Strategic Troops vs Regular Troops – Which is better to use?
This has been a question we’ve all been wondering for a while now, so myself and two players in our alliance decided to see which troop type was better to use, strategic or regular.
All tests were run with T3 troops (less rss to replace for testing purposes). Every round was 1000 each of Infantry, ranged, cavalry.
3000 troops each march.
Strategic vs. Strategic – no hero
Both of us are in war mode, no hero was used, we have equal research done.
My troop loss – 14.9% On a 375k march I would have lost 55,875 troops
My troop kills – 16.3% On a 375k march I would have killed 61,125 troops
Regular vs Regular – No hero
My troop loss – 12.9% On a full 375k march I would have lost 48,375 troops
My troop kill – 14.2% On a full 375k march I would have killed 53,250 troops
So, lets assume this is a kvk attack and 40 points for T3 kills.
| Strat vs Strat | |
| Points scored | 2,445,000 |
| Points given | 2,235,000 |
| Regular vs Regular | |
| Points scored | 2,130,000 |
| Points given | 1,935,600 |
The kill ratio is bigger on Strat T3 than it is on Regular T3, because more troops were killed by both sides (shown by the points and KRs)
936 strategic total kills vs 813 normal total kills
Regular vs Strategic
Now this is interesting. In the previous two test I won, because I have a stronger hero than my opponent, but this time I lost because Strat Troops are much stronger than Regular troops. She also lost less troops attacking regular T3 than when she attacked the same troop type in the previous reports. So if you are fighting in a kvk and the person doesn’t have strat T4 unlocked yet, attack with strat T4. Lets see the opposite of the above attack.
Strategic vs. Regular
This time I attacked with Strat and she defended with Regular T3. As you can see the reports are almost identical on troops killed vs lost.
We both came to the conclusion that we are ok with losing a few more troops using strategic troops to attack with because the increase kills is worth it especially in a kvk. Strategic troops are stronger and weaker at the same time, but the increase in kills vs the losses in our opinion is worth it.
There you have it everyone, strategic are best.
Feel free to blow up the comments section below..
Enjoy!
Navi
p.s. HUGE thanks to General Bow for running these tests.
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I registered. But still can not read the article.
please email [email protected]
Lol – that’s incorrect. Strategic are weaker against regular of same type even up to one whole tier below. This is exactly why we test and this is why some players play a whole lot better than others.. I already posted a sampling of accurate kill death ratio info here. Shame on you guys if you didn’t pick up on it. If you’re not clear how to read it – ask. Smh.
-Salt #136
Here’s a thought, just ask MZ. Oh wait, they have already answered it. Stratgic troops are stronger then than counterpart but weeker against everyother troop. So basicall, strategic calvary is stronger than regular calvary but weaker than regular infantry and regular ranged. The only time strategic are stronger is when they are up against the same type of regular troop. All this experiment stuff isn’t necessary, mz has already told us
strats are not better, it is 100% situation, if you are launching a rally of 2.35mill and sending a perfect mix of strats t4 and if they again have a “perfect mix” of t4 normal, of course the strat will come up on top lol. However how the game actually works is people will have a troop type that they main. Weaknesses –> strats are vulnerable to 2 troop types and are only very strong against ONE…. SO… if you send a full march of 375 march of infantry strats vs 375k normal they will lose 2:1!! winner = normal. strats cavalry vs normal infantry 4:1 = winner normal… HOWEVER if you send RANGE strats vs normal inf its 1:7 for range. So strats ARENT better, depending on most situation they can actually be weaker, unless you get a scout in on a guy and know EXACTLY what troop he has you can send a very specific march towards him and strats are better.
All in all,
if you send exactly the same troop types against each other normal wins
if you send a mixture of the three vs each other strats win
strats have two weaknesses and less health, but more attack
normal has one weakness and more health, normal attack
Hope all that made sense
If I’m taking hits as a trap with 1 mill strat t3 mixed troops, should I make reg t2 mixed troops as meat? Or strat t2? Also around how many? I’m a landmine so I will be taking rallies and hopefully some solo attacks.
