Welcome to another edition of I, Tynion. Today, I want to talk about choosing the right man for the right job. Everyone has a role. If you don’t have a role, you are most likely losing a team game or you are playing a single player game like Golf. How does that relate to gaming, and more importantly Lord of Ultima? You’ve got to understand what your pieces do best, how to utilize them efficiently and how to exploit your opponent’s pieces. In Lord of Ultima, those pieces are your troops.

Every troop in Lord of Ultima has a cost to create and a cost to retain. You’ve got to pay for them to be trained (the resource), pay their wages (the gold) and feed them (the food). There are two key factors that are often overlooked and those are time and army size requirements.

These two factors are essential the answers to the questions, “How long?” and “How many?”

Time is a critical function of the game, as everything in the game is tied to the clock. Every building, resource, troop recruitment, and travel are dictated by the clock and how long it is required before something can be accomplished. Therefore, selecting the right man for the right job could be as simple as, ‘It takes less time to train a Berserker (Zerk) than it does a Mage.’ However that is not always the only thing to consider when choosing the right man.

The other factor is army size. Each troop type has a size modifier attached to it. That modifies indicates how much of the total army is taken up by a single unit. For example, if I have a maximum army size of 1,000 (a single level ten Barracks) and I only want to make Zerks, then I could train 1,000 of them since the Zerk only requires one army slot. Inversely, if I wanted to make only Rams out of that army, then I could only make 100 Rams, as it requires ten army slots (1,000 / 10 = 100)

Before I go on, I wanted to let you know that I am not going to be utilizing a lot of screen shots in this article. I could go really deep into the number crunching and provide proof to my teachings. To be completely honest, I think I would drive most of you away if I did that. I hope to have instilled into you at this point in my article series a level of trust in that, you believe what I am trying to tell you. By all means check my math though, as the numbers could be off.

Every Man Has a Purpose

What are you trying to do?

Are you trying to conquer a city? Are you trying to defend your castle? Are you trying to raid a dungeon or even kill a boss? Every troop in Lord of Ultima is good at doing something. There are no bad troops in the game. Some of them are worse than others at doing things, but they all are “The Best” at doing something.

I can’t tell you how many times I have had my castle come under siege since starting this game. It just so happened that my castle was on the edge of our area of control, therefore I was the shining beacon that was the bane of all our enemies troops and plans. Therefore Castle Nevamoor was always under attack.

Through all the attacks, my castle never fell. It was not because I am a l33t player with uberz skillz!!! It is because my enemies seemed to enjoy attacking my castle with Rangers and Guardians. Let me give you a quick Noob tip of the week. Don’t try to capture someone’s castle with defensive oriented troops. It just doesn’t work that way. Trust me… this is experience talking.

Memo to ‘Noobs Across America, Lord of Ultima branch’: Don’t you think that there is a reason that the Towers that you can build are called Ranger Tower, Guardian Tower, Templar Tower, and Ballista Tower? The developers were not being secretive when it came to which troops you should be using for defense. Let me do you a favor and break it down for you, minus pictures:

1.) Rangers kill Infantry Troops (40 defense against Infantry).
Infantry Troops are: Berserker, Ranger, Guardian, and Baron

2.) Guardians kill Cavalry Troops (50 defense against Cavalry).
Cavalry Troops are Crossbowman, Paladin, and Knight.

3.) Templars kill Magic Troops (50 defense against Magic).
Magic Troops are Mages and Warlocks.

4.) Ballista kill Artillery Troops (400 defense against Artillery).
Artillery Troops are Rams, Ballista, Catapult, Sloop, Frigate, and War Galleon.

You may have noted that I left out the Scout. Scouts are different. They are actually spy-like troops. Typically speaking, a Scout will kill a Scout. I have noted that on occasion a Scout will be killed in battle when there are no opposing Scouts, which I can’t explain, so I will leave that as nebulous as the developers seem to have left it.

I believe the problem with understanding why certain troops are the best defenders or attackers is that the numbers all seem to be relatively close when just looking at those troops in the recruit window. However, what you need to remember is that the Towers mentioned will provide a +100% bonus to defense to the appropriately named troops (at level ten). Additionally, all non-ship troops will gain a +50% bonus for City Walls (assuming level ten Walls). A single Ranger with said protection will provide defense enough to kill two attacking Zerks. So when you are making your Castle, my advice is to always… repeat… ALWAYS level your City Walls to level ten and install a bunch of each of those Towers to level ten BEFORE building your Castle. My personal preference is to install seven Ranger and Guardian Towers (14), four Templar Towers (18), four Ballista Towers (22), and two Camouflage Traps (24 Towers total).

