Killing Commanders for Fun and Profit

I am against mega-commanders for many reasons. Regardless of your personal style of building PvP commanders, today I will make the case for minimalist hunters.

Dead commanders make more money.

Everyone knows that hides are very profitable. They sell for 2000-3000 gold each, and are very useful in crafting leather armor and mounts. Bugs are especially tough in Illyriad, and they drop plentiful hides as a reward. Yet their toughness creates a false conundrum for many Illy players. When you have the opportunity to kill a legion of scuttlers, scritchers or spiders, how many of you hesitate because of your commanders? Does the thought of resurrecting them pull your pucker string? It shouldn't, not if your hunters are properly built. Long ago in Night Squires, I learned to send multiple waves of commanders from different cities. To support this strategy, I keep my hunting commanders at levels 10, 15, or 25. This setup allows me to pay a single day of resurrection (and a few crafted items) to score major hides and animal parts.

Let's look at a battle from yesterday, from a nearby small hill.

This represents 115000 average defense, which is way more than any of my individual hunter squads can manage.

Wave #1: Quadruple elite Wolfrider commanders in vanguard leather (+100% attack), hill tribe spear (+60% hill), war wolf (+20% hill). Base Heroism 2074, total bonus +360%, total cavalry attack 38000. 61 wolfriders to supply base attack power, this is the absolute minimum I could have sent to fully power commander Heroism.

Wave #2: Quadruple elite Wolfrider commanders in vanguard leather (+100% attack), hill tribe spear (+60% hill), war wolf (+20% hill). Base Heroism 2074, total bonus +360%, total cavalry attack 38000. 60 death packs to supply base attack power.

Wave #3: Triple elite Fist commanders with adventurer sword (+60% hill), hillsman chainmail (+60% hill), riding horse. Base Heroism 2194, total bonus +240%, total infantry attack 22378. 150 fangs to supply base attack power.

Wave #4: Quadruple elite Death Pack with hill tribe spear (+60% hill), hillsman chainmail (+60% hill), war wolf (+20% hill). Base Heroism 3599, total bonus +280%, total cavalry attack 54705. The base attack for this army was provided by 500 kobolds, which is a neat cost-saving trick that we will discuss in a future article.

Note:  I accidentally deleted the battle report, but you can see the final result in this scout report. 68 kobolds killed to finish off the remaining scuttlers.

So, to recap, I got 2146 hides for 65 wolfriders, 60 death packs, 150 fangs and 68 kobolds. I did lose a handful of crafted items equipped to the commanders, but as you can see, I will recover some of those dropped items during harvesting. My hunting commanders are already back in action this evening, ready to take on the next legion of bugs. Until next time, my dear cannon fodders:

 

Misbehave. Kill lots of stuff.

 

<^^^^^^^^||==O    Skint Jagblade 

Reader Question: Siege Trains

A question from a reader today:

I do have a specific military question. I have heard of a maneuver where a bunch of cities send cats to a target set to attack rather than siege. Just prior to the wave of cats, a clearing army would hit the city to destroy the troops inside and allow the cats to hit.   The idea is that the percentage of successful hits would be the same as a siege, but the large group would drop the pop really dramatically and the cats would not be vulnerable to destruction and no troops would be needed to protect them.  I am sure you have heard of this before, but have you ever seen it used? Also what are your thoughts about it good vs bad.

In SIN, we called that technique a siege train. As my final operation in the SIN-TUF war, I ran a triple train against three Public Relations cities. He lost a serious amount of population. However, while siege trains can be damaging and demoralizing, they suffer from several drawbacks.

