Studius NEW guide to troops!!

Forget everything I said in previous posts. Build Ursa Berserkers. The end.

So, I log on to GoR and find this curious message. My apothecary is a pile of rubble for some reason and give this message when selected.

My barracks are shrinking!!

Whats with my lvl 10 Barracks? 

Power of ballistas1

From a recent attack. Note: I had Jovian thunder active :)

Rome wasn't build in a day, and neither was my PhD

Surprising to anyone that actually reads this blog, I am near the end phases of my PhD. This means I am working constantly to make my adviser think I am working constantly. Just kidding. Actually, my work load has made GoR take a back seat to writing, data, collection and more writing. Thus, I am taking a break from GoR. I still maintain my domains, but I'm not able to devote time to blogging or playing during this time of summer.

I'll be back, however. Rome is in my blood!

-Studius Maximus

Studius' Guide to Troops: Part 3 How do I start?

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

I have an elaborate system that I have developed to explain troop building--interdependence of game elements; contingencies: game play style, stage of the game, among other things. But, its just too much information and complexity. So, rather than provide a theoretical treatment of troop building philosophy, I thought I would just explain the basics based on typical questions I have seen. Here is the first one:

Q1: I'm new to GoR, I have some basic buildings done--I'm about 200-500k glory-- and I need to start training troops. What should I build?

First you will need to build conscripts. At low glory, all things being equal, you are a prime candidate for farming. Conscripts are a great defensive stop against marauding cavalry, which are the main farming troop. Because most folks send 90k cav when farming, you need at least 90k cons-in each city. Eventually, you will want more, but for now, that will have to do because you need to build other troops at the same time (see below). Also, cons will be needed to take wilds to improve your resource production in your city. Cons are just a good bang for the buck--I have seen folks with 3mil cons in one city! While I wouldn't recommend that, just know that cons are a pragmatic troop. But, don't JUST build cons... that is a major mistake.

Second, you will need to build transports of some kind. I would recommend donkeys--yeah, they are slow, but they are a good start. The reason is you might need to transport resources to or from your cities--either to consolidate resources or get them out of a city under attack. About 5-10k donkeys is ALL you will ever need. Don't over do it!

Second and a half, you will need wagons, start building 50-200 at a time. They aren't critical at this stage, but you will be very happy you have them later on. Just build a few per batch, it doesn't seem like much, but 1000 wagons carries 10mil resources. Always keep these hidden or reinforcing a nearby wild!

Third, after a healthy amount of cons and transports, or at the same time, start building tier 2 troops in this ratio: 4:2:1-- Skirmishers: Cav: Legs. My advice is when you have about 90k skirms, 45k cav and 22k legs, you can start on tier 3 troops.

This ratio is designed to get you offensive/defensive power and some farming troops. Skirm and legs are your offense/defense, while cav are for farming. After that, or during these builds, start throwing 250-500 centurions into the queues.  Having 10k cents to back up your cons and legs is a major benefit.  This approach could be thought of as a 8:4:2:1 Skirm:Cav:Legs:Cents ratio--but the point is I wouldn't start tier 3 until you have a large and steady supply of resources either from alliance or from your own farming. Building scorps and shock doesn't make a lot of sense until you have a good strong base of tier 2 troops. That is my opinion.

Once you are at about 1.2 mil glory, including 180k cons (assuming 2 cities), 20k donkyes (or 1000 wagons), 90k skirm, 45k cav, 22k legs and 5-10 cents, its time to go to the next stage of building.

Side Note: Of course, you can build all you want, then some jerk comes a long with 90k skirm and wipes out your army. It happens. But, the more and better troops you have, the less likely you will be hit. If you want to build troops with out fear of losing them from attackers, keep them hidden. But, you also need to consolidate all your troops in one city--there are exceptions, but this is your best bet. (Remember, for now keep cavalry and transports hidden or in a nearby wild).

Of course,whether to hide your main troops or not depends on if you are at war or in a top alliance. That choice is up to you!

Next time: I have basic troops... now what? Can I build ballistae???

