Help with combat

[capt.phoenix]

I loved the unigueness of the combat system in Thea 1. I absolutely despise the combat in Thea 2. To the point where I just auto-resolve.
This works fine until mid-game when the more powerful challenges cause the auto-resolve to smash you into the ground and stomp on your head. I appears I need to manually fight those.
So...does anyone have any tips for combat that will help me get through the combats without going more insane than necessary?

[Lorska]

In some cases auto/resolve will actually give you better results, for example when you have a bunch of unspecialized weak characters.

In order to beat things at manual there are a few tricks:
- you could wait until everything is placed so you know exactly what's gonna happen, but that requires for you to be able to deal with the delay punishment
- highly specialize your characters, going all in on one stat and twisting equipment around that idea, some thing like destiny builds are generally usable in all challenges and physical double leech weapons can trivialize a lot of fights mid-game
- know your enemies, if you are aware what you are weak against, try to evade areas or enemies that you struggle against, or attack them, so you can choose your challenge type and possibly one they are weak at
- chump blockers from summons are amazing, as they can invalidate a whole turn from an enemy unit and you can use it as late as you want from a bunch of characters that would normally be useless in the fight

[Jimib4158]

yeah i almost auto-resolve my whole game cause tactical combat seems too convoluted.

building supper high gear in your cities is the best path to victory using auto resolve, i have all high level metals made gear in my main exploring party, and auto-resolving is pretty easy even in main game ending battle.

yeah i wish i was better at tactical, but honestly, in its current form i find manual tactical combat too tedious.
Perhaps some better auto-targeting would make combat smoother.

[Heau]

This feels dated, I had missed it originally, but in case this is helpful to someone.

As with thea 1(that I can remember), thea 2 favours very few super powerful units for each challenge type, and other units to buff them, primarily to buff their initiative.

The game picks "your best 7 units" for a challenge without real consideration for utility characters so it's best to trim down your crew to ensure your utility buffers are available to play.

Only yellow challenges tend to have relatively fast enemies with legendary true damage that can be very difficult to play around.

Red and yellow allow you to stack shielding to oblivion making you vulnerable only to true damage.

For red, you can get around almost anything with a single high STR unit with a shielding/poison (stone/wood essences) legendary weapon. 2H Polearms are generally safest as you can build shielding as you play the card so if you don't have the absolute top initiative in the end, you can live. Shielding/true (stone/metal) can also work for red but poison synergizes particularly well with spear's first strikes.

The buffing is most often done through human zercas, but you can craft a book (relic?) of common rarity with the ability to debuff speed and lower stats of enemies scaling with a unit's wisdom. Some lowlife human units can also start with that skill innate.

I beat most red challenges up to (~red 13) with a single stacked STR unit with high quality spear, that I play 2 or 3 times, and buff for speed with Zerca's Inspire with the 1-4 points remaining. If I get a shielding/poison spear, I will typically pass if the first turn if I'm first to play as first strike is too valuable. I like to run 2 Zercas in all comps so you can buff 4 points worth and play your top unit twice on board for 3 points. But it can be a zerca with a hunter or some other unit with the WIS scaling speed/power debuff.

with a high INT character, the same method can be applied to yellow challenges since dual yellow essence(stone/wood or shielding/poison) will make your spear work with INT for yellow challenges.

Purple is a little trickier. There is one relic IIRC that has shielding on attacks based from wis(vs yellow) or dest(vs purple) but I only know to craft the super end game version with god wood. For myst based character, you can generally work around the Random(3) ability from a book, paired with zercas or a unit with a quick, cover! book (or a human inventor with it). But special enemies that can spawn a board full will wreck you on large boards if you catch one of those out of bad luck.

[Gilmoy]

I'll contribute a (very) different strategy. Thea 2 admits many winning solutions.

+ Know how tactical targeting works. There are rules. Memorize them.
Melee must attack facing melee, then facing rear, then diagonally-adjacent, then nearest.
Ranged must attack same-column, then it asks you.
Sniper always asks you.

Thus, you constrain enemies's targeting by laying down cards that force their attention.
And they constrain yours. Use this to not get sacked in your backfield.

+ Understand Thea 2's deploy cost rules.
Each side gets 7 APs. Each card costs k+1 APs, where k is the number of times it has already been deployed. That means 1 AP, then 2 APs to double-deploy, then 3 APs to triple-deploy.

+ 7 guys can deploy all 7 once each = 7 AP
+ 5 guys can deploy 5 once each + double-deploy any 1 of them = 7 AP total
+ 1 singleton monster can only triple-deploy itself = 1+2+3 = 6 AP (and 1 is wasted)
+ You can choose to triple-deploy yourself, too
-- AoE wrecks multi-deployed targets. Each copy takes full damage!

+ Understand Delay, shot order, and rearranging Delay
This dovetails with both of the above. Sometimes an enemy double-deploys late.
It's usually the AI's "best" guy = has highest damage.
You want to use Double Toss and freely target both copies for 2x damage, killing it first.
But every column has an enemy in it, pinning your shot choice.
But -- your archer has lowest Delay, and can 1-shot a column, clearing it out.
So deploy into that column, archer clears that column for you, and now you're unconstrained to Double Toss any 2 targets you choose. Win

+ Beware: The AI is "smart" about this, and will always suggest the 2 worst-possible targets for you. Never take the AI's suggested free targets for your snipers. Always re-target to do what you want. Only you can look out for you.

