Tips for unit composition.

[Xenomorph Kitty]

Loving the game so far.

But I've hit a roadblock in Chapter 9 it seems, some weird sort of difficulty curve. It's the amount of units I'm facing, but more their composition, I'm just kinda getting wrecked.

So now I've got a decent handle on the game but not got that far into it I'm planning on starting again but giving more consideration over unit choices and squad make up as I now have some sort of rough understanding I think.

But I was wondering if some people had some good tips on how to make a decent squad? Or improve the ones the game gives you?

Sybil's squad has been consistently awful for me throughout play so far, she just gets merked by everything :/

[HomicidalHippo]

Who's in your Sybil's squad?

In the front row, I place at least 2 tanks centered (units like Sentinel, Valkyrie, Paladin, etc). Middle row is 1-2 healers. Last row is my damage (this helps protect against assassins mercing your backline).

I followed this formula for about every squad I could manage, cleared Captain difficulty no problems. Heading into Warlord now, but maybe a more experienced player has other suggestions too.

Good luck!

[Xenomorph Kitty]

Originally posted by HomicidalHippo:

Who's in your Sybil's squad?

In the front row, I place at least 2 tanks centered (units like Sentinel, Valkyrie, Paladin, etc). Middle row is 1-2 healers. Last row is my damage (this helps protect against assassins mercing your backline).

I followed this formula for about every squad I could manage, cleared Captain difficulty no problems. Heading into Warlord now, but maybe a more experienced player has other suggestions too.

Good luck!

Well as I don't really know what I'm doing, Sybil has the same squad she starts with, due to her command limit always seemingly being low I've not really been able to think of how to change her squad up. It's still the two frontline spears, the apprentice and her.

[Isharis]

Sybil has pretty poor Leadership to begin with, and there is (presumably a bug?) an undocumented Leadership penalty to being Fire Affinity, which she is.

She's a decent sacrifice/bait squad, but is otherwise hard to use. If you get Medal of Valor items you can use those on her to make her better.

Acolytes are good against Heavy Infantry, and Archers are universally pretty useful. I like to have squads of 2 Acolytes/Paladins in the front row with Archers/Warbows in the 2nd and 3rd rank. I have a few of these squads.

Stefan I have with Swordmasters, who can front load a lot of damage to their front rank. I usually use him to strip the front and then hit them with a second unit demanding surrender.

If you get the trait which gives you more dragons, Abigayle can train them faster and get lots of morale damage.

The biggest thing I would do is focus on having good line troops, that will be excellent at their job. After chapter 1, it will allow you to save the game and then go to town and access the Marketplace to conscript new troops. I would spend my first 2 tech points to get Apprentice Training and Merchant Envoys. This will open up the ability to recruit Apprentice conscripts as well as a larger selection of mercenaries and artifacts.

I would take some time to take a look for Fighters with 23-24 strength, preferably those with Fire or Lightning Affinity and 17+ Skill or a trait. Dark Affinity is also good, but rare enough I wouldn't hold out for it. A L1 Fighter with Lightning Affinity, 24 Strength and 18 Skill will be one of your best units. Earth units will have high HP but will promote very slowly.

25 Strength is needed to become a Soldier, and 42-45 for most tier 3 classes.

Bowman aren't likely to have more than 21 Strength to start, but could have 18-19 Skill. A Bowman needs 20 Strength to be a Horsebow or 20 Skill to be a Skirmisher. Both are good to get going early.

Ordinary Archers can be promoted with just 18 Strength, but I would actually use Fighters to promote tier 2 Archers as they have higher starting Strength and will be able to access Warbow at 38 Strength. A Fighter with 24 Strength that promotes to Archer becomes 29 Strength, and it doesn't take many levels for it to become a Warbow and become a backbone of your army.

Horsebows have high mobility allowing them to volley fire from range 2 (or 3 on certain terrain) and then withdraw a few squares, often to a location behind your lines. The increased survivability from that withdraw after firing cannot be overstated in importance.

Skirmishers have good Skill growth, so getting them started early is important if you want an ambush squad. Rangers are a solid tier 3 class and Skirmishers gain a +10 Skill. A L1 Bowman with 19 Skill will become a Skirmisher with 29 Skill. It takes 38 to promote, so like Fighter -> Archer -> Warbow you can access Rangers pretty easily with a 19 Skill Bowman. An 18 Skill Fighter can do similar, just a little slower, but if they have good Strength that's also fine.

Apprentices with Water or Dark Affinity and Magic 28+ at L1 are good buys. Keep in mind that you can see other Apprentices with Magic 28+ with other Affinities, but they will fall behind as you level up. Traits on Apprentices are nice if you can get them, but keep an eye on what they do as many aren't that great for an Apprentice as they would be for a Fighter, while others (like Arcane Barrier) are very nice for an Apprentice.

