ATs. Often enough the solution is a simple rainbow; archers fallin' foul to their own tricks in this respect. The best way to deal w/ archers is often the way they like to protect themselves, too.

The things to note about archers are that when they enter a combat zone, they'll move forward until they're in the range of enemies and then stop to shoot. They'll stay in place where they are until they're either killed or have no more enemies in range, wherein they advance farther forward to put themselves in range of more enemies.
The other thing to note is that when given the choice between multiple enemies, they'll attack ranged units first and foremost; this makes them susceptible to both rainbows and ponies. It also means they're a sharp sight at killin' off other archers. The downside to this is that ATs act the same as archers, and since they outrange everythin', they'll typically start shootin' down your archer army long before they get to play their full role in a battle. This is why outnumberin' ATs is so important. This is also why rainbowed archers act as the best defence unit one can have.

As far as screenies of archer reports go, I'll probably wind up w/ more of them than any other so allow for a pretty wid variation. Also take note of the various effects of rainbows and how drastically they affect each situation.
Large Scale Archer Attack-Defeat
Large Scale Archer Attack-Defeat
Large Scale Archer Defence-Victory

[Darkbrady]

HB Units~
HB units are fast, strong units that are especially talented at killin' off their non-HB counterparts. They are notably more expensive and slow to train, but are often enough worth it if one can afford the increase in costs.


Pony~
Life: 500
Population: 3
Attack: 250
Defence: 180
Load: 100
Upkeep: 18
Speed: 1000
Range: 100

Ponies are the most effective counter-unit to archers, as well as bein' the best loyalty spammers now that scouts got their wall damage nerfed. They train at a decent speed and don't require too much, but are solid units that move quickly and are an easy cure to all your archer-flavoured problems.
However! They act as a potential bomb unit. Misuse of them winds up w/ them bein' very expensive bombs and denyin' them livin' up to their full potential. Despite their life and defence, they're somewhat fragile because of their speed; they move forward fast each round, well ahead of the rest of your army and charge headlong into all enemy rainbows; they also become the first viable target or enemy archers, so find themselves gettin' off'd pretty fast.
Also because of their speed, rainbowin' them is hard to do; only scouts can be their rainbow; but thas not always bad. Scouts move so much faster that they take all the threat the ponies would have before their more expensive horsebacked counterparts come in range. This works well as a protection method and mid-battle bomb tactic.
So by now, you've got glass cannon ponies that will potentially fly straight into all dangers at no thought for themselves and get themselves maimed before their task is complete. But on the other hand you have a ragin' mule that kills rainbows w/ haste and charges at enemy archers and chews through them at a ratio of 1:5. By the time the rainbows are out of the way, ponies can waltz right up to archers and ATs and flatten them; expect 100k ponies to be able to maul 500k archers. When numbers start rollin' out like that, you can start believin' in them as a solid counter unit.

Also, note that ponies are a great assault unit, but when it comes to defendin' it's a different story. Havin' your range set to 5k will wind up sendin' your ponies on an unneccesary trek to attack the offender, and have to go through rainbows and get shot down by arrows (bein' the first unit the offendin' archers will be in range of) so will actually backfire and lead to your ponies deaths.
Ponies can defend, but it requires archer backup, heavy scout numbers and the removal of traps that set the range to 5k; that way you can get in on the game easrly, hard and fast w/o goin' out of range of your own archers. Ofc, this will also give the offender the advantage of no traps/abati to worry about.
Ideally, keep ponies for your attacks and less of a defensive unit.

Open Scale Pony Attack-Victory


'Phract~
Life: 1000
Population: 6
Attack: 350
Defence: 350
Load: 80
Upkeep: 35
Speed: 750
Range: 80

What can I say? Almost exactly the same as regular ponies, but slower and scarier. They can be rainbowed by scouts and ponies, addin' extra protection while still movin' at a decent pace towards the enemy; they have far fewer losses than regular ponies and even reduce their losses. Their extra attack chews through enemy rainbows like nothin' and defence and life increases protect them solidly. By the time they get to archers you're lookin' at a terrifyin' ratio of around 1:8. 100k 'phracts will solve nigh all archer problems when marched correctly.
Since they're easier to protect, harder to kill and far more capable of slaughter than any other non-seige unit it seems like a sweet deal, but consider the costs and time to train. They become ridiculously expensive in small numbers; when you send 100k 'phracts to murder a million archers, jus' consider that they can have those archers replaced fast and reinforced w/ more archers quicker than you'll be able to retrain any lost 'phracts. It's a monster task, but often worth the punishment on your time.