1. In order to actually raze the city, you must still have a siege that was set up at least 12 hours prior to the siege train. Otherwise the best you can do is inflict damage. 
2. The technique is slow. The fastest your siege engines will march is 7.5 for dwarves and 5.625 for everyone else. 
3. At medium range, the slow speed means a single operation can take two weeks round-trip, minimum. 
4. The enemy has a long, long time to prepare and reinforce. 
5. The attack is incredibly obvious, with multiple slow armies moving from a dozen different cities. 
6. The timing sequence is critical. If your clearing forces aren't out front, the siege engines will pile up and die. If the clearing forces are too far out front, even by 10-15 seconds, the enemy will reinforce in the timing gap, and your siege engines will pile up and die. 
7. Your clearing forces will always hit a full wall, which can cause enormous casualties if the defenders are using equipped troops. 
8. If the enemy can clearly see that they cannot repel your attack, then they know that exodus will inflict less damage than letting your attack land. They will move. Marching for two weeks to an empty square is frustrating. 
9. The cost to maintain 120-150 catapults in dozens of cities is extremely expensive for the whole alliance.

As a tool, I do not prefer siege trains. They are risky, expensive maneuvers that can tie up dozens of armies for two weeks or more. They are hypersensitive to launch precision. There is a high probability of exodus, and a small probability that you might lose everything you send at terrible kill ratios. There is a medium probability that you will inflict moderate but non-fatal damage to an enemy city.

All that said, siege trains are a tool in the military toolbox. I have seen them work extremely well. I have also seen huge "pile up and die" scenarios, and situations where sustaining damage did not sufficiently demoralize the defenders. Siege trains can be invaluable against opponents who are low on defensive troops, but who still have remaining cavalry and cities surrounded by plains. A standard siege under those conditions is suicide. At short range siege trains can be especially devastating. My preferred way to use them is as siege support, set to arrive after the wall is badly damaged, to accelerate the existing siege.

Thanks for the question!

Misbehave. Kill lots of stuff.

<^^^^^^^^==O    Skint Jagblade

Basic Timing: Mission 1

Ok, cannon fodders. It's time to talk about TIMING. This is the first skill that separates casual players from true military players.

Illyriad contains no built-in timers. There are no in-game currency options for speeding up armies that are marching. If your alliance wants to land a precision operation together, the only method is for all individual players to launch at the correct time. Is this important? You bet. For example, in a siege, the army that executes the Siege command (the catapults, battering rams, and raze troops) might be 5% or less of the entire defensive camp. If that siege army arrives before the reinforcements, it could be smashed upon landing, and your entire two week operation is rendered useless. If your reinforcements arrive too early, that gives the enemy several advantages. First, they can see how big the camp is growing, and they might decide to exodus away from your siege. Second, your reinforcements might get picked apart individually. Third, it signals the landing square to the enemy, which allows them to launch clearing troops earlier, or might even allow them to counter-reinforce your landing square.

If this seems hypothetical, it isn't. During the great Unbow-SIN war, there was an enormous battle fought on a small hill adjacent to an Unbow town. SIN lost about 1 million troops, and Unbow used around 400000 cavalry. During the operation, a single SIN player put an army on the square over a day in advance. Hey, it happens to the best of us. This allowed Unbow to pre-launch clearing troops. Instead of facing primarily regional forces from Unbow, our opponents were able to launch intercontinental cavalry all the way from Tallimar in Elgea. The heavy losses to SIN troops delayed future operations against Unbow. The siege had to be recalled and the mission scrapped. If everything had gone according to plan, the SIN forces would have destroyed the city and gone home before any Elgean cavalry could have arrived.

In short, timing is important.

Military alliances will have tools to calculate launch times. But having a great battle plan is worthless if your players can't launch their troops on schedule. The only way to get good at timing is to practice, practice, practice. This basic timing exercise can be run with just a single city, a Marketplace 1 and five caravans. That's all you need to start. Even a total n00b can participate. You will mimic launching armies from multiple cities to one location, by launching multiple caravans from one city to multiple locations.

• Locate five different basic resources on the map. Iron, clay, wood, stone, or food.
• Measure the distance by clicking on the square and selecting Send Army or Send Diplomats.
• Calculate your caravan speed: 20 + marketplace level.
• Select a single arrival time for all sites.
• Calculate the travel time for each site, using the method below.
• Calculate the send time for each site, using the method below.
• At the appropriate time, launch each caravan on schedule.
• As your caravans travel, their time remaining should line up nicely.
• When your caravans arrive, your notifications should line up nicely.

