Howdy, I’m a casual.
I assume the thread will largely go ignored, but I digress.
I’ve not played most campaign content, and recently figured it was a mistake, so I booted the game up and started going through them. I’ve had quite a time, but…
I can’t beat the Land Battle Challenge on Gold. Every other Art of War challenge was a cakewalk to gold.
There is a specific section in Land Battle, the 4th grouping, which pits the player against 6 MAA while using 4 archers, and I’ve tried maybe 30 times and just.. can’t. Feel free to stop reading right here, and just, go try it yourself. If you crush it no problem, well, my ego is in shambles. If not, then maybe come back to read my conclusion.
If you compare the stats between the opposing unit groupings for most of the 6 Land Battle challenges, they are reasonable due to bonus damage and natural triangle. Feudal Archers vs MAA are currently, in my honest noob Data Scientist opinion, completely out of wack. Infantry are so strong right now, and In this challenge, you are completely outnumbered.
Let’s just do the math…
4 archers:
30HP
4 base damage
.96 speed
0/0 armor
6 MAA:
45HP
6 base damage
.9 speed
0/1 armor
Group Relative…
120HP vs 270HP
12 damage vs 36 damage
.96 speed vs .90 speed
My favorite metric comparing the two groups in the challenge
20 swings to kill the archers vs 90 arrows to kill the MAAs
Each swing from the MAA deals 20% of the archers HP pool. It takes 5 swings to kill the archer on even ground.
Each shot from the archer deals a whopping 6.5% of the MAA HP pool. It takes 15 arrows to kill the MAA on even ground.
Given the movement speed differential of 0.06, you need 16.6 seconds to create a single tile advantage on the MAA when using the archer line. The scenario we are given is spatially constrained. You can clear about a single tile, each way, if you can manage to make the ‘U’ turn at each end.
It’s clear the un-upgraded archer is only capable of killing a man at arm 1v1, on flat ground, if given sufficient room to run/kite.
You are supposed to use a hill-top advantage to engage the MAA, but..
…If you stand the archers on the hill to engage the MAA, pulling the archers away as they get weak, it’s lost. With the hilltop advantage giving the archers their natural base damage (4), they are still completely outmatched in a stand-up fight.
…If you kite with the archers, it takes 3 volleys with the hill advantage to kill a single MAA, and when you reposition to distance the group from the MAA, the grouping will push a unit backwards and they get jumbled up, giving the MAA a random and unexpected free hit WITH a hill advantage, basically cementing the damaged archer to an inevitable death.
…If you charge right towards the MAA to maximize the distance, engage on flat ground before the hill, and immediately retreat and kite, you get about 6 volleys, killing 1/2 of the 6 MAA.
In any case, your goal after the initial engagement is to kite and fire without getting hit.
I have managed to kill, in my ridiculous amount of time practicing this specific mission and my archer micro, four MAA without losing a single archer. The last two were relatively weak, but I had to kite the MAA up and down the small sliver of woods multiple times, and I eventually screwed up as one decided to path away from my 3 healthy archers towards the hiding weak one (AI prioritizing weak units).
I think the balance changes exasperated the Challenge’s difficulty over time, and it desperately needs adjustment.
Funny enough, my best attempt at finishing the section against the six MAA without using a unit was using… 4 MAA! LOL. I managed to kill five, while pulling my units out of formation on the hill.
Maybe I’m just bad, or I’m not cheese’ing the pathing/AI enough, but in any case, I’ve given up and encourage others to try it. It’s it’s the single most annoying, frustrating, and challenging thing I have attempted to do in this game. Success seems heavily dependent on the AI and pathing RNG.