Ikariam, The Novel

*DISCLAIMER*

This is a work in progress, if the interest is shown, and I find the time, the guide will be continued. The most recent point (which is uncompleted), is ”controlling the battlefield”, I could write several pages on this subject. However I’m not going to go in depth in such a matter if no one is interested in seing the final result. Feedback is much appreciated, and don’t skip the introduction sections underneath. I am going on vacation tomorrow, and as such I am posting today. I am posting in ”discussions” since it states I am allowed to discuss anything, hence this should be fine eh? Also it allows comments, which are welcome.

*DISCLAIMER OVER*

• Who am I?
  
  • Great question, and maybe even the most important part of this guide. After all, why trust the word of a random stranger?
    
    
    
    • I’m a 19 year old Danish male, with 11 years of experience in Ikariam. Now one could argue that I didn’t pick up much info when I was 8, and to that I would agree. However I have seen servers rise and fall, and through the last 3-4 years Ikariam have been a constant part of my life. I am quite new as an active member of any Ikariam board, and has earlier only partaken when it came to posting combat reports. I only play on one english server at this point in time, this being the server Charon. My account name is ”Abeged”, it’s placed number 11 on the ts highscore as of this moment, and I’m the diplomat and leader of the alliance Danish Vikings, currently placed #1. I’ve got several accounts on the danish megaserver, but I somewhat doubt these are of interest, do let me know if they are though.
      
      
      
      
• Why and what is this guide?
  
  • There’s quite the simple answer to that question. Only two other guides excist on the english forums, both of which I disagree on several points made, missed information, and at times only a surfacelevel understanding of what war is. The following is a 7000 word essay, and it is not read through. I started this project more than 6 months ago, lost interest, and recently picked it back up. As such my style of writing may change quite significantly underway, and new concepts may also have come to light that may cause me to contradict myself. Please do point out any of such accidents.
    
  • The purpose of this guide is to be a complete dictionary to Ikariam. Now this is obviously not possible (or at least not without me being payed). As such I will be going through what I find the most important/what I could come up with. If there are any points of interest not listed please do let me know. As to what I find to be the most important part of Ikariam, war, I find war to be important. However this also means I will explain how to build an account for war etc. Do also keep in mind that every single point I make in this guide is subjective, and I will argue I have all the difinitive answers, recieve the information as you want. Enjoy the read.
    
    
    
    
• Basis gameplay, and account building
  
  • Early game:
    
  • Your goal is to achieve as big an account as possible in as little time as possible. However, while building your account there is one thing you must consider first:
    
    
    
    • Miracles: These are artifacts that empower your account for a limited time or have an instant impact on ongoing effects. Now I will only cover 3 of these since I believe these are the only useful ones for permanent cities.
      
      
      
    • Hephaistos’ Forge: All Combat units receive 2 more armor and cause 20% more damage.
      This effect allows your armies/fleets to be WAY more effective than your opponents. Whilst fighting someone with an active Forge, not having this active will mean you will be outclassed even though you got the jump. You need 6 Forges to achieve the effect permanently.
      
      
      
    • Temple of Poseidon: 100% increased speed for warships and transporters. This allows your (as it says) ships to move in a way increased pace. This makes transporting goods way faster AND allows you to easily keep up to speed in conflicts. Probably the best all-around miracle of the bunch. You need 5 Temples of Poseidon to achieve the effect permanently.
      
      
      
    • Colossus: 100% of all enemy troops and ships that are fighting against your troops in your towns have been driven away. The scatter time of 4h has increased by 3h.
      This miracle opens for a lot of options. You can use it to take back your own cities, prevent a big loss or create an option for glorious victory. The concept of “spread time” will be gone over later. You can have a maximum of 12 cities, therefore, having both of the above available without a cooldown will only leave room for one of these, don’t take more, the value of this miracle is rare and should be prioritized like it.
      
      
      
    • Theocracy: This is a form of government and has nothing to do with early game. However, it is to do with miracles and will therefore be included here. This form of government is what ties all the above together. Without this having said numbers won’t achieve the no-cooldown mark. This form of government cuts off 20% of the miracle cooldown, it will also reduce the cooldown of Colossus to 2D 9H. This is somewhat late game and shouldn’t be equipped before you intent to use the miracles continuously.
      
      
      
  • Buildings:
    
  • You have 14 building spots to deal with, so choosing what to build on these are important. Ripping down a building is expensive AND takes a long time to rebuild. Following I will sort building in tiers, 1 being must haves and so on and so forth.
    
    • Tier: 1
      
    • Carpenter’s Workshop:
      This allows you to save 32% of all wood used in building. This also means that you will save storage space and thereby even more space for storage buildings.
      
      
      
    • Architect’s Office:
      Same as the Carpenter, just for marble instead.
      
      
      
    • Tavern:
      You can’t have a city without a Tavern, it is needed to keep the happiness up and you quite simply can’t do without.
      
      
      
    • Palace/Governor’s Residence:
      These are needed to achieve anything more than 1 city, and since having only one city won’t get you really far, a must have.
      
      
      
    • Tier: 2
      
    • Academy:
      Will allow you to progress in your research trees. This is useful all the way to the max level of 25 in future research. It will take several years to even get close to this so I would recommend getting one of these in all cities.
      
      
      
    • Temple:
      The building that allows for the use of miracles. You must assign priests to increase your faith to the needed level (being a 100% in all situations). You either have a temple with priests assigned or no temple, your island mates will get mad if you bring down the faith. I recommend building one of these in all cities as soon as you are ready to take use of miracles.
      
      
      
    • Hideout:
      Allows you to train spies. This will allow you to spy on other people as well as make it severely harder to spy on you (if the spies are home). Spies are extremely useful in conflict, this will be explained later.
      
      
      
    • Barracks:
      Where you train your army. You will need at least a few of these, however I prefer having several if not all 12. The more you want to start conflicts the more barracks you can justify building.
      
      
      
    • Tier: 3
      
    • Warehouse:
      You will need a few of these no matter what. The amount differs based on your activity in the piracy game since the resources payed out are based on safe resources. Each level of warehouse secures you 480 of each resource. I personally go for 3 warehouses in each city in the beginning of the server, and then cut down to 2 and a depot when I hit city number 10 or 11.
      
      
      
    • Museum:
      Having this is not a must have. However it will save you A LOT of wine. The more you level your Tavern the harder the scaling on the wine cost become. Museums allow you to gain happiness by trading treaties. One treaty per level of museum.
      
      
      
    • Depot:
      Allows for more storage. Gives you 4X the value per level compared to the warehouse, HOWEVER it does not give you ANY safe resources. In the late game this building will become a must since building prices will surpass what warehouses can support. You can only have 1 depot in each city, and this will be needed at some point, only you can choose when this is needed.
      