Provinces from Glory of Rome

(c) Kabam, inc. 2010

Just click on the map to see a larger version. 

Studius’ Guide to Troop Building Part 2: Troop Tiers 3-4

 Part 1    Part 2  Part 3

Ok, now we get to talk about the good stuff!:  tier III and IV troops. These are considered the “big guns” because they seem to promise a ton of firepower compared to lower tiers. This is true, to a point. These troops do offer an immense advantage in one on one battles, and there are some definite advantages to these troops. But, don’t forget, there are disadvantages as well, and these are keys to understanding how to build an army that will either defend or attack with maximum effect.

But, before we move on to army building philosophy, we need to cover the pros and cons of the tier 3 and 4 troops:  scorpios, shock cavalry, centurions and the big boys, ballistae!  Here, once again, is my "battle matrix" which gives an objective measure of troop effectiveness. The score to the right is the "raw battle score" or RBS. It is weighted so that if a troop is effective against a higher tier, it receives a bonus. I will be referring to this throughout the post when talking about troop strengths and weaknesses in battle.  

Tier III Troops: Scorpios, Shock Cavalry, and Centurions

Scorpios (scorps): These are ranged troops with much more range and attack than skirmishers. They are faster as well. They are excellent killers, taking down foot troops with ease—a few thousand scorps can destroy an army of conscripts or even legionaries. However, as with most troops, scorps have a major weakness: cavalry (and shock cav).

 This is extremely important because not only do cav have an advantage over scorps, they actively seek them out to kill them in battle. In other words, cav will bypass other troops and head straight for ranged troops, including scorpios. What makes this even more important is that while all troops have a weakness, tier 3 are usually pretty robust against tier 2 counter-troops (e.g., centurions will easily kill skirmishers). Not so with scorps. Both cav (tier 2) and shock cav (tier 3) will kill scorps. This liability is reflected in the scorpios surprisingly low RBS of -2.5, and with a food requirement of 35/hr, these troops are good, but maybe not a great choice for a main force in your army. (As a side note, I have never seen scorpios survive a major attack on a city with cav). And if you want to build 90k scorps, you will need 81 mil iron along with 18 mil stone, 45mil lumber, and 90 mil food.

Shock Cavalry (shock): These are a much improved version of regular cavalry, strong against ranged troops (very strong in fact) but relatively weak against melee troops. The only troops that can kill shock cav, and survive, are cents. Not even ballistae are safe from shock cav.  Legionnaires will die, one for one with shock, so it is an even trade. This makes shock cav a very dangerous weapon considering most armies as of May 2011 (just after the 4^th city upgrade) are ranged. (Although, I believe this is changing as folks are building more centurions after the recent patch reduced build time time by 75%).

Shock cav are a fantastic troop, and this is reflected in their RBS of 10, the highest of all troops (largely due to the fact they can kill ballistae). A couple things to remember, they are fast and will die first in most cases. They run ahead and attack ranged troops, but are extremely effective against ALL ranged troops. They have a high food requirement of 35/hr. And, if you want to build 90k shock cav, you will need 81 million iron along with 18 mil stone and 27mil lumber, and a whopping 108 mil food.

Centurions (cents): These troops have an excellent reputation. And it is well deserved. Cents are powerful and effective against all troops except scorps and ballistae. However, the only troops that can kill a centurion, one on one, are ballistae. Scorpios will tie a centurion, troop for troop, but I’ll take that any day. A tier 3 troop for a tier 3 troop is a decent trade. Centurions do well against scorpios due to their speed and defense—cents have the highest defense of all the troops and are faster than everything but cav, shock and ballistae. This is reflected in the the Cents relatively high RBS of 7.5. It is lower than shock only because of the shock’s ability to kill tier 4 troops.

