Understanding affinity, the help guide is just symbols.

[krazypickle]

is there a wiki with detail?

[MrPibbs]

There's a guide in the steam guides section that on first glance looks like it covers it pretty well. Unit optimization guide I think it's called.

[phenir]

Is it really that hard to understand? Did you try looking around to see what these icons represent? Like on say, the unit status screen?

[Jab]

The thing that's probably confusing you, as it did for most of us is that affinity is simply a moidifer for your CURRENT STATS. It has nothing to do with stat growth
So if you take a unit with earth, level it up to 20, then change it to lightning. It will have the EXACT SAME stats as if you had changed it from earth to lightning at level 5 then leveled it up to 20.

There's no penalty for "waiting to long", this game is very forgiving with things like that. You won't be finding yourself saying "oh i wish i had done this sooner to optimize it" etc.

The bonuses are listed in game, one + means 10% increase and ++ means 20%. Same with -. They will also have status effects in game but those are failr negligable.

Here's some guides,
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1488200/discussions/0/3412054783687665921/
https://www.thegamer.com/symphony-of-war-affinities-explained/

Generally the most important ones are to make sure your tanks have earth or at least fire, your medics have water, and dragons should ALWAYS get priority on dark.

For gunners, cannons, and crossbows, it doesn't matter what affinity they have. Earth is probably ideal but shouldn't be wasted on them, they function at 99% effectiveness regardless of their affinity (which is actually somewhat realistic to the advantage musket era gunners had in real life combat).

[abaoabao2010]

Originally posted by Jab:

The thing that's probably confusing you, as it did for most of us is that affinity is simply a moidifer for your CURRENT STATS. It has nothing to do with stat growth
So if you take a unit with earth, level it up to 20, then change it to lightning. It will have the EXACT SAME stats as if you had changed it from earth to lightning at level 5 then leveled it up to 20.

There's no penalty for "waiting to long", this game is very forgiving with things like that. You won't be finding yourself saying "oh i wish i had done this sooner to optimize it" etc.

The bonuses are listed in game, one + means 10% increase and ++ means 20%. Same with -. They will also have status effects in game but those are failr negligable.

Here's some guides,
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1488200/discussions/0/3412054783687665921/
https://www.thegamer.com/symphony-of-war-affinities-explained/

Generally the most important ones are to make sure your tanks have earth or at least fire, your medics have water, and dragons should ALWAYS get priority on dark.

For gunners, cannons, and crossbows, it doesn't matter what affinity they have. Earth is probably ideal but shouldn't be wasted on them, they function at 99% effectiveness regardless of their affinity (which is actually somewhat realistic to the advantage musket era gunners had in real life combat).

Put lightning/fire on tanks as long as it's not paladin/valkyrie. Killing more enemies is the best damage mitigation, and being able to hit and hit hard helps more than the extra hp you gain from earth.

[CthuluIsSpy]

I dunno, earth sentinels are pretty good too because you'll want them as dedicated tanks.
You'll want fire on your zweihanders and champions though because they need so much strength.
For guns and crossbows lightning is ideal because of the skill increase, but it really doesn't matter overall.

Earth and water are super common, so most of your forces will probably be that. Especially water; in my game most of my melee conscripts are water, which isn't great. Serviceable, but not great.

Anyway, to give a simple breakdown -
Earth - lots of health, but lower skill (put this on your tanks and heavy units)
Water - health and magic, but lower strength and skill (put this on your mages and healer)
Fire - strength and loyalty, but lower magic (put this on your heavy DPS)
Lightning - strength and skill, but lower health and loyalty (put this on your light DPS and bows)
light - lots of leadership and loyalty (put this on your squad leaders)
dark - lots of strength and magic, but huge penalties to leadership, loyalty and slightly lower health (mainly dragons, but mages and heavy offensive can use it too. Just don't use them as leaders)

[abaoabao2010]

Originally posted by CthuluIsSpy:

I dunno, earth sentinels are pretty good too because you'll want them as dedicated tanks.
You'll want fire on your zweihanders and champions though because they need so much strength.
For guns and crossbows lightning is ideal because of the skill increase, but it really doesn't matter overall.

