Looking at the simple battle mechanics.
Generals
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Unfortunately, the game is so heavily loaded in favour of crossbow and archer units for combat damage, but heavily in favour of mounted units in terms of General specialisations and skills, that few Generals are really worth having in the base 10 ranged, 6 melee base army that serves to take out 100% of everything you will face.
The best General, by far, is the Han General Geng Gong. His skill forces an immediate attack upon the chosen position in his range from all ranged units with ammunition remaining on the battlefield, on your side.
Yes, I only included within his range for a reason. It doesn’t matter where the ranged unit is, it will fire upon the position chosen by the skill, even at the complete other end of the battle map, with the speed of the weapon, but bypassing weapon cd if the weapon had just fired. Javelins could be helped by the skill if you actually needed to go in depth enough to use javelins in the first place.
You can open any walled town through the use of the skill, since city defenders will leave the town and attack if you use the skill on any of the units defending the city (which incidentally will probably kill the targeted unit outright)
The other Han General is ok, allowing more range for spear attack for a limited time, so you can hide your spear in the sword and shield units, instead of just in front. Good for Kushan, so your spears take the few elephants that get to you out, without being vulnerable to the javelins.
Unfortunately, still better to just have your Generals equipped as the max tier archers you can, regardless of their skills or attributes or specs, unless they have a crossbow skill, not cav crossbow skill, just crossbow skill.
Most of the other Generals are garbage, other than for Empire or city management. The skills look interesting, but the game doesn’t offer the opportunity to use them. The AI doesn’t build it’s cities, spiralling into constant bankruptcy, regardless of how much I try to subsidise them into building more than useless public order or fish producing buildings, which fish is pointless, by the way, without the fish market building which transforms the fish into gold, which market the AI never builds, regardless of subisidies; feeling like I’m repeating myself.
Equipment
By far the most interesting part of the game. Equipment determines the unit. All units can have their gear customised.
There are five gear categories, four of which are usable for the moment, the last, which is for banners, has no items available, yet, if ever.
The other 4 are horse, weapon, armor, and footwear.
There are 6 different weapons: spear, sword and shield, 2h sword, javelin, bow and crossbow. All but the 2h sword and javelin can be used with horses, to become a mounted unit with 1/3rd less units. This is, currently, pointless, mounted units are just so much worse, unfortunately, despite the setting of the game.
Higher tier weapons have higher damage. This is not a pointless observation. The damage differential between tier 1 and tier 2 weapons is enormous, even more so for tier 3.
Tier 3 equipped units will do close to 3 times the standard damage and other than crossbow, which already starts at a high armor pierce, 3 to 5 times as much ap (tier 1 archer 3 ap, tier 3, 15 ap)
One type of footwear, either tier one, tier 2 or tier 3. Higher tier, more armor, higher attack interval.
Armor has two types, heavy and light, these affect defence, aka, dmg mitigation, more for heavy, less for light. These also affect the attack interval, heavier for a higher attack interval, lighter for less.
This applies to the tiers, lower tier light armor has a lower (better) attack interval. Unfortunately, this appears to mean that low tier armor, high tier weapon ranged units appear as best, but they added an arrow type to each tier of archer: poison for tier 2 archers, fire for tier 3. What these do exactly isn’t clear, but the damage is significantly greater for each one than the previous.
That said, you don’t need to worry about what you recruit: light armored spear all day, because they’re the cheapest. You just change the equipment load out of the unit at will: tier one archer becomes a tier 2 spear with the right gear. This is awesome as a concept to maintain the use of veteran units, even if their troop type becomes obsolete, or less useful: too many cav, just remove the horse; need a contingent of crossbow for the ap, instead of a couple of archers or whatever, just change gear.
It sounds great, but the game’s AI is too basic to take advantage of it.
Ranged units will form 60-80% of your army, highest tier weapon possible, followed by highest tier light armor and highest tier footwear.
Highest tier possible for melee units, starting with heavy armor, then footwear, then weapon, that’s all you need.
Ranged units dominate so heavily that a wall of 3 melee units is probably all you need, the only issue might be consecutive battles during a Kushan invasion.
Battle
I haven’t yet, and will not now name “the franchise”, but if this is the competition, it can act like Tony Stark during the congressional hearing in Iron man 2, despite producing the same results as the states and corporations he was making fun of.
In other words, the combat AI is worse than an exoskeleton that snaps your spine in a faulty movement.
Apparently, the enemy has one directive: attack the center of the player’s line, as fast as possible, regardless of how this order affects the general cohesion of the army and it’s ability to inflict damage.
Line of four melee, line of 4 xbow, line of 3 bow, line of 3 bow, 2 trebuchet (if Han, if not, the Trebuchet aren’t available, not that necessary, just fun to watch). highest weapon tier for ranged, highest armor and footwear tier for melee and if possible, highest weapon tier. Wipe everything.
That simple, unfortunately. There is a lot of availability for customisation, but it’s shallow. You’d think that a full tier 3 unit (weapon, armor, footwear) would have a bonus to stats for being a tier 3 unit, along with it’s bonuses for gear, to offset the fact that tier 3 gear is heavier and reduces attack speed.
So much potential. Cavalry is awesome, not useful, but perfectly created. The cavalry charges are true cavalry charges: you click past the unit, use the cavs charge skill, remove auto attack and charge through the unit, killing a bunch of units as you go clear through and regroup at your targeted location. The skill isn’t necessary for a charge, but it helps increase speed and impact power for cleaner charges, not that the game is capable of presenting situations where the use of charges is productive as a means to defeat an enemy.
In the end combat comes down to a bunch of ranged units hiding behind a thin line of melee sword and shield., if facing Kushan, add two spears that cover the 4 sword and shield to take out any elephants that make it to the line. Heavy spears melt any mounted units in seconds, as do fire arrows and tier 3 xbow.
Final Words
This game has 2 of the best mechanics introduced to the genre in the past ten years with the gear crafting and unit equipping.
This allows a level of customisation and control over the composition of an army which has never yet been seen. You can change your army to fit the situation, or would be able to if it were necessary.
I can see a different level structure for each unit, as well as a general General level structure, which is separate from the General general unit structure, which is dependent on the unit type.
So Generals gain levels independently from the units under their command, which also gain level, based on their unit type: meaning a level 10 General, can have a level 8 spear unit ability, level 4 archer unit ability and level 5 sword and shield ability, while also having whichever unit specialisations they can unlock through level gain, which should never be identical to other multiple lines of the level tree, which at the moment they are far too often.
All the pieces are there.
Better weight for management is necessary, so AI kingdoms aren’t rushing to bankruptcy.
Don’t be lazy with cheaty production, which at the moment is available to the ai, as evidenced by the fact that a bankrupt ai can have tier 2 or even 3 gear available to be stolen after a victory.
Yeah, this game doesn’t require a guide, it really doesn’t require anything, because anyone familiar with the genre will find it insanely easy and unable to take advantage of the new mechanics presented, and anyone new to the genre will find it boring and tedious.
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