Coming from K:48 Mr Bow is a very big deal guys! I my not like his pop up FFAs, buy, his work for us here is great, he’s taking time and helping us. Maybe the FFAs was for this test lol anyways, great website and please think about what he is saying…you still need to understand how to use them.
SBg
Sammy3,
Thank you
I am glad to see the detail salt heart included in the comments. The initial set-up and testing layout as detailed in this article is flawed, maybe not enough to negate the conclusions, yet still sadly flawed. You cannot test with uneven scenarios, switch attacker/defender and say the base level unevenness has been accounted for. This is just *one* example of why the comments by salt heart are the best compliment to this article. I don’t have the time to go I to more detail about the baseline issues and it’s associated false assumptions. Just say I am a bit shocked anyone spent 10 minutes let alone the claimed “working on this for over a month”. GIGO after all. Not as bad as the initial version of the treasury ror been bad math is bad math.
On the plus side, you have shared that combat is very deterministic – exact same set-up yields identical results. Too many do not understand that. I am glad to see someone else post on the random element. The general conclusion is also overall valid – using strategic troops in place of regular troops does mean you kill more and take more losses yet kills are increase by more than your losses are increased. That is the true take away from here. And the ideal the one type of troop heavily boosted is better than two or three types of troops with lesser boosts is another solid point. Lastly, the one that health and defense boosts have very similar effects is another hidden gem in this article and comments.
Thank you for these posts. I just wish there was more vetting but hey, this is just a game after all.
Deth,
Thanks for your input. With the release of a membership on my site relatively soon I will be including many more battle tests that will be refined according to comments like yours salt heart’s.
Stay tuned.
It seems like the gems and bonuses tend to more often boost the strategic troops.
No, boosts are always equally except for some recent core gear
Nice test, very helpful an easy to understand!
The test I would like to see results of are where low number of strategic and/or regular troops attack bigger numbers of troops (simulating rallies on strongholds) are the numbers the same or will Strategic prove to week? Personally I believe that strategic t4 rally with t3 strategic meat shield, loses to many points in a KVK, but using them you need fewer rallies to zero a SH, there for a useful option when you want to zero some ne in your own Kingdom!
I would like to see a test as well mixing both troop types evenly and attack each other then.
Send 1k of each troop class regular and strategic from each type: ranged, Calvary, and infantry for a total of 6k troops each. I would like to see if the regulars take most of the beating so they can be used as a buffer to save strategic and what the point loss would be.
Also maybe send this mixed lot against both 6k of just strategic and just regular to see the results.
Good article!
Well, let me summarize your stats:
Strategic kill more and die more
Am I right?
Now when it comes to traps, I am assuming they would die way more. So u r gonna be regret that attacking a city with traps by sending your strategic troops.
My conclusion:
Regular combat is better! lol
Unless you are tile hitting or you have scouted a guy and know what u r going to do.
As its name implies, they are strategic troop, you must have a strategy to use them not just to make a mix-troop march and go hitting anyone 😉
“As its name implies, they are strategic troop, you must have a strategy to use them not just to make a mix-troop march and go hitting anyone ;)”
I never of thought the name like this……………………………… thanks haha
Last thing lol – these are just baseline numbers – skill selection, gear and gems influence the results greatly of course. But that’s more advanced analysis which I’m not going to get into here. Vital to get the basics down first of which this is a small sample.
Last thing – more accurate testing is 1000 vs 1000 btw – otherwise you’ll see a 5% glitch. Just trust me on that lol. Numbers above still hold however.
Hey Chad,
Btw are you the Navi that was in Oenoe in the beginning during the tMg/UoS wars? I was Murfman then I you’re the same guy – sorry about the zero.
Anyway – I can’t release the data but I can tell you it’s well worth people doing the tests and crunching the data. It’s really Game of Math – of course there’s quite a bit more to it all than that but the math is essential.
