How do Special units get dispersed into combat groups?

[DeletedUser]

I've been reading up on how battles work in this game and I watched the basic tutorial on Tribal Wars' youtube channel, but it doesn't cover everything. Firstly, I understand that:
Spearmen, Swordsmen, and Axe Fighters are Infantry
Light and Heavy Cavalry are Cavalry
Archers and Mounted Archers are Archer
Those are the three groups, but some units aren't expressly put into those. I know that Paladins go with the group that has the highest percentage of provisions of the army, but I have been unable to find any information like that regarding Nobles, Catapults, Berserkers, and Trebuchets. Also, do Rams attack on their own somehow? Because their whole purpose is to decrease the effectiveness of the defender's Walls. Can someone explain this to me?

 

[Tokano]

I can't even begin to speculate why the video didn't cover the siege weapons or the specialty units. I can only assume that explaining such dynamic units would take up way more of their time than they had to give.
Nobles, Berserkers, and Trebuchets are called specialty units. These units are very specific in their purpose. The noble lowers the loyalty of a village, the berserkers go berserk when they are out numbered and do twice their normal damage and the trebuchets will take out enemy siege weapons from such a distance that they will have a very difficult time making it to the walls. Rams and Catapults are siege weapons and their job is to knock down buildings. The rams will devastate the wall so your troops won't get killed on them and the catapult can either assist the rams and damage the wall or if you have enough of them, you can aim them at very important buildings like the church and wipe them out.

Yes, rams do attack on their own. It's not advisable to send just rams because they'll all die immediately, but they can attack on their own.

 

[DeletedUser]

Thank you very much! Can you tell me if any of the Specialty units combine with one of the three combat groups? Or do they simply go on their own? If so, what is the order of combat including Specialty? What are the units considered for defensive purposes?

 

[Tokano]

Absolutely!

Zerkers fall into the infantry unit even though they are considered a specialty unit. This means that swords are going to be your primary defense against any zerkers.

Trebuchets are going to fall into the defensive category. They are very slow and therefore not ideal to move around from city to city, so once you build them and shift them around, it's best to leave them sit. I typically will build anywhere from 40 - 100 of these guys in my treb villages and I'll move them around to cover my offensive cities to prevent ram nukes from completely destroying those walls. I'm not sure what category they fall in to since they are neither mounted units, infantry, nor archers. I think they fall into their own category or the get defaulted to the archer category since they are ranged. I haven't really had a lot of chances to experiment with them too much.

Rams are unique in the fact that they are they only siege weapon in the game that doesn't require a boatload of them to bring down a building level. 400 rams is over kill on rams, but it's almost guaranteed to bring down the wall to 0 when they hit. I believe this defaults to the infantry group since if we're assuming it isn't in a group of its own.

Cats are useful in both offense and defense. Offensively you don't really want a lot of them since they are much more effective in smaller waves. For example, I sent 3 of them on an attack with a full nuke earlier this week and I expected them to just die and to my surprise, they brought down the building I targeted by a whole level. Defensively you're probably only going to build 100 of them (which is how many I build for offense as well, ironically). The reason people build them as defense is because they are fantastic at taking out archer type units. I believe these fall into the archer category if we're assuming they're not in their own.

Spears, Swords, Archers, Heavy Cav, Trebs, and Cats can be used defensively. I don't recommend going defensive in your first village because your troops will just die on enemy walls when you try and take them and barb nobling is very frowned upon (unless you're in Omerta or something).

Axes, Light Cav, Mounted Archers, Rams, Cats, and Berserkers are all considered offensive. Ideally you'll want to find a mix that works for you in your area. There is no perfect nuke that will kill everything. It's likely you'll have to send a combination of a ram nuke, followed by a horse nuke, followed by an infantry nuke. Or some mix of that.

Despite what you may have heard, it is absolutely never a good idea to mix offensive and defensive troops in the same village. You can support an offensive village with defensive troops and move your defensive troops out to prevent the enemy killing them, but never build both types in the same village. Hybrid villages are only going to get you sent to the rim. They aren't good at anything. Attacking, defending, or even farming.

 

[DeletedUser]

Thank you very, very much for all the info. This is exactly what I was looking for! May I ask why it's not good to build at least some offensive troops in a mainly defensive village? Because it seems that supporting only allows defensive troops and they are unable to be used for offensive purposes.

 

[Tokano]

Because building offensive troops in a defensive village takes away from the overall defense in that village. Not to mention, if you're going to be farming, defensive units are going to carry more than offensive ones.
So the small amount of offensive units you build there will be useless unless you're going to send them as a fake at someone and you want to bait them into thinking that village is offensive when it is really defensive.

