Military Attack
Introduction
Military Combat is what you do to gain land in Shadowmere. Depending on if you break through or not (see following section) you will get land from the kd (kingdom) you attacked. Sometimes you will get unbuilt land if the kd had any, usually you will get some of their building parts from them too. remember to destroy buildings you don't want and use that land for other things.
How to attack
Under the Warfare menu, there is the Military Attack option. This will lead you to a screen that has a drop-down menu full of targets, and the 'Attack' button next to it. Select a target and click the button. If you are far enough above the enemy, and don't have retals, you may have a Mutiny warning screen, depending on the mutiny modifier of your race. If you choose to attack anyways and mutiny, you will lose a percentage of your total troops and equipment equal to half the mutiny chance. While it is important to be above an enemy kingdom if you want a good chance of victory, you should not be reckless as, especially early in the game, losing a significant portion of your troops can be crippling. I generally recommend hitting from within the 10-20% mutiny range in order to give reasonable odds of winning the battle while not bearing a huge risk of troop loss.
Vampires and Werewolves should rarely attack from under 1.75x the opponents score; this will more or less guarantee a victory with a proper army.
If you have retals on a kingdom, simply get as strong as you can because you will have a mutiny chance of 0% regardless of how much higher your score is than theirs. For retals you can also attack outside of the typical score range of 50%-200% of your score.
How to Setup Your Army For Victory
With the above advice concerning mutiny in mind, it is necessary to have an army composed of the proper Military Units. For example, assuming equal % and number, an army of Rangers is 48% as powerful as an army of Fighters. Let's review the conditions necessary to win a battle:
1) Your army's damage must be greater than the opposing army's absorption, after Land Penalty, spell effects, and randoms are factored in.
2) Your army's total power must be greater than the opposing army's total power. Army power is determined by your ( TOTAL DAMAGE * TOTAL ABSORB ) * (OTHER EFFECTS). OTHER EFFECTS include spells such as Frenzy and Valor, specials such as Bloodlust, effects like Ghouls or Skeletons, and the attack's random factor.
3) An extra note of importance: the amount of land taken in a victory is based on your total power compared to theirs. The more overwhelming your victory, the more land you can take. The minimum land gain is 1, and the maximum is 12.5% of the opponent's total land. In most wins you can expect to gain 4-5% of the enemy's total land.
Clearly, knowing that maximal power is important for both overall victory and maximum land gain, you will want your army to have your total damage equal to your total absorb, ASSUMING that you do not have excessive Land Penalty or the opponent does not have excessive absorb. If either of those conditions are the case, you may want to have higher damage in order to meet the first condition. Bloodlust and Frenzy can help in this regard as well.
Since we have determined, barring some infrequent scenarios, you want to go for the strongest power, we will have to develop our army accordingly. Assume that the %s of each troop type are equal (though you will have to adjust in actual situations). The most effective army per score would be composed of Archers, Clerics, and Mages. The archers and clerics should be in equal number, and any number of mages is fine as long as they do not exceed your total troops. Since your score also impacts how well you can attack, due to target range or mutiny, it can help to make sure you are carrying the minimal amount of buildings necessary to house and feed your army. Buildings, Gold, and Mana can provide significant score that is not helping you in your military battles.
In more realistic situations, your kingdom may not be able to have the "ideal" setup due to what % you hire your troops at and what is available on the Open Market, though this issues can be overcome the more land and study your kingdom has. In these situations, try to keep 1 cleric for each of your damage units (assassins, archers), feel free to use the slightly less efficient but balanced fighters, and avoid having a significant portion of your army composed of rangers and thieves.
What To Do Before You Hit "Attack"
1) Consider your opponent's turns used, score, and race. If they have a lot of unused turns (early in a set you can figure out what the max # they have left is) they can easily recover and smash your kingdom. Their race can also factor in as far as their ability to grow and destroy you, or cast nasty spells on you. Also note that Minotaurs will cause you to lose extra troops during combat. And lastly, make sure the enemy is not too large! Also make sure your opponent has not been abused already!
2) Cast the spell Scrying on the opponent, or Spy on them. This will give you a report of their kingdom and allow you to formulate an attack strategy. This will reveal if they are weak to certain "preparatory" attacks, such as Assassination, Bombarding, and various Spells. It will also let you know if they have enough land to be worth attacking in the first place, or if you will have to adjust your army damage to account for them having a lot of clerics. Making use of a spy report requires experience; don't be afraid to mess up, just make sure you learn what went wrong by looking at the results or asking in chat! If the opponent is weak to a certain prep type, consider using it. Generally the smarter strategy is to not prep and just take military attacks on a soft target from a decent score above them. This will prevent you from giving out too many retals and being destroyed by the enemy and their allies.
3) Make sure to dispel your opponent! Barriers such as Fear Barrier and Death Barrier can devastate your army. If they have Frenzy or Valor on their kingdom, dispelling them will greatly increase your chances of victory!
4) Cross your fingers, hope for a good random, and analyze the attack results to know if you want to attack more than once!
GOOD LUCK!
The two win conditions
The following two conditions must be BOTH met, in order to "break" your enemy and get his land:
Win condition 1
The total Damage Value of your army must be greater than the total Absorbtion Value of your target's army.
Win condition 2
Your army's Damage Value multiplied by its Absorbtion Value must be greater than your target's army's Damage Value multiplied by its Absorbtion Value.
Notes
When you get the line "We did not deal enough damage to break their first defensive line", it means that your damage was not higher than their absorption and thus did not fulfill the win condition 1.
When you get the line "We broke their lines a few times but we lost the battle in the end", it means that you had more damage than their absorption, but you did not fulfill the win condition number 2.
Note once again that you must meet BOTH conditions to successfully break through, and take their land.
Damage Value and Absorbtion Value of the Combat Troops
The following numbers are the damage/absorption of each troop type in military combat. These numbers allow seeing which kind of troops is better at what. Note that the numbers are for 100% troops (so in military a 200% figher is 2/2 ,a 370% figher is 3.7/3.7, a 400% assassin is 8/0.2, a 350% thief is 2.8/2.8 and so on).
- Fighters 1/1
- Rangers 0.8/0.6
- Clerics 0.15/2
- Archers 2/0.15
- Thieves 0.8/0.8
- Assassins 2/0.05
- Warmachines 5/0.0001
Specials that affect combat
Land Penalty
If the attacking kingdom has more land then the defender then a Land Penalty is applied. The land damage penalty starts when the defender has less than 70% of the attacker's land. This makes it more difficult for a larger kingdom to take land. It is effectively mitigated by using more attack strength than normal.
Bloodlust
It doubles damage of a part of your troops (depending of it's power).
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is an ability that allows some races to "eat" the enemies and get food from them. Cannibalism 100 means you get 100 food for every enemy you kill (troops and population alike), 25 gives you 25 food for every dead enemy in the battle and so on. Cannibalism works only when you attack and only in military attacks and raids.
W/A Immunity
Some races are not affected 100% by Weapons and Armor. This means that enemies' w/a have not full effect on the kingdom with immunity. The percentage depends on the wins the kingdom has and the study % of weapons and armor fields. Atm only Vampires and Werewolves have W/A Immunity. Bless on Vamps can negate the wins part of their immunity (study part is not affected).
Caveat: Randoms
There is a random luck that runs when someone does a military attack. The atmospheric messages that appear above the battle results are what we refer to usually as "randoms".