Why those numbers?

I chose those numbers because the Castled city has 24 tower slots available. A level ten Ranger, Templar, and Guardian Tower will defense 2000 of the appropriate troop, meaning those troops will gain the +100% bonus to their defense. At those levels, a Ranger is 40 (base) + 40 (Tower bonus) + 20 (Wall bonus) = 100 defense against Infantry (ie, two Zerks).

Now you should have a general understanding of why those four troop types are useful on defense, but you should also know that perhaps the best defensive troop has not been mentioned yet, and that is the Sloop.

Again, I get a chuckle when I read my siege reports and see that my opponent is attacking with Sloops. Gentlemen, let me be very clear about this. You need to read the troop description numbers. If you are attacking, just read the ‘Attack’ stat. In this case you will notice that the Sloop is listed as 2,500 attack power. That sounds really awesome, however, in reality, it’s really bad. The Sloop has an army size requirement of 100; therefore it counts as 100 troops. To rate the Sloop on offense versus say a Zerk, you need to divide that 2,500 by 100 to compare the two troops. At that point you see that the Zerk is actually more powerful as an attacker (Zerk is 50 attack while a Sloop is only 25). What this means is that if I attacked you with one Sloop, it would be the equivalent of attacking with 50 Berserkers, when I could be attacking with 100 Berserkers in that one Sloop’s place.

Inversely, if you look at the defensive numbers of the Sloop, you begin to see a tremendous difference. Against Artillery (including other boats) the Sloop is a whopping 6,000. Considering that the War Galleon is a 12,000, and costs 400 army slots, you get a good representation of how powerful a Sloop really is.

The Sloop, in my opinion is the best defensive troop. Most people are a little timid about building on rivers and oceans. They feel that it opens them up to attacks from Galleon and Frigate invasions. While this is completely true, I would like to offer information that these same people conveniently don’t think about.

The Sloop costs four times less to make than a Galleon and is half as powerful. That means that I can make four Sloops in the time that it takes you to make one Galleon. Further, it only takes two Sloops to kill one Galleon, therefore I profit two Sloops in the exchange. On the Frigate front, the problem that the attacker wants you to forget is that if you sink the Frigate, the troops can’t swim! So those attacking troops would by default die. Considering that my Sloop (again) is 6,000 on defense and your Frigate is 3,000 on attack, you can quickly see what the likely outcome would be if your Castle had a fleet of Sloops sitting in port for defense. Yes, the Frigate is going to offer the Castle a ton more damage due to the army it is transporting, but the Sloop is going to blast the Frigate out of the water.

Now the other side of this is that the Sloop will also defend against land based attacks. Incoming Catapults (150 attack) and Rams (50 attack) are in for a beating if they try to siege a castle fortified by a fleet of Sloops. They simply can’t add up the damage fast enough to overcome the 6,000 defense of one Sloop. Remembering that a Sloop is 100 army slots; against a Ram (10 army slots), the comparison is 60 (6,000 / 100) defense vs. 5 (50 / 10) attack. Against the Catapult, the ratio is only 60 to 15, but you still see that the Sloop overpowers anything with the Artillery tag.

The drawback of the Sloop? It can only defend water cities and can only be trained at a maximum speed of 21:56, which is really good considering that a War Galleon is capped at 1:10:11 and the Frigate is 35:05.

Secondary Defensive Troops

There are three troops which I believe should be included in your planning for defending your empire and alliance. While they do not have dedicated Towers, Crossbowman, Paladin, and Scout are very important to rounding off your defense. I am not going to lie to you; these troops are inferior to their ground defensive counterparts. However, the only reason that they are inferior is the Tower’s defense bonus. The key here that you must realize is that once war breaks out and the opposing empire sends their men, and your alliance all send their men, it’s going to becomes completely obvious that you can’t house every last Ranger, Templar, Guardian, and Ballista that is going to be sent to your Castle. If you are properly defending your own Castle, you most likely have 15k Rangers, Guardians, and Templars along with 5k Ballistas all by yourself. Those troops will most likely fill all the Towers to capacity. So where are your allies men going to hide?

At that point, a Ranger is only 60 defense against a Berserkers 50 attack, which means they die pretty much one for one, and that is not good for defense. Offense can send a heck of a lot more men than the defense can because they know when it is going to happen. So defense needs to be better protected and fortified.

