Well, at the risk of showing my hand, I'd like to discuss what strategies people use in duels, and the thoughts behind them. Why? Because.

Strategy 1: Marks and only Marks.

Using this strategy, a player will go for only marksmen as the troop they produce. This is a very costly strategy, and requires the player to avoid conflict that will wipe out his starting basic troops. The player will also have to forego most of the attack and defense updrades and many of the other nonessential techs. Marks suck a lot of gold, and you will need it to continually buy them. If you play it right, your first two marks will be out by turn 9. They can then rampage and conquer any troops out there. Any mid-level troops are destroyed in one shot. Master level troops will be rendered useless after the 2 marks attack, and dead the next turn. I haven't come up against anything that this strategy doesn't beat. The longer the game goes on, the more dominant this strategy gets.

I see the weakness of this strategy being to go against mass squires, or mass basics troops.

Strategy 2: Basics and only Basics.

This strategy relies on numbers to win. No cash is spent on troop upgrades, so upgrading attack and defense techs is a must. This strategy works best when you can rush across the field quickly. Plan on having heavy losses, but also plan on pumping out so many stacks so quickly, that you will eventually overrun your opponent. It is easy to build a forward barracks under this strategy, as you should be swimming in cash.

The problem is that advanced troops should be able to handle the mass basics. If your opponent goes all marks, you should easily run him over.

I was up against a all marks strategy in one of my duels, they also invested in falchs and only produced two or three of these units. I used about half my income on squires. Knowing where my opponent was and knowing they couldn't split their force with as much gold as they were spending i had my forces split. One waited for the time to strike the castle while the marks were playing with my squires and scouts. pretty effective if i do say so myself. unless you are playing with someone that craps themselves when they see marks in a duel i would say ignore them completely.

Basics only have run me through on a couple of occasions. this strategy is not a long term one and if you aren't very aggresive you will definitely be pushed back. I haven't developed a good strategy for handling this one except, only go all basics yourself. Once the enemy gets to your castle make a mace, so much for being able to take the castle. If that mace gets low, its probably been at least 2 turns, deploy another.

I haven't met too many strategies that are as effective as a "blanket" strategy as the all basics is. At any point you can upgrade one of the barracks that you have been able to afford to deal with a particularly annoying unit. IE: one knight to take care of the mace problem. you can also quickly switch up to deal with the extremely annoying marks problem. Squires upgrade is only 2500 and they themselves only 5000. You will have plenty of units to take the retal damage from the marks while you slash away at them and you can easily surround and immobilize them. if you have invested in the training techs that offer more barracks points then you will have a few spare barracks points. They will be slim if you go all basics though depending on how many barracks you have built.

Last Edited : Wednesday, 7 October 2009 - 01:06