Pay attention to how important it is to pre-clear layers away and how many unneeded casualties are taken due to remainin' defencive layers. These big boys may be powerful, but it's essential that they have the enemy layers cleaned as much as possible before they go marchin' in, although you shold also be able to see the sheer, relentless power these beasts have behind them.
Large Scale 'Phractsmack-Victory
Large Scale 'Phractsmack-Victory
Large Scale 'Phractsmack-Victory
Large Scale 'Phractsmack-Victory
Large Scale 'Phractsmack-Defeat
Large Scale 'Phractsmack-Defeat


Transporter~
Life: 700
Population: 4
Attack: 10
Defence: 60
Load: 5000
Upkeep: 10
Speed: 150
Range: 10

A safe transportation device. Relatively cheap and quick to train they act as your courier for goods; however have no effect on battle. Whereas every other unit moves forward each round, ever more into enemy arrow range, transporters stay behind in safety till the end and only get killed when your army loses.
Sayin' that, transporters can be killed in a victorious battle. Have a looky at this:
50k Raams attack ATs
The rainbow got wiped out, doin' the job in protectin' the raams while they slowly inch forward, but the interestin' thing is that the transporters started takin' hits w/o any raams bein' killed.
Transporters do indeed move slowly, and will even pass the attackin' force. Where seige units will stop as soon as they're in range of walls/defences, the transporters will continue forward, actin' as a painfully expensive rainbow for the raams to continue their attack untouched for longer.
This is a rare situation, becasue typically the defendin' units will be busy attackin' other units and otherwise keepin' their focus on the seige before the transporters.
I honestly don't have a solid explanation for this; if anyone does, feel free to let me know and I'll include it.

[Darkbrady]

Seige Engines~
Seige mechanics are devices and machines built and constructed to be a powerful tool used in city invasions. The have high costs and train times, but tend to be far more powerful than any foot troop can possibly match. They're pulled by horses and as such their speed is affected by HBR rather than Compass. An issue w/ seige is that (with the exception of b'listers) they tend to require large numbers of them to be worth the time; when involved in small scale battles, foot troops or HB troops can often enough match, if not better any job seige can. This means that Seige mechanics are almost exclusive to large and massive scale warfare.


B'lister~
Life: 320
Population: 5
Attack: 450
Defence: 160
Load: 35
Upkeep: 50
Speed: 100
Range: 1400

B'listers are standard projectile seige mechanics. They follow a lot of the same rules as archers, but most importantly will move forward each round as well as attackin', until they are in range of walls/defences. This key mechanic is what makes HBR/Archery combos so vital for them, as they will literally creep into enemy AT range before they're finished destroyin' them, or have to move too close to get in range in time. Sayin' that, this is mainly for NPC5s. B'listers have little, if any use in the game outside regular casualty free NPC5 farmin'. They've been proven to drastically increase losses on NPC10 raids and get torn up too quickly on player raids, as well as movin' too slowly.

I have...virtually nothing good to say about b'listers in a pvp environment. They move too slowly and don't hit hard enough while havin' a tendency to die easily. The fact that they're expensive and slow to train next to the few archers it requires to kill them off jus' goes to make them further redundant. If you really, really want to use b'listers, then I suggest you use them as a defencive unit and hope that your attacker doesn't know how to layer properly.
Large Scale B'lister Attack-Defeat
Large Scale B'lister/Raam Attack-Defeat
Open Scale B'lister Defence-Victory
Open Scale B'lister Attack-Victory
Large Scale B'lister Attack-Victory


Raam~
Life: 5000
Population: 10
Attack: 250
Defence: 160
Load: 45
Upkeep: 100
Speed: 120
Range: 600

Gears of War!Raam's are the swordsmen of seige mechanics meets a solid brick wall on wheels. Crazy life and defence stats means they can pretty much walk through attacks onto their person until they're in range and slowly cram their proverbial boots where the sun don't shine. Like all the seige mechanics, they will creep forward slowly each turn (very slowly...) and punch their way through anythin' they see until they are in range of the walls wherein they will begin to chomp up anythin' they find. Bein' incredibly hard to kill, they have plenty of time to do this.
They have massive potential, meetin' that of 'phracts and bein' able to successfuly seige hugely defended cities w/o requirin' several waves of them.
However, they move slowly. So slowly that pre-battle, the target has plenty of time to prepare a defence and get heavily reinforced, rendern' the attack a waste of time or an outright failure.
In battle they have similar problems; bein' held back by their speed, they give massive numbers of enemy archers and ATs plenty of time to start rippin' on their life while they stop and slowly punch down heavy rainbows; sadly, their attack isnae to up to scratch, only matchin' that of ponies. So they don't kill any faster, but take a lot longer to reach their targets; in situations w/ extremely large defendin' armies and lots of rainbows, all their might turns to...well...death; leadin' to the agonisin' loss of extremely expensive and slow to build seige mechanics.
This isnae to say that they cannae be used well, however; they jus' tend to be too easy to counter against for all their expense to be worth the effort. In the end, 'phracts will typically do the same job about as well, but w/ less chance of bein' countered and the extra losses they take can be retrained quicker.