Some basics:
Vs Counterparts: (100 inf vs 100 ranged)
T3 vs T3
(as expressed by losses)
6 / 27 4.5 KDR
T3 strat vs T3
6/41 6.83 KDR
T3 strat vs t3 strat
6/41 6.83 KDR
T4 vs T3
4/38 9.5 KDR
T4 strat vs T3
4/58. 14.5 KDR
The list of scenarios is really long.
Testing controls are important. I used two Maxxed out t4 accounts – reset skills to zero – removed all equipment and then compared stats under boosts to check. I then compensated with statless equipment and added small gems to get the stats to match up perfectly for both accounts. Then you include hero and march on a tile. That means the data is relative as the t4 accounts already have roughly a base health and defense of 225/400 if I recall but that’s ok – data still mostly holds up. Lots of things to test..
Real mitigation value of health and defense – (btw they appear to basically be comparable in value)
Real damage increase on boosted stats (single focus stat spikes are mega damage and can overcome more than people think)
Real role of traps and siege
Troop combo scenarios
Wonder scenarios
Etc…
Testing is alot of fun. Well worth everyone’s time. Hope this helps a bit.
Lots of #136 knows this stuff now – I’m pretty free with it. Makes for a dangerous kingdom. See ya’ll on the battlefield.
-(SYT) xxxSALTHEART
You guys are close but not really. Your testing methodology is off. I’ve run countless scenarios using very tight controls. Needless to say….Strat troops are amazing when used properly. There’s way, way more to troop combos than you guys might imagine.
Btw, wanna try a fun test….run 100 t4 strategic infantry vs 100 t3 regular infantry.
Saltheart,
I would love to publish what test you have run here as well saltheart. It is very hard to run all the different types of tests as I’m sure you know. The more information we can get from the community who has already done these tests would be great.
I think kills are given at chance. There is no exact way strategic is better than normal and vice versa. Because that is not the way the game developers have designed the game.
this is a great post and i disagree with the concerns about accuracy. as long as you also switched between attacker and defender role and get similiar results everything should be fine.
however what I am missing is an analysis about what happens when the share of troop types is not equal. e.g what happens if 3k strat archer meet an 1k of each of the other regular types.
because i dont believe strat troops would be the better choice in such a scenario.
regards
Nephes
Here is a question:
I if i have maxed research all regular troop combat, at what lvl strategic research starting from 0, will the strategic win against the maxed research regular troops?
Have these numbers been tested in un-even attacks? Above you just went with even numbers of each type. I want to see how targeted attacks work against a full mix (roughly equal numbers of all troops both regular and strategic, say 6k troops 1k of each) against a large portion of strategic cavalry and a little bit of infantry backup (4.5k cav, 1.5 inf).
Rarely does anyone have JUST strategic or regular, they have a mix. And rarely are attacks equally balanced between the 3 troop types. Most are strong in one or two types so they load up their march with those types and don’t send any of the third type.
With their less targeted strengths I think you would see the defender performing better when they have a balanced reg/strat mix of troops against a 1 or 2 type strat march.
Very interesting statistic research just need to think about how valuable this research is and how to use it.
It’s a fact that strat. is strong vs one type of troops and weak against all other types, Knowing that it would also be nice what happens if
– 3k mixed reg. hits 3k of 1 type strat.
– 3k with only 2 types of troops reg.hits 3k of 1 type strat.
ect.
or how about mixing strat. and regular troops on both offense and defense? like 500 each.
Dont think strat. is always better to have. I use reguliar troops for defense to kill potential siege attacks. Also when the numbers are not equal like 375k strat. hits 1M regulair or 1M strat. would strat. still be prefered above normal troops?
In my opinion strategics are to be used when you have identified the opposing troops and know which to select for max kills minimal losses. In situations where you do not yet know the opposing troops strategics stay home.
This is correct… scenarios arent cookie cutter.. Anti scout is a bad place to send your strats..
Are you absolutely sure your regular/strategic boosts were the same? I’ve done similar tests, and in each case the losses suffered didn’t change by more than 1% between regular and strategic (boosts were not exactly the same, regular boosts were slightly higher and regular losses slightly lower), but attacks with strategic resulted in ~15% more damage on average. This is completely in line with the tests I’ve done with single troop types.
