Settlers Online Combat Tactics PART ONE

SETTLERS ONLINE COMBAT TACTICS PART ONE

There have been enough of us asking more about combat and camp composition and troop setups in the chat to justify creating this series of posts.

To be perfectly honest: I don’t know so much about the combat system myself. I use the guides, tweak them a bit with the combat simulator when needed and that’s about it.

But how does it really work? Can I do better? Or at least find an alternative solution that still works and that suit my troop limitations at the moment?

I had thought about doing some research but... never had the real motivation. Then enter Brayarg, some teasing about it (and he knows a great deal more than me) and we ended up deciding to give it a go in hopes that everyone will benefit from this.

There’s a lot of ground to cover so we’re going to break this into several posts.

For now we will start with the Basics.

THE BASICS

In this section we will examine the basics of combat within Settlers Online.

What is a round? What are the attributes of each unit? And how do these combine to form a simple attack - and expected outcome.

(following this we will look more in depth at more units and various enemy setups together with various allied combos to defeat them)

What is a Round?

A round is a combat cycle in which all units, enemy and allied participate. If, at the end of the round there are still units alive on BOTH sides, another round will begin. Rounds (combat cycles) will continue until one of the sides has lost ALL units - and thus lost the battle.

Combat Replays

When we see the replay of a combat we see that Allied units always attack first, only then having the Enemy units “respond”. This IS NOT how it actually happens.

In reality the Allied attack and the Enemy attack takes place at the same time (following the Initiative classes of the units - see below for more info). It is only displayed in this way so you can see first the damage Allied units give, followed by the damage inflicted by Enemy units.

We will make this clearer when we create a very simple attack scenario and see how it happens, stage by stage.

Unit Attributes

If you go onto the Combat Simulator you will see that a Recruit has the following Attributes (and costs):

Recruit (R)

Attributes:

• HP 40
• Min. damage 15
• Max. damage 30
• Experience 2
• Accuracy 80%
• Value 1.25

Costs:

• Beer (5)
• Bronze sword (10)
• Settlers (1)

What does each of these things mean?

HP - Hit Points or Health Points

It tells us how much damage the unit can take before it dies. The higher the HP the stronger the unit. The lower the HP the weaker the unit.

Min. Damage - Minimum Damage

This gives us the minimum amount of damage this unit can dish out. This is the least the unit will inflict IF it engages with the target.

Max. Damage - Maximum Damage

Conversely, this gives us the most damage this unit can inflict. Again, only if the unit actually connects to the target and hits it.

One note about min and max damage:

A striking unit will only give either one or the other, there are NO values in between. So a Recruit will only give either 15 hit points damage or 30 hit points damage - never 17, 20 or 25. There are only 2 values at play here.

Experience - XP

This gives you how much XP you would get from defeating the unit. This is not important with our attacking units - but it is important with enemy units if you want to know how much XP you are likely to get from a particular camp or attack.

Usually tougher units will yield more XP as they will be more difficult to kill.

Accuracy

This gives you the probability for an attack (for that unit) to give maximum damage. So, 8 times out of 10, on average, a Recruit will inflict 30 damage.

This doesn’t mean that if you were to attack 10 times, 8 times the Recruit would do 30 damage. It’s an average, something to be expected but not definite. Settlers Online mechanics are not completely rigid in this aspect in order for battle outcomes - even with exact same setups - yield slightly different outcomes pretty much every time.

Value

Is how much the unit is worth in terms of gold coins. This is not necessary to the combat itself, but it is useful if you want to use a cost effective setup to take down a particularly difficult camp. It helps give you an idea how much an adventure can cost you resource wise - and compare that to how much you can get from it.

There are two, very important things, that are not mentioned above, and those are Initiative and Abilities.

Initiative

Each unit can have one of the three types of initiative:

Fast - First Strike

Normal - Second Strike

Slow - Third Strike

Fast - First Strike

This means this type of unit, within a round, is the first (fastest) to engage in combat (to strike).

Normal - Second Strike

Normal units attack secondly, after first strike units (if they are present, on either side).

