Troop Tiers

Hey guys, I was doing some research on troop tiers and found this information at appheroics.com.  

Here is the source of the information below:

http://appheroics.com/game-of-war-troops/

There are 4 Game of War Troops types: Infantry, Ranged, Cavalry, and Siege and each type is weak or strong against the others. If you look at the order they are listed in the Barracks screen, it’s a circle you can memorize. Infantry are weak against Ranged, Ranged are weak against Cavalry, Cavalry is weak against Infantry. If you’re more of a visual learner, imagine an army of Infantry soldiers charging up a hill only to face a terrifying rain of arrows from the Ranged units at the top. Unfortunately, the archers weren’t paying attention to their flank and get mowed down by Cavalry riders that had circled around behind them. Then the victorious Cavalry foolishly charge against another group of bad ass infantry who have formed an impenetrable shield walland gut the passing horses with their spears and swords.

Siege is a unique type, as its purpose is destroying wall traps when attacking an enemy city. Siege is weak against all other troop types and they are fairly ineffective against opponents with no traps or when sent as reinforcements to defend a fellow alliance member’s city. When troops fight against the same type, i.e. Infantry vs. Infantry, the outcome is decided by who has better boosts as determined primarily by research and hero skill point allocation.

Normal Troops

There are 4 different Tiers of every type, each stronger than the last. Beginning players often confuse the tiers as the rows on the barracks screen, which consist of 3 troops each, when in fact each tier consists of  4 troop types. The table below shows the breakdown:

Tier	Infantry	Ranged	Cavalry	Siege
1	Swordsman	Slingers	Outriders	Battering Rams
2	Hoplites	Skirmish Archers	Light Cavalry	Ballista
3	Armored Pikeman	Guardians	Companion Cavalry	Siege Towers
4	Immortals	Marksmen	War Elephants	Onager

Players often abbreviate when referring to the tiers: T1, T2, T3, and T4.

In the majority of cases, I believe having an even mix of troops is best, although I have found myself needing siege less and less and I recommend keeping only 10% – 15% as many siege as you have of the other 3 types. I’ve heard all kinds of arguments to the contrary, only one of which seems to have any truth to it – Maximizing Ranged troops is best because most players tend to train more Infantry.

This is probably true below Stronghold 15, because Swordsmen are the first troop listed in Barracks and I’ve noticed many players researching Hoplites as their first Tier 2 troop, due also to some inherent preference in moving from left to right in any given list. Much like I outlined in my2nd beginner video which suggested taking the minimal upgrade path to Stronghold 8 (SH8), I also recommend getting to SH15 as quickly as possible so you can train T3 troops. At that point, players usually are not biased to Infantry to the same degree.

Biases to one or two troop types might make sense for T4, when research to unlock each of them takes a really long time, you have likely reached a Lvl 50 hero where crafting equipment can be tailored to supremacy in a single type, and you’ve likely collected and combined more of one troop gem type than the others. I have not reached the end of the Road to T4 Troops yet and I haven’t figured out what my plan will be when I get there yet.

Strategic Troops

In the Barracks and Academy, you’ll notice there are options for Strategic Troops. The game was not originally designed with these and it’s my opinion they were added primarily to give Level 21s with Tier 4 troops something else to do. Strategic Troops apparently hit harder than their normal counterparts for each type, but in addition to the standard weakness (i.e., Infantry weak against Ranged), they are also weak against their own type (i.e. Infantry weak against Ranged AND other Infantry). For example, Spearmen (Infantry) are weak against Hunters (Ranged) as well as other Spearmen. Practically speaking, I think this means that if you send an even mix of Strategic Troops against an equal even mix of normal troops of the same tier, the Strategic Troops win easily. For example, 10k Spearmen/10k Hunters/10k Chariots sent against 10k Swordsmen/10k Slingers/10k Outriders results in the first group winning if all other boosts are the same. If you send Strategic troops against a force that is not even, but biased towards one or two troop types, they will die twice as fast. This notion of a troop type being weak against itself is a little perplexing. If two players fight each other with the same Strategic Troop type, they can’t both be at a disadvantage, otherwise there would be no point in the game developers noting that weakness in their description. What I think this means is that the attacker’s Strategic Troops are weak against their own type, which would suggest Strategic Troops are a better defense option. Also interesting to note is there is no Strategic Siege unit and the 3 Strategic Troop types apparently don’t have the strength advantage against Siege that Normal troops do, based on their descriptions in the Barracks.

I have little experience with Strategic Troops because they have an entirely different research tree in the Academy, so none of my huge research boosts for Normal Troops count for Strategic Troops. After the Hero vs Monster update came out, it became much more important for me to focus on hero research to be able to complete monster kill events. As a beginning player, it’s important to know that Normal Troop research is a prerequisite for the corresponding Strategic Troop research, meaning you can’t just choose to research Strategic Troops without doing Normal research first. Because you have limited time and resources to train and research, I don’t recommend pursuing Strategic troops heavily before reaching at least SH15 and unlocking regular T3. The guy who spends all his time researching lots of different areas ends up getting smashed by the guy that focused on getting to T3 as quickly as possible.

If you have conducted controlled experiments or have general impressions of the performance of Strategic Troops vs Normal Troops that sheds light on any of my assumptions, please leave a comment below.

The table below shows the Strategic Troops

Tier	Infantry	Ranged	Cavalry
1	Spearmen	Hunters	Chariots
2	Peltasts	Rangers	Scythed Chariots
3	Phalangite	Stalkers	Lancers
4	Legionnaires	Dianas	Cataphracts