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 4th 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!
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