Which Boosts Should I Use?

I always have an 'Attack Boost' on while doing my 'Offensive Defense' strategy. My rationale for this is, you're trying to bait in attacks that you can win - this is the hard part. Once you bait these attacks in you want to do as much damage as possible (i.e. kill as many of their troops). With a 'Defensive Boost' you'll have 20% less troops hospitalized, however, with an 'Attack Boost' you'll kill 20% more of their troops - you're doing this to maximize kills rather then minimize hospitalized troops so the 'Attack Boost' makes much more sense. Similarly, you won't want to have an 'Anti-Scout' or a 'Fake Army' as both of these boosts are counter intuitive with regards to the 'Offensive Defensive' strategy.

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How Do I Optimize My Hero's Stats?

In many games (MOBAs, RPGs, etc.) it is important to balance your Defense and Health to maximize EHP (effective HP). You can look in your 'Hero Boosts' tab to see what percentage boost your troop Defense and Health have. From this, you can make decisions on how to most effectively itemize, gem socket, and skill your hero. I will give you an example of how to calculate your EHP.

Let's give your hero's hp a value of 1 (the value of this number if irrelevant as it is a constant, 1 is just easy to work with).

If you have 120% troop defense bonus and 240% troop health bonus that means that your troops defense is 220% of its normal value, and your troops health is 340% of its normal value (I added 100% to each of these values as the normal value starts at 100%). You could calculate your EHP through the equation:

 1 * (Defense Bonus) * (Health bonus) = 1 * 2.20 * 3.40 =  7.48

Your troops have an EHP of 7.48 times the original EHP with no boosts.

Now lets say you balanced your troop defense and health bonuses, but still had an equivalent additive amount of bonuses to these two stats. Your troops stats would be 180% defense and health bonus which is 280% of your troops health and defense normal values. Your EHP would be.

1* (Defensive Bonus) * (Health Bonus) = 1 * 2.8 * 2.8 = 7.84


Its amazing how much stronger troops can get with multiplicative bonuses!

With that said, there are times when you may have a higher EHP from skilling or itemizing your hero in a certain way that isn't as 'balanced' as another option. Use this equation to help you make the correct mathematical decision if you're on the fence.
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How Do I Properly Skill My Hero?

Most people in Game of War don't optimally skill their heroes. With the assumption that your hero is level 46 or higher you should skill the least amount in each skill on left hand side of your skill tree in order to work your way down to 'Troop Defense II' and 'Troop Health II'. Skills are exponential in the fact that the more points you put in them, the higher then reward for the next point. This is why it is important to max out these very beneficial skills to 50/50. The only exception is the very first skill, 'Troop Attack', which you should max out (5/5), without going into too much rationale I can say that it pays off.

After this, you'll be working your way back down the skill tree. There are two different routes you may go, depending on the make-up of your troops.

The first possible route is for people who train '1 or 2 troops' (not including Siege, as Siege is horrible). You should max out the skills for '*Troop Type* Attack II' for the troop(s) you're training. After you max out these skill(s) you'll want to max out 'Troop Defense' and 'Troop Health', remember to max these two stats out in the appropriate order to maximize your troops EHP.

The second route is for people who train 3 troops (I'm not going to say 4 troops because I don't count siege as a troop, they're crap). Due to the fact that your troops are more spread out, it is important to max out 'Troop Defense' and 'Troop Health'. After this, you'll have more points to spend... Use these remaining points on the troop type(s) that you have the most of.

Without going too in depth on itemizing and socketing your hero. You should always create equipment that correlates to your troop type(s) with the knowledge that defense and health bonuses are incredibly efficient (especially in balanced armies) as they effect all of your troops.

Hey everyone! Welcome to my blog, I'll be discussing in-depth strategies revolved around the game 'Game of War Fire Age'. 

I'm going to start this blog off with an indirect rationale and strategy guide of my 'Offensive Defense' fighting style.

Defending and Hospitals
...what doesn't kill me only makes me stronger

Having your troops hospitalized is much less of a set back than having your troops killed for multiple reasons.

• Healing hospitalized troops is much cheaper in resources then creating new troops.
• Healing hospitalized troops takes much less time then creating new troops.
• Healing hospitalized troops is on a separate timer than creating new troops - so you're never slowing down your actual troop production when you're healing up troops.
• When you have troops hospitalized, your enemy only receives 1 point (or possibly 2 if it's double points) during a kill event.

Your losses during defense are obviously much less devastating and hardly permanent. It is important to have as many hospitals as your march capacity. At least for this strategy.
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Information can be Valuable, Invaluable, or even Counter-Productive

...give your enemy something counter-productive to work with - and then capitalize on their misinformed decisions

I'm sure all of you guys have heard of the term 'fake-rallying' before. If you haven't I'll describe it and its advantages quickly.

While rallying troops, whatever troops (or hero if selected) are rallied cannot be attacked or scouted. People use this to their advantage by 8-hour rallying their troops throughout the day and/or when they go to bed to keep them safe and out of harms way. This is a good general strategy, but I'm going to go more in depth with it.

