How to play Loyalists2

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re-writing in progress. Nothing here is final. It will be completed shortly.

Loyalist units

Spearman is a basic combat unit with ability to strike and retaliate before his enemies.

• good defense in mountains and villages
• lawful, can be upgraded into 3 useful units (balanced melee/ranged javelineer and melee units with strong blade or pierce damage)
• strong vs drakes, cavalry, skirmishers and ulfserkers; weak vs skeletons and skeleton archers
• strong melee attack with first strike (pierce), weak ranged attack (pierce)

Heavy Infantryman is very slow, but powerful defender. He can hit hard and have great resistances and low defenses.

• low defenses, wlo and cannot reach mountain hexes
• lawful, but can have fearless trait to fight well any time
• strong vs skeletons and melee fighters; weak vs mages, dune burners and orcish archers
• strong melee attack (impact)

Fencer is quick skirmisher. He asi faster than most loyalist units and he is a good support, not a frontline unit.

• maximum defense and speed in forest (70%), but low hitpoints
• lawful, can be upgraded into 2 useful units (sorceress with strong ranged attack or to become better healer)
• strong when well protected by other units; weak in 1vs1 fighting and on terrains with low defense
• weak melee attack (impact), weak ranged attack (impact)

Horseman is a great support unit, that can heal, slow down enemies and block others in forest hexes.

• maximum defense and speed in forest (70%), but low hitpoints
• lawful, can be upgraded into 2 useful units (sorceress with strong ranged attack or to become better healer)
• strong when well protected by other units; weak in 1vs1 fighting and on terrains with low defense
• weak melee attack (impact), weak ranged attack (impact)

Cavalryman is a great support unit, that can heal, slow down enemies and block others in forest hexes.

• maximum defense and speed in forest (70%), but low hitpoints
• lawful, can be upgraded into 2 useful units (sorceress with strong ranged attack or to become better healer)
• strong when well protected by other units; weak in 1vs1 fighting and on terrains with low defense
• weak melee attack (impact), weak ranged attack (impact)

Bowman is important unit for rebels with powerful ranged attack.

• maximum defense and speed in forest (70%), but low hitpoints
• lawful, can be upgraded into 2 useful units (stealthy ranger or very offensive marksman)
• strong vs drakes and anyone with no or limited ranged attack; weak vs ulfserkers, skeletons, mages...
• weak melee attack (blade), strong ranged attack (pierce)

Mages are in both rebel and loyalist armies. They provide fire damage in their magical ranged attack.

• good defense in mountains and villages, but low hitpoints
• lawful, can be upgraded into 2 useful units (white mage is good healer, while red mage provides excellent damage)
• strong against skeletons, saurians, ghosts; weak when not protected by other units
• weak melee attack (impact), strong magical ranged attack (fire)

Merman Hunter is a warrior and scout connected with water.

• good defense in water (50-70%)
• lawful, can be upgraded into 2 useful units (slowing netcaster or spearman with better ranged attack)
• strong on maps with lots of water and swamps; weak on maps with small amount of water
• weak melee attack (pierce), strong ranged attack (pierce)

Starting troops - random opponent

(98 gold)

On the maps with a lot of water, recruit one or even two mermen hunters in the first turn.

Choose a leader wisely. Good leaders might be someone with good abilities, if you wish to use him/her on the frontline in small maps. White Mage, Druid or Elvish Captain will do just fine. Good healer is more effective than shamans and can also remove poison. Leadership will make your units more powerful. You can also pick up Elvish Ranger if you are on map with lots of forest hexes.

General Loyalist Strategy

Loyalists are considered to be the most versatile faction in the game. They have most available unit types to recruit (8), more than any other faction. Loyalists are mostly melee oriented faction, with only two ranged unit types, the mage and the bowman, but their ranged units play a significant role in the loyalists strategy and have to be used effectively. About the melee troops the loyalist player gets to choose among:

• Heavy Infantrymen: few strikes, high damage per strike, slow, higher hitpoints, good resistances, low defenses, deals impact damage which is good against undead
• Spearman average strikes, average damage per strike, average movement, medium hitpoints, normal resistances, average defenses, deals pierce damage which is good against drakes, has a weak ranged attack
• Fencer: high number of strikes, low damage per strike, quick, low hitpoints, bad resistances, good defenses, deals blade damage which is good against elusive foots or wose, deals less total damage than the other two, is a skirmisher.

The loyalists unit price ranges from the cheap spearmen and mermen (14 gold) to the expensive horsemen (23 gold).

Loyalist units generally have good hitpoints and they deal good damage, even the cheap spearmen and bowmen. Even their scouts have high hitpoints and better melee attack compared to most of the scouts of the other factions. But OTOH, the loyalist scouts have lower defences than most of the other scouts and they do not have a ranged attack.

The loyalists have some units with good resistances, like HI or Cavalryman, which can be very good for defending if you notice that your opponent doesn't have the proper units to counter them. Other units, like the bowman, who is more vulnerable than the previous two, but is also good for defense because it has better defense, is cheaper and it deals solid damage back in both melee and range. Similar goes for the spearman.

When attacking, Loyalists have units which can be pretty devastating, like the horseman for attacking enemy magi and other ranged units, magi against the entrenched melee units, fencers for killing enemy injured and valuable units trying to heal behind their lines. But the mentioned units are also very vulnerable and they can die very easily if not properly supported.

The loyalists as a faction generally have average defenses (they do not get 70% defense anywhere, with the exception of the fencer, which is a special case) and they are not a terrain dependent faction (like the Elves or Knalgans are). Therefore, even if it good to put spearmen and bowmen on mountains, villages and castles where they get 60% defense, you should also take the faction you are facing into account when deciding where to place your units. For example, if you are fighting knalgans, you should try not to move your units next to hills and mountains and/or take the hills and mountains with your units and leave the forest to the dwarves.

All the loyalist units are lawful, which obviously leads to the conclusion that the loyalists should be more aggressive and attack at day (or even start at dawn, because your opponent in most of the cases will be reluctant to attack too aggressively and leave units on bad ground when the morning arrives) while at night the loyalists should at least play conservatively, or in some cases even run away. Of course, that is also dependent upon the faction of your opponent.

The greatest weakness of the loyalists is their limited mobility. The loyalists' units have normal movement, some of their units like the horseman, cavalryman, merman fighter and the fencer are pretty quick when they are in their favorable environment, but all their units get slowed over rough terrain a lot compared to the other factions' units. Half of the loyalists units can not even move on/over mountains, and their scouts get significantly slowed in forest, for example. This lack of mobility will often give your opponent an opportunity to outmaneuver you in the game. To prevent that, sometimes it is good to attack hard on a certain point and defend only with minimal amount of units elsewhere, rather than uniformly spreading your units around the front.

When you don't know which faction you are facing, it is good to get a mixture of units. On most of the default 1v1 maps, this initial recruitment list would be good: spearman, bowman, fencer, mage, merman fighter, cavalryman. As always, you should carefully consider about the exact placement of each individual unit from the initial recruits on the castle to come up with the most optimal combination that will allow you the quickest village grabbing in the first turns of the game.

Villages

Generally, elves does not have a lot of hitpoints, so healing in villages to full health is quick. Use scouts to get to the distant villages. Fighters are good for holding them. Use woses more often on maps with limited number of villages, because they do not benefit from them and cannot defend them effectively.