Medics follow the same path as Apprentices, though they will be more in the 24+ Magic for optimal.

Militia have starting stats similar to Bowman, with upwards of 21 Strength and 18 Skill at L1. Militia only have 2 real viable paths: Swordsman or Acolytes. Hiring mercenary Acolytes will have about +10 extra Magic above an organic Militia->Acolyte and no sacrifice for those points. Sword Fighters and Sword Masters hired as such sacrifice a big chunk of Magic they don't need for a big chunk of Skill that is vital.

I would generally recommend buying Acolytes, Paladins and Valkyries as mercenaries when possible, as well as Sword Fighters and Sword Masters. You can train them organically, but they are always going to inferior units because Militia stat growth is poorly suited for any of these. They aren't good enough at Magic in one path but their medium Magic growth is largely useless in the other.

If you run into conscripts with Prodigy or Captain traits, and they are otherwise decent units you can put in a squad with Barnabas to get some extra Leadership growth. I recommend having at least 1 ranged unit with Barnabas, so that he can snipe a little bit. Just having that volley fire gives a chance for his units to gain Leadership from his Mentor trait.

One of the biggest things really is the units primary attribute though. Just having better starting Strength and a corresponding good Affinity, or a good Skill or Magic will make a huge difference. Those Water Affinity Cavalry will take forever to become Knights, your Earth Affinity Militia will suck at Sword Fighting and your Fire Affinity Apprentices will be Apprentices till the end of the game, struggling to ever become a Fire Mage.

You story characters will pretty much always be good enough to lead squads. Sybil being the exception, and she really just needs to grab some locations to get Leadership boosts, and Medal of Valor should head her way whenever you find them. They give +2 Leadership up to 50 and +1 up to 70. Few story characters have under 50, so she'll get the best return on them.

[Xenomorph Kitty]

Thanks for the tips, a lot to take in!

[Zalugar]

Haha yeah, Sybil is kinda trash at the start. Her affinity is fire, which SUCKS for healing and you can't class change her to something useful for story reasons. So an easy way to make her a better healer would be to give her an Affinity: Water or Dark scroll. If you can't do that or don't want to, pretend she doesn't exist and maybe even just bench her and a get a real healer to replace her. She does have a really good trait though.

Front line should be tanky units. Fighters are best early with militia being okay as early tanks but frontline affinity types are usually Earth or Fire, with Light also being acceptable when not just being used a leader (but Light is extremely rare anyway and should really be a squad leader). Water and Dark should avoid the frontlines; Lightning can be okay but better to not. Keep that in mind when recruiting units too.

Good early tanky units are Acolytes and just plain Soldiers. If you can upgrade them Sentinels and Paladins are the tankiest you can get.

As for comp, try to have 3 or at least 2 on your front line; the damage spreads out MUCH better. Unless RNG dictates they really don't like one guy.

For versatile damage, try making a squad of horsebows. Very useful. Probably won't even need a healer in it.

As for strategy, make one really tanky squad (3 tank, 2 healer, etc) and put them on the very edge of where an enemy can attack. The AI will always attack the lowest threat rated unit in its range of attack, and even then will often use archers to do it from a distance instead of their whole squad.

[sdf_momar]

Originally posted by Venom Gaming:

Well as I don't really know what I'm doing, Sybil has the same squad she starts with, due to her command limit always seemingly being low I've not really been able to think of how to change her squad up. It's still the two frontline spears, the apprentice and her.

Sybil is usually a meh squad for me, but by this point if you've been using her you should be able to squeeze a 5th into the squad. Let her run around and collect map captures (mines, towns, etc.) to boost her leadership if it's still below 50 and you plan to use her. My squads at this point are 5 or 6 units typically. The 6 unit ones tend to do more of the heavy lifting.

General squad building:

You'll want a healer unit in most squads. 2 once the game progresses more, but 1 is OK for now. I usually run a couple squads without a healer just for variety, but they'll feel very fragile. You can build a squad with 2 now to use as a bait/front line.

I'm assuming you're still mostly in tier 2 with your units. Any of the armored units (spearman, knight, soldier, acolyte) are fine for a front line. Acolytes have magic resistance, while knights might have more HP depending on your technologies. A 2 unit front is workable for the chapter you're on, but look into a 3 unit front in the future. The light units are going to be a little weaker, but they get bonuses in rough terrain and can usually rely on dodging/glancing blows to stay alive. As an example, my Stefan unit has him and two swordwomen as a front and they do alright. Raskuja and his ranger buddy can usually take one enemy offense as well at this point. As a note for the future though the swordmaster, the tier 3 upgrade to swordwoman and what Narima's class is based on, make fairly strong dodge tanks.

Mages are arguably the strongest offensive unit once you have the technology to make them fire immediately.