Once the Towers are full, the superior tag leaves those typical defensive troops and falls to the Cavalry troops. They can get to the castle faster, and they defense multiple troop types. For example, the Paladin is 90 defense against Magic and 50 against Infantry. Yes, those numbers are not optimum, however they are respectable considering the option of a Templar (75 against Magic without protection) and a Ranger (60 against Infantry without protection). Again remembering the time factor, these troops will get to the castle in half the time that the walking troops will get there. The draw back here is that these Cavalry troops require two army slots, so when doing your math comparisons; you must divide the numbers by two to get the actual numbers.

Last, but certainly not least is the Scout. I learned the hard way, twice, about the importance of a Scout. My advice is that if you are making a defensive or offensive city, include a Stable or four in it to create Scouts. Scouts are critical. Don’t allow yourself to think that Scouts are not important because they can’t kill men. Scouts are going to kill you faster than any number of Zerks can. Scouts provide vital information about your city to the other player. It will tell the other guy what you can make, how much you can make, and how much you already have. They can already look at the map and figure out how fast reinforcements can arrive. A Scout will tell them all the rest.

I advise keeping 5,000 Scouts in your Castles at all times. That may sound steep, but when planning a large attack, it is a wise move to scout the target first. You never want to walk into a buzz saw of 5k Sloops parked in the Harbor. If they come later, that still sucks, but having your initial siege crushed because of bad planning is just bad business.

So if you can block the Scouting report for as long as possible, you are delaying the inevitable attack, buying yourself time to further fortify and possible even totally avoid the attack completely. The other misnomer is that once a siege is on, the Scouts are useless. That is totally not true. If Scouts are included in the sieging army, they are going to get a fresh scouting report every wave. You don’t want them to know what your troops are, your building levels, your resource count, etc. Keep Scouts in your Castles to prevent that information. Also, Scouts get the +100% bonus from Watch Towers, so your Scouts should overpower their Scouts pretty fast.

Let’s Get Offensive!

Now we spent a good amount of time talking about the defensive troops. Please don’t take that as a grim omen. All the fun of this game is on the offensive side of the field. You just need to understand a simple fact. The game is designed to help the defense save the city. You need to overcome that.

Now when becoming an offensive player, you cannot look at this game the same way that a defensive player does. Forget about the values of troops. Don’t concentrate on the resources that you lost. Don’t worry about re-build times, and don’t be concerned about taunts and that from the defenders. You need to train yourself to have a mentality of, “Those walls are coming down.” “I am going to drive my army straight through that city and into the next one.” Never send 5k troops, send 200k troops. Don’t send a couple Rams with your Zerks, send 50k Rams and 200k Zerks. Overkill is the name of the game. Crush, kill, maim, destruction, mayhem. Those are all powerful words with powerful meanings. They all leave you with a strong image in mind, and that is exactly what you need to have if you want to take a city from someone. Make no mistake about it; you are not taking the city from one person. You are taking that city from one person with 50+ cities whom is in an alliance which consists of 50+ people who all have 50+ cities. A non-Castled city can make around 20k troops and a Castled city can make 200k troops. You’ve got to know that, most likely, you are going to lose. However, if you don’t lose, they are in some serious trouble.

That is the mentality that you need to have to be a successful offensive player in Lord of Ultima.

Again, there are no ‘Best Troops’ on offense. They are all good, but one thing to remember is that if you just attack with Zerks, then you will get dominated by Rangers and Paladins. You’ve got to be diverse in your attacks, and bring a bunch of friends and a lunch (you are going to be there all day). My personal attack of choice is to attack out of my first city with 150k Zerks and 1500 Rams. My second city would then follow up with 20k Warlocks (or 50k Mages) and 20k Scouts. In a typical attack of that strategy, I am forcing my opponent to have a ton of Rangers to combat the Zerks, but I am also forcing you to have a good number of Templars as well. That essentially makes the defender dilute his defense points with him needing different types of troops to combat my attacks. Additionally, my attacking teammates would send a barrage of Artillery with the sole intent of blowing the Walls up.

Rams are critical in any siege attempt. It is important to remember that Towers can only exist if there are Walls. If you blow up the Walls, then the Towers come down as well. At that point, it’s SHOWTIME! As Rangers are not strong enough to kill Zerks, let along 150k of them. Catapults are also very important in an attack, as they damage the buildings that a Ram cannot. For example, the Catapult will rain rocks down on the city, damaging the non-Wall, non-Tower buildings… like your Cottages. If you remember my last few articles, you will remember what I have been preaching to you. BUILD COTTAGES! Another lesson learned the hard way was removing all the Cottages from my Castles. I spent a week repairing damages to my attack city following a War Galleon siege.

A week?