      
      
    • Tier: 4
      
    • Wine Press:
      Allows you to save 32% wine. Useful in the late game when Taverns start scaling to ridicules amounts, or if you’re planning on being active all the way through, can be swapped with the museum.
      
      
      
    • Tier: 5
      
    • All of these buildings are fillers and can be used at will, I won’t write down every single one but take a look at the building menu, build what you find nice. Below I will include those I find worth the most.
      
      
      
    • Stonemason and equivalent:
      These will increase production, are you an active raider the value of these will be less, are you not they will be more. Consider with care.
      
      
      
    • Optician:
      I recommend building this in one city. Then make it the city you perform all your experiments in. This will increase the value of your Crystal Glass.
      
      
      
    • Workshop:
      Build this in one city and make all upgrades available. Then remove the building again. This is not up to question however it won’t take up space for a long time and I therefore think it deserves a spot in this category.
      
      
      
    • The rest:
      
      
      
    • How I do my city:
      
      • 1 x Palace
        
      • 1 x Trading Port
        
      • 1 x Shipyard
        
      • 1 x Architect’s Office
        
      • 1 x Carpenter’s Workshop
        
      • 1 x Barracks
        
      • 1 x Academy
        
      • 1 x Museum
        
      • 1 x Hideout
        
      • 1 x Temple
        
      • 1 x Depot
        
      • 2 x Warehouse
        
      • 1 x Forester’s House
        
      • 1 x Stonemason (or equivalent)
        
      • 1 x Tavern
        
        
        
        • I fit my embassy in my sulphur city in exchange for the Alchemist’s Tower. Sulphur is the least used resource, and is therefore either not used, or easy to plunder.
          
          
          
      
      
  • Income:
    
  • Now I’ll go over how income is calculated. More specifically, what pays what and who takes what.
    
    
    
    • Economy:
      
      • Every citizen produces 3 gold per hour
        
      • Every worker produces 0 gold per hour
        
      • Every researcher costs 6 gold per hour
        
      • Priests cost 0 Gold per hour.
        
      • Units and warships in your town cost the stated upkeep
        
      • Travelling units and warships cost double the upkeep
        
        
        
    • There is a research that reduces the cost of researchers called Letter Chute. This will reduce it by 3 gold per hour effectively halving the cost.
      
      
      
    • The cost of units and warships is stated in unit details.
      
      
      
    • The use of your gold is not only units and warships. Buying transporters takes a continuously increasing amount of gold. Reaching the cap of 180 takes a couple of hundred million. I tend to reach 180 at around 4 mil ts.
      
      
      
• The Basic Art of Warfare
  This section will be informing on the basic forms of warfare. If you are new you should start your journey into warfare here. Once basic understanding of the system is there the rest will come naturally.
  
  • Units:
    
  • Here I will go over what roles what units play on the battlefield, which to use and which to not. No math will be presented here. They will be split in land and naval units.
    
    
    
  • Land:
    
    • Front
      
    • Hoplite:
      The backbone of any army. An absolute must have.
      
    • Steam giant:
      The alternative to the hoplite. This unit is more tanky, deals more damage but less units fits into the battlefield. In 9/10 cases hoplites, will be better, waving against battering rams will be the exception (will be covered later).
      
      
      
    • Flank
      
    • Swordsman:
      The trusty soldier of the flank. Without a flank your ranged line is without protection and will be slaughtered. You can’t fight without these.
      
    • Spearman:
      The only alternative to the swordsman. This unit is far less sturdy, got far less damage and therefore takes way more to even keep up a flank. This unit is pretty much useless and should never be used.
      
      Ranged
      
    • Sulphur Carabineer:
      The soldier of range. This guy is needed to make any dent into the opposing front (hoplites), not having them will decrease the loss had by your opponent. This decrease is visible on the damage of the ranged units in comparison.
      
    • Archer:
      Weaker version of the Sulphur carabineers. End of story, not worth it in any case.
      
    • Slinger:
      Even weaker version. Even worse choice than the archers.
      
      
      
    • Artillery
      
    • Mortar:
      The nuke throwing war machines. These are needed to get through any decent wall. While useful for breaking down walls they don’t make any difference when knocking down hoplites compared to the other artillery units. In other words, don’t make a million of these, it is not needed.
      
    • Catapult:
      The unit in-between mortars and rams. Only useful until you have mortars researched.
      
    • Battering Rams:
      Great for knocking down hoplites. Deal the same damage to them as mortars and applies the same number of hits. They cost less than mortars and therefore should be on the battlefield on all times there aren’t a wall in play.
      
      
      
    • Special units
      
    • Gyrocopter:
      Shoots down balloons. Always have these on the battlefield if there is a risk your opponenthave either balloons or gyrocopters in.
      
    • Balloon-Bombardier:
      Attacks the artillery line. Are extremely squishy so will more or less be taking down in one round. Only have on the battlefield if no enemy gyrocopters are present.
      
      
      
    • Support units
      
    • Cook:
      Gives your army morale. Without these your entire army will go to space because of demotivation. A must have in any army.
      
    • Doctor:
      Heals your units. Or. Well. That’s what it’s supposed to do. They’re 100% useless. Don’t ever use them.
      
      
      
  • Naval:
    
    • Front
      
    • Fire Ship:
      Needed in all fleets. They are used in “advanced”, fleet tactics and are great for taking a punch. A great number of these will die in battle so recruit a decent amount.
      
    • Steam Ram:
      Also needed in all fleets. While fighting on water you use two different ships in your front line at once. They deal a load of damage and if you can prevent them from tanking the damage they will wreak havoc on the enemy frontline.
      
      
      
    • Flank
      
    • Ram Ship:
      Only flank ship for sea. Like on land flank is always needed. Don’t save money here.
      
      
      
    • Ranged
      
    • Mortar Ship:
      The only useful ranged ship at sea. Make sure to have enough of these.
      
    • Catapult Ship:
      Useless.
      
    • Ballista Ship:
      Useless.
      
      
      
    • Artillery
      
    • Diving Boat:
      Great for taking down flame ships.
      
    • Rocket Ship:
      Great for taking down steam rams.
      
      
      
    • Special Units
      
    • Paddle Speedboat:
      Shoots down balloons. Always have these on the battlefield.
      
    • Balloon Carrier:
      Always have these in, the gain in damage from bombing artillery is worth the loss in balloon carriers.
      
      
      
    • Support Units
      
    • Tender:
      Is the support-unit of the sea. This both raises morale and repairs ships in-between rounds.
      
      
      
  • The Battlefield
    This will be a resume of how the battlefield works, what strikes first and how units are placed.
    
    
    
  • Both battlefields work the same way, units are placed in the same way. We need to know how to use this in our favor.
    
