Army Formations and Setup

In this section we will discuss various Army Formations. I'm hoping to have you guys engage in the comments section and feel free to include your favorite setups with upgrade distributions there.

Currently as of June 22, 2008 the game has certain updates that have made some armies better while older army setups obsolete. Choosing a setup is all about your personal preference and style of play. So lets begin with the setup that I am currently using, which is not the best, but seems to be a common strategy among many players.

Note: This section will mainly focus on the setups and their basic strategies without going into extreme details on how to fully play out the setup.

1 MAGE, 2 ARCHERS, 5 KNIGHTS

This setup has won me many games recently. Many of the top players are using some variation of this setup. Particularly because the knights have so much HP right now.

STRATEGY: The concept of this arrangement is to use the knights as a barrier by moving them up in a uniform fashion and using the archers to block off the ends. This protects your mage from the opposing chain attack and protects the mage from being attacked from the sides since you can form a wall across the board.

UPGRADES: All the points go into upgrading the mage. Still there isn't enough to max out the mage completely, so he looks as follows: +7 health, +1 speed, +3 chain, +9 magic.

VARIATIONS: Common variations on the point distribution that I have seen are giving the knight in front of the mage increased speed so that they can move forward in the first attack and take out the opposing knights shield at a long distance. This only helps if you are the first player to move, but no use later in the game, so a pointless upgrade in my opinion. Oh and that means the Mage is weaker in upgrades as well.

1 MAGE, 3 ARCHERS, 4 KNIGHTS

This setup is the same as the one above except the archer in front of the mage allows you to attack the opposing teams shield bearing knight if your the first to move. The problem is that the archer will probably be killed quickly by the opponents team if used in a similar function to the way the knight was being used. Some people prefer this and do very well with it.

1 MAGE, 1 CLERIC, 6 ARCHERS

This setup was very common before the upgrade to the knights hp. This particular placement of the pieces wasn't considered the most popular since people had variations on where they liked to start the Mage or Cleric, but I played well with it at the time.

STRATEGY: The concept of this arrangement is to use have the healer protected on the hill and outside of any chain attacks from the opposing Mage. Usually the healer would be only focused on revitalizing your Mage and when facing an identical army the one whose Healer lived the longest would usually win.

UPGRADES: All the points go into upgrading the Mage. Any remaining point went into upgrading the Healer.

VARIATIONS: The biggest variation on this setup would be in the actual placement of the pieces. One day we may see this setup gaining popularity again.



Armies That Are Bound To Lose!

Whats the fun of discussing good formations without a look at the kinds of formations the new players attempt to get away with. Please people, do not fall into these traps. You might win the rare game with these, but for the most part you will have a score in the negatives.




CONCLUSION

Ill be adding more formations to this post as I have time and also try to include any good one's left in the comments section by you players.

Beginners Guide to Game with 10 TACTICS COMMANDMENTS!

This section will discuss the basic strategies of the game and what new players should know to help get them started. This guide is mainly for the multiplayer aspect of the game, since I only use the single player to test out a new setup. Those of you looking for a good guide to the single player aspect can find it here on COCAK posted by FRAGM3NT. Reading through this guide will catch you up to speed on the types of things the experienced players utilize as second nature and will decrease your learning curve in getting better.

SETUP ARMY:

Every new player should first start by entering 'Setup Your Army' screen and clearing out that default army. That army is extremely useless and if I accomplish one thing, I hope its to never see another player just blindly use it again.

"Okay so now I've cleared out the army and left with a blank slate, what army should I choose?"

At this point in the guide, we wont be discussing the various types of armies, so I suggest you have fun and play around with the setups and get used to seeing what the different pieces do.

"But Doctorrook, I need help in choosing!?!?!"

For those of you looking to jump right into it without testing the waters then without going into reasoning or details, let me suggest you start with an army that has a some combination of the following: 1 Fully Upgraded Mage, 3-5 knights, and 2-4 Archers. My advice on this setup will probably change depending on updates made by Gamebrew, but with knights currently powerful, its a good starting point. It's important you learn to use the Mage, so start early. Again we will have later discussions as to various different strategies, but for now lets go over game fundamentals before we get into that.

Additionally, as much as you want to create super upgraded players at the expense of having an army with only 3-6 pieces, please avoid this unless you really know what your doing. In my experience its best to fill out your army with the maximum allowed 8 pieces, giving you more attack power and strategy even if not a single piece except your mage has any upgrades.

