How do you assess an enemy? And is there an army comp?

[ElMoe.gaming]

How to assess if an enemy is worth to fight against?
How to build an army composition?

[Draken]

1. Right click on the enemy army. Right click again on units to see their stats.
2. An army usually should have at least two rows of melee units and then a few rows of ranged units. How much depends on the range of the ranged units.

As to the whole 'judge opponents'. My advice: Play the game. Save, try an attack, learn what works and what doesn't. If a battle goes completely different than you expect take a closer look and see what cases the difference. Read the units traits and stats and how they interact. The battle log is also useful for that.
Basically: Get experience.

Armies also can differ greatly between classes. Some have few but powerful creatures. Others swarm the enemy with expendable units. Some classes rely on casters or special abilities to win.

Play the game => Lose => Learn why you lost => Try again

[kristoffer]

Some things to look at and compare:
- HP of the troops
- Armor (2 or 3 will make the enemy difficult to harm with regular troops)
- Weapon damage (can the weapons penetrate enemy armor with ease)
- Do the enemy have lots of ranged units?
- Special weapons (breath weapons etc, and their burst-AoE)

Is there a mage in the army. Lvl1 mages can be dangerous, lvl 2 are very dangerous.

[Grimwulf]

Originally posted by ElMoe.gaming:

How to assess if an enemy is worth to fight against?

The short version is by playing the game and learning in the process. If by "worth it" you mean the chances of winning, well, you look at their stats and gear, compare it to your own forces, then make a decision. If you mean if it's worth it in strategical sense, then it depends on the current situation. Not every fight will gain you something. And even when it does, it might not be worth the losses or the action points.

Originally posted by ElMoe.gaming:

How to build an army composition?

Depends on the nation you play. Each line consists of 20 units. So you can put, say, 20 spearmen as a frontline, then 20 pikemen as the second line, then archers and what have you. If you take too many infantry with you, your archers will be left too far away to shoot. Cavalry in low numbers tends to die too quickly. Normally you want at least one mage in your important squads, but it can differ from nation to nation. Just learn by trying different approaches, you'll get the hang of it.

But again, each nation plays differently. Sometimes you don't need to bother with compositions at all.

https://i.imgur.com/JvtPhYI.jpg

[Maverick00053]

Biggest deciding factor is usually the special abilities and mages. Early game one mage can ruin you and late game a high level mage will tear apart your weaker units or stun lock your big units.

[FaintPulse]

Simplified: right-click an enemy army on the map before combat. Review the stats of its units by right-clicking on individual enemy units, and then compare with your own. In the very early game, simply having more and physically stronger/tougher units in an army might be the deciding factor, but very quickly you’ll realize certain spells and debuffs can turn tides.

IMO, there is no better way to learn combat in CoE than to watch battles. I still don’t enable after-action battle reports in the options. Especially when you are first starting, take the time to pause frequently during combat to inspect your units and the enemy’s to review what spells are doing what, and how movement, range and the clock factor into fighting.

[archonsod]

In terms of generalities, if it looks big and scary it probably is. If it looks comparable then numbers, magic, range or some combination thereof is likely to be the decisive factor.

[meglobob1]

The most dangerous thing in a enemy army is usually a mage, especially one with lvl 3 spells.

ALWAYS, treat groups with a mage or multiple mages with respect, especially until you find out what spells they are packing! Assassins help a lot vs mages.

My rule in CoE, 'if in doubt don't engage'. It works out quite well biding your time in CoE, the number of times a AI army has got it self into some kind of trouble, making my job much easier, well I have lost track!

[ElMoe.gaming]

Thank yall for the replies. Ill keep them in mind in my next run. ;)

[dustin1819]

As for the after battle reports thing, it is important to note that you can still view the battles from the messages window. It may actually be smarter to learn with battle reports because you can watch the same battle multiple times unlike the previous way of doing it.

Edit for bonus points, you can look at comp and than guess casualties and check if you were right using the info button instead of watch battle. Which is important since the entire combat mechanic of CoE5 is guess whether the casualties of this engagement are worth picking the fight.