Sword Bombs

[DeadKnightS2]

Sword Bombs are an effective way of clearing large amounts of archers for those who can't afford to keep mech or cavs in suitable amounts to achieve this type of results.

For this to be effective I'm assuming- all techs 10, and let's just say these were done with a hero of 0 attack, so your results could be even better depending on the defending hero and the hero you send.

These DO NOT work AT ALL if reinforcement layers arrive, or you send them while there are still layers in the city. Your swords will be lost for pretty much no gain whatsoever, other than they lose about 50 archers. Yeah, 50.


So let's say you take a city down to this- (or find one set up like this, but that's kinda unlikely IMO)
1k or less of ALL layers up to Ballistae
300k archers.
NO wall defenses. This would be best if he was offline or just has no clue that building 1 trap, ab, and AT will wreak havoc on a sword bomb *hint, don't let there be any wall defenses*
Let me stress the importance of killing the layers.
Even those crappy 1k layers will cause your sword bomb be about as effective a deadly spitball.
So seriously, take out those layers... For that I'd just do 10k pikes and 1k scout-phract layers (as in every troop from scout to phract except for trans).
If you can get rid of the ballistae, you're set for some serious winning killing.

Sword bombs need a little layering. Don't bother with anything slower than the swords except for archers, if they're slower, they won't do anything for you.
If you know you're going to win the battle, then try to lower your losses. In these cases I'll go with
2k Pikes, Scouts
200 Archers, Cavs, and Phracts
95,400 Swords

If you know you won't win the battle, then go with this-
1k Pikes, Scouts
200 Archers, Cavs, and Phracts
97,400 Swords
That ups their losses a bit.

So let's see-
after the 10k pike with layers, they should have around 800 swords, 1k scouts, 300k archers left, and the 1k ballistae (they seriously affect the battle. If they don't have any or you can get rid of them, be very happy).
Without the balls, send the first bomb I showed. With them, send the second one.
Without the balls, it's a wipe. You kill all three hundred archers, in one wave. With the ever so horrendous losses of... 38k swords.
With the balls, it's around 150k archers a wave.

If you used scout bombs to do this, you're chipping away 8k archers a wave at much more cost to yourself.
Enjoy,
DK

[TheArmy]

I'll try this once a find the right city

[Stal]

dude ... perhaps a WR ... everything is just theory until you can show what WILL happen not what could depending on all these random things ... the thought you have put into this is great but perhaps trying it out and proving it would be good ...

[Murtagh]

If the city has no layering why not a simple arch rainbow? This seems like a complicated way to beat an unlayered city.

[DeadKnightS2]

Stal- At the moment there is not much action on my server and I don't have a report of a good sword bomb. I have known of this for a while and not many people I know use it except for me and some people here on the forums.
And really it's not a bunch of random things.
No layers, 300k archers, Swords kick some serious archer butts. Without balls, it does a lot more. IMO it's even a lot simpler than Arch rainbows, and a lot more effective in the right circumstance.

Murtagh- An archer rainbow would take out 33-41k depending on whether there were a few balls in the city or not. Would you rather waste 90+k archers for 33k archers or 97-194k swords for 300k archers?

[Lucas101]

Send a decent attack hero with 50 intel, might give the swords an extra round?

[DeadKnightS2]

That's true, I was mostly just thinking of a baseline not including heros, so people could come up with even cooler reps on their own with good heros- this is to show people that it wasn't some mega hero that got these numbers, and that swords aren't a useless offensive troop.

[Lucas101]

I dug through the archives and found this ....

EDITED THE URLS

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

http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/a...9Kvs206Kar.jpg

http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/a...0Kvs43Kcav.jpg

This is found here http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=63051

[DeadKnightS2]

Thanks a lot Lucas! Stal- There are some reps for you, and as a note, there are more reps on post 5 of the last link Lucas posted.

[cushseth]

sword bombs are effetive in very rare circumstances, Ie. if there are no towers.. if tehre are no balls/pults..

You wont find a city with no towers, or no balls/pults, and if u do.. odds are your gonna jaq it. or pike bomb it. Even tho swords get a bonus vs archers, pikes are better for bombin....