+ Maximize your damage output.
Weapon quality is expressed as a multiplier to your relevant stat.
Pump those stats at level-up, and via crafting. Prefer the stats your weapon actually uses.
Craft better weapons with higher multipliers.

+ Specialize your heroes. Best 7 in each color, and in sorted order as they "die" off.
If you have only 7, they'll be in every fight. When you have 15+, you should specialize.
Red can wear red-only armor, and stack all damage in red.
Yellow/Purple melee goons can wield Artifact (1H) or Relic (2H). However, it's harder to keep both Wisdom and Destiny high, so they will tend to excel in one and not so much in the other.

+ Purple has Spiritual Healing ritual, which lets you cheese-heal. Exploit that.
It's a late(r)-game trick, e.g. to clear an island of 4-Leshy groups.
Memorize which hard fights allow purple challenges. Stockpile 3-5x the casting cost.
Fight in purple only, bring 15-20 heroes, let 3-10 "die" fighting, grind the foe down.
Spam the ritual until everybody's Faith is non-negative. This works in purple only.

There is no red or yellow healing ritual. It's deliberately asymmetric that way.
The set of monsters that offer purple fights was tailored to make this asymmetry fair.
(There's a mod that adds the red + yellow rituals, but it clowns the game.)

+ By game rule, your Chosen (only) cannot "die" (leave) from -Sanity.
In yellow fights vs. Orcs, let her take the big -150 hit you can't block.
(That means lay her card down diagonally-adjacent to the Brutes )
She'll skip several fights while she heals, but she will never leave.
Don't risk anybody else this way.

+ For each color, your research/gathering/crafting target is 3 melee goons + 3 ranged.
Codex (Myst) and Wand (Destiny) are 3-color, so they're your ranged in both teams.

Red melee goons wear red armor, and usually a 2H weapon.
Yellow/Purple melee goons wear 3-color armor, and usually 2H Relic.
You need goons to stop enemy goons, which are like Brutes, Kraken, and Leshy.
Don't be second-best in that fight.

+ My preferred crafting target is runaway shield growth (stone/bone).
It works in every color of fight, against every monster.
Life Leech from bone saves you vs. Legendary True damage, which hits both Shield and HP simultaneously. If you have only shield leech, the True damage will soon kill you.

Corollary: If you know (from memorizing or browsing) that a certain foe does not have True damage, then you could replace the Bone part with another essence that kills things faster.

Hence my red goons craft stone/bone 2H Axes (Str). Other weapons are gimmicks.
My yellow/purple goons craft stone/bone 2H Relics (Wis, Dest).
The ranged can be Bow (Per) and Codex (Myst).
Wands (Dest) are solid, but I dislike their slowness.
Later, IIRC there's a Scroll that gives Chain Lighting (Dest), which rehabs your Wand guys.

~~~~~~~~

Now, some gimmicks can be very strong. Heau's method of the solo 2H Polearm stud with Init reduction works because it's another path to achieve shield growth.

+ First Strike on lay-down immediately pays you full shield leech for whomever you hit.
If you deploy and hit 2 guys for -60 each, you promptly get +120 Shield, plus they're hurt.

+ Double-deploy self and you get (up to) twice the benefit. You can even triple-deploy.
That could boost your shielding from ~150 to ~500.
Then it's simple math: Can their survivors do that much damage in 1 round?
At the end of round 1, your 2-3 copies get your attacks, which could leech it all back.

It's a valid strategy, worth considering.
The other strategy of 2-3 full teams of 7 also works.
Build toward either one.

~~~~~~~~

Alas, we did not, after all, give you a Cliff Notes of Thea 2 Combat for Dummies
Everything in Thea 2 is connected to everything else.
Your power, when it counts most in a showdown fight, is the product of all of your contributions over time. There is no simple way to isolate a subset of it that works.

Embrace all of it, and learn to love it. The deep-dive through the math is the fun.
If it's not fun, find a game that's more fun.

[Gilmoy]

Finally, be leery of relying on Summons.
Summons are children's toys, useful when you're in the sandbox fighting children's threats.
They reach a tipping point where they cease to be worth 1 AP to deploy.

The (brilliant) game mechanic is that every hand lasts exactly 2 rounds.
Early on, when monster damage is low, your pet summons can last 2 full rounds.
If it does live the 2 rounds, a summons is wonderful: it completely shields your flank.

But monster damage scales up faster than summons' HP.
By midgame, most of your summons get 1-shotted.
Then it's not a solution as a line-blocker for you, because it will vanish in 1 round.
Then you get sacked in the backfield in round 2.

In lategame, Brutes and such even get a skill that gives counterattack-damage.
This is deadly vs. summons like Ghosts, because your summons can die at round 1 init 0 from its own attack! That means it blocks ZERO enemy attacks, and you get sacked twice. And the guy sacking you is a Brutes

My solution to Brutes etc. is to bring my own melee goon and go toe-to-toe with it, and win that duel 1-v-1. Hence I shift my late-game build path to specialized goons with heavy armor, high damage, and double-leech. Some tasks you can't entrust to a pet.