Slow - Third Strike

Slow units are the last ones to attack. They wait for First Strike units to attack, followed by Normal units, only then having their turn.

Using a combination of different types of units to respond to a particular enemy camp composition is usually the best strategy.

There are also three extra characteristics, called Abilities that each unit can possess as added to Initiative. These are:

Attack the Weakest

AC Bonus In Tower

and

Splash Damage

Let’s see how they work.

Attack the Weakest

The name says it all. A unit that has this type of Initiative characteristic will, when it’s time comes, attack whichever units are the weakest on the opposite camp. If they kill them all but still have more attacks, they will go after the next weakest unit, until their attack ends.

We will examine the consequences of this - and how to adjust accordingly - in a subsequent post.

Another characteristic that you will see on some units is AC Bonus in Tower.

AC Bonus In Tower - Armor Class Bonus In Tower

This means if the unit is inside a tower (building) during an attack, it automatically acquires DOUBLE hit points.

For allied units this does not matter (unless through PvP - player versus player attacks - only these are not implemented yet) since they will always be inside garrisons and being the ones attacking enemy buildings (camps, towers, castles, etc).

But it matters for Enemy units. In some adventures (Stealing From The Rich and Traitors if memory serves) you have a few camps that are Towers, that are needed to be destroyed in order to successfully complete the adventure. The units within, of course, will have this ability, which makes them twice as tough as normal (usually archers). This means our troop composition must account for that extra factor.

Still, if you’re not attacking a camp which is in fact a tower, you do not need to worry about any of the Enemy units having this characteristic.

Splash Damage

In regular combat when Unit A attacks Unit B, the damage Unit A inflicts may be greater than Unit B’s Hit Points. This means Unit B dies. But what happens to the excess damage?

Well, with normal units this damage is LOST.

But, in units (usually Boss Units, the toughest ones), that have SPLASH DAMAGE characteristic that will not be the case...

What will happen is that excess damage will be carried on to the next unit.

And the next.

And the next.

UNTIL either all the damage the Boss Unit could throw gets used up

OR

You run out of that type of units that are soaking the damage...

.

Splash Damage means whatever this Boss Unit throws at you will never be wasted and just keep hitting your units until the damage inflicted runs out.

COMBAT EXAMPLE01: WILD MARY

Let us imagine you are facing Wild Mary. A single, very powerful unit facing the entirety of your 200 unit strong army.

Here are her characteristics:

Wild Mary (DwW)

Attributes:

• HP 60000
• Min. damage 740
• Max. damage 800
• Experience 430
• Accuracy 50%

Abilities:

• First Strike
• Splash damage

Let us imagine we are going to put 200 Recruits facing her. What would happen?

Well, since Wild Mary has First Strike, she would be the first to attack. She would at least give 740 damage. Which means (considering each recruit has 40 Hit Points) she would take down 18 recruits, minimum, just in her first strike.

For the sake of illustrating the point we’re trying to make with this example, let’s say that every recruit always has 100% accuracy (instead of their real 80% accuracy) and that, as such, they always hit the target with maximum damage.

This means 182 recruits will do 18*30 damage, which is, 5 460 damage.

Only Wild Mary has 60 000 hit points...

First round finishes, what do we have?

182 recruits on one side (one at half health) and Wild Mary with 54 540 hit points still to use.

Second round. Same as before. She gives minimum damage - and takes 19 recruits this time (remember one was at half strength) and gets maximum damaged from the remaining 163 recruits: 4 890 damage.

So at the beginning of the third round Wild Mary still has 49 650 hit points to spare.

Well, I think you are seeing where this is going...

After 11 rounds Wild Mary will be standing and there will be no more recruits left to attack.

And because Boss Units RECOVER, next time you hit the camp, she will be there, waiting, in full health, the full 60 000 hit points all over again...

So, how do we do this? How do we defeat this seemingly impossible unit?

Well, clearly we will have to use something more than just Recruits - perhaps a combination of things? That’s just one of the things we will see in our next post about SETTLERS ONLINE COMBAT TACTICS.

We hope you’ve enjoyed it so far!