A typically important thing to say about raams is that most of the defendin' units against them will actually be reinforcements sent durin' the long time it takes for the raams to actually reach their target. These extra numbers can potentially still be fought off, but they defender will usually have all the time they need to prepare a full rainbowcake for you. Several pre-cleaner waves will have to be camped to hit a second before the raams or you're lookin' at serious failure.
Large Scale Raam Attack-Victory
Massive Scale Raam Attack-Defeat
Massive Scale Raam Attack-Victory


Cata~
Life: 480
Population: 8
Attack: 600
Defence: 200
Load: 75
Upkeep: 250
Speed: 80
Range: 1500

A unit of some controversy. The almighty attack rate combined w/ range makes them a frightenin' prospect to imagine, but their otherwise mediocre defence and speed pulls them down and makes them relatively easy to kill. Their speed falls into the same issue as raam's, but havin' range offsets some of that. In theory, they would be able to rip up the most massive of defences, but realistically it introduces the issue of pre-battle speed that raams have and allowin' said massive defence to get heavily reinforced, and then the unholy costs and expenses involved w/ maintainin' and makin' them.
From a defensive standpoint, max Archery and max walls puts these big guys at the highest range in the game; coupled w/ ATs and archers, they have the ability to annihilate attackers long before they're in range; they're ideal for raam-killin' in this situation, although the high upkeep is arguably not worth it next to Archers who will train much faster/cheaper and eat considerably less.
Requirin' mich scripts and lv10 researches is a whole issue on top of that; they're hard to get, slow to train, expensive to train and when you do get them you probably don't have enough to make a difference. So you need to spend another month makin' more and then finally do send them out to war; but you give your opponent all the time they need to get fully reinforced and wipe out your army.
This is up to a personal choice, I reckon...some people think that cata's are the be all and end all of superunits. Personally, I think they're jus' raams that hit harder, farther, die easier and cost way, way more.

Sadly, not much more effect than raams, but far costier to rebuild. Layered up properly they could potentially be pretty dangerous, but as w/ raams, they give the defender far too much time to prepare a better layerin' and defence, renderin' yours inert.
8k Cata's against NPC8-Victory
7,5k Cata's against NPC9-Victory
Massive Scale Cata Attack-Defeat
Massive Scale Cata Attack-Victory

[Darkbrady]

Examples and Breakdowns~
In this section I'll show various screenies of battle reports and break them down to explain how they work, why they work or what went wrong.

How Ranged Units Work~
Attackin' w/ archers always seems like a good idea, down to how much reverance people talk about it, but you have to understand one of the most important things about any ranged unit: they will always attack enemy ranged units first.
This means that if you attack archers with archers+layer, your archers will be under seige from the enemy archers as soon as they're in range, makin' your layer essentially useless, but it will give your layers the chance to run forward and hit the enemy. This makes ponies and archers dangerous partners.
Have a looky at this report:
Ranged Die First
The battle started at AT range becasue there was no traps/abati; this meant that everythin' was in range of the AT at first. So what did it do? It started to pick off the ranged units first. First the cata's died, then the b'listers, then the archers...by which point the ponies had done enough damage to finish off the last of the ATs.
What would have saved the ATs?
Traps/abati. This would have put the layers in range of the ATs before the ranged units, givin' the ATs the chance to kill them off more before it started to attack the ranged units.
Combine this with range deductibles and you have a serious problem.
This means that while your archers are busy shootin' enemy archers at the other end of the field, they're not even hittin' for maximum damage, but it also means that when those ponies arrive in front of them, they hit them for even less damage and give them all the time they need to kill your archers!
This all isn't to say that archers can't ever attack, jus' don't expect them to be your main spearhead force against any defence with real numbers in it. Archers are still excellent waves to send to clean up heavy layers before you clean the traps/abati. At 5k range your archers can mow down enemy layers safely and quickly, even in small numbers, becasue their defending counterparts are not yet in their range to attack.
Ofc, that's not to say that archers can't succesfully attack either, under the correct circumstances. Takin' advantage of shortrange battles and few layers can bring offensive archers up to a great advantage.
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/a...Archer Assault

Importance of Rainbows~
Let's discuss the importance of gettin' rainbow mechanics correct. We'll start w/ a full, head on attack of non-rainbowed ponies versus archers.

