Squad Building

Squad Building Considerations

Every squad should have a main role (and possibly flexible to other roles). Building special purpose squads typically will result in squads better able to fulfill that one role than a general purpose squad that can fulfill many roles, but often there are closely related roles that can be fulfilled by a single squad. Sometimes you won’t know exactly what to expect, so even if you don’t have a ton of general purpose squads you will want a variety of squads to be ready for surprises.

Typical Threats

The most common threats you’ll face are:

  • Enemy infantry squads: more resilient and possibly have spears for +damage & defense against cavalry
  • Enemy gunner/dragoon squads: massive damage that bypasses 75% of armor & focuses front line
  • Enemy cannon squads: massive damage that bypasses 75% of armor, cannot be dodged & can target anyone
  • Enemy mage/dragon squads: massive damage that bypasses all of armor & can target anyone
  • Enemy assassin squads: attack the back line
  • Enemy knight/centurion squads: do splash damage to middle line
  • Enemy light squads: ambush from rough terrain
  • Enemy archer squads: attack from range
  • Enemy cavalry squads: higher movement and charge can stun your front line

The highest danger comes from enemy firearm and mage squads & the best defensive classes for those two threats (sentinel and paladin respectively) will do fine against the rest as well. Thus defensive squads should focus on either defending against firearms or mages and at least some of them should have an armored back line to defend against assassins.

Sentinels will fare quite well against cavalry, given their spears and paladins will do more damage to enemy heavy classes with their striking damage bonus.

Squad Composition

Classes should be chosen with care to what movement type is desired, which is based on the majority movement type (with the exception of flying dragons, where three dragons is enough to fly three other characters).

Typically squads will want a variety of classes for defense, offense and healing, but specialty squads may focus primarily on one or two of those. Mixed Unit Tactics gives a bonus of +3 weapon for each unique class in the squad beyond the first class, so mixing in a variety of classes is helpful, but shouldn’t be the primary consideration.

Polearm characters give a 10% bonus to offense and defense to all adjacent characters, so many squads will benefit from adding one or two. Polearms also give a separate row adjacency bonus to other polearm characters, so there’s reasons both to spread them out and keep them adjacent.

Front Line

The front line is dominated by sentinels for tanking firearm damage and paladins for tanking magical damage, but valkyries and knights are useful for cavalry squads. Samurai, zweihanders and champions can also be used up front for higher damage, but won’t defend quite as well as sentinels or paladins.

Light squads that rely on ambush can be significantly more flexible, utilizing rangers and swordmasters up front & rely on dodging in rough terrain on top of significantly reducing the enemy in two straight attacks to open combat. They should avoid taking enemy phase attacks however, unless their front line is heavy infantry and they have a healer.

Early in the game any heavy infantry classes will be fine for the front line, but you might plan ahead for what you will turn those into when they reach tier 3. Likewise ambush squads can use sword fighters and skirmishers for the front line.

Middle Line

Due to assassins attacking the back line, this is the safest place for healers, mages and other low armor, low hp classes like gunners. They are still vulnerable to splash damage from centurions and knights as well as mage/dragon attacks, so mages/healers should prioritize a trait like arcane barrier for survival.

Back Line

Armored classes that focus on damage but still have good survival like champions and centurions are good choices for the back line. They will be much more resilient to assassin strikes than healers and mages but can focus on doing damage more than being a full tank like a sentinel. Light classes with some armor, some hp and good dodge ability also can be fine in the back, but might require certain terrain to effectively dodge assassin attacks (open for light cavalry, rough for swordmaster, ranger).

Alternatively, put squishy classes like mages, clerics and gunners in the back line and rely on positioning to prevent assassins from reaching that squad. Assassins are themselves fairly squishy, so can often be dealt with on player phase with archery and/or cavalry charges. Back line classes are not vulnerable to splash damage to the front line, but can still be hit by mage/dragon/cannon AoE attacks.