    
    
    • Support units
      
      • All of the support unit`s auxiliary units are put in reserve.
        
      • The effects of all auxiliary units also work from the reserve.
        
      • Can contain an unlimited amount of units.
        
      • The support units do not take part in the combat action.
        
        
        
    • Bombers
      
      • Can only contain units from the `bomber` class.
        
      • The weakest units are positioned first.
        
      • Attack sequence: Artillery, long-range battle line, close-combat battle line, flanks
        
        
        
    • Artillery
      
      • Can only contains units from the `artillery` class.
        
      • The strongest units are positioned first.
        
      • Attack sequence: Front line, flanks
        
        
        
    • Long-range battle line
      
      • Can only contain units from the `long-distance` class.
        
      • The strongest units are positioned first.
        
      • Attack sequence: Close-combat battle line, flanks, long-range battle line
        
        
        
    • Close-combat battle line
      
      • Is initially only occupied by heavy infantry. If no heavy infantry is available, the following units will take their place:
        
      • light infantry
        
      • long-range fighters that do not have any munition left
        
      • The weakest units are positioned first.
        
      • Attack sequence: Front line, long-range battle line, artillery, flanks
        
        
        
    • Flanks
      
      • Can only contain units from the `light infantry` class.
        
      • The strongest units are positioned first.
        
      • Attack sequence: Flanks, long-range battle line, artillery, close-combat line
        
        
        
    • Air defense
      
      • Can only contain units from the `air defense` class.
        
      • The strongest units are positioned first.
        
      • Attack sequence: Bombers, air defense
        
        
        
    • Reserves
      
      • The reserve takes all the units that do not fit on the battlefield.
        
        
        
  • The attack sequence
    
    • The same formations on both sides of the battle shoot at the same time. The shot sequence of the different formations is the following:
      
      
      
      • Air defense
        
      • Air
        
      • Artillery
        
      • Flanks
        
      • Long-range battle line
        
      • Main battle line
        
        
        
  • Morale
    
    • Morale is what decides whether your forces are capable of staying for the fight. There is not a lot to say here. Without cooks/tenders your army will be send home, make sure you bring some if you intend for your forces to stay for the entire fight.
      
      
      
  • Armor
    
    • Armor is deducted directly from damage taken. This means that if a unit has 3 armor and 5 damage is incoming, 2 heath pointes will be deducted. This is also the reason why you will be needing mortars to take down walls, as higher levels walls achieve values of way over 100 armor, rendering attacks of less than 100 damage useless.
      
      
      
  • Precision
    
    • The precision of a unit is measured as a “red bar” and can be seen in unit details (Click the picture of the unit in either the barrack or shipyard). The lower the precision the bigger the chance that the shot will go wide. This is why you see most units dead in the slot in the middle, second most next to this and so on and so forth. This mechanic is fairly useless, but just recognizing its existence can prove useful when waving, will be covered later.
      
      
      
  • Occupation
    
    • To occupy a foreign town, you have to fulfil the following requirements:
      
      • You need to have researched the topic `Governor` from the research section `Military`.
        
      • Your palace has to be one level higher than the number of towns you are already occupying.
        
        
        
    • Members from your alliance can station troops and ships in towns that you occupy. Other actions can be carried out from there. This also includes further conquests.
      
    • If your town has been occupied, you cannot start any military actions with land units - with the exception of a rebellion against the occupier. Building troops and ships cost the town`s owner double during this time. If your port hast been occupied, you also cannot start any military actions from there with your own warships.
      
    • The occupied player receives 10% of the goods when the occupier`s army returns from a pillage. The rest is transported on to the target destination and the pillaging army stays in the occupied town.
      
    • If the town is not occupied any more when the army returns, the army will be scattered. Loaded goods will be given to the town. If pillaged goods cannot be shipped any further due to a blockade, those resources will also be sent to the town and the pillaging army will be stationed again. Thus it is important for the occupier to keep control of the town and harbour.
      
    • You can call back armies and fleets stationed in occupied towns at any time. You can select your home town from amongst your own towns. If you wish to stop an occupation, you can do so at your palace, or in the military advisor.
      
      
      
  • Espionage
    
    • Not much is worth mentioning to espionage. It is extremely useful to get the upper hand in conflict.
      
      
      
    • The most underestimated and quite possibly the most useful mission is in my opinion: “Observe fleet and troop movements”. This allows you to see all activities from the given city. This will allow you to hit “surprise” attacks, time units coming back from “space” and see how long units being send therefrom are from landing and thereby calculating where it will land based on the geographic layout of the server.
      
      
      
    • One thing to note when using spies:
      If you decide to use decoys, the owner of the target town will always be informed that something is going on in their town. Even if the owner does not discover any agents, decoys or even if no agents were involved.
      
      
      
• The Needed Art of Warfare
  This section will be surrounding what I think is needed information to lead warfare in a competent matter. This will include the understanding of putting together a force, when to fight and how to fight. This section is all you need if you’re going to be playing with a competent general. What I mean by such is with only this information you can fit in, in a coordinated attack, and understand and comply to instructions.
  
  
  
  • Creating a force
    Please keep in mind that this is only a guideline of how to produce an army, as you gain experience you may develop your own preferred recipe.
    
    
    
    • Land
      Small army:
      1000 Hoplites
      700 Swordsmen
      168 Sulphur Carabineers (this will provide ammo for 6 rounds)
      30 Mortars (Ammo for 3 rounds, enough for small walls)
      60 Rams
      60 Balloons
      240 Gyrocopters
      50 Cooks
      
      Large army:
      5000 Hoplites
      4000 Swordsmen
      504 Sulphur Carabineers (This will provide ammo for 18 rounds)
      60 Mortars (Enough to take down any wall)
      90 Rams
      150 Balloons
      600 Gyrocopters
      100 Cooks
      
      
      
    • Naval
      Small fleet:
      400 Fire ships
      100 Steam rams
      300 Ram ships
      84 Mortar ships
      80 Diving boats
      30 Rocket ships
      30 Balloon ships
      45 Tenders
      
      Large fleet:
      2000 Fire ships
      400 Steam rams
      1500 Ram ships
      252 Mortar ships
      500 Diving boats
      150 Rocket ships
      100 Balloon ships
      100 Tenders
      
      
      
  • How to fight
    Here I will go over the basics of the battlefield and how to prevent easily being outmatched. This will also allow you to outclass 90% of the playerbase, since these do not have the required level of knowledge.
    
    
    
    • Waving
      This technique can be used both on land and on the water. However I am only going to go over the naval version since that is what I believe is the most efficient and the only type I find worth it.
      