Earth and water are super common, so most of your forces will probably be that. Especially water; in my game most of my melee conscripts are water, which isn't great. Serviceable, but not great.

Anyway, to give a simple breakdown -
Earth - lots of health, but lower skill (put this on your tanks and heavy units)
Water - health and magic, but lower strength and skill (put this on your mages and healer)
Fire - strength and loyalty, but lower magic (put this on your heavy DPS)
Lightning - strength and skill, but lower health and loyalty (put this on your light DPS and bows)
light - lots of leadership and loyalty (put this on your squad leaders)
dark - lots of strength and magic, but huge penalties to leadership, loyalty and slightly lower health (mainly dragons, but mages and heavy offensive can use it too. Just don't use them as leaders)

Unless you run a 3 sentinel frontline squad, having the tankiest unit be tankier won't keep the other less tanky frontlines alive any better, so it's wasted.

If you do run a 3 sentinel frontline squad... well, I never tried that so I'll bow to your wisdom.

For the heavy DPS (especially zweihander/champion): fire and lightning gives the same amount of strength. Only difference is fire has more HP and lightning has more SKL. Not missing attacks is a lot more important imo.

Base elemental affinity (not light/dark) are equally common in recruits. Also you can just buy a bunch of cheap new recruits until you get the affinity you want and train that one up, so you should always have your pick of the base elemental affinity. The exp system in the game makes training up new recruits extremely easy. Easier than hoping for a affinity scroll in any case.

Earth's hp bonus really should be increased a lot to make it competitive with other afifnities imo. Player squads don't care much about hp as long as they don't die in one fight, they only care about out-healing the damage they take each battle, and hp doesn't help with that, only damage mitigation does.

BTW lightning on light units is only useful if you need the extra SKL for something, like if you build crit traits or is stealing money. Otherwise the extra SKL is not that useful, since you never miss anyway and you shouldn't really be hit by melee attacks in the first place.

[CthuluIsSpy]

SKL also increases evasion though, which for light units are really important as they don't have much armour or health. The AI does spam archers and I don't know how you are wiping out the enemy before they can get a round of attacks off.

[krazypickle]

this is great info ty!

[Nobody]

Originally posted by CthuluIsSpy:

SKL also increases evasion though, which for light units are really important as they don't have much armour or health. The AI does spam archers and I don't know how you are wiping out the enemy before they can get a round of attacks off.

I mentioned this in another post regarding skill:
In my last runthrough I made a squad that lived and died by the skill stat just for giggles. It was mostly swordmasters with a couple of other types sprinkled in for flavor and then artifacts that drastically increased skill. Most of them also had the disarm trait and the squad included a certain unique leader that allowed swordmasters to attack first, even on defense.

That squad wasn't optimized for staggered volleys and whatnot, but as long as they weren't ambushed almost all hits were either dodged or glancing blows. They stood toe-to-toe with the last boss without issues. So yeah, skill is huge for light infantry! CthululsSpy is giving you good info.

[Abatis Gold]

You can always open up the tutorial tab and read through the game's manual. Can also read the descriptions under the affinity scrolls to better understand what each does.

[abaoabao2010]

Originally posted by CthuluIsSpy:

SKL also increases evasion though, which for light units are really important as they don't have much armour or health. The AI does spam archers and I don't know how you are wiping out the enemy before they can get a round of attacks off.

Keep in mind evasion is only useful if you put light units on the front row, and even then it's not as consistent as heavy frontline. Game's pretty forgiving though, so it works well enough as long as you are careful with positioning.

As for AI archers, they do almost no damage, as long as you have no mages in your squad getting hit, you can more or less just ignore them until you clear out the melee squads, even on ludicrous.

You don't have to wipe the whole squad out before the counterattack...? But if you really do want to you can always ambush. Or use cannons.