READY TO PLAY:

Personally I suggest you test out your army in the single player mode, but its usually more fun to get into the multiplayer and really test your abilities win or lose.

WHAT I NEED TO KNOW:

Instead of going into opening techniques and those sort of things, let me go over some key game elements that you need to always remember, which will help you develop your own strategies. Remember these are strategies, the better you get, the more you will learn to use some of these techniques to fool your opponent or lure them out, but for now just obey blindly as Tactics Commandments!

10 Commandments of Tactics 100 Live

1) Never expose your BACK!

Unless its completely necessary, never expose your back, especially to a mage. A hit to an exposed back allows up to 50% increased damaged by the attacker and if delivered by a mage, it will Chain itself right down the line.







2) Become a VETERAN!

Everytime one of your pieces gets a kill, they get a badge next to their picture indicating they are a veteran that does 15% more damage with each kill. So two kills will be 30% more damage, and so on. I've seen Mages get every kill and do insane amounts of damage by the end of the game. Conversely, remember to kill the opposing teams veterans before the normal player as a good strategy. The concept of creating Veteran's is what separates the skill level of players.




3) Remove the knights SHIELD!

When attacking the knight, if you hit him head on, he will block with a shield. So try not to attack a knight head on with your mage, it will just result in a decreased hit % for your chain attack. The shield can only be used once a round, so remove the opposing knights shield by hitting him with another player (archer/knight), or hitting him on the side or back where he cant use his shield. A beautiful thing about the mage's chain attack is that every knight hit in the chain has their shield removed to be demolished by another one of your pieces.

4) Forget the HILL!

Many new players are lulled into a sense of safety brought on by the increased attack percentage and increased defense percentage of standing on the hill. First, I never want to see anyone putting a knight on the hill since its pointless, they are close range fighters, keep em off unless its the end of the game. Second, you lose attack percentage jumping onto the hill and jumping off the hill and you can only move 1 spot to get off so your range of movement is limited. A smart player will position themselves outside of your attack range on the hill, forcing you to get off to be effective. SO.... Avoid the Hill! Unless your low on hitpoints.

This rule does not count for Archers or Clerics, I was mainly discussing Mage's and Knights. Archers can do some distance damage on the hill and your healer can be protected by the hill while providing support for your offense. But let me restate, in the setup army screen, dont start your Mage on the hill please.

5) Kill the CLERIC!

The Cleric aka "Healer" can be an integral piece. She used to be seen a lot more during the era of Archer-Mage-Healer armies, but is important nonetheless. In the setup screen, you can see how expensive it is to add a Healer to your army. Under the right person these women can keep that annoying Mage at full health and beating your unhealed army down. I like to focus on taking them out as early as possible.

6) Avoid the POINT BLANK!

Again, this is mainly for the new people, advanced players know how to approach this properly. Until you are at that level, try to attack the oppising mage from a distance with your mage or archer, or just one knight thats separated from the rest of your pieces. When the mage attacks a player right next to it, he gets an increased attack bonus that will chain to the rest of your peices. I will get into more details about avoided Chain attacks in a later guide, for now understand that strategies exist and its best to learn them. This holds especially true if the opposing mage is on the hill (since they didn't read #4 above and either did you) and your attacking them by standing next to them. Now they get increased hill damage, increased standing next to opponent damage, and god forbid you exposed your back to them as well causing you to possibly lose your entire army in a single wave of the wooden staff.


NOTE FROM DOCTORROOK:
I know you people might be thinking I focus to much on Mage discussions, but thats only because whether or not you like to use the Mage (since you will definitely be facing off against the mage in most games), it is the most important part of the game unless the creators make some fundamental changes to its power. Which is why it is important to understand the range of his attacks and how the chain attacks distribute themselves.


7) Learn to GANG UP!

Many new players lose out because they keep hitting every player on the opposing team doing a nice distribution of damage points. Instead learn to focus on individuals in the opposing team and kill them off so they have one less players to attack you with on the next round. Usually knights are HP monsters so focus on killing off that annoying archer or cleric. Remember not to put your guys in compromising positions just to accomplish this.






8) Never give them a LAST DITCH!

