Settlers Online Combat Tactics PART TWO

SETTLERS ONLINE COMBAT TACTICS PART TWO

Hi everyone,

Today we will be looking at all the units we can build within Settlers Online and their respective characteristics. We will group them by main traits and do a brief analysis on them. Then we will see how a combination of different units can help us defeat a single (but very tough) opponent: Wild Mary.

On the next post we will try and see which allied units are effective against enemy units - and try and find some exceptions to those rules! Afterwards, on a subsequent post we will look at all enemy units present in a single adventure - and try out a few setups for a couple of camps.

There are currently 9 units that we can build in Settlers Online:

Recruit (R)

Militia (M)

Soldier (S)

Elite Soldier (ES)

Cavalry (C)

Bowman (B)

Longbowman (LB)

Crossbowman (A, X or XB, depending on the guide, we will be using XB here)

Cannoneer (K)

Unless stated otherwise, the unit will be a NORMAL UNIT, which means, it will strike AFTER First Strike Units (or FAST Units) and BEFORE Third Strike Units (or SLOW Units).

Let’s look at the characteristics of each of these units individually:

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)	Militia (M) Attributes HP 60 Min. damage 20 Max. damage 40 Experience 9 Accuracy 80% Value 3.375 Costs Beer (10) Iron sword (10) Settlers (1)	Soldier (S) Attributes HP 90 Min. damage 20 Max. damage 40 Experience 10 Accuracy 85% Value 6 Costs Beer (15) Settlers (1) Steel sword (10)
Elite Soldier (E) Attributes HP 120 Min. damage 20 Max. damage 40 Experience 20 Accuracy 90% Value 11.875 Costs Beer (50) Settlers (1) Titanium sword (10)	Cavalry (C) Attributes HP 5 Min. damage 5 Max. damage 10 Experience 8 Accuracy 80% Value 3.375 Abilities First Strike Attacks weakest target Costs Beer (30) Horse (40) Settlers (1)	Bowman (B) Attributes HP 10 Min. damage 20 Max. damage 40 Experience 3 Accuracy 80% Value 1 Abilities Towerbonus Costs Beer (10) Bow (10) Settlers (1)
Longbowman (LB) Attributes HP 10 Min. damage 30 Max. damage 60 Experience 8 Accuracy 80% Value 2.875 Abilities Towerbonus Costs Beer (20) Longbow (10) Settlers (1)	Crossbowman (XB) Attributes HP 10 Min. damage 45 Max. damage 90 Experience 20 Accuracy 80% Value 21.875 Abilities Towerbonus Costs Beer (50) Crossbow (10) Settlers (1)	Cannoneer (K) Attributes HP 60 Min. damage 60 Max. damage 120 Experience 30 Accuracy 90% Value 26.875 Abilities Last Strike Towerbonus Costs Beer (50) Cannon (10) Settlers (1)

There is also another unit, but this one cannot be neither killed nor built: the General (G).

General (G)

Attributes

• HP 1
• Min. damage 120
• Max. damage 120
• Experience 0
• Accuracy 100%

NOTE: I have found somewhere else that the General’s accuracy is actually only 80%. This doesn’t make much sense since with minimum and maximum damage being the same he will always deal 120 damage anyway. Still, and until I can verify this furthermore, I will leave it being 100% since to my understanding the wikia source is more reliable.

As far as I could find, all the various Generals have the same number of hit points and inflict the same amount of damage. The differences are that the special Generals (Veteran, Battle Hardened, Grim Reaper) travel faster both on the battlefield (which is a crucial quality for some blocks to be made possible) and coming in and out of adventures.

Also - and this is crucial information for those of you doing BLOCKS! - all the Special Generals fight twice FASTER than the Normal Generals. For this reason (and you will see it in the guides) we usually use Normal Generals when doing Blocks!

Of all the generals the Veteran General is the only one able to carry 250 troops. All others transport the usual 200 units.

There are a few things that can already be extracted from this:

• ALL SWORD units (R, M, S and ES) are NORMAL UNITS. The main difference between them is that, the more expensive the more ACCURATE they are and the more hit points they have. And, apart from Recruits, all others have the SAME inflicting DAMAGE.

• ALL MISSILE UNITS (B, LB, XB and K) have TOWER BONUS. They all have the same HP apart from K (which is 6 TIMES any of the others). Their inflicting DAMAGE steadily INCREASES from B to K. Finally K units also have the Last Strike ability.

