Military - Units and Strategy
Also see:
Military strategy - basic attack and defence
Military is a huge part of Crown of the Gods. As you know, you need armies to attack caverns, plunder from other players and demolish the cities of others. You also need armies to defend and deter your competition for the Crown!
There are many guides and strategies out there, everyone has their favourite troop, favourite combination and preferred attack style. This guide won't go into that but does aim to give you some basic pointers on what you should be building (or not) early on in the game.
Troop types
There are troops with different attributes and skills. I won't go into the detail, it's all listed on the Crown of the Gods website here, In essence though troops can be classified in a few different ways:
Some units may additionally be classified as Sacred or Mystic.
The Differences between Units - which ones to enlist?
Enlistment time and cost
Each unit takes resources to enlist, and a basic time. Some also require gold. The unit you enlist in a city may be chosen based on the resources near it, or what you have plenty of.
The time for one unit to enlist can be increased by building more and higher levels of military training buildings. At first the troops seem to enlist slowly, this will improve as building levels rise. You can see the speed increase multiplier at the top of your Enlistment Queue panel. For this reason having a mix of many different unit types is not effective - having one Stables for example, will allow very slow enlistment of cavalry units in a city. Using that spot for an extra Training Arena will add to the overall speed you can enlist Infantry units at.
Combat attributes
The attribute of a unit will affect how well it does in battle against another unit.
Some examples:
Rangers have a 40 defence rating against Infantry, but only 10 defence rating against Cavalry. Therefore attacking them with Cavalry units would make sense since they are weaker. You can see the individual unit ratings in the tooltips over the unit in the enlistment screen, as well as here.
Rune barricades placed upon your city walls will neutralise some mystic units attacking a city, so if you expect to be attacked by Mystic units, such as Sorcerers then they would be a good choice.
Offensive or Defensive?
All troops are additionally classified as Offensive or Defensive. Put simply this means that they are better at one thing than the other.
I've listed the different types for comparison here.
A designated 'Offensive' troop does have some defence ability, and defensive troops can attack, however it is more efficient to use troops for what their strengths are.
Travel speed
The classification of a particular unit affects how fast it moves. Scouts are fast, artillery are slow. Your choice of units and the distance from your cities (to defend) or enemy cities (to attack) could be important in a battle. The speed also affects how fast they travel to caverns for raiding, although cavern raiding also adds 15 minutes each way as 'fighting time' while they kills the cavern monsters and retrieve the loot!
Carry Capacity
Each unit type also has a maximum amount of plunder or loot it can carry. This may affect how many you send at a cavern, or how many you send to plunder enemy cities.
For example:
Rangers carry 10 resources each, Triari carry 20. Both are defensive Infantry units.
Navy and Artillery
Naval and Artillery units are time consuming and expensive to build.
Artillery units are used to demolish buildings and walls, naval units can carry out attacks on different continents. You won't really want to enlist any of these troop types early on.
There are many excellent guides available to discuss how to form your naval fleet and how to effectively siege a city to nothing. See the Links page for more information.
So what is the 'best' unit?
Every unit has its pros and cons. Trying to define the 'best' unit depends on many factors:
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Available resources
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Travel time to caverns (if you plan to use it for raiding the majority of the time)
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Travel time to enemy cities (if you plan to be attacking other players)
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Combat strength (against cavern monsters or against other players' units)
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Carry capacity
Most experienced players would advocate a mix of troop types, that way you can have a 'best' troop for any situation. An alliance may also have an overview of all troops in a particular area or continent, and advise you to build a certain unit as that will support the overall alliance military strength.
In any battle, choosing the correct troops for the task can make an important difference.