Centurions are very well suited for either attacking or defending, and are the last defense against the devastating shock cav. In large numbers they can be almost unstoppable. But, the problem is keeping a large mass of centurions is expensive, just like other tier 3 troops, food upkeep is 35/hr. But more than that, building cents is very expensive: 90k cents requires 99 mil iron, 9mil stone, 45mil lumber and 90 mil food. It should become very clear that tier 3 troops require massive amounts of iron and food to build—of course this could affect the resource economy of GoR, severe food and iron shortages.

Tier IV: Ballistae! (ballis)

The legendary ballistae! I have some experience with these troops, at one point I had about 12k of them in one city. (I realize that others out there have had much more, but 12k is a lot considering their expense and upkeep). But, they seem to be an odd troop, and it’s hard to know just how to use these guys. Nonetheless, on paper they are pretty awesome. But there are a few serious concerns with ballis that you will want to think about before building a 90k troop ballistae army.

This is the strongest troop in GoR in pure fighting ability. These are very long range killers, much longer range than scorps and skirms. What is interesting is they are very, very fast. Faster than all troops with the exception of cavalry (which is strange considering how huge they are relative to other troops). Also, I should mention that they are very vulnerable to wall ballistae, never send your ballis against a city with wall ballis, it won’t end well!

Now, these troops are ONLY vulnerable against shock cav, can be challenged by regular cav. That is, shock cav win, and regular cav tie. This is really important because again, cavalry seek out ranged troops, which means they will head straight for skirm, scorps and ballistae when attacking.  (You might see why I think cavalry and shock cav are such a great troop…). Despite this downside, ballistae are unstoppable against melee troops. The only problem will be when the ballistae are outnumbered, which will be 99% of the time. Why? Well consider these numbers: 180 mil iron, 270 mil stone and lumber and 360 mil food, along with 900k population. That is what it takes to build 90k ballistae, not to mention, even with the build time reduction, you are lucky to get 200 ballistae in an hour. Yes, that means at least 450 hours of build time. And 90k shock cav will wipe them out (which take less than half the time and resources to build).  This is why ballistae have a RBS of only 9, one less than shock cav. And probably the most critical aspect of ballistae is not their attack or defense, but their upkeep... it is 100 food per hour! Yes, that means your 1000 ballis need 100k food per hour! 90k ballis? 9 mill food/hr! This is why you will rarely, if ever see large numbers of ballis---the most I have seen have been around 25k, which alone is 2.5 mil food/hr--compared to cents or scorp at 875k food/hr. Imagine how that guy felt when his 25k ballistae met 25k shock cav! Not good...

That covers all the Tier III and IV troops. You might disagree with some of my assessments, but numbers don’t lie. These troops are expensive. Building large numbers is difficult, and even with reduced build times, they take many hours longer than tier 2 troops. But, given the right army and circumstances, they can be devastating.

Next post in this series will take on the question: What army should I build? The answer will be based on a number of factors: where you are in the game (# cities, glory etc.), what you want to do in the game (fight, survive, grow, etc.), as well as how you want to play. And some of these issues will also depend on how your cities are set up. Oh fun!

Till net time!

Studius' Guide to Troops: Part 1 Tier I and II troops

Part 1  Part 2 Part 3

Introduction

This is a tough and touchy topic. People who have played GoR for a long time will probably have opinions that differ from my own. However, I will try to incorporate many of the different points of view, or philosophies, into the explanations to follow in later posts. For now, I am going to provide basic information on troops: strengths, weaknesses, resource usage, etc. In later parts of this series, I will provide more comprehensive advice on how to build an army. I am still learning, and what I have experienced in the past has shaped my views, but I might come to different conclusions later as my experiences evolve. 

The first thing you need to know is about the different fighting troops that you can build and how they are “tiered” into 4 categories.  Each of these troops have strengths and weaknesses which must be understood to build an effective army, and each tier represents a more effective troop than the lower tier. (In addition, understanding the resources required to build the troops as well as the food resources necessary to maintain the particular troops are critical.)