This strategy can be used as a war-tactic. You can advance teleport into an enemy's hive and then fake rally your troops to either skew the scouting information they receive from scouting you and/or keep your troops out of harms way. I have multiple tactics with regards to fake rallying.

• Fake rally all of your troops to show that you're hiding your troops (giving them no scouting information) and effectively putting all of your troops out of harms way.
• Fake rally 50-70% of your troops giving them a false sense of how many troops you have.

Using these fake rallying strategies your enemies will be misinformed on your troop counts and your intentions. They will often think you're weaker than you are, which is exactly what you want. Remember a good defense is your best offense, you're trying to bait them in to attacking you.

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 A Good Defense Is Your Best Offense
so... why not make your defense a form of offense?

I'm going to reiterate. You're trying to bait your enemy into attacking you. One strategy I do is attack weak players in a strong alliance (that you're fighting with) and take their heroes. Remember, you don't want to lose many troops doing this. I do not release these heroes, instead, I use them as bait to force them to attack me. Poke at them physiologically for a bit, make them want your head.

After your troops come back from attacking a player, instantly put them back into a fake rally in one of the two formations listed in the previous section.

They'll begin scouting you after a few moments of your aggression, and typically, attacks will follow. This is what you want.
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Choose Your Battles

...and you'll never truly loose one.

This is quite possibly the backbone to this 'offensive defense' strategy. You've baited players in using the tactics listed above. During this, you'll need to pay very close attention to your game, as attacks are imminent. 

You'll receive a notification when someone is attacking you, the notification resembles a red flag - it is a bit difficult to miss. Right when you see this notification pop up, click on it and look at the information provided. You want judge how strong a player's attack is based on the following factors in comparison to your own. 

• VIP level and if it is activated (9/10 provide combat incentives).
• Hero items
• Hero level
• Troop count
• Troop tier
• Troop research (if you have a level 19 watchtower or above)

Note: You will want to do as much of this scouting right away, preemptive to getting attacked - as you'll only have limited time to make mechanical decisions while being attacked.

You want to take fights where you're about the same combative strength as your enemy's attack or stronger. Remember, it is paramount that you have VIP active as well as optimal hero skills (I will create a separate guide on this later).This is where it gets fun.

Remember the fact that you're fake rallying your troops? Well this is where we exploit that. Here are the specific strategies for each of the two fake rally possibilities.

Fake Rallying 100% of Troops

• If the attacking march is stronger in combative power than the troops you have in your fake rally, keep your troops and hero in your fake rally and do not fight the march.
• If the attacking march is equal in combative power or weaker than the troops you have in your fake rally, unrally those troops ~4 seconds before the enemy's march hits. This is crucial, 4 seconds is early enough where you'll have no problems doing it (as there is a decent amount of time for human mechanical error) however they'll have no possibility to scout and then pull back their troops. 

Fake Rallying 50-70% of Troops

• If the attacking march is stronger in combative power than the troops you have in your fake rally, quickly cancel your fake rally and then instantly fake rally 100% of your troops to put them all in safety. 
• If the attacking march is equal in combative power or weaker than the troops you have in your fake rally, unrally those troops ~6 seconds before the enemy's march hits. It is very crucial that you have all of your troops unrallied to fight the attacking march, so that's why I would give yourself a bit more leeway. 

You've effectively made your defense into an offense, congratulations. 

Sometimes you'll have multiple marches coming at you. Remember, strength doesn't lie in the number of marches, rather, it lies in the strength of an individual march. Without going into every single possible scenario, I will use a few specific scenarios as examples for good decision making.

If a march that you can beat is coming in 12 seconds and a march you can't beat is coming in 21 seconds, you'll have enough time to cancel your fake rally for the '12 second' march and then quickly fake rally right after to avoid the '21 seconds' march. I generally give myself an 8 second grace period to alternate between fake rallying, canceling a fake rally, and fake rallying again. You may want to give yourself a few more seconds if this is a new concept to you.

If there are 3 relatively weak (but not extraordinarily weak) marches coming at you in close succession, don't get fooled by the additive combative power of all 3 marches, each march is only as strong as its individual combative power. I would fight all 3 marches by canceling the fake rally right before the first march and then re-rallying right after the third march hits. 

Sometimes very strong players (strength doesn't equal intelligence) will send multiple marches at you in succession, you can pick and choose out of those marches with the knowledge that the hero isn't in all of them (and is most likely in the first march, however, not always).

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Rebuilding instantly

...come at me bro

When doing this strategy you'll often have to dodge strong marches and thus loose fights (of course you won't lose troops because they'll be fake rallied). This means, you'll basically be capped at your storehouse's limit to resources - don't come into a battle with a ton of resources.

With that said, it is important to save the resources you can use in your item tab as well as speed ups for healing hospitalized troops. You will have troops hospitalized using this strategy I can promise you that, and the longer you can keep popping them back out to fight another day the more of these engagements you can take.

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~~~~ Thank you for reading, I may edit and add to this guide as I see fit.~~~~


-miestyman