• CAVALRY is a unit apart from all the others, being neither Missile nor Sword. It is the only one possessing the FIRST STRIKE (or FAST) ability. It also possesses another important ability which is: ATTACK THE WEAKEST UNIT. This means Cavalry will ALWAYS attack FIRST the WEAKEST TYPE of enemy units, irrespective of them being Fast, Normal or Slow units. This can be a great advantage sometimes - but not always!

• The GENERAL is also a unit apart from all others. His hit points are negligible but still he deals always some damage - which seems to be the same for all types of generals (Normal, Battle Hardened, Grim Reaper General and Veteran General).

So, in fact, we can say that there are ONLY 4 TYPES of units:

SWORD (R, M, S and ES)

CAVALRY (C)
MISSILE (B, LB, XB and K)

GENERAL (G)

If we divide them in terms of their strike order we get:

FAST UNITS	NORMAL UNITS	SLOW UNITS
C	ALL SWORD (R, M, S, ES) MISSILE (B, LB, XB) GENERAL (G)	K

Now let’s look at the example from the previous post: defeat WILD MARY.

We’ll post here this unit’s characteristics once more:

Wild Mary (DwW)

Attributes:

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

Abilities:

• First Strike
• Splash damage

We saw that simply sending 200R against her would not work.

Then what would happen if we sent 200 of any other type of units?

Here are the results:

200 R - TOTAL DEFEAT

200 M - TOTAL DEFEAT

200 S - WIN: 90 to 97 S losses

200 ES - WIN: 61 to 66 ES losses

200 C - TOTAL DEFEAT

200 B - TOTAL DEFEAT

200 LB - TOTAL DEFEAT

200 XB - TOTAL DEFEAT

200 K - WIN: 37 to 53 K losses

Thing is: we will only have ES and K very late in the game. So, it seems like we are stuck with using masses of soldiers, right?

Well... not quite.

We have 200 units available right? So why not use a combination of units? Clearly it seems that both sword units and missile units CAN do some damage on Wild Mary. So perhaps a combination of both would be best, right?

ESPECIALLY if we could send some weak units to soak up the extensive damage that Wild Mary will deliver and use te tougher units to take her down.

This is a technique we can call SHIELDING, which means you use weaker units to protect stronger units. Cannon fodder in other words.

Since we don’t have K yet, let’s see if we can use LBs instead. Let’s see if we can use a combination of R (to soak up damage) and LB (to deliver damage).

Let’s do 100R and 100LB.

Simulator says that we can’t make it this way. Total Defeat.

Let’s try 100M and 100LB

Still Total Defeat.

But what about 100S and 100LB?

Now we win!

And the losses?

Between 65 and 71 S. Which is a lot better than what we had using simply 200S.

But what if we use some R mixed with S?

Let’s try 50R and 50S along with the 100LB, what do we get?

Well, we may win this way but victory is not certain... Clearly we need more Soldiers and less Recruits.

Lets try 25R, 75S and 100LB

VICTORY!

Now, we lose 25R as well as something between 62 and 68S. Already an improvement from the previous best setup.

We can continue (and we should continue!) tweaking these numbers in order to get better and better setups.

Here’s a list of the VICTORY setups thus far as well as a couple of other suggestions:

SETUP 1: 200S - 90 to 97S losses

SETUP 2: 100 S, 100LB - 65 to 71S losses

SETUP 3: 25R, 75S, 100LB - 25R and between 62 and 68S losses

SETUP 4: 35M, 50S, 115LB - 35M and between 42 and 47S losses

SETUP 5: 27M, 58S, 115LB - 27M and between 47 and 53S losses

SETUP 6: 3R, 29M, 51S, 117LB - 3R, 35M, and between 45 and 50S losses

As you can see here, you have many possible combinations to defeat Wild Mary. What you choose is up to you, of course. But you may want to consider a combination that is cost effective. Or perhaps a combination that allows you to simply use the units you already have built. Or one that is aimed at the resources you produce or can obtain easily through trading.

In any case, and if a suggestion can be made, we would say it is always useful to plan things somewhat, to see what camps need to be taken down first and what we will need to take them down so that efficient settings can be achieved for as many camps as possible.

In the long run, it is important to save troops as much as possible, to save the resources you need to build them with. Recruits and Bowmen are cheap to build and so serve as good cannon fodder. Soldiers and Longbowman are much more expensive and as such (as a rule of thumb, so to speak), one should try to preserve them as much as possible - particularly the LBs.

In any case, how you decide to attack is, of course, entirely up to you. The idea behind these posts is not to tell you what to use in each situation but rather how to INTERPRET each situation and ADAPT to it.

On the next post we’ll look at a specific adventure, look at all the enemy units therein, at the various ways we can attack the several camps in order to complete the adventure and some possible setups for each of them.

We hope this has been useful to you!