A mix of attacker types can help chew through more enemy units. All melee tends to run into problems with wasting damage on overkill. Mixing ranged, back attackers, or mages helps spread the damage and avoid that.

I like to keep a few light infantry and cavalry squads around. Light infantry let you use ambush and move more easily through rough terrain. Cavalry is useful for dealing some damage and opening the space for another unit, or for rushing to objectives or dangerous enemy squads with shock. To have a given movement type a squad doesn't need to have only that unit, just a majority. So Barnabas's unit for example can maintain cavalry movement with 4 horses and a couple foot units.

Chapter 9:

I usually send 3 squads up north to the forest there, with at least two being light infantry. The enemy squads will move in to the forest and let you ambush. After finishing the knights you can divert one or two south depending on how the enemy across the bridge moved.

Dianna's unit with a hulking pavise artifact was able to take attacks from three of the gun squads if placed on the fortress (last gun squad couldn't reach). Results may vary. If you don't have a unit that can tank them you can hang back a little further and get first strike. Ideally you'll wipe the gunners before their first salvo, though one squad of gunners usually ends on the fortress making it a bit harder. You can also just sacrifice some units in a squad with the bait strategy and then march them to the temple for a res.

You only need two ally (green) squads alive to meet the extra objective. While they do like to suicide into the enemy, you can afford to use a couple of them as bait for enemy squads you couldn't deal with. The enemy tends to prioritize the ally squads over your own in my experience.

[Xenomorph Kitty]

Thanks for even more tips!

What I'm finding is in chapter nine that I don't have really an effective way to deal with the cavalry that come through the forest, light infantry squads I have which are Stefan and the Cat guy don't do enough damage to wipe a squad and not take significant damage in return, making them pretty much get merked to death when it's the enemies turn.

As far as artefacts go I must have really bad luck if the shop inventories are random and prizes from the arenas are random too because I've found nothing really useful.

Most useful thing I have is likely the green shattersword thing that ignores 20% of armour, no joke I really don't have any sort of other artefact that does anything except boost stats, and I've checked the shops every chance I get.

The armies from the south I can largely deal with, although the gun guys are ridiculous, I know they're meant to be good against armour, but I usually try to have Diana tank in the small fort. The gun guys literally one shot her.

Jules squad is him and four horsebows, he's reasonably decent although I can only really finish off squads with him which I know is kind of the idea. But given the enemy squads seem to roll around with at least one to two decent healers each even finishing them off can be a pain.

I think I've just had really bad luck on artefact rolls and squad building.

[aegis3d]

Quite a bit of good advice on this thread. The main part to make a long story short I'd say is not to leave the original units as they are in general. You usually either want to really specialize squads, or have a very nice mixed combo that works together. The simplest change with Sybil is to either add 1 more frontline unit to add enough damage to make her viable, or add 1 more healer to make her a veritable wall and also out-of-combat major healer. I would not add a utility unit like an archer as it doesn't do enough damage or healing to help, other than perhaps a mage as they do very high damage.

[Isharis]

Acolytes have magic resistance, while knights might have more HP depending on your technologies.

This is actually a pretty important point I had forgotten about. One of the biggest changes in tone of the game for me came when I put some points in the Craft tree. There are 2 +5 stackable armor techs and 2 +25hp cavalry techs. These 4 together make a huge difference.

What I'm finding is in chapter nine that I don't have really an effective way to deal with the cavalry that come through the forest, light infantry squads I have which are Stefan and the Cat guy don't do enough damage to wipe a squad and not take significant damage in return, making them pretty much get merked to death when it's the enemies turn.

Spears are really good against Cavalry. Cavalry can also charge, so placing yourself just far enough away they can't get to you, means they'll move up 2 squares away and then you can get a first strike on them. Spears also get bonus attack power through Phalanx, which triggers when spear units are adjacent to each other. A good spear crew makes a solid anti-cavalry unit.

The armies from the south I can largely deal with, although the gun guys are ridiculous, I know they're meant to be good against armour, but I usually try to have Diana tank in the small fort. The gun guys literally one shot her.

Yeah that's gonna happen. You actually want your high Skill units to engage Firearm units in melee, though even better is to rain arrows on them where they can't return fire. Firearm units are very good against high armor units like Diana, but you can dodge Firearm shots. Horsebows (especially with good Skill) have +50% evasion on attack, so they are also a good crew to sweep in and clear out Dragoons or Gunners, as they have a good chance of evading those gun shots and can shoot the back row where the gunners often are.

[Big Mad Wolf]

I check my old saves, those where the comps I hard after chapter 9 (Warlord with permadeath):
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Amnv9uleU4ioyRHwLk8gYq8aGRFL?e=yiC8xk
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Amnv9uleU4ioyRKyDal0xiMnE4J4?e=oWS0VM