      
      
      • The technique is simple. We abuse the fact that the weakest units place first in the frontline. Units place from the middle and out, same goes for damage, it is dealt from the inside and out.
        The idea is therefore to have 3 fields (36) of flame ships in to tank the damage and filling the rest with the high damage brother ship, the Steam ram. Whatever little chip damage that the flame ships may leave because of their low accuracy will be filtered by the high armor value of the Steam rams resulting in ridiculous value.
        To do this you need to start off by sending 36 flame ships with the rest of your main fleet. This will fill up the three middle spots of the battlefield. Hereafter you will have to make sure there is always another 36 arriving for every round hereafter. When the 36 flame ships arrive for round two you will have to hit the white flag instantly. This will make it leave as soon as it has done its job and therefore won’t end up messing with the waves to come. Please do keep in mind that the number 36 isn’t definitive. Often times sending 24 will net you a victory. Specifically, when facing a line of, 36 fire ships and diving boats, which is also the most commonly used combat line. Your Steam rams will take a lot of residual damage in this case, and they will need to be replaced often. However, this will grant you a gs victory of up to 10 points, relative to the condition of enemy ships.
        
        
        
    • Countering the front line
      This works for both land and naval combat. It is a question of choosing your artillery with care. Not that the choice itself is that hard, we got two to choose from.
      
      
      • The principle is simple, for naval combat, if your opponent got ONLY Steam rams in you send in rocket ships, they will place first so you can send them in on top of diving boats. In all other cases I recommend sending in diving boats. The exception being when the enemy is using waves of 12 or 24 fire ships. Doing so against 24 will net you a win of 10’ish gs, while 12 is largely dependent on the condition of your units.
        For land you use mortars for the killing of walls and steam giants. In ALL other cases you use rams since they don’t take ammo and are cheap to make so the loss won’t be felt as hard. The math behind this will be covered later.
        
        
        
    • Understanding the relative power level of the front
      
      
      
      • Here I will specifically be speaking of the naval front since, as I’ve already stated, I don’t find land units to be worth the effort. To explain the title, this is acknowledging when you should be using what ship, specifically the fire ship or the steam ram.
        One fire ship is worth 6.2 gs, and one steam ram is worth 24. This means that you have to kill at least 4 fire ships for every steam ram you are losing.Fire ships have less of every stat compared to the steam ram, however you can also have 3 times the amount of fire ships on the battlefield at a time compared to steam rams. However, because of the way armor interacts with damage, fire ships do little damage compared to steam rams, more on armor later.
        
      • So how do we determine when to use what? There is no obvious rule to follow, it comes down to intuition. Steam rams are fairly squishy and costs you a lot when they die off. To make up for this they do a tremendous amount of damage. This means that the optimal time to use steam rams are when there is little incoming damage. If your enemy is missing either the long range, or the first attack combat line for instance, and there are fire ships in front. In this case there is missing a very large damage source, and using a pure line of steam rams might be beneficial. Keep in mind the condition of steam rams go bad extremely quickly, and it is recommended to wave in a completely new line of steam rams every round.
        
        
        
    • The forge
      
      • You’d think even mentioning would be a waste of time, but I rather often see people going straight against this point. Now the first rule of warfare in Ikariam: “Never fight at a forge disadvantage”. You can’t win vs an opponent with an IQ above 50, and forge advantage. The buff it provides is honestly way too necessary, and trying to contradict this will get you slaughtered 90% of the times. Now before anyone attempts to lynch me, yes there are cases where winning at a forge disadvantage is possible, however this section of the guide is targeted people with just a slight grip on warfare, and as such I find it important to set up specific rules of engagement. When in a declared war I will very rarely take up a fight at a forge disadvantage myself, the reasoning behind this being you will be cut into pieces if you’re caught doing so. Do it at your own risk and don’t come crying to me when pinched.
        
        
        
    
    
• The advanced art of warfare
  This section is dedicated to the arts of war that are necessary to understand the general’s decision-making, and to lead beginner level war in any scenario. Reading will never make you an expert at Ikariam, and as such take your time to understand the following principles, and work the information into what you’ve already learnt. The following sections will be of the “easy to learn, hard to master” category, and don’t ever tell me you’ve mastered the techniques. I’ve played with a lot of talented players through my 11 years of Ikariam, and I can confirm. Everyone makes mistakes.
  Every single part after this is written down as I thought it right, and it has not been read through what so ever. Some sections may not make sense, and some may need more explanation. Please do let me know.
  
  
  
  • Controlling the battlefield
    
    • The (in my opinion) most important part of warfare. This is going to be an entry level explanation of how to control your surroundings, what routines you need to get used to, what you should be aware of, and the different timers that takes part in the battlefield. For an expert level explanation you will need to find someone already at this level, and follow him/her. If I were to describe the exact science of control I’d need to be payed to do so. Feel free to hit me up ingame or on the forums though. I’ll gladly help answering any question.
      
      
      
    • There are two ways a conflict starts, you’re either the aggressor or the defender. Depending on which role you are taking, you will need to act accordingly. The difference, however, is fairly small and pretty simple. You need to ask yourself: “Do I have anything I need to protect?”. If the answer is no you can go straight to attacking, if yes there is a few precautions you will need to take. Firstly you need to understand that it is impossible to defend something forever without being willing to take losses. Secondly you need to understand the power of fighting in your own city. While fighting in your own city you have the power to withdraw any amount of your army/fleet at any time. This for instance means that all of your units should always be fresh, you will always have ammo for every ship, and if on land you get the power to manipulate your wall. Again, I’m going to choose to ignore the subject on land units, and as such I won’t be touching on the principles of wall manipulation (yet that is), and will again keep my focus on naval warfare. Defending is equal to attacking in almost every way as already stated. This also means that you will still need other cities to wave from. This is the case because while you can withdraw any number of troops at a time in own city, you must send all stationed units into battle. Having fire ships for instance, would cause massive losses. So like when you’re attacking, don’t forget to secure a base of operation.
      
      
      
    • Setting up an attack (or defense).
      