Tip: Try to select basic resources that are relatively close to your cities. If you want the exercise to be harder, select locations that are varying distances, so that your caravans must be launched several hours apart.

Calculating Travel Time 

This is the manual method for calculating travel time. You don't need to manually calculate army travel times, because the system will display them accurately in the launch window. Diplomats don't display a travel time, but you can get it quickly by actually sending, noting the time, and then immediately recalling. Unfortunately these methods don't exist for caravans, because trade units are non-recallable. Which is great, because this is good practice at maffs!

Caravan speed is 20 + Marketplace level, squares per hour. Travel time = distance / speed, which will give you the time as hours, in decimal format. Punch that decimal into an online calculator to get the HH:MM:SS format. 

Calculating Dispatch Times
 

Now that you have your caravan travel times to the five targets, let's get the launch times. It's pretty simple. Arrival time - travel time. Let's just spare you the headache and use this online calculator. Those are your launch times. Keep in mind, most alliances have players in multiple timezones, so people typically use the server time, not your local time.

An Example

Gentle Reminder
 
     738|-2417 in Fellandire
     Marketplace 12
     Caravan speed 32
     Arrival time: 04:00:00 server time

Resource	[X|Y]	Distance	TT(dec)	HH:MM:SS	Launch Time
iron	741|-2425	12.65	0.395	00:23:42	28 Nov 03:36:18
clay	749|-2426	13.60	0.425	00:25:30	28 Nov 03:34:30
wood	752|-2409	8.06	0.252	00:15:07	28 Nov 03:44:53
wood	752|-2411	7.28	0.2275	00:13:39	28 Nov 03:46:21
clay	751|-2397	17.09	0.534	00:32:02	28 Nov 03:27:58
gold	740|-2392	21.59	0.675	00:40:30	28 Nov 03:19:30
food	713|-2392	38.28	1.196	01:11:46	28 Nov 02:48:14

How to Kill Your Way to Capturing a City

Yesterday, Rill made some comments on the Illyriad forums about new player sieges. The Illyriad Community™ frequently warn small players about the expense of armies. These admonitions are presented without any numbers or context. In GC, these ominous statements are usually followed with a recommendation to grind out resource plot upgrades.

Since you all know that I adore both weapons and maffs, I am going to set the record straight.

 

Rill wrote:

To get a level 20 barracks you'll need a fairly high level warehouse.  The resource requirements for a warehouse and barracks are not insignificant.  If you are planning to get the resources for them through trade, you might want a higher level marketplace to allow you more caravans.  Other than trade, the only reasonable way to get those resources is either time or being part of an alliance.

If you plan to use your own siege engines, upkeep for them is fairly expensive, so you'll also want to have some gold for that.  Each one takes around half a day to build, and you'll want a minimum of 5. With 5 siege engines it will take a day or two to complete the siege, plus travel time and the 12-hour setup period.

If you intend to execute all of this on your own without alliance or other support, it would be difficult to gain the required gold (for resources, supplies and troop maintenance) in a short amount of time without purchasing prestige and selling it for gold on the market.

All in all, sieging and capturing a second city on your own can't really be described as "quick."  But good luck with your efforts! Look forward to seeing how you do.

Let's get something straight. Your first city is garbage. With the exception of a human 5x5 resource plot layout, all the other races begin with a worthless foundation. At some point, you are going to exodus that city, and rip everything inside back down to level 12. Your first city is a platform to learn about the game, explore some options, and then settle or capture a real city. I always recommend capture. Personally, I find no joy in the boring grind of the early research and resource plots. You've already done that once with your starter city. The map is littered with better cities, ripe for the taking. So right off the bat, this new player has the correct idea, and I always respect a little self sufficiency.

Do you need an alliance to build a level 20 barracks? Heck no. A good alliance will definitely make it easier to get free resources, but it isn't necessary. That ominous gold cost isn't really so menacing when you understand how the Illyriad markets work.  It takes approximately 1.5 million of each resource to build a Warehouse 17 and a Barracks 20. Let's call it 6 million total. You can usually buy resources for around 1 gold per unit, depending on your area. So how do you get the gold?