100k Ponies.
100k ponies sounds like a pretty worryin' prospect from the offset, but as you can see, it didnae go very well. What went wrong?
The first few ponies were killed off by traps/abati while gettin' shot at by the 200k archers. They charged forward (while gettin' shot at) and killed the defendin' pony/'phract and continued on more (while gettin' shot at) to start work on the rainbow (while gettin' shot at). As you can see, gettin' constantly shot at by archers for those rounds didnae help their life expectancy as they failed to even finish workin' through the rainbow. Let's counter that problem w/ a rainbow of our own.

99k Ponies w/ a rainbow of scouts
Suddenly the ponies do much, much better. Despite the fact that they were against more than double the number of archers, they ripped everythin' apart. This is because the 10 scouts lunged forward and drew the attention of everythin' for long enough that the ponies go far enough ahead to have sufficient numbers left alive by the time they reached the archers. The issue w/ ponies isnae killin' the archers; they do that unbelievably quickly. The issue is gettin' to them alive. A small rainbow like this protected them for jus' long enough to reach their target and lay waste to them.
However, it's not as simple as jus' puttin' on a wee rainbow and thinkin' the day is yours...

99k Ponies w/ a rainbow of scouts gone awry
The lowest number of archers yet, but the ponies were crushed and never even reached the pointy-eared bowmen. Why, you ask? Because this time, the defender had the better rainbow and was more solidly protected. Now; the first things to happen were that the scouts were utterly demolished by those catas and archers. They only drew the attention away for so long; not long enough, sadly. The ponies were still well in firin' range by the time attention turned on them. And what happened then? 18k pikemen decided to stick long sticks w/ metal into the riders. Although they wildly outnumbered the pikes and killed them all, there wasnae enough ponies left to talk about it by the end of that round, wherein they got shot up a few more times and were dead before they even reached the swordsmen.

So..rainbows? No rainbows or weak rainbows lead only to false hope or potential defeat. You cannae jus' toss some random troops in and cross your fingers. Puttin' in the correct number and the right unit (for example; layerin' up on pikes when ponies are attackin') is absolutely essential in winnin' battles.

[Darkbrady]

Final Notes~
This is lookin' pretty messy now that I scan over it. Aye, I'm kinda tired by now. Formattin' of some kind would probably be nice...not sure what to colourify, though...
This will be neated up in the future (maybe) but I hope and expect to make a lot of alterations as time passes; little I can do now as I'm relyin' on the voices of others to show me how to edit this. There is much to do and much I can improve on. Again, I urge you to tell me what, explain what I missed and where, show me how I can update and improve certain notes. This isnae somethin' I'm writiin' for me, but for anyone who can benefit from anythin' held within.

Credits~
Credits go to anyone who has helped, suggested changes, added, included or updated infos or corrected anythin' wrong in the guide:

Everyone in this thread and my Request Thread who've contributed~
Countless discussions, updates, contributions and debates that have proven, disproven and pushed this to a new level
DCJerboa~
Supplies a heavy number of excitin' and fun-filled battle reports, as well as continued help towards the Guide
Birtles~
Added a note on Valley warfare, made a correction on startin' distance and neatened hero attack formula
captain virk~
Suggested includin' defences stats/icons
JPA32~
Corrected note on AT/cata range
Rodri~
Suggested includin' notes on scout battles
redwhiteandblue~
Provided link to advanced scoutbombin' endgame tactics
Lord Bx.C~
Corrected hero attack formulas and suggested added note on hero statistics page
AlekTrebec/Bubbles~
Had reports stolen by me
Zumbar~
Contributed Reports
peir117~
Had reports stolen by me
denethor~
Had reports stolen by me and then supplied even more
Richard Rahll~
Suggested an example in hero attack differences and supplied report
Jellisanderson~
Contributed Reports
Leon Sinaga~
Contributed Reports
Lynnore~
Supplied reports and referenced her guide
arislan1999~
Reference to his guides
Derven~
Reference to his guide
Alexander89s~
Contributed report and inspired "How Ranged Units Work" section
THEJDizzle~
Brought outdated info to my attention and made me realise that I need legally bindin' fine print
mazoo~
Contributed Reports
Davoni~
Contributed Reports
Onslaughtx~
Suggested includin' the info on Range Deductibles
remediosvaro~
Caught an error in numbers on Valley warfare
dustino~
Brought incorrect wall bonus to my attention
Reverb~
Helped so much with combat formula and verified certain theories~
Sirmagus~
Contributed Reports
Fullen~
Suggestin' pointin' out the flaw in 1 man rainbows
Lord Volldemort~
Contributed Reports
poiuytrewq~
Contributed Reports
some1_317
Contributed Reports

[Darkbrady]

Reserved for any space I might need in the future; I'm runnin' out of space far faster than I anticipated.