      • The principle of setting up an attack also applies to setting up a defense, and as such I’m going to refer to this as an attack. By setting up an attack I am referring to the actions you will have to perform before, in the beginning and as the battle goes on. First rule I tend to follow is, always assume hostile forces. This means that I always make certain I have the means to deal with resistance, when for instance occupying harbors for allies to raid. The main focus while setting up an attack is confirming you have enough action points, and that you have enough cities to wave from. Do notice I distinguish the two, having two cities will never be enough against an experienced opponent, this is the case even if said cities have 12 action points each. This however doesn’t mean that you have to start off an attack with occupying 7 ports for waves, it means you have to make certain you have 7 ports (for instance), nearby and with feasible player statistics (this meaning accounts with 80k gs tends to make for shitty wave cities). So how do you actually confirm you have the right amount of cities ready to be waved from? Experience will tell you how many you need, and time will allow you to do it well. For instance, using only one island to wave from will make the job easier for you, but in doing so you are also making it easier to push your waves, as well as informing your enemy of where the entirety of your gs is. But I don’t even believe this is the greatest flaw of waving from one island. Be spreading you are also reducing the islands your enemy can use to close the gap to you, and allows you to neglect their attempt at acquiring cities to wave from. When leading war as an alliance, we will typically be 5-ish people for an attack. This means that if we’re assaulting one island, we only need 3 occupations to lock the island, and thus I keep 5 ready on everyone. This leaves 7 occupations (just to clarify, I am referring to blocking by harbor, land units are more or less useless until the island is locked), per person, that I can use to occupy a large amounts of islands around where center of fighting. This means that chasing wave cities will never take more than 15 minutes, and as such, usually leads to a quick retreat from the enemy, leaving army behind to slaughter. Same goes for the solo play, but in smaller scale. If you’re attempting taking on several people of equal skill and size by yourself you should not rely on this guide to save you, but I will go through the general idea of an aggressive retreat.
        
        
    • An aggressive retreat
      
      • It is impossible to fight toe to toe against several people of equal size and skill. It is however possible to win against such, and it is quite easy as well (a quick note, chasing an experienced foe is never worth if you’re not expecting to hit valuable units, or plan to chase him all the way home). Now firstly you need to master waving, simple as that. As soon as you send a wave from a city, that city will be assaulted by a set (a set being a fleet capable of sustaining 5 rounds, I realize now I haven’t covered this yet, I will shortly). Now this assault will take at best 15 minutes if you’re fighting an experienced opponent, which means you will get 2 waves out of each city you occupy. The goal is to last for 5 rounds before withdrawing your set. This is easy to do, and you will only need one city to wave from as long as you have 15-ish seconds from your set arriving until the enemy arrives. This will allow you to send out raids from the city of which the fight is taking place, and simply turning them back so that they will return in their respective rounds. Keep in mind when waving this way the returning fleet will join your already engaged fleet rather than create a new fleet. While you may think “why the hell does this matter?”, this does cost you gs if not accounted for. The reason being that these ships will join your reserve, and end up placing an additional field of flame ships. 7 flame ships will survive on average, and as such the second wave you are sending, should only contain 24 flame ships, because the first two rounds had 7 remaining flame ships, leaving now 14, and thus a field of 12 will be placed. You could do all your waves in this way, but if you miscalculate, or your opponent sends only 24 flame ships, you’re going to have a bad time. I prefer only doing 2 waves, and one from a separate city.
        
      • To continue. Your wave city has now been taken, what have you done in the meantime? You have firstly been performing the last part of your attack, while the majority of your set has been withdrawn, you also send a set containing balloons, speeds and a ram. These you won’t withdraw, and what they’ll do is making certain you win, by taking out u-boats. It’s cheesy and annoying, but you won’t get the combat report as long as it isn’t in your own city, so no one on the forums will be able to bash you.
        
      • So you now know how to win every single damn time (as long as you play every round correctly). Can we do this forever? No, that’d be impossible. While you are doing this remember you are facing several foes, and all of these foes will be chasing your fleet. As long as you have the upper hand, and your entire fleet hasn’t been caught, you can leave at any time. If your fleet does get caught you’ve done something wrong, and you should feel bad.. (kidding) Anyways, you get caught, you leave, make shure your units hometown is set so that your opponent will have less of a chance guessing right, sending them to the nearest city is what they’ll do 9/10 times. Back to you not getting caught. Now you just need to make certain your returning ships don’t get caught. If you’re defending your fleet will return to your town upon withdrawing. This should be fine. Now if you’re not defending, your ships will return from the city you sent them from, and your opponent will know what city this is. If they have chased you through said city your ships will be spread, and go to your hometown, perfect, if they haven’t they now have the option to take them out as they land, they will be able to extrapolate the exact return time from the combat report, and as such, going to bed right after a fight is rarely ideal. So to sum up. Taking on several foes is no problem, but you won’t win any gs off of it. The only thing to gain here is respect, which is also totally fine.
        
        
        
    • Sets
      
      • So, back to sets. I define a set only in naval warfare, as I simply do not have the experience with prolonged warfare on land to give you an answer I am 100% correct will serve it’s purpose. I could give an estimate but I’ll leave that to personal request.
        
      • A set persists of:
        
        0-36 Fire ships
        60 Steam rams
        120 Ram ships
        42 Mortar ships
        50 Diving boats
        0 Rocket ships
        30 Speeds
        24 Balloon ships
        20 Tenders
        
        
        
      • This is the set I default to. I don’t fixate completely on the numbers, you can go with a more min-maxed version of the one above, but you would need to do so for any kind of flame wave, since they’d all be different. You can get along with only 43 steam rams for instance, but if it turns out you’re piling on top of the set, they’re going to be extremely damaged, and will bring down the rest of your fleet, as such I use 60. 43 will also only work against flame waves of 36. If your opponent is using waves of 24 you will loose too many, and take extra losses in the fifth round. You can also change the number of tenders, 20 is more than enough to keep up morale, even 10 should do just fine. The reason we use a lot of tenders is to keep up the health of your front, flank, balloons and speeds. There’s really nothing more to add here. It’s a detail nice to be aware of, and it will assist you in getting the most out of your fleet.
        
        
        
    • Tenders
      
      • So I just reminded myself of the importance of tenders. In a close tie with the rocket ships, I believe these are the most undervalued units in the game. I suppose it might come from the bad reputation of the doctors. So why are tenders not useless when doctors are? It comes down to the units we are healing. Hoplites have a very little hp pool, and as such healing them makes little to no difference. So you’d think steam giants would make then worthwhile? Nope, because the doctor can’t heal robots (I suppose it does make sense). Back to the Tender. This unit can heal any other ship in the game, and to add to this, ships have large amounts of health, and therefore have great opportunity to be healed. That’s the theory behind it, the exact number you wish to use is derived from experience, but in a full sized naval battle I tend to use somewhere between 80-100, and for sets I use 20.
        
        
      • To be continued
        
    
    

Full context can be found at: Discussions -> Battle Maths

The following is an example of how to calculate the outcome of a battle on beforehand.

When it comes to war in general, the game attempts to take out one unit at a time, and thereafter takes the remaining damage, and splits it over the remaining units.

Connecting this with your example of a full flame front.
(I will assume constant forge)

A fire ship has:
219 HP
8 Armour
82 Damage

With forge:
219 HP
10 Armour
98.4 Damage

To calculate the outcome of the battle you will need to first find your effective hp (Ehp, the total amount of health a given attack line has. This is calculated by adding current health to the attacked units armor times the amount of incomming attacks. I will split armor and health below for clarity), and your total damage per round (DPR, the total damage a given attack line does).