Cotters. You heard me right, cotters. Those little harvesting scrubs that you can build on your very first day in Illyriad. The market prices for basic minerals and basic herbs fluctuate between 150-300 gold per unit. Every day, a single cotter can pick up 100 resource units, for 15000-30000 gold per day. They can work in teams of 4 on a mineral or herb location. So your tiny settlement with 20 cotters can harvest 300000-600000 gold worth of minerals and herbs per day. That's equivalent to about 75000-150000 of each basic resource daily. N00bs, do you have any idea how long it takes to grind on resource plots until you produce 3000/hour of each resource? A damn eternity, and it will mostly go to waste when you rip down your crappy starter town, because the real production kicks in after level 12.

But wait, there's more. You see, since you will be focusing on your Barracks, you will quickly get the benefit of hunting. Basic hides sell for 2500-3500 gold per unit. Even a modest kill will yield 50-100 hides, which can be collected with a single cotter. Your barracks research will yield several excellent options for hunting: advanced bows at 9, basic cavalry at 11, advanced infantry at 13. By assembling a proper hunting army and following my Basic Hunting Guide, you can supplement your herb and mineral harvesting and earn even more money. Efficiently killing animals is almost free, and is far more entertaining than grinding basic resource plots.

So how expensive are these siege engines? Not very. A catapult will cost about 12000-15000 gold to build. The hourly cost varies per race, around 150/hour, which is only 3600/day. Five will run you about 18000/day, or about 100 minerals or herbs. You can see why this isn't a big deal, right? That's a single cotter worth of gold, and you can easily support 20 cotters.

Is this method slow? Nope. You can complete the Barracks 20 and the Siege Encampment research in about 7 days. If you insist on building your own siege weapons, that will be another 3 days. Factor in some inefficiency, and a determined player can be ready to capture in about 2 weeks. It's probably the single fastest way to acquire a good city. When you are ready, just ask politely in GC if anyone can help you capture a decent city. Ignore anyone who starts giving you the speech about grinding resource plots and receiving gifts.

Summary

Materials cost for WH17, B20: about 6,000,000 gold equivalent
Upkeep for 5 catapults: 18000 gold/day
20 cotters per day produce: 300000-600000 gold

It's a no brainer. Your first city is disposable. Harvest and kill your way to a Barracks 20, then capture a worthwhile city. You should be there in only 2-3 weeks. This method is much faster than the FarmVille grinding recommended by the Illyriad Community™. If you need help, just speak up in GC and eventually an actual military player will help you. Until next time, my dear cannon fodders:

Misbehave. Kill lots of stuff.

<^^^^^^^^||==O    Skint Jagblade

Diplomatic Units in Illy: Part II

There's more to diplomatic units than scouting a pack of NPCs or thieving your neighbor. Here are a few more neat things you can do with them, and tips on building using diplomatic structures.

Embedding in armies

To be able to embed diplo units in your army, you need to research Diplomatic Contingent, which is in the diplomacy tree. After that, you can add diplos to your army in the window where you populate the army with troops. 

What's the point?
1. You can reinforce your alliance mate or a confederate city with this army against other players' diplo attacks.

2. By embedding scouts in an occupying army you are adding scout defense to that army in field. If several armies are stacked on a square with a good amount of scouts in each, their diplomatic defenses add up and they become rather difficult to scout. Note that assassins don't work on armies in field, only in cities, so there's no point in embedding assassins.

3. By embedding diplos in armies, you are creating a small bubble of diplo visibility around them. Remember the table in my last post? The "visibility" property is what accounts for that radius. Only scouts and spies have it, and human and dwarf ones have the larges sight radius of 4 squares. If another army lands on a square next to yours you will be able to tell whether it's a pack or a cornucopia.

Tracking other diplo units

Sometimes, when you get attacked with diplos, you want to try to figure out where the attack came from. The technique has been described in this forum thread. The basic principle is following the enemy units with your own and taking screenshots as they progress.