My tests would indicate that the ‘strong vs.’, ‘weak vs.’ etc. boosts don’t affect the losses suffered by that troop type, but only the damage inflicted. With the same research levels, 1000 Peltasts, Light Cavalry and Chariots (all weak vs. Infantry) all did the same amount of damage to 1000 Hoplites. Meanwhile, the Light Cavalry and Chariots suffered about twice as much damage as the Peltasts (Hoplites are strong vs. Cavalry, but neither strong nor weak vs. Infantry). These results indicate damage multipliers of roughly 0.5x, 2x and 3x for respectively weak, strong and very strong vs. a certain troop type. The results for other types support this. These don’t appear to be the exact values, as these rough values give error margins of 5-15% on marches with a single troop type. ~0.45x, 2.07x and 3.13x fit my small data set better but I need more data to determine the exact values.
On a mixed march vs. 1000 Hoplites (333 of each troop type), for both regular and strategic troops, the losses were 15, 30 and 60 for cavalry, infantry and ranged, supporting the 0.5x and 2x multipliers. I’m sure that with sufficient troops, the same ~1% difference would be apparent due to small differences in stats. The strategic attack killed 153 troops, while the regular attack killed 133 troops. This is, again, a ~15% increase in damage. The multipliers I proposed support this increase in damage. For regular troops, 33% of troops deal 2x damage, 33% deal 1x damage and 33% deal 0.5x damage. (2+1+0.5)/3 = 1.167x ‘base’ damage. For strategic troops, this would be 3x, 0.5x and 0.5x, or (3+0.5+0.5)/3 = 1.333x ‘base’ damage. 1.333/1.167 = 1.1428.
Anyway, I might do some more tests in the future. I actually plan on starting 2 more farms, so that would be an opportunity to test things in a completely new and controlled environment. My tests so far have been just for myself, but if I do some more I’ll be sure to make some screenshots.
And I’m really sorry but I’m out of potatoes and cookies 😉 Keep up the good work though!
One other advantage of strategic troops not mentioned so far, is they give more points in events so enable the event prizes to be achieved with less speedups and resources!
good point!
This only seems to hold true for t4 strategic troops though.
Have you tried testing the same attack two times in a row to see if there is some kind of luck involved. I have always thought if you attack the same exact attack twice in a row it wouldn’t be the same kills. Just a theory.
Yes, the same result was achieved multiple times in a row.
Keep a balance between Regular and Strategic troops. If you attack and they have a lot of one type of troop two of your strategic groups don’t work as well. While there large number of regular troops work well against two of your strategic groups.
I’d just go with the durable regular soldiers! Stretgic troops have to be balanced in order to achieve a consistent kill rate. More or less troops on a small account is the path to destruction. A mix of all the troops is the only path.
Your reg troops should also be balanced, especially on attack. Unless you scouted. Which most don’t. If I scout and I see extra cavalry. I’m going to send more strategic infantry. And I said cavalry for a reason. Most on my kingdom are lazy and rely to heavly on cavalry. It’s not in common to be hit by a full March of t3 and t4 reg cavalry. Which are easily stopped with a mix of t2 and t3 infantry and anti cav traps.
You should have a mix of reg and strat troops. And a good balance of troop types unless you send your hero every time. Which you can only have your hero in one March.
Definitely, there is strategy to the game that involves attacking your enemies opposing troops that focus on the enemy’s weak points.
Good read by General Bow with the assistance of Reb! GladiiFTW
Valuable information, yes…but I’m not convinced. Your conclusions make too many assumptions that you haven’t accounted for.
1. You tested with 3K troops, but made conclusions for 375 K troops. Do you know for sure that the ratios will remain constant after a 1000% increase? It is possible that there is code in the GoW system to change the kill/loss ratios with larger numbers of troops. Unless you know the algorithms programmed into the GoW system, you can’t make such an assumption.