It's tough to learn exactly what hit will cause a LAST DITCH over a kill, you will learn over time. The "Last Ditch" is when you leave a player you just attacked with under 5% Health (Correct me if I'm wrong on exact percentage) that shows up in a red font. Do whatever it takes, if you have attackers left, to kill this guy, because if he is still alive when its his turn this piece will do 75% more damage for one turn (if he is alive more then 1 turn the damage will return to normal). This is especially painful if an Ubermage gets Last Ditch type powers that can turn the tide of the game and wipe out your entire army (Experienced players refer to this as the "D'oh" moment.

9) Defend the WEAK!

I laugh so hard when I see players sending the cleric into the front battle lines. I will discuss techniques later, but it's important to learn how to keep the cleric away from damage in your rear guard away from the opponents mage's chain attack, archers arrows, etc. I can't tell you how to do this, its something you need to learn. The same goes for the mage. Some advice I can give you is the following:

a) The more pieces you have between you and an opposing archer (including the enemies own knights) - the less damage the attack will do.
b) The more spaces the opponent has to move his pieces to reach a position that he can be in range to attack you, the less damage they will do.
c) Remember Mage's can attack over pieces without losing attack percentages, but also remember they are limited to how far they can attack and at the most they can only move two spaces. Mage offensive/defensive strategies will be an entire guide section in itself.

10) Don't QUIT!

This may sound like a rant agains't quitters, but its more of a motivation to those who think they are losing. I've seen players quit with with a full team of pieces and I only had 3 players left, but I had killed their mage. As much as I tout the powers of the mage and his importance, its also a major flaw in people's perception of the game. I've had my mage killed off early in the game only to still dominate the other team through pure strategy and staggering my players to avoid chain attacks. Play the game out, learn to use your pieces without thinking all is lost. I remember crushing a player early on, or so I thought, only to have the game come down to my archer vs his archer and he won. Moral of the story: Play the game to the end and learn the movements and strategies. Players get confident when they get a mage kill. Use that against them since many opponents then become reckless. The same goes for having one's cleric killed early on, this doesn't necessarily spell the end of your game.


SUM IT ALL UP:

These commandments are hardly written in stone and the beauty of the game is that the creators change the gameplay based upon community feedback. I might just be writing a blog sometime next month about a new Ubercleric with attack powers, who knows. For now, use this knowledge to get yourself past the initial mistakes of new players and hopefully it provided some useful info to you other players.

Welcome Message for Tactics 100 Live Players!

Greetings Live Tacticians!

I, Doctorrook (formerly played as 'Lynx' before we needed to use a Gamebrew ID) decided to make this strategy blog for Beginner, Advanced, and Expert players of TACTICS 100 LIVE currently hosted on Gamebrew. Right now there is a comment section and an Official Blog that has game updates, but no area to discuss actual Tactics, hence making this an Unofficial Guide. I will probably be promoting this Blog wherever I can during gameplay or postings until there is an Official area for us to discuss strategies.

A little about myself:

Currently I have never ranked better then #30, but I'm also not much of a record protector, so sometimes I lose when having fun and trying new strategies or just up against a superior player. There are people way above my skill level and I hope they join us as contributors on this site to make the game an even more enriching experience. I have been playing the game since its early inceptions, back when the games hills were in the middle row of the map and no penalties for jumping on top. The best games I have played are usually ones that I have lost, which is my reason for this Blog. I want to help new players get up to speed on the game quicker, while also helping develop the more advanced players allowing a well versed experience pool. Personally my favorite army is the 1 Ubermage/7 Archers (I used to hate clerics and knights), but ever since the upgrade to the knights I have learned to become extremely effective with the 1 Ubermage/5 Knight/2 Archer army.

A little about the game:

This game can be extremely fun, but newcomers sometimes complain about the pacing, which is actually the best part for me. Unlike Chess, you move all your pieces at one go, so strategy becomes very important. At different times in the games history different types of armies have dominated (more discussion on this at a later time). The key to the game is to find the one army that can help you win as much as possible, but the beauty of the game is that no matter how dominant your army is, there is a setup that can take you down. A player can have a staggering record of 400 wins-50 losses, yet still lose to a player with 20 wins - 115 losses because the weaker players particular setup might lose regularly, but will be the dominant players only weakness. I hope we can bring to light various strategies in this Blog with the right participation.

Now What?:

I think the best first step in starting this blog will be a way to help out all the New Players in the game on knowing the fundamentals of game so that the learning curve isn't tremendous and they get frustrated by being dominated and quit playing. So stay tuned for my first guide to be posted shortly.

Game On...

-Doctorrook