Guide to combat?

[a a r o n]

I read the tutorials posted everywhere that explain the controls, but is there something that I'm missing? I lose every battle even when I have double the strength of the opposing army and I am using Tech and stuff

[cheru]

Well how are your units moving in the battle? Do they perchance runaway?

[a a r o n]

Originally posted by cheru:

Well how are your units moving in the battle? Do they perchance runaway?

I was playing as Alfheim so I was making a line and letting the enemy come to me so I could shoot them while they charged us.

[Zachmo]

Originally posted by Aaron Frost:

Originally posted by cheru:

Well how are your units moving in the battle? Do they perchance runaway?

I was playing as Alfheim so I was making a line and letting the enemy come to me so I could shoot them while they charged us.

The elves can't melee, shoot then fall back; repeat.

[Scio]

Elves are especially very hard if you're playing luna mode. They particularly struggle against lizardman who can beat them hands down even with 1/3rd of your STR if you're not using human mage comrades to fluff your backlines with magic users and swordguards hold them off.

[Scio]

been a while since I tried Alfheim on Luna, so I decided to try it again. Forgot how stupidly hard it was... like stupidly stupid hard. Probably the worst faction to try Luna with. No fun at all.
Currently on Turn 13 and at least got Lion down, Reinald down to the other forces hitting from behind, and got Harald and some mages finally from them being downed but Makan is stubbornly holding out with 1 low income territory left. Ya just gotta facepalm how hard it is to kill Lizardmen with Elf forces.

If @Aaron Frost fighting Lizards without Intense micro and Meinrad to spread mushrooms in front of your forces, it's pretty close to impossible.

I'll probably get them down by turn 15, but it takes about 400% to 500% STR rating to beat a decently levelled Makan due to their high HPrecov/def stats when you can't micro it

[a a r o n]

Originally posted by Winchedan:

been a while since I tried Alfheim on Luna, so I decided to try it again. Forgot how stupidly hard it was... like stupidly stupid hard. Probably the worst faction to try Luna with. No fun at all.
Currently on Turn 13 and at least got Lion down, Reinald down to the other forces hitting from behind, and got Harald and some mages finally from them being downed but Makan is stubbornly holding out with 1 low income territory left. Ya just gotta facepalm how hard it is to kill Lizardmen with Elf forces.

If @Aaron Frost fighting Lizards without Intense micro and Meinrad to spread mushrooms in front of your forces, it's pretty close to impossible.

I'll probably get them down by turn 15, but it takes about 400% to 500% STR rating to beat a decently levelled Makan due to their high HPrecov/def stats when you can't micro it

Weird I figured they'd be easy because of the low difficulty stars. Thanks for the advice

[Conscript_4_5C12U13]

Try Musket, you can hold the line with infantry and snipe with their muskets.

[Rin Palora]

Basically the elven troops suck and suck hard (except Minrad the shroommancer), the sword guards are nearly useless and bow guards undermine them selves with the wind magic, as they push stuff away just before their own arrows hit. This could change if your troops have more levels compared to your enemy but since elves die so easy it's hard to get the level advantage over the enemy.

I would say focus on bow archers and kite the enemy to death, they do have better range, split your archers in such a way that you have some of them draw the enemy infantry away while you move the rest of the archers to the side to engage the enemy range units. If you do it well enough you'll be able to eventually surround the enemy mele and ping-pong them between your archers until they run away. Do keep in mind terrain bonuses (lizards move a lot faster in swamps, dwarves in mountains, cavalry in open field, etc)

Better yet focus on getting comrades from other factions and recruiting better troops with them, especially knights if you can or frost mages (they have summons for support) but really any mele infantry you can get is better than the sword guards. (dwarves and lizzards are the strongest imo).

The only real advantage you have is the Shroommancer, summon those in front of an enemy charge and watch their mele infantry kill each other in confusion.

[Rin Palora]

That being said does anyone else have some general tips for combat, or knows enough to answer a few of my questions?

1) Do comrades lose XP when they retreat from battle, are defeated in battle or lose a battle?
-- What if they're defeated in battle but their side still wins?

2) How do comrades get XP?