Sending them as support... I have seen a lot of last ditch efforts to save a village by people supporting their village with offensive units. While it's going to kill off a few more of the attackers units, it's probably not going to make huge difference. The only exception to this is Zerkers. Their defense stats are pretty high for an offensive unit and they're pretty effective as a last ditch effort to save a village. Still, the attacker is going to kill way more of your units and only lose a single nuke instead of losing their defense and offense.

 

[DeletedUser]

Cats are useful in both offense and defense. Offensively you don't really want a lot of them since they are much more effective in smaller waves. For example, I sent 3 of them on an attack with a full nuke earlier this week and I expected them to just die and to my surprise, they brought down the building I targeted by a whole level. Defensively you're probably only going to build 100 of them (which is how many I build for offense as well, ironically). The reason people build them as defense is because they are fantastic at taking out archer type units. I believe these fall into the archer category if we're assuming they're not in their own.

I could see that in the TW1 it would be a good idea to build cats, because it was another building that produced them, so you could recruit cats and archers at the same time. But a cat is 8 provisions for 100 att, 100 inf def, 50 cav def, and 100 arc def. 1 archer is 1 provision, for 60 arc defense.
Why would you build a cat for archer defense when you could build 8 archers and get 480 arc defense?

 

[Tokano]

Assuming a completely neutral battle where there are no contributing factors; it is just troop vs troop:

Defender	Attacker	Defender Losses	Attacker Losses
100 Catapults	100 Mounted Archers	100 Catapults	54 Mounted Archers
100 Archers	100 Mounted Archers	100 Archers	25 Mounted Archers
100 Catapults	100 Rams	0 Catapults	100 Rams
100 Archers	100 Rams	2 Archers	100 Rams
100 Catapults	100 Catapults	32 Catapults	100 Catapults
100 Archers	100 Catapults	100 Archers	21 Catapults

That's why I build 100 of them in each village, because they have multiple benefits.

 

[DeletedUser394]

Tokano Check your results for Catapults/Archers vs 100 Catapults lines, I can only duplicate your results w/ a church bonus. Comparing 100 Archers vs 100 Catapults isn't a good comparision.

1. You can build almost 5 AR to each Catapults
2. Archers are only 1 provision vs Catapults are 8 provisions.

A better comparision is 800 Archers vs 100 Catapults

Defender	Attackers	Defender Losses	Attackers Losses
100 Catapults	100 Mounted Archers	100 Catapults	54 Mounted Archers
800 Archers	100 Mounted Archers	140 Archers	100 Mounted Archers
100 Catapults	100 Rams	0 Catapults	100 Rams
800 Archers	100 Rams	3 Archers	100 Rams
100 Catapults	100 Catapults	100 Catapults	100 Catapults
800 Archers	100 Catapults	800 Archers	72 Catapults

 

[DeletedUser394]

Rams are unique in the fact that they are they only siege weapon in the game that doesn't require a boatload of them to bring down a building level. 400 rams is over kill on rams, but it's almost guaranteed to bring down the wall to 0 when they hit. I believe this defaults to the infantry group since if we're assuming it isn't in a group of its own.

Why 400 rams? When you only need 220 Rams minimum to take down a wall 20 to 0. Having nearly x2 that seems like over kill. 250-300 seems a more reasonable.

 

[Tokano]

Tokano Check your results for Catapults/Archers vs 100 Catapults lines, I can only duplicate your results w/ a church bonus. Comparing 100 Archers vs 100 Catapults isn't a good comparision.

1. You can build almost 5 AR to each Catapults
2. Archers are only 1 provision vs Catapults are 8 provisions.

A better comparision is 800 Archers vs 100 Catapults

Defender	Attackers	Defender Losses	Attackers Losses
100 Catapults	100 Mounted Archers	100 Catapults	54 Mounted Archers
800 Archers	100 Mounted Archers	140 Archers	100 Mounted Archers
100 Catapults	100 Rams	0 Catapults	100 Rams
800 Archers	100 Rams	3 Archers	100 Rams
100 Catapults	100 Catapults	100 Catapults	100 Catapults
800 Archers	100 Catapults	800 Archers	72 Catapults

Good call, I totally overlooked provisions in my comparisons.
However, from my experience, cats do extraordinarily well in defending. It could just be because my co-player and I build excellent defense and the cats are moot, but it sure as hell beats recruiting tebs to take out siege weapons. Saves you two provisions. xP

 

[Tokano]

Why 400 rams? When you only need 220 Rams minimum to take down a wall 20 to 0. Having nearly x2 that seems like over kill. 250-300 seems a more reasonable.

I generally build 249 (exactly) in my offensive villages, however when I was account sitting IceDragon, Vonhorst sent a single attack of 400 rams and it decimated the walls even with heavy defense in the village. So that is why I said anything above that is over kill.