Basic Guide: How to Combine Troops

by Andrea Patáková, one of our LoS war lords.

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We have 3 types of troops - speed, melee and ranged 

• Speed troops are Swift Strike Dragons, Battle Dragons, Banshees, Pack dragons (+ Wind Dragon)
• Melee troops are Porters, Conscripts, Halberdsmen, Armored Transports, Minotaurs, Giants, Ogres, Soul reapers
• Ranged troops are Longbowmen, Fire Mirrors, Lava Jaws (+Great, water, stone, fire and frost dragon)
• Hybrid: Fangtooths (work well with all troops, only bad combination is with GD/ED against camps)
• Uniquiue: spies (they are not considered combat troop, good only for spying)

 How to combine troops

Short rules:

• good: range+range, melee+melee, speed+speed, range+melee, speed+melee, hybrid+anything
• bad: speed+range, hybrid+big dragons (when sent against A.camps)

Exception to all rules: "rainbow attack" that combines all sort of troops on purpose and accepts small losses for bigger gains

(rainbow attack has: Fire dragon + heavy ranged (LJ, FM) + strong melee (ogres, giants) + (optionally hybrids- Fangooths) + speed bumps (1 of each other troops) = this setup is VERY strong and can overcome far greater defending force so beware!

Long Rules for attacking: -

• do not mix speed troops with ranged troops, becauce ranged troops stretch battlefield making fast troops loose the advantage of first strike and instead make them vulnerable to defending range because they spend their first turn to cross battlefield instead of attacking
• for this reason when attacking with Great or Elemental Dragon (ranged) support them only with other ranged troops (lbm,lj,fm) and slow melee (at,mino,giants,ogres)
• since wind dragon is very fast and has shortest range of all big dragons, instead of ranged he is considered as speed troop! He works well only with other speed troops and will probably get hurt a lot otherwise.
• it is ok to mix fast troops and slow melee types (AT is best example to carry loot), but basically your fast troops need to be strong enough to win battle by themselves (as they run ahead and decide outcome before slow troops catch up to them)
• fangtooth are hybrid, they are sort of fast (but not fast as speed troops), they have strong ranged attack (but only short range) and very strong melee attack,  they can be used with any other troop type (they serve as good ranged backup that can become even stronger melee if enemies close in)

Strenght of troops

 (this gives only overall idea - with mixed armies, it becomes a lot more complex)

1. attacking: Lavajaw>Fire Mirror>fangs>banshee>bd>ssd>lbm>mino>rest
2. defending: ogres>soul reapers>giants>fangs>banshee>bd>Lavajaw>AT>rest

• simplified in both cases: elite (outpost troops) > BD > SSD > non-elite troops

When you are the ATTACKER: you either need strong enough attack to smite DEFENDER before he can retaliate (rangers or speed troops), or support your attack troops with good defending troops to soak damage (or use mediocre troops that are good at both attack and defense, like BD or fangs)

When you are the DEFENDER: you need lot of strong defending troops to withstand initial attack and then strong attacking troops (range, speed) to kill attackers before they kill you. You are at DISADVANTAGE.

For this reason I do not recommend to defend unless you are well experienced and have large quantity of good defending troops AND good attacking troops AND can minimize risk of wipe by wraith dragon (put up Cease fire)

Rule of thumb for newbies:

• ATTACKING:

1. crush non-elite troops by dragons (bd, ssd or bd+ssd)
2. crush BDs by LOT MORE BDs or ellite troops
3. Crush elite troops by Wraith dragon.
4. BEWARE, always support your attack with spying (last spy report should be ideally 30-45 sec before your army arrives, so you have time to recall)

• DEFENDING:

1. NEVER DEFEND UNLESS YOU ARE EXPERIENCED (then you don't need this guide) - resources are too easy to replace, but dead troops takes tens of millions of resources and weeks of real time to replace! You may always get hit by stronger force that arrives instantly (speeded up)

Examples of attacks:

• fast farming attack: ssd, bd, bd+ssd, banshees  - good for farming food from camps, or attacking lower power enemies (or not defending ones) with little RSS, add Pack dragons if you want to carry more loot, add Wind dragon if you want to make your attack more powerfull
• slow attack (adding AT to carry loot): lbm + AT +gd/ed, FM+ giants, BD+AT, fangs+lbm, BD+fangs, LJ+ogres+fangs...etc.
• to gain talismans from camps or egg/armor from wilds: lbm+AT+GD, LJ+GD/ED, WindDrag+banshee

To see stats of all the troops read this: http://dragonsofatlantis.wikia.com/wiki/Troops