This is especially handy in a peaceful situation. Chances are, the attack was sent by someone from not too far, and if you happened to be there when their units landed you can send out your diplos to trace their trajectory.

Visibility radius

If you go to the map and turn on diplomatic visibility you will see how far you can see from each town.

In this radius, you can see how big is an NPC pack or an occupying army stationed next to you. Any moving diplomatic unit that's not your own (with exception of settlers, exodusing cities, and messengers, which are always visible to everyone) will be visible to you only within this radius.

You can increase your visibility radius in three ways: by leveling up the consulate, building a foreign office, and doing diplomacy quests and making the inquisitive populace discovery. If your cities are clustered closely together, a foreign office in just one city will boost it enough to see around as far as 100 squares and even more. The inquisitive populace discovery adds 2 squares to your city visibility radius.

Diplomatic upkeep buildings

In the previous post I discussed what types of units to build in bulk and what kinds in relatively small batches. Upkeep reducers are only useful if you intend to consistently keep a high number of a certain type of unit in the city, since these buildings are specialized to each unit type (thieves' den, scouts' lookout, assassins' abode, spies hideout, and saboteurs' sanctuary).

Diplo upkeep buildings consume a lot of basic resources, which you will need every scrap of for building troops, so choose wisely. The best use case for these buildings is making cities that specialize exclusively in diplomatic units.

Specialized diplo cities

Given the realities of war, it behooves a military alliance to have cities that are dedicated to diplo. A case can be made for scout and thief cities in particular. Other types of diplomats usually don’t really need a dedicated city, although the upkeep on assassins and saboteurs is high enough to separate packs of these units to different cities.

For building a thief city, one can choose a high food plot city over a military style 5- or 6-food plot one (but still surrounded by plains). Unlike combat troops that are built to die and immediately rebuilt, thieves are supposed to be reusable, and long-term upkeep is more important than the speed of building. A city spot surrounded by high food plots can make a choice thief city. Sov is rotated to diplo production during the build phase and then turned to food for high gold upkeep.

Scouts are more likely to be killed off quickly than thieves, so a handful of 6- or 5-food plot cities with scout lookouts that run diplo sov can be a valuable asset for a military alliance.

You will have to carefully pick a land plot to put such a city on, due to high resource consumption of upkeep buildings.  

Table 1. Resource cost for diplomatic buildings (per hour, for a level 20 building)
 

Building	Wood	Clay	Iron	Stone
Scouts’ lookout	700	1500
Thieves’ den	1700	1100	1700
Assassins’ abode			3100	1900
Spies’ hideout	700	1100		1100
Saboteurs’ sanctuary	2700	1500
Foreign office		400	800	1600

Basic Hunting Guide

This guide was originally written for Night Squires, a long time ago.

Introduction

Hunting is great for teaching the following knowledge: scouting, battle calculation, terrain bonuses, army composition, commander builds, crafted equipment, harvesting, market valuation. Hunting is much easier than PvP because nothing attacks back, but as you can see it teaches many valuable skills. The general process goes like this:

1. Locate NPCs on the map.
2. Verify that they aren't in anyone else's claimed zones. Once you hunt a few times, you'll get a feel for your neighbors and their policies about resource ownership and encampments.
3. Decide if the NPCs drop interesting parts for crafting. Some parts are much more valuable than others. Hides are moderately valuable, and all animals drop those.
4. Know which creatures to avoid. For example, giant spiders are very tough and drop nothing of interest except generic hides.
5. Dispatch scouts. 3 basic (t1) scouts should almost always succeed.
6. Punch the results into the Battle Calculator.
7. If the casualties are acceptable, dispatch your army set to Occupy. Some players will debate this practice, but it is functionally the best way to establish immediate ownership of valuable animal parts and minimize pointless arguments about harvesting kills. It also prevents spawn points from popping out another critter while your very tasty skinners are still approaching.
8. Collect the hides with cotters, and the animal parts with skinners.