Assuming full flames vs full flames:

Total health: 219*7*12 = 18396
DPR: 8265.6

Now with our DPR, and knowing what we're fighting against, we can calculate our effective damage. EDPR. This is calculated my multiplying the your amount of individual attakcs, with the enemy armour rating. This is caused since armour deducts directly from damage, and every uncomming attack will have to penetrate the armour value.

EDPR: 8265.6-(8*7*12) = 7593.6

We now have our EDPR, and since our enemy happens to be the exact same composition, we also have already calculated their HP. Damage is done at the same time, and as such does not take account for losses in units. As I said, Ikariam will kill off one unit at a time, and thereafter spread the remaining damage. So we'll calculate as such.

7593.6/219 (the hp of a flame ship) = 34.67
This means that 34 flame ships will die this round. The remaining damage will now split, and we can calculate the remaning hp your front will have. Keep in mind units in reserve also counts towards this number, so if player one had 1k flames in reserve, and player 2 had none, player 1 would be having fewer losses. I am assuming no ships in reserve.

7593.6-(34*219) = 147.6 Damage points

The above is the damage that will be spread, now we can calculate how much health you have left to spread it across. This is the number of remaining ships, times their health, minus the damage, divided by the number of remaining ships.

(((7*12-34)*219)-147.6)/50 = 216.048 health remaining per ship. You can now calculate the percentage.

216.048/219 = 0.98652 = 98.652%

Ikariam will round down to the lowest number, so the displayed value will be 98%, however as you see, the correct value is closer to 99%.


This is how it's done. If you do end up taking the time to do this, let me know. Just keep in mind this is only factoring the front line. Counting other lines the same procedure applies, you just have remember to calculate in order of the attack sequence. Also, damage only "splashes" on the last attack, so if one ship is left with 7 hp after being hit by morters, the damage from the front line will start off taking down the remaning 7 HP. You can also overkill. Meaning that even if you do 200 damage to the 7 hp mortar, those remaning 193 damage will be gone, and as such, calculating as I is not completely accurate, but taking this into consideration is not a subject I will delve into unless I'm being payed to do so. The difference is small, a little worse for naval units than on land, but still relatively small.

As an answer to Rime:
Sorry I didn't notice your message before answering in the thread, "battle math". I don't have a lot of time on my hands at the moment, this happens.

Anyways, 1:
Yes, yes they do. I wrote down the attack sequence that artillery units take:

Artillery

• Can only contains units from the `artillery` class.
  
• The strongest units are positioned first.
  
• Attack sequence: Front line, flanks
  

The wall just counts as frontline, and is treated by the engine like any other frontline unit.


2:
The "shortsword" is not used. I honestly have no idea why this is coded in, but it is 100% irrelevant, and will never become relevant. If someone can provide evidence of a combat report where secondary weapons are used I would be highly interested.


3:
Yes, they do. Again, all units for their respective spots are considered the same by the engine. Meaning the wall and a hoplite is the same type, and a ram and a mortar is the same type. While it doesn't make much thematical sense, it is how it is.


4:
There is no definitive source as to how spread works in Ikariam, I can only tell you what I've picked up from experience, and thus the section being a bit on the vague side. I can't prove any of the following, but it is my observation:
Spread, let's say it's 90% (even though there is no way to read it off the screen), describes the units ability to hit the center-most target. So if 100 hoplites attempts to hit with 90% accuracy, 90 of those attacks will hit the center-most target. Then there is 10 hits left, 9 of those will then hit the second most center target, and the last one the third.
Damage is spread the entire board, not just the top unit or the stack. The damage that spreads is only the last remaining damage that is incapable of killing a unit. So in case of a hoplite front, the maximum amount of damage spread, is 55 (since they have 56 hp). This damage is then spread across the entirety of your remaining front-line units. Assuming you have 55 hops left, all of these hops would take 1 dmg.
It is useful in waving, since the mechanic we are abusing when waving, is that units place from the middle and out, as well as the weaker units place first in the frontline. So by sending in at least 1 slot worth of weak units, these will take the middle position, and since spread dictates that most hits go for these, the remaining, high-damage, high-cost units, survived.


5:
You sort of answered your own question here by quoting me. Yes, this is the average hp of the entire stack. Whether it is stupid or not... I don't think so, it is another aspect to war, and it is an aspect that can be mitigated. Which means the skillcap goes up. I don't know what else to say to you on this..


6:
I went through every single unit in the game. This is what I wrote about doctors:

"Doctor:
Heals your units. Or. Well. That’s what it’s supposed to do. They’re 100% useless. Don’t ever use them."
So as you also concluded yourself, they do next to nothing.


7:
Yes, it may indeed just be sloppy coding. I don't know the reason any better than you do I'm afraid.


8:
I'm not much of a "land-battle warrior" if I can refer to it that way. I don't know the exact amount, but every cook supplies a set amount of morale. I'm not certain if it's a percentage or a value deducted based on the amount of units, but to my experience you are correct. 30 cooks have been more than enough for me. If I were to guess I'd say 1 cook supplies 2% morale, while would mean you'd need 50 to sustain a battle where you are loosing every aspect.. Not that you'd want to sustain that. Again, that's just my best guess.


9:
He will be warned in the form of "a smell of sulphur comes from the street", or "your spies have been caught drunk", etc. These messages means you were spied upon, via the use of decoys. So no, he will not know it's you who spied upon him.


10:
Yes, a wall is made of 7 different units with the same exact stats. So just like they all have 200 hp, they all do 14 dmg. As to if they all hit the middle, if it has 30% accuracy, the chances of it hitting the middle most unit is well, 30%, and as such you should expect.. 2 hits (?), to hit the middle stack. Now is when the engine focusing damaged units comes in. Because even though the wall rolled a miss, it will still prioritize the damaged unit, and deal damage to him.
As to whether or not the 100 damage will be spread equally amongst your 7 segments of wall.... No, no it won't. I don't know why this is, I don't know how this is calculated. But most damage will be going till the middle segment, and the least to the outers.
Again, the actual working of accuracy have never been described by anyone with access to the code. This means anything to do with accuracy is a theory, and I can only provide you with my best guess, based on personal experience.

I hope that helps.


And as to why I'm not adding this to the guide.
There is a deadline for how long one can edit their comments. I don't know how long that is (I'm not a forum expert), but I've hit it. As such any extension (like the one in this comment), will be going in the comments, at least until I see it worth it to post an updated version.