When it comes to discerning which troops are “better” than others, it is important to remember the fact that numbers matter! All the calculations below are based on 1on 1 battles (and are drawn directly from Kabam's own material).  For instance, when different size armies are involved, say 500 centurions versus 50,000 cavalry, the superior abilities of centurions will become less of a factor due to the large numbers of the opposing army (e.g., all the cents will die, and most of the cav will survive).  This is a KEY concept in GoR, sometimes better troops don't guarantee a win due to having inferior numbers. This is an important concept because it requires massive resources and upkeep to train and maintain, say 90k centurions (Tier III), but significantly less is required for 90k legionaries(Tier II), which means you can have 2-3x more legs for the same “cost” as cents. Thus, early on when deciding what to build you must factor in the resources required to build and maintain high tier (3-4) troops (for example, Ballistae require a massive 100 food/hr per unit!). This is a concept we will explore in later posts as well—and will be a major part of philosophy of army building. Always remember, what you build, you have to maintain! And you can have massive numbers of lower tier troops (1-2) or lower numbers of higher tier (3-4). 

To help with differentiating the troops beyond the basic stats, I use a metric I came up with called the “raw battle score” (RBS) to rank troops according to their strengths and abilities. This score is just ONE way of measuring the overall effectiveness of the troop. However, it does NOT include the specific strengths or weaknesses in terms of other types of troops (for instance, the RBS of centurions is 7.5—but this does not reflect how that specific will do against other specific troops, see the "battle matrix" for that information).  And it does not include a calculation of resource use and maintenance to provide a value-based or economic assessment of each troop ; I will introduce that in later posts (because it is much more advanced).

Finally, I am not discussing siege troops or transports. Donkeys are lame, wagons carry lots of stuff. Enough said. 

Section One: Basic Troops Tiers 1-2

Tier 1: Conscripts

Conscripts: These are the basic melee troop. They are only really effective against cavalry, and are weak against all other troops.  They are only really good for three tasks: Defending against cav attacks, taking wilds, and taking down wall defenses. I would not bother making more than 180k per city. They are cheap and give 1 glory per unit. This troop has the lowest RBS of  -16.

Tier 2: Legs, Cav, Skirms

Legionary: The next step in melee troops. Overall, legs are better than conscripts, and good for defense. They are effective against cavs and shock cav and are decent against skirmishers, but weak against scorpios. They have a decent battle score of  -4.5, which is better than skirmishers and scorpios (this is because they are effective against . They are also relatively cheap to make and have low upkeep (9 food/hr) compared to centurions (35 food/hr). They give 3 glory per unit.

Cavalry: These are an excellent troop which can be very helpful for farming activities because of their high speed and load capacity. Cav are also very effective against skirmishers and scorpios, and hold their own with ballistae. However, they are weak against legs and centurions.  They have a middle of the road battle score of -.05, but they have low upkeep (9 food/hr).

Skirmishers: These troops have an excellent reputation for attack and defense. Their ranged ability makes them very effective troops because they can attack without taking losses under the right circumstances. These troops don’t look good objectively based on the numbers, but they are a proven performer in GoR and are used as the main attacking and defending troop for almost all regular players. They have a low RBS of -10, the lowest score second only to conscripts. Don’t let that dissuade you; they are a powerful and proven troop with relatively low up keep (9 food/hr).

Battle Matrix

Below is the whole “Battle Matrix” which gives a breakdown of how each troop performs “one on one” against all other troops. On the left is each battle troop and along the top are the "opponent" troops. The matrix is filled with three possible outcomes color coded : red--opposing troop survives; orange--both troops die; green--opposing troop dies. The raw battle score is on the far right column (If you can figure out how I calculate the RBS, you get a special prize which I will never give you). *Hint: the scores are weighted according to their effectiveness against tier levels.

      

Below is at matrix of all troop stats for Life, Attack, Defense, Speed, Range, Load, Food upkeep/hr, and resources required to build one of each troop. This is current as of May 2011 and are BASIC troops--no research or bonuses.

NEXT TIME:Tier III and IV troops (Cents, Scorps, Shock Cav, and Ballistae!)