3) What determines if a comrade "refuses to join" even when I have several people from their faction already recruited? Is it a hardcoded faction hate?

4) Do comrades give bonuses to the entire army?
-- Will an army with a comrade in it get extra morale or some other kind of bonus (besides the here's combat power) ?
-- Basically is there a point in making sure all of your armies have a comrade with them ?

5) Other ways to acquire trust besides waiting for it to recover with each turn?
--The FAQ says winning 'might' help but I've to see that happen. Does it only count if the leader takes part in the fight?

6) Extra commands?
-- Anyway to move half a squad?

7) Difficulty options, any other differences besides what the tooltip says?
-- AI gets more money / training at higher difficulty?

8) How much do you need to actually micro? Do you need to select the unlimited abilities for your troops to use them or do they use them based on w/e script they have.
-- For example do elven archers use longbow at range and regular bow for close range automatically or do I need to tell them to switch?

[Scio]

Originally posted by Palora McWhine A Lot:

That being said does anyone else have some general tips for combat, or knows enough to answer a few of my questions?

1) Do comrades lose XP when they retreat from battle, are defeated in battle or lose a battle?
-- What if they're defeated in battle but their side still wins?

2) How do comrades get XP?

3) What determines if a comrade "refuses to join" even when I have several people from their faction already recruited? Is it a hardcoded faction hate?

4) Do comrades give bonuses to the entire army?
-- Will an army with a comrade in it get extra morale or some other kind of bonus (besides the here's combat power) ?
-- Basically is there a point in making sure all of your armies have a comrade with them ?

5) Other ways to acquire trust besides waiting for it to recover with each turn?
--The FAQ says winning 'might' help but I've to see that happen. Does it only count if the leader takes part in the fight?

6) Extra commands?
-- Anyway to move half a squad?

7) Difficulty options, any other differences besides what the tooltip says?
-- AI gets more money / training at higher difficulty?

8) How much do you need to actually micro? Do you need to select the unlimited abilities for your troops to use them or do they use them based on w/e script they have.
-- For example do elven archers use longbow at range and regular bow for close range automatically or do I need to tell them to switch?

1) Comrades lose exp when their HP is reduced to 0 during a battle.
They do not lose exp when retreating successfully.
Winning or losing the battle has no effect on exp gains.

2) comrades gain exp based on their actions in battle. exp seems to be given for most actions excluding some special ones that do not hit any targets like Agnes Shout or Jyozaemon's Grand Gathering. More exp is given when hitting more than one target or hitting high level targets.

3) This one is answered in the comrades guide in detail.

4) comrades give effects to their entire squad(8 units) if they are the leader unit, based on their "squad skills" and "leader skills", which can increase the stats or resistances of the other units in the unit.
A leader will not affect themselves with leader skills unfortunately, but squad skills will affect the leader as well, just to differentiate the two.

A comrade can also give bonuses to only the leader if they possess "assist skills" if they are not the leader.
Outside of their 8 unit squad for the entire army there is no effects unless you consider battlefield action buffs

5) No. There are no other ways to obtain trust.

6) Extra commands? These are commands that are available in battle.

C - Select All units in the Army
X - Set all selected units to Auto/(March in Lunatic mode)
Z - Increase the game speed to Ultra, or Return it to Norm from Ultra/Fast
A - Select All Front units
S - Select All Back units

7) I don't remember what the different difficulties do for Easy and Normal
Hard the computer will always hire the highest level unit for the cost of a level 1 unit. (ie. Hires a level 20 military unit if the comrade involved is level 20 to 29, and it costs them the same as if it was level 1)
Luna one has restrictions on how far one can move units, how often one can move units, how far away one can hire a comrade from, and cannot order the army to do anything other than with March, Wait, Back, Hold, and Run.

8) Units do have a certain action preference. Based on the closest enemy in the range of their abilities first, then cooldowns if applicable, then buffs if allies are nearby. There is also MP to consider for some skills.
This does however mean that sometimes skills of certain kinds will never be used, so turning them off by right clicking them in the box on the bottom left can allow one to get use out of some of the skills that do not activate due to the other skills that would go off first due to being shorter range or don't have cooldowns.(this is very important to winning difficult battles in dungeon mode)