*Edit:
And thank you Helen, it's nice to hear that someone found the read worth the time

lol, that some A+ meme you got going there.
Yes, there's a way to calculate how much of the bar is filled etc, yet this doesn't explain what accuracy is, since accuracy in itself is a theory (theory in this case meaning not confirmed by a trusted source, meaning GF developers). As such we don't know that accuracy is actually based on a 0-100% system, that's just HTML requiring a set value to form a box. For all we know accuracy could be a number that tells us how many different outcomes the damage spread could have (or some other random occurrence).
So what I meant was, shure, we can read it is 90%, but we can't read what these 90% refer to. Does it mean there is 90% chance the unit misses, hits, flies to the moon, whatever. It's theory, and as such I won't refer to any subject regarding accuracy as a fact or a definitive result. Neither will I assume I understand how it works.

Thanks for the effort tho. That really was the most completed mocking session/meme/sarcasm fiesta I've seen in a long time.

To TBBDV:
Thanks for the appreciation mate, took way more than 2 hours though
I recognize and am aware that playing with 3 wine cities is plenty, as I also stated before even starting I do not call any of my information definitive answers, but rather personal personal preference/experience. I mentioned using 24 flame ships. I'm aware I didn't explain it in extensive detail, but if I had done so, I would of had to cover any frontline combination to prove my point. I Wrote that using 24 flames specifically versus 36 flames and diving boats would net you a victory, because this is true, and only true if this is the specific case. If your opponent has any experience with the frontline, the answer is to match it, and send in rocket ships. You will take significant losses, your steam rams will get damaged heavily, and you will need to start waving steam rams (and match the rocket ships as long as he's using 24 flames).
I don't like relying on waving balloon carriers because of the time it takes. Usually I am fighting at a disadvantage in numbers, and as such, having to use double the time to reposition my waves is either impossible or at least inconvenient. I do understand the purpose however, but the difference if you're using enough tenders will be so little that the risk of making a mistake because of the travel time, outways the worth of balloon waves (again, personal preference).
Also, sending sets of 10 has only proven to bite me in the ass. I don't exactly know how talented the general english servers are, but in Denmark, no fight will last longer than 5 rounds, without the flamewaves moving 1-3 islands backwards. This means that it gets impossible to send waves, and you just have to withdraw perfectly good ships (again, a decision I make from personal experience).

So yes, there's plenty of ways to do it. "Ikariam, The Novel", describes but one of many.

And for Rime:
I guess TomColBadil already did my job here. As he quoted, not every unit on the battlefield hit at the same time, but mirrored units do. This also means that even if a hoplite is killed by an opposing hoplite, it will still hit it's target. It however won't hit if it was killed by any other unit, since the frontline is the last firering line.

Well I tend to only fight on my larger accounts during declared war, and as such I never fight against someone who is offline. As such (again it only comes down to my personal preference) my point stands, spending 15 minutes per island for balloons is too long for me in the long run. And indeed, sometimes I do waste 5 hours looking for fleet, that's the name of the game.

I could keep discussing, but I think we should take that somewhere else if that should be the case. Let us keep this thread for educational purposes.
And thanks again.

To Brom:
I started the guide out explaining what I found important in Ikariam, and explained that the guide would follow what I found important. Since the answer to this is war, of course my general purpose city isn't going to match that of a superpirate, neither an afk farmer or a "mixed". I also state that I only play with larger accounts, all surpassing 5 mil TS, since I at this point find the earlygame fairly stagnant and boring. What this means is that my city is built to match a server where war is a game of sports, it is not used to actively raid active people, since on these servers there are (almost) always enough inactive in a couple islands radius. It also means that 3 warehouses quite simply wouldn't be enough without using ambro to boost storage capacity, something I find rather unnecessary before at the bare minimum 20 mil TS.

In terms of army composition, this ties into my above points. No player above 5 mil TS will be leading war on land. It takes way too long, it's in my honest opinion quite boring, and in the grand scheme of things quite unnecessary, since the damage it does to both sides is negligible compared to naval combat. Thus the only use I have for my land units is to plunder, in order to bait out enemy fleet so I can get some actual damage done. Other than that I bring my army around in case backup is needed anywhere. This typically happens when 5-10 battles are happening simultaneously, and all 3 guys fighting on land had the same idea as you, and thought 2 sets of carabineers was enough.

As I've stated at least 50 times already, this is but one of many ways to do this. But I have been refining this method for 10 years, and I can assure you I've had quite the selection of talented players to discuss with. Allow me to quote the very first line in the section regarding army compositions:

"Creating a force
- Please keep in mind that this is only a guideline of how to produce an army, as you gain experience you may develop your own preferred recipe."

Even I don't follow what the compositions. My army is typically 2-3k hops strong, I don't need anything else, and if I do I have the barracks to sustain losses from several fights at once. And yes, as I also stated, this is but the start of a guide. I even wrote that I easily could write several pages on a couple of topics, but since I am not being payed, those aren't coming for the foreseeable future.

And for TomColBadil:
I very well might have it wrong, as I have noted, accuracy is a theory since there is no real way to know if you're right. I see you sent me a pm though, so yeah, let's try and clear things up in there.

I see now I never came back to accuracy.. Huh. I'm not going to do so now, but hopefully what I'm copying in down below will give you an understanding of my developed understanding of accuracy. It is as always only a theory, but I'd like to believe I am getting closer. For the thread I wrote this response to, go to:
Doctors are weird! Need engineer! :D

Anyways, it's a heavy read. Get a drink before starting.

You know I wasn't planning on doing any math today, but on top of that mad compliment I'm suddenly feeling inspired.

Anyhow, I guess I could calculate the outcome of a standard SG battle with and without doctors, now engineers.

I'll assume both sides are using SG's. One without engineers and one with. This is based on the fact that if one person is waving SG's, the other person almost always mirrors you no matter his skill level.

Anyhow. There's a whole lot of units who would be affected by engineers. Gyros, ballons, mortars/rams and SG's (I don't think I forgot any (relevant) units).

So the lineups will be the following, assuming one full battlefield for each side.

16*7 SG's
40*6 Swords
12*7 Muscets
6*5 Mortars
15*2 Ballons
30*2 Gyro's

(Let me know if I misremember the numbers, as I've stated countless times at this point, I don't battle much on land).


So let's start calculating damage numbers. Luckily I only have to do it once since they're mirrored.

I'll assume all units are fully upgraded and have forge.

Units:
- SG's
HP: 182
Armor: 6
DMG: 45*1.2 = 54
True DMG vs SG's = 54-6 = 48

Swords:
I'm not gonna calculate these. They're going to be the exact same as with doctors. Refer to some of my other posts for calculations on these.