2. You don’t account for the cost of building the original troops. Do strategic troops and regular troops cost exactly same same resources and time for troops of the same type and same level? I don’t know, but if they are not exactly the same, then your conclusions are off.
3. You show that regular troops lose fewer troops than strategic, but also kill fewer enemy troops than strategic. You assume that more (strategic) is better for both kills and losses. But, what if I want to reduce my total losses and I don’t care if that also means fewer enemy kills? In that case, regular is better.
4. You don’t account for any randomness programmed into the GoW combat algorithms. Again, I don’t know, but it seems that the game designers might include a 5% random adjustment in the kill/loss outcomes of an attack. The strategic troop loss in total number was about 15% more than the number of regular troops lost. But, if there is an element of randomness, those results could have come out the same or as much as 25% different.
I think my conclusion is the you might be right about Strategic troops being better than Regular, but your yesterday doesn’t necessarily prove it so. Also, the individual player’s circumstances and strategic goals will change the conclusion from the same set of test results. Again, valuable information. Thanks for running the tests. But, you need a lot more information to convince me.
Daniel,
Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
1. You make a good point, I’ll ask general bow if he has done any tests a higher quantity. Although it would be a rather large waste of troops to test 375k vs. 375k in multiple different scenarios…
2. They actually do cost the same resources to produce and the same time.
3. yup, you’re correct, but that is a playstyle decision and does not change the fact that strategic are more powerful.
4. Yes, but if we run the same test 3k reg. vs. 3k reg. multiple times and get the same results that there is no randomness, and that’s actually what we did.
Now what are your thoughts?
To have a 100% fair test, you need to have two new cities one with strat the other without it and do this. Although this isn’t necessary, it would eliminate all possible factors changing the central thought of strat being stronger than reg.. We have no idea what boosts could be changed throughout this. Technically you can’t make assumptions about numbers of larger troops with every different kind of boost included, but you could predict that the outcome would be similar. Also with cores and whatnot changing battle percentages to give differentiated boosts to reg and strat troops, this may not always be true. Just my thoughts, definitely a chance they could be incorrect. Great post, keep it up 🙂
Also you could say it isn’t best go be a trap account with strategic troops. I’d rather have more troops stay in the hospital and kill a bit less than going over the limit (and giving them kills) while getting a bit more. Of course this doesn’t apply to people with huge hospitals, but I think it would with smaller hospitals. However this gives no reasoning against the fact that strategic troops deal more damage, but is just an additional thought.
Do you have any input, comparison or opinion on strat t3 vs regular t4?
I have not looked into this yet.
when you do, can you post it up here. I am very curious. Love this site and everything you have done though! all is very helpful and greatly appreciated!
Why not start two new cities and research only what you need for t1 strat and compare it that way? Never allocate hero points at all, build no additional buildings, 100 troops against 100 troops. This would eliminate all variables and there’s no reason to think that the different tiers would yield different percentages. If you did want to check t2 for comparison, it would be easy enough to take two identical cities to that point.
We could do that, but it’s not necessary for reasons I mentioned above.
Although it’s not necessary, it would give a lot more accurate results and be more persuading.
Well —-. I read the earlier article saying strats wernt as good so I focused on regular. Now im way behind on strat. Wasted that research time. Shit.
Oh ya, I forgot about that older article.. I’ll go delete it. Super sorry Sym. Troops are cycled out all the time though, so no worries!
Thanks Navi and General for the good work, as usual. Maybe you should also reconsider your post regarding strat traps vs regular traps? just wondering…
strat traps are better assuming you have same research and that you have an equal distribution of he types of strat traps
I have run the tests both ways. Me attacking and defending. I have run hundreds of these tests, these are just a few of them. I have been working on this for over a month. The numbers are all virtually the same. Strategic kill more. I will be running similar tests with meat shields soon to show you all how important they are.
What does it mean when i say in “War Mode”. All skill points are on the left side of the skill reset. Meaning, we were both set up to battle, not farm.
There are certain stats that carry over to the troops regardless if the hero is in the fight or not. Both of us being in war mode puts us on level ground. My stats are better than hers, which is why i won 3/4 battles.
