What's the best strategy for conquering counties in Pocket Empires?
I love playing Pocket Empires on my Android phone and I'm trying to conquer some neighboring counties.
I usually send my speed bumps (1 Paladin, 1 Hussar, 1 Militia) and then all my ranged units. But I'm wondering what would be the best strategy for conquering counties.
- Should I add other units like Trolls or Demons to soak more rounds of damage?
- How many siege weapons do I need and are the Battering rams of any use?
- How many Lizards or Black Widows should I send to do the bulk damage without loosing too many?
Any suggestions for a solid strategy are welcome!
Given that I have no empty counties in my neighborhood to test it on, I don't have the option to test it, but given my current experience with raiding/conquering Innumerable 10 Black Widows/Lizards, your best bet will be to calculate what you can handle.
This means you will have to spy the county to see what you're up against and then check whether your army would be capable of taking it down. This isn't as hard as it might sound and it's very easy to get so overpowered, that these numbers might not matter anymore.
But to start with this, we have to do some calculating (attribution goes to the Pocket Empires forum):
What you will need:
- 1 or 2 battle reports involving the units you want to use, and the monsters you want to conquer;
- The HP (health value) of the monster
So, let’s continue our example of the Black Widows and Bowmen.
Our goal is to find out: how many of our units can kill how many monsters?
In other words, if I am sending X amount of bowmen, how many black widows can I kill without having to worry about the bowmen getting hurt?
To make a useable simple calculator, you need to find out two things. The two things you need to find out then:
- How much attack each individual unit does (Attack per Unit);
- The HP of the monster.
This will get you how many of your units can kill how many monsters.
Okay. So open up your first report. Lets say we have 500 bowmen. You will notice that underneath the writing "Round X", it will say something like Bowmen, move: 15, attack: 5000.
Attack per Unit
So first we find out how much attack each individual unit does. To break it down real simple: we have 500 units, they did 5000 attack.
So total attack is: 5000 attack You have: 500 units Each unit does: 5000/500 = 10 attack each unit.
1v1?
Now that we know how much attack each unit has, lets find out how many units it will take to kill a single monster.
Now, from the forum, we know that one black widow has 60 HP. So if each bowman does 10 attack, then it will take:
10 attack per bowman
60 HP per black widow
= 0.1667 (this means that each bowman kills 0.1667 black widows)
Now you have a simple formula which calculates how many black widows your bowmen can kill! So if you have 12345 bowmen, you can kill:
12345 units * 0.1667 (this is the 1vs1 value)= 2057.9 black widows!
BUT this is only 2057.9 per round!
We have to calculate how many rounds you have before your main units (in this case bowmen) get hit!
Factor in rounds
I presume you understand the theory of positional warfare (aka speed bumps, kiting, etc).
Your battle report will be handy here. You can see how many rounds you have before the monsters start attacking your main unit. It’s usually around 3-6 depending on the speed of the monster, the range of your unit, and which mix of units you send to act as speed bumps.
But a strange thing starts happening when the monsters get too close to your units! Your units start getting their attack reduced by half! (this happens when the monster is 30m or less to your ranged units).
So basically multiply however many rounds of attack you’re getting in before your main unit gets hit: lets say for us (to keep things simple), in our pretend report, we deduce that we have 4 rounds BEFORE your bowmen gets hit (that is, your bowmen get hit on the 5th round).
That means your army of 12345 bowmen can kill : 2057.9 * 4 = 8231 black widows in a fight (raid or conquer).
The beauty of using the simple method above, is that you don’t have to do too many calculations and take into account all the factors in the game which influences these things (these are listed below). All you need is just a few numbers. This is a nice, clean way to do things. but please note that if you upgrade something like your attack, you will need to re-calculate the "1vs1" attack.
This is because the calculation works on the basis that everything is still the same. Which means that the factors (see list below) have not changed.
All the factors that are already incorporated into the calculate above:
- Attack value of your unit (Please note that the value that is shown when you viewing them in command centre incorporates any research upgrades);
- Attack type (eg piercing) vs armor type [bonuses or penalties];
- Your attack experience + any attack potions (this can be found in your Lord profile page);
- The armour value of the monster;
- If your unit gets a +/- 75% for that type of monster;