Hunting commanders follow a very simple build: Heroism 10, Vitality 3, Accelerated Healing 3. You will get much better results if you use 3-5 commanders in an army. Hunting armies are usually cavalry or infantry; elves sometimes use bows. Nobody hunts with spears, not even orcs. The commanders should be t2 units for greater Attack values (and thus Heroism). A starting player can learn with a basic (t1) infantry, cavalry, or bow commander. The commander should be the same category unit as the troops; it is common for t2 commanders to lead t1 units. As a player advances, they should switch to using t2 commanders for greater efficiency.

Common hunting army combinations are: human knight leads knights/chariots, dwarf stalwart leads axemen/stalwarts, elf trueshot leads sentinels, elf marshal leads swiftsteeds/marshals, orc fist leads fangs.

When using the battle calculator, notice how terrain changes the way your units attack. The complete modifier table can be found at the Illyriad Institute. Cavalry armies prefer plains and small hills. Bows like mountains, hills, and plains. Infantry likes forests, buildings, hills, mountains, and plains.

Once Heroism is 5+, it becomes an advantage to research Military Outfitter and the elite division for the chosen hunting army type (cavalry, infantry, bows). Equipping items to the commanders can provide another 240-350% in attack power, and that is doubled with elite divisions. A properly constructed army with 60 units receives about +200 units for each equipped commander. With 4 commanders, that's a 60 unit army hitting like 860.

Good hunting equipment includes: boar spears, animal scale armor, overpadded chainmail, hunting bows, and terrain-specific weapons and armors. Elemental hunting for salts is aided by dragon spears, reinforced swords, hero bows, spiked platemail, terrain armors, and animal scale armor.

Some players prefer general-purpose Silversteel equipment, as it works equally well in all terrains and does not require constant swapping around. I don't prefer that, as the bonuses are smaller (except the swords), I like optimizing my arsenal, and it drives me nuts when I lose expensive weapons to unexpected shifts in animal populations (and yes, that does happen).

New players with small armies are advised to attack easy creatures in a Horde or less. Favored targets include: wild dogs, bears, wolves, pumas, golden monkeys, giant beetles, wolves, rats, scorpions. As you grow more powerful, it is possible to kill bigger groups, but that makes it hard to harvest all the parts before they expire on the map. Experienced hunters will also take down tougher creatures like scaled chargers, elementals, poisonous crawlers, and other beasts with highly valuable parts. 

Example hunting armies:

The Rookie Special. 3-5 t1 human chariot commanders (plains spear, plains leather or vanguard leather, heavy warhorse), 60 t1 cavalry. Spectacular for hunting on plains, and for teaching all basic attack skills.

The Stalwart Slam. 3-5 t2 dwarf stalwart commanders (war axe, terrain armor or overpadded chainmail, riding horse), 150 axemen or 60 stalwarts. The war axe gives a +60% everywhere for dwarves, and the riding horse compensates for the axe and the stalwart's slow speed compared to the axemen. Great in forests and buildings, good on hills and plains.

Fist of Fury. 3-5 t2 orc fist commanders (terrain sword, terrain chain/plate or overpadded chainmail, riding horse), 150 fangs. Similar to the stalwarts above, with the advantage of fast build times on orc fangs.

Unseen Arrows. 3-5 t2 elven trueshot commmanders (hunting bow, animal scale armor, riding horse), 100 sentinels. Absolutely fatal on mountains and hills, good on plains. A little rough in forests. Very cost effective because sentinels are so cheap.

Cavalry standard. 3-5 t2 cavalry (plains spear or boar spear, plains armor or overpadded chainmail, heavy warhorse), 60 cavalry. Pretty much the standard issue plains hunting force for humans and elves. Orcs and dwarves tend to use it less, as their cavalry isn't quite as good, and they have a stronger advantage for infantry.

Stubborn Mules. 3-5 t2 dwarf Runerider commanders, (boar spear, overpadded chainmail, dwarven battle mule), 60 rune riders. Apparently this configuration is good for hunting on hills, and can even be used on mountains. I personally find it ridiculous, but to each their own.