Yes, a week… the Galleons reduced my seven Cottages from level ten down to level seven, which killed my already low build speed.

So how do I pick the right man for the right offensive role? Again, it all goes back to time. Your walking men are good for siege missions. The reason for this is that they don’t have the movement rate to be able to get back and forth from the home city to the target city like Cavalry does. So use your Zerks and Mages on Siege Missions with your Rams and Catapults. You can then use your Knights and Warlocks on Assaults, as they have the speed to get in multiple hits before the siege ends and Night Protection kills off your army. Finally, Paladin is your man for Plunder raids.

I am starting to get a little long winded here, so let me conclude my article with a couple Noob Tips for you. I will have these tips relating to offense, so as to not leave you offensive guys feeling left out.

Noob Tip of the Week

Damage being assigned to troops is directly related to its troop type. A Ranger dealing damage at its defense against Infantry rate is going to deal its damage to Infantry troops. Therefore you need to be smart when trying to conquer a city.

How does this relate to anything? A Baron is an Infantry troop. If you send a Baron with a gang of Mages to try to conquer a Castle, you are going to have some issues, as the name of the game when conquering is to protect your Baron at all costs until you gain 100% Claim on the city. If you have zero army absorbing Infantry damage except for the Baron, and the Rangers are all firing their sharp, pointy arrows at the Baron, then you are going to have a hard time getting your Claim up with a dead Baron.

This should not be confused with, it can’t be done. I am sure that many cities have been conquered by Mages with Barons. However, what I will do is offer you some advice on how to best do this.

First, don’t send Baron with your army. Rather, send your Mages and then send the Baron. Armies sent from the same city will combine at the target and become one army if they are both set to siege. Since the Baron walks so freaking slow (I am very bitter about that by the way), the Mages will have a good amount of time to get the defense carved up and under control. This also gives you time to get the Assaults and Plunders in before he arrives as well.

Let’s face it; you’re going to have to fight at night time.

The other way, surround him with Infantry troops. Zerks are your best bet, but you can always send Rangers, Templars, and Guardians for the simple use of absorbing damage. Just know that they only absorb as much damage as they offer, so a Ranger attacking is only going to absorb ten damage before dying.

Noob Tip of the Week

Speaking of Sieges, Assaults and Plunders; do you even know what they do and when to use them?

Siege is how you tell your army, “Attack this city and don’t come back unless I tell you too or you conquer the city.”

Assault tells your army, “Go full go, attack that city with everything you’ve got, and when you’re done, come back with some loot.”

Plunder tells your army, “Head on over to that city, kick the door in, and rob the place blind.”

So when do you use them? I say use them all during an attack. Remember that a city under siege must feed all of its inhabitants. That includes all the support troops. My advice is to have an army land a siege first, simply to engage the city and basically lock the troops in the Castle. Then begin beating on the city with Assaults and Plunders.

Assault is designed to kill as many troops as possible. I have been told that the modification for damage is somewhere in the range of the troops dealing five times the normal damage. Therefore if you send 20k troops, expect 15k to die but also kill 15k. Inversely, Plunder is designed to deal very light damage, but steal a ton of resources.

Now what I like to do at this point is Plunder the crap out of the Sieged Castle. You need to empty the city of all Food and all Stone. Paladins carry the most loot, so they are the best at this job. A city without Stone cannot rebuild broken walls and Towers and a city without food cannot feed the troops. Each hour the game will check to see if you have enough food to feed the troops tied to the city and if you can’t feed them, 10% of the troops will desert, meaning, they disappear in the night and leave you holding the empty bag. Those troops are as good as dead troops.

Continue to Plunder and Assault the city through the course of the Siege as the enemy alliance is obviously going to keep sending troops and resources, so you just need to keep hitting it. I typically designate one player to only Plundering. If he had 100k Paladins, set his War Minister to keep hitting the city every 20 or so minutes with Plunders. As soon as the Paladins return, send them back out. Keep doing that until they are all dead or the siege ends.

I am disappointed with last week’s response, as only one person bothered to submit a city. Due to that, I will give him by default 75 diamonds, but will also return those un-won diamonds to Silvanoshi, as I don’t believe in giving things away that were supposed to be earned.

Thanks for your effort PaulCR you get diamonds for the second week running!

PaulCR, if you are the only one reading my article, tune in next week and get your last diamond code. (assuming no one else submits an entry)

This week’s contest is a simple one.

I want to colonize a new continent. I am bored on this continent. I would like to get in on some action elsewhere, how do I best get started on my colony city?

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We have a new forum and website look coming in the next few weeks, so please be sure to let me know what you think about them.

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