Muscets:
DMG: 29*1.2 = 38.4
True DMG vs SG's = 38.4-6 = 32.4

Mortars:
HP: 32
Armor: 3
DMG: 273*1.2 = 327.3
True DMG vs SG's = 324.3

Balloons:
HP: 40
Armor: 3
DMG: 51*1.2 = 61.2
True DMG vs Mortars = 58.2

Gyro's:
DMG: 20*1.2 = 24
True DMG vs Ballons = 21

Alright, that's the baseline. Now for the damage that is taken, let's start with the easy ones. Balloons and mortars. Gyro's shoot before balloons so we have to account for this first.

As there are 30 units in each stack, both stacks of ballons (should) take damage equally. (I'm aware this isn't always the case, I am unable to explain why this is... Accuracy in a nutshell). I'll calculate based on a logical distribution of damage, as I would any other position.

30*21 = 630 dmg inflicted to each stack of ballons. Let's calculate casualties.

Total hp of balloons: 40*15 = 600. As such all balloons should die in a forge vs forge battle. To my knowledge this is correct.

This means I don't have to calculate for loss of mortars (forgot about this, just saved myself like 10 minutes).


Mortars:

So we know we have a full line of mortars. They're split in 5 stacks with 6 units in each. This means damage will be dealt to 6 different stacks with 5 hits going to each.

5*324.3 = 1621.5 dmg to each of the 6 stacks.

Total health of a stack of SG's: 182*16 = 2912

The loss: 2912-1621.5 = 1290.5/2912 = 44% is left alive (or 1290.5 hp's worth (or 7.09 SG's)).
Remember, this is only of 6 stacks, we have one still on full health.


Muscets:

There are 12 in each stack of muscets. This means that the 2 outer stacks of SG's will take 1 hit, while the 5 inner will take 2 from each stack. This adds up to a total of 7 hits on outer stacks and 14 on inner.

Let's calculate for the inner first.

14*32.4 = 453.6 dmg

All inner stacks have the same amount of health left, this value is 1290.5 as calculated above.

1290.5-453.6 = 836.9/2912 = 28.7% is left alive (or 836.9 hp's worth (or 4.598 SG's)).

Now for the outer.

7*32.4 = 226.8 dmg

These stacks have different amounts of health so I have to calculate seperatly. Let's start with the damaged one.

1290.5-226.8 = 1063.7/2912 = 36.5% is left alive (or 1063.7 hp's worth (or 5.84 SG's)).

The undamaged one:

2912-226.8 = 2683.2/2912 = 92% is left alive (or 2683.2 hp's worth (or 14.74 SG's)).


The frontline:

Now this is going to be a pain to calculate, but then again, I've come this far, may as well finish is properly. Haven't even gotten to the point yet..

We have 3 different kinds of stacks to calculate for, to do so we need the number of SG's alive (which is why I included it above).

Let's start with the 5 inner stacks.

These each have 4 SG's left which can deal damage, meaning they will hit the 4 inner most targets. Since there's 5 stacks, these stacks will be hit 5 times.

48*5 = 240 dmg

To calculate loss we need the exact hp value (which is why I included that above).

836.9-240 = 596.9/2912 = 20.5% is left alive (or 596.9 hp's worth (or 3.28 SG's)).

Remember, this is for the 4 most inner stacks, we still have one stack heavily damaged, one slightly less so, and one even less. Might take a few attempts to get this, I won't judge you, I'm damn concentrated as well.


Now let's calculate the damage the damage the sixth most center stack does.

This stack has 5 SG's alive, which means it will hit the 5 center most stacks once.

48 = 48...

These stacks now have different amount of health. Let's calculate for the 4 we just calculated for above first.

596.9-48 = 548.9/2912 = 18.85% is left alive (or 548.9 hp's worth (or 3.02 SG's)).

And now for the fifth which didn't get hit above.

836.9-48 = 788.9/2912 = 28.09% is left alive (788.9 hp's worth (or 4.33 SG's)).


Last stack, let's calculate the damage dealt by the last and most healthy stack:

This stack has 14 SG's left alive. This means all stacks will be hit twice.

48*2 = 96 dmg

I have to calculate this for each different health stack. The 4 most center stacks have the same hp, the last 3 stacks all have different hp values.
First for the 4 most center stacks.

548.9-96 = 452.9/2912 = 15.55% is left alive (or 452.9 hp's worth (or 2.49 SG's)).


Now for the fifth stack:

788.9-96 = 692.9/2912 = 23.79% is left alive (or 692.9 hp's worth (or 3.81 SG's)).


Now for the sixth stack:

1063.7-96 = 967.7/2912 = 33.23% is left alive (or 967.7 hp's worth (or 5.32 SG's)).


Now the seventh and last stack:

2683.2-96 = 2587.2/2912 = 88.85% is left alive (or 2587.2 hp's worth (or 14.22SG's)).


Hot damn, that's the heavy part. Now for the slightly less heavy but still sort of boring work. We need to figure out how much hp each damaged unit has. Which is another reason why I included the exact unit numbers and hp numbers. It'll make my job easier. Probably is a help to you guys as well. Let me know.



Luckily only SG's have taken damage in our experiment (yes I'm aware some gyro's should have taken damage as well but I honestly can't be bothered. That's a question for another time).

Let's figure out the missing health, starting with the 4 most center stacks.

452.9-2*184 = 84.9 hp which can be healed.

The fifth stack:

692.9-3*184 = 140.9 hp which can be healed.

The sixth stack:

967.7-5*184 = 47.7 hp which can be healed.

The seventh stack:

2587.7-14*184 = 11.7 hp which can be healed.


Total amount of hp that can be healed (excluding gyro's): 84.9*4+140.9+47.7+11.7 = 539.9 hp which can be healed.


So all of that math was for this lonely number, I'm not sure how I feel about this.. Took like an hour.. Anyways..

Let's asses the value were this to be healed. What is it in SG's?

539.9/184 = 2.93 SG's.


Total statistical loss of SG's without "engineers" can be calculated based on their hp.

A full battlefield is 16*7 = 112 SG's.
Total health is then: 112*184 = 20608 hp.
Total loss is: 20608-(452.9*4+692.9+967.7+2587.7) = 14548.1 hp.

The percentage the engineers would do is then:

539.9/14548.1 = 3.71%


The conclusion:

In this specific but very common scenario, a frontline with "engineers" would be 3.71% more effective than a frontline without them. This is in my opinion a pretty large difference, but then again, it would be open to everyone, would't actually make much of a difference in the long run. I would not see it as overpowered, but it would most definitely make SG's the superior frontline unit. And before anyone starts whining "but Abeged, we don't place SG's in while mortars are on the field", I only got one thing to say, I didn't consider I probably should have gone with rams before now. But also the experiment is mirrored, and as such the same (almost) difference would be found. If you don't trust me I do encourage you to do the math yourself. So I guess I had two things to say.

Anyways, that's it for me for now. I'm going to add this to my novel since well, it took way too long not to do so.