Now go kill some poor defenseless animals!

Misbehave. Kill lots of stuff.

<^^^^^^^^==O    Skint Jagblade

Diplomatic Units, Getting Burned

Tink recently outlined the basics of diplomatic units. My thoughts:

When considering diplomats, I view them as mostly the same across the races. The notable exceptions are elven diplos being faster, and dwarven diplos being slower. Orc thieves have a superior carrying capacity. That's about it. The use model for the each class of diplomat means that you will generally have enough attack power to complete the mission, with the exception of scouts.

Most players who get burned on a diplo army have made one of two mistakes. 

First, they sent out smaller forces, often to many targets. These smaller forces are more likely to be defeated and killed. Sometimes that's okay or even expected, particularly with speculative assassins, harassment saboteurs, and small scouting parties. At this scale, even runes can be 100% fatal to the mission attempt.

If a large party is lost, it's usually thieves, and almost always because a player got greedy and repeatedly hit the same city. Eventually a player's allies will embed defensive thieves and reinforce. It is easy for them to know the required number to win, because the number of enemy thieves can be directly calculated from the prior robbery reports. So thieves: don't get predictable!

Until next time, my dear cannon fodders:

Misbehave. Kill lots of stuff.

<^^^^^^^^||==O    Skint Jagblade

Diplomatic Units in Illy

Running a military city is an act of fine balancing between various needs. In addition to building troops a player has to pick and choose which diplomatic units to build and how many. Here, I will try to give a breakdown of diplo units by race and their strengths and weaknesses. This post should be taken with a grain of salt, as the success of your diplomatic units depends first and foremost on what your opponent is building.

Humans

Humans have the most well-balanced diplo units. Speed, attack, and defense skills place all of their T2 units in the top or middle of the pack. Human assassins and spies are the strongest of all races.

Elves

Elves outdo all the other races on the speed of units. Also, elves are kings of scouting, being both fastest and strongest on attack and defense, which makes them critical for running fast scout operations. Elf thieves are the weakest, lacking in strong attack/defense and good carry abilities.

Orcs

Like humans, orcs have overall robust diplo units, and their thieves and saboteurs are outstanding. Both orc T1 and T2 thieves have a very high carry capacity. With the increased warehouse size, orcs are the only race for which you can build a city that is capable of emptying a warehouse in a single trip and not have negative gold upkeep on the thief army.

Dwarves

Dwarves have really ended up with the short end of the stick - their diplomatic units are slow and have middling to poor performance. While dwarf thieves have high attack, their low speed and carry capacity make them much less useful than human or orc thieves. That said, dwarf diplo armies may still end up winning a lot of times, even if they are not as efficient as the other races.

 

Summary of diplo units

Race	Type	Name	Visibility	Speed	Attack	Defense	Carry
Scouts
Human	T1	Scout	1.9	17	15	17
	T2	Ranger	4.1	22	34	28
Elf	T1	Tracker	1.6	22	18	20
	T2	Outrider	2.8	30	40	36
Orc	T1	Hunter	2.9	18	15	17
	T2	Stalker	4	20	36	30
Dwarf	T1	Sentry	1.7	14	14	17
	T2	Watcher	4.4	18	33	31
Thieves
Human	T1	Burglar		15	15	16	59
	T2	Master Thief		22	38	30	64
Elf	T1	Rogue		19	14	17	50
	T2	Dark Elf		25	31	29	54
Orc	T1	Goblin Cutpurse		17	14	18	71
	T2	Plunderer		20	34	28	76
Dwarf	T1	Footpad		14	18	20	57
	T2	Halfling		16	39	36	60
Assassins
Human	T1	Cuttrhoat		16	18	18
	T2	Assassin		22	39	35
Elf	T1	Willowblade		18	15	17
	T2	Night Shade		24	34	30
Orc	T1	Poisoner		17	15	17
	T2	Iqadron Acolyte		19	36	30
Dwarf	T1	Executioner		14	14	17
	T2	Deep Dweller		18	33	31
Saboteurs
Human	T1	Saboteur		15	15	17
	T2	Agent Provocateur		22	35	29
Elf	T1	Elven Pruner		17	14	17
	T2	Dark Elf Saboteur		32	30	20
Orc	T1	Goblin Saboteur		16	17	20
	T2	Arsonist		19	40	35
Dwarf	T1	Sapper		13	16	17
	T2	Underminer		19	34	36
Spies
Human	T1	Agent	2.6	17	17	21
	T2	Spymaster	3.6	23	39	37
Elf	T1	Waysman	1.6	21	14	17
	T2	Farseer	4.2	28	32	32
Orc	T1	Goblin Spy	2.9	18	16	16
	T2	Listener in the Dark	3	21	35	27
Dwarf	T1	Observer	2.7	16	15	17
	T2	Keeper of Secrets	4.2	19	36	30
Race	Type	Name	Visibility	Speed	Attack	Defense	Carry