[CthuluIsSpy]

Magic is a thing though. You can dodge spells, and I've seen AI archers kill some of my units. I don't know how the archery mechanic works but it seems inconsistent. Sometimes it deals no damage, sometimes it removes half of a unit's health.

[abaoabao2010]

Originally posted by CthuluIsSpy:

Magic is a thing though. You can dodge spells, and I've seen AI archers kill some of my units. I don't know how the archery mechanic works but it seems inconsistent. Sometimes it deals no damage, sometimes it removes half of a unit's health.

Archer attack is a lot of low damage hits. Armor more or less no-sells it, so most units, even light units, cats and dragons, don't care much about them. Mage/healer/cannon are about the only thing that can die to a few enemy archer attacks.

Yes, if you get hit by 20 archer squads you will still lose some semi-tanky units, but unless you're specifically trying to keep enemy archers alive, that rarely happens.

Most enemy's magic doesn't do much, unless you have 0 MAG from artifacts. It's a bit like how you deal with enemy archers: just ignore them.

On magic: as long as your frontline's alive, your mid line being brought to half hp by a mage won't do anything less than if they're full hp. There's maybe 10 enemy squads in the entire campaign with enough mages to pose a real threat on their own.

Seriously, I'm not saying SKL on light units is useless in the general sense, it's just not that big of a deal, kinda like MAG on a heavy unit: it's only really useful in niche situations.

[Jab]

Originally posted by abaoabao2010:

Put lightning/fire on tanks as long as it's not paladin/valkyrie. Killing more enemies is the best damage mitigation, and being able to hit and hit hard helps more than the extra hp you gain from earth.

This is only true if you get the first attack and if said attack kills based on the extra damage. If that extra damage doesn't cause an enemy to die, that wouldn't have otherwise, the damage mitigation is 0. If you need to tank 8 hit and run squads the extra damage isn't going to matter.

[abaoabao2010]

Max hp on the frontline does have a role to play, and that's to prevent getting oneshotted from full hp before you can heal back up.

If you want to argue for earth affinity frontline, this is really the only ground to stand one.

In most cases, sustain matters more, as you fight multiple times with each squad in each mission.

Originally posted by Jab:

This is only true if you get the first attack and if said attack kills based on the extra damage.

Even when you are attacked, the second round of enemy attack happens after your first coutnerattack lol. Ambush and ranged attacks notwithstanding.

Originally posted by Jab:

If that extra damage doesn't cause an enemy to die, that wouldn't have otherwise, the damage mitigation is 0.

By the same logic, if that extra hp doesn't cause you to survive an attack you otherwise wouldn't, the effect of hp is also 0.

Except it's a lot more often enemy units come close to dying than your unit comes close to dying, so it's obvious which affinity's benefit comes into play more often.

Originally posted by Jab:

If you need to tank 8 hit and run squads the extra damage isn't going to matter.

Think about it. This is EXACTLY the situation where damage matters a lot more than hp.

Before actually getting into the why, have some empirical evidence: A dragon frontline and a champion frontline. Which in your experience tanks 8 hit and run attacks better? The one with more HP, or the one with better damage mitigation?

First of all, hit and run=double evasion=you miss a lot. You're even more badly in need of SKL on your heavy units in that case.

Since you should get healed for flat amounts a lot during that 8 fights, the total effective hp at your disposal is a lot closer between the higher hp option and the lower hp option, relatively.

But you might argue "what about the % max hp heals from Soha's bloodshard/bloodlust"? Remember that heal on kill scales off kills.

On the other hand, you get 8 chances of killing something extra with a more damaging setup, so you get around 8x the difference in average damage mitigation.

And that's before considering how STR increases damage resistance and SKL increases evasion.

Here's a handy video that I have of surviving a lot of attacks by going damage (went dark affinity here though, since the squad has St.Teresa's Tiara, and dark at least doesn't reduce SKL like earth does):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdsUA3k9M1M