Studius' Guide to Building in GoR

V.1

First off, I want to thank folks like Dominantis, Edwinus, Xylia and Noriega in Augustus1 for teaching me the game. A lot of what I know originates from them, so they deserve a lot of credit. However, I am BY NO MEANS the end all expert, I just have played enough domains and built enough cities to know how to build fast cities designed to be pretty self-contained with maximum troop building power. 

Question One: what buildings should I build?

·         There are building you must build in order to play the game correctly, and these should be obvious: villas, barracks, embassy, forge, stable, workshop, generals’ quarters, academy, watch tower, rally spot, and relief station.

·         However, there are some buildings that are completely optional—you can play the game just fine without them. The buildings that are unnecessary are: Storehouse, Museum, Coliseum, and Forum. You will find very little use for these buildings later in the game.

·         The two buildings that are good at low levels but unnecessary at higher levels (over about 1mil glory) are the storehouse and coliseum. If you are just starting out, you will want a storehouse because it will keep your resources safe, up to about 1mil of each kind. The other exception is the coliseum, only because this can be your primary source of silver—which is required for research and for training praefects (generals). It is a good idea to keep your Coliseum at level 1-2 for a while until you can farm for resources once you are higher level. Eventually, you will replace each of these buildings with barracks. (See below). 

Question Two: how many of each building should I build?

Here you have some options, but note that the only buildings you can build multiples of are villas and barracks. The ratio of these depends on your style of play.

1.      For maximum troop building power, increasing your barracks to 17-18 per city is the goal, thus you will keep your villas to 5-6. Keep in mind this will limit your max population, and therefore your max troop training batches--for some builds (such as cavalry, which require 3 population for each cav built) this will limit batch size quite a bit. This means you will have to build CONSTANTLY—as in every hour, set up a new build in your queue when you are building basic troops--which is also why having lots of barracks is important--large queues.

a.       A good way to "power build" with limited population is to have short builds—cons, cav, skirms—with long builds every once in a while—scoprios, legs or cents. This will allow you to fill your queues while the long builds are ongoing. This assumes you adopt a certain troop philosophy, which is Skirms, Cav, Legs as the primary troops (this is a topic for another post).

b.      Also, have a nice, high level general as your Praetorian Praefect, this can decrease troop training time dramatically.

2.      Second option is to build 7-8 villas and less barracks (15-16). This will make builds slower, but you can have a greater population per build. This is for casual gamers, not for the hard core player…just my opinion.

Question three: What order should I build?

·         This is a difficult question to answer. You will be required to build certain buildings in the order specified by the quests, and your own uses—for instance, if you want skirms, get your barracks to lvl 2, If you want to send 90k troops at a time, build up your rally spot, etc. But if you want a higher level wall, you will need to upgrade your workshop along with some other things. Order is not super-important; just try to build your academy, palace, walls, embassy, and watchtower up pretty fast.  

                    

·         And as a final pointer, your rally spot should be the last building you build to level 9, and I mean the very, very last. It is a 5-day build, and you can have all level 9 barracks in that amount of time.  With that in mind, your lvl 9 walls should be low priority also until everything else is leveled up. The difference between lvl 8-9 walls is not that huge. But the difference between lvl 1 and lvl 9 barracks is pretty significant for troop building times.

•          The most important thing to remember is GET ALL BUILDINGS TO LEVEL 9 AS FAST AS POSSIBLE!  You should be building CONSTANTLY… research, buildings, troops and temple until they are   maxed out. (This requires constant resources, so make sure you are in a good generous alliance).

Here is my typical city:

Once you get all your primary cities built, including 6 or so villas, fill all empty city spots with barracks. I like to have all my barracks on one side of the city. Here is my THIRD city. Notice I have no academy (third cities don’t require academies, you don’t need to build it unless you want to power your research levels up faster), coliseum, forum, or storehouse, and I have only five villas, but 18 barracks.

 Buildings: Academy, Embassy, Forge, Generals Quarters, Palace, Rally Spot, Relief Station, Stable, Temple, Watch Tower, Workshop, Villa x6(or 5), Barracks x17(or 18)