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WyldRage's Tactics: Royalists

FORMAT
These articles will be divided in the following sections:

Introduction: the faction's advantages, as well as weaknesses.
Start: How to survive the few first minutes, trying to find a balance between military strength and economy.
Economy: Useful buildings
Military: How to design the faction's army, including information for their specific units.
Team: This is to describe their role in a "perfect" team of 4 players. This means: all factions played and good teamwork.

INTRODUCTION

The Royalists faction is the only faction without an economic advantage: the Council gets cheap upgrades, Nationalists get an extra slot, and Ceyah gets maintenance-less units. Your advantages are an extra company per settlement, like the Ceyah, and an increase of militia size, which you should try not to take advantage of.

It is very obvious that the Royalists are the Mareten militarist faction. So you have to play accordingly.

START

A Royalists' start is a hard thing to do, since you don't get any economic bonus. Much of your strategies at this point will depend on the type of game you play and the random elements. However you have the fastest, with the Ceyah, start, due to your additional company of settlers. And that fast start may be the only advantage you'll have on the economists (Council and Nationalists).

There are two kinds of games for the Royalists, single player against single player, and teams. Depending on your money, in a single player game, you should make 1 or 2 villages fast, and upgrade your first town. After that, it will already be time to go on offense, because you can't win a economic race. During team games, you should try to get at least a Nationalist village from one of your allies, by giving him one of your village at the same time. This will give you better access to resources, and allow you to create more troops. A Council village might also be a good idea, for the cheap upgrade, and a Ceyah will give you access to cheap troops, but give the priority to the Nationalists village.

When there are few random cities, or none, you will have some troubles. Settling towns is your weakness, so your only hope might be making an army fast and attacking the enemy before he has made an unbeatable economy. You WILL lose a war of attrition. With many randoms, do the same thing, but capture independent towns instead of your enemies'. You may be accused of rushing, but going fast is your main chance to win.

ECONOMY

I won't lie to you: your economy will suck. The only high resource you may have is the maximum number of companies. Banks will be needed to finance your force, and you will require many resource buildings to support any great army. Don't forget about the upgrades either: the ones who give +4 to your resources are your priority for your supporting towns.

However, your recruitment towns will be different. Here, the billet will save you a lot of money, if you combine it with the carpentry guild and the armory guild. They will give a 75% rebate for your main units, and 25% for your support and specialist units. I recommend, for the maximum use of your billet, to have only one city for recruitment, and not 2 or 3 towns.

MILITARY

This is where the Royalists really shine, even if their specific units don't. The Sorceress and the Battle Priest are over-specialized, and only useful in a limited number of circumstances. There are two good points to the Battle Priest however: it decimates the Ceyah players, in 1v1, and, if there is no Ceyah, there is no reason to pay the extra 120 gold for it.

Their Elite unit is the Cavalier, and it is the strongest one, with only the Void Beast coming near it. With weak support and strong cavalry, you know what your strategy will be: SPEED. Put a couple of rangers with Scouts, Dragoons and Cavaliers to make a great reaction force. You should flank ANYONE with them, even the Ceyah (to get rid of their priests).

An important tip for recruitment: always go for the low-quality, basic troops, like footmen, infantries or scouts, instead of the higher-quality ones, like the Grenadiers, the Dragoons or, to a certain extent, the archers. Why? Because you need more troops and you don't have enough resources for troops who need two units of resource (except the engineer). You should always try to fill your maximum number of units, without depleting your resources.

One word for the archers: even if they require 2 woods, get at least one company. While your front-line slowly become less numerous, your archers will still be there shooting at the enemy.

TEAM

In a team, you are the warrior. While they are still trying to get the most gold possible, you will be defending them, in exchange for their gold. That is only the beginning, for, when the fighting begins, the other players will join in the fray. At that time, you will have two responsibilities. The first one is for your infantry: it will bring a good number of hard-hitting front-line units to the Nationalists' few high-quality troops, the Ceyah's canon fodder and the Council's archers. They will take advantage of the Zealots' and Shadow Priests' spells to crush the front-line, while protecting the archers. The second one is for your cavalry: with the Ceyah's own cavalry, you will flank the enemy's troops, or make strikes at his faraway cities.

At the beginning, your team's victory rests on your shoulders. It is you who will defend your holdings, and your allies', against possible rushes, or rampaging monsters. You have to make an agreement with the other players first though: you fight, they pay. Also, remember to exchange cities with the Nationalists, you will both profit from that.

That's it for the Royalists. I know that most of you will hate me for saying that the Royalists need to go fast to win, but that's the way they are. If you take too much time, their economy, and their stronger support, will crush you.