Like I said earlier, I will be writing a blog on this very topic soon. This is just a sample of which troops are stronger. Strategic will kill roughly 10-12% more than regular troops and have roughly 7-8% more losses, but i’ll take the higher kills in a battle any day. Especially in a rally.
There will be more to come on these topics.
Hi General Bow.
Can you provide more tests?
I’m interested in something like,
Strait v.s. Regular
Infantry v.s. Infantry
Infantry v.s. Ranged
Infantry v.s. Cavalry
Very good tests, extremely useful. Thanks for taking time and troops to do this.
You’re welcome. Thank you for taking the time to comment. And let’s not forget to thank General Bow too!
Well I did say troops 😛
You should of reset hero skills and fought without assigning skill points.
“Strategic will kill roughly 10-12% more than regular troops and have roughly 7-8% more losses”
Sorry I’m struggling letting this statement go unchallenged. This simply isn’t the case.
Show the data.
HI Navi –
Thanks for running the scenarios and posting the reports. You mention that all researches were identical, which is important. You also say that you were in war mode. Please explain what you mean by that. Further, are all of your stronghold buildings identical? Recall that barracks / villas / hospitals give certain defense and health boosts at certain levels. Also keep in mind that these boosts apply even when the hero is not in the march. The only real way to do a comparison is to have the same number and levels of urban buildings. Thoughts?
Mad
Madsop,
This is a common point of confusion, I had a hard time thinking through this myself as well. But, even if the buildings and boosts aren’t exactly the same (in this case they are close but not the same), it doesn’t matter. If regular and strategic troops were equal in power than General Bow would have won all fights regardless because he has stronger overall boosts than his opponent. Instead, when the “enemy” attacked him with strategic troops, the enemy won because strategic are far more powerful than regular troops and General Bow’s boosts were overruled.
Make sense?
Navi
Fair point. As long as the other side stayed consistent you can still get a good comparison between the two. Even if the other side lost each time you could still compare the spread on troop kills to determine which is stronger. Well done.
Mad
Doing the maths you left out (for brevity?), all other things being equal, using strat troops to attack regulars results in 10.6% more kills and 7.0% more deaths.
#forbrevity
To make sure we are dealing with all of the variables, I would like to see the exact same tests as above, but with attacker/defender switched. If the results were exactly the same the first few tests, you could reasonably assume the rest would be. But I am curious if there is an element of the results here that benefits the attacker/defender role slightly.
So They kill more but die quicker…
There are certain statistics from your hero that carry over to your troops even with hero not equipped. I will be coming out with a blog on this later as to why. I was hoping someone would actually catch that.
Well was yalls hero evenly match as well. Prob not. Theres way to many variables in this experiment
Um… You used no hero but then go on to say that you won because you had a better hero?
I don’t believe this is proof, I think more testing is needed.
I thought the same thing
Glenn,
The point general bow is making is that he won the first two battles of R vs. R and S vs. S because he had a stronger hero. SO, YOU WOULD THINK THAT IF REGULAR TROOPS WERE AS POWERFUL AS STRATEGIC OR EVEN CLOSE TO IT, THAT HE WOULD WIN AGAIN. Instead, strategic troops are much more powerful so general bow couldn’t win even with a stronger hero.
Exactly
Okay, the general idea also states having exactly the same number of troops, of course, if you had overall 60 more troops in a 3k march, you’ll see differences. Troop count needs to be the same.
Yeah, this really proves nothing at all. Strategic troops are better in certain situations. So obviously when theyre not in those situations, regardless troops are better. I’ve never trained on strategic troop. I’m at 200 mil power and usual beat people stronger than me. This is nothing but a way for mz to make us have to research more so well spend more money on the game. Wake up. Mz is robbing us blind
Everything on this site is very helpful and understandable instructions for mid level players. I’ve read 2 articles and learn 2 new things. I’ve been playing a few months now and it’s a struggle being a non spender. Thank you guys! FrozenAcid of [email protected] in INO.