Differences between T1 and T2 units

T2 units tend to be used in most attack scenarios as they usually carry more bang for your Illy buck. T2 scouts report on all of the city’s armies including the ones stationed or moving outside the city; T2 thieves steal advanced resources in addition to basics; T2 saboteurs stall research, not just construction; a pack of T2 assassins can kill two commanders in one city whereas T1 only kills 1 commander per successful hit.

For defense, T1 units are cheaper and faster to build, and the ongoing upkeep is cheaper or the same per each defense point. However, building T1 is not always the most practical way of defending against enemy diplo.

What to build and how much?

When in doubt, build scouts. T1 scouts for defense and scouting armies stationed out in field, T2 for actively scouting cities. Every military city needs a few thousand scouts for defense. At the same time, when both sides build up a healthy stock of scouts during a war, getting a report becomes a real chore as scout packs (10,000 and more) start failing. In such cases, other methods of troop estimation, such as recording reports from direct attacks on cities, totaling up data from recent combats, and estimating based on sovereignty, become more important.

Thieves are worth bothering with only for offense, with some notable exceptions. The best defensive thief management is storing your advanced resources in the hub. When thieves come back to their owner with gold or basic resources, they haven’t stolen enough to justify their upkeep during the travel time, so they are a net gold drain on the player. However, that calculation changes drastically for a city under siege, and in some situations thief reinforcements may be called for.

It’s fun and worthwhile to have a pack of saboteurs on hand. 1-2 packs that are more than a few hundred will break through most defenses. This is a tool often used to “pin down” cities targeted for siege to ensure they cannot exodus because of stalled research. Sab defense is not a concern for players with complete research in cities. Experienced players tend to stop doing research during a war - but if research you must, consider sab reinforcements in combination with a rune.

Assassins can be a useful tool to help break through city reinforcements, when stacks of multiple commanders from many cities greatly increase the overall city defense. Bear in mind that an experienced opponent will be also reinforcing with assassins and it may require a large amount to break through the defense (although in practice, few people have scores of assassins on hand as they tend to be too rarely used). Plus, even T2 assassins only kill 5 commanders per hit at most. Thus, it would take several large packs to kill a lot of commanders in a city. If you want to take up the assassin gamble, build up a swarm of assassins in a city or two.

Spies can provide valuable insights into the city’s operations revealing the inventory, as well as build and research queues. Most typical use of spies is to get intel for thieves and saboteurs. Players who thieve usually have one or two packs of spies on hand - it does not have to be larger than a couple thousand as players rarely think to defend against spies.

Messengers

Messengers are often overlooked when queuing up diplo builds. It’s easy to start a queue of several thousand scouts or thieves and forget the messengers. Yet, a quick recall of occupying armies is often crucial during wars, so make sure that you have about 10 messengers on hand in every city, at all times.

Scribes of Allembine

These are special diplomatic units awarded in the Heroic Statue quest. They are a spy type of unit and each provides 120 defense against spies. 

This concludes an overview of diplomatic units in Illy. In another post, I will discuss some use techniques for diplo units and buildings.

Stay tuned!

--Tink