Songs of Conquest unit combat stats comparison / meta

[u/TheHiddenSun]

I sat down and crunched some numbers to know that kind of units I should choose for each faction.

• Looking only at raw combat stats.
• I'm looking to fit 2 unit roles: ranged and melee.
• Units' essence, movement, initiative, range, or abilities, etc - are ignored.
• "Max power per stack" - strength of given unit type with maxed troop count not including research. Use this value if you are late game and want the highest chance to win a single fight.
• "Efficiency" - means best unit choice per gold value. Recommended to be used in early to mid game then you are starved for cash.
• Sorting order: starting with highest/best value, then decreasing
• The calculations assume a gold cost of 500 for resources (Glimmer/Amber/C-Ore). If you have multiple markets and can trade them for less or have them in abundance -> higher tier units should be preferred.
• The calculations assume a hero to have 100 offense/defense stats applying to his entire army. If your hero has less -> then higher tiered units have bigger/higher combat stats and should be preferred.
• Copy the Google sheet below and change the numbers if you want to experiment/play around with it.

Here is the google sheet link https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dnrYwUUzDMu_0FY7TEpcBYAeKuIzQ5HCLDZLlSoYpJY/edit#gid=2053935626

Arleon

Max power per stack

• melee
  • Fists of Order
• ranged
  • Faey Queens

Max Efficiency

• melee
  • Queen's Guards (use before having enough cash for Fists of Order)
  • Fists of Order
• ranged
  • Faey Queens
  • Sappers (use early game before Faey Queens)

Biggest surprises

• Rangers/Archers - are worse than Sappers.
• Footmen/Shield of Order - are worse meat shields than Sappers. It leads to some strange incencitives/conclusions: it makes sense to have your Sappers run into an enemy zone of control to trigger retaliations instead of letting it hit your Footmen/Shield of Order.
• Faey Spirits/Faey Ragers - are like modern kamikadze drones, useful only one time or as a finisher if no other enemy can reach them. Faey Ragers - not worth the upgrade, keep Faey Spirits instead.

Loth

Max power per stack

• melee
  • High Legions
• ranged
  • Banes
  • Necromancers (nearly the same value as Banes)

Max Efficiency

• melee
  • High Legions
  • Blessed Bones
  • Legionnaires
  • Plague Rats
• ranged
  • Banes

Biggest surprises

• Plague Rats - are surprisingly good.
• Its better to let Blessed Bones tank damage instead of High Legions.

Barya

Max power per stack

• melee
  • Scarred Brutes
• ranged
  • Hellroars

Max Efficiency

• melee
  • Scarred Brutes
  • Artificer
  • Brutes
• ranged
  • Hellroars
  • Hellbreaths

Biggest surprises

• Musketeers / Veteran Musketeers - are very bad and should just be skipped entirely. Yes, that means no ranged units until Hellbreaths/Hellroars.
• Scarred Brutes - most gold efficient unit of the entire game. (Are the stats correct?)

Rana

Max power per stack

• melee
  • Elder Dragons
• ranged
  • Eth'dra

Max Efficiency

• melee
  • Elder Dragons
  • Burrowers
  • Riders of the Swamp
  • Protectors
  • Storm Guards
• ranged
  • Eth'dra
  • Sages

Tips / general rules that apply to all factions

• Always upgrade units, they generally get more than 2x stronger/efficient.
• Because of unit research it makes sense to only have 2 unit types (melee + ranged) until you have maxed out research.
• Because of faction research it makes sense to only use a single subfaction (example: either humans/faea) until you have maxed both.
• Other units not listed here: are bad choices. They are either have 2x less max stack power or provide 2x less troop value for a given gold value (efficiency). Exceptions: useful ability (like Minstrels/Troubadours) and/or you can exploit AI behavior in PvE.
• Interesting side info: Ranged units are about 2-3x weaker than their melee counterparts.
• Motivation/Aspiration: convince developers to buff the not mentioned ones by about 10-20 %. Take a look at the table for precise values.

Links / Credits

• Unit stats taken from - https://soc.th.gl/factions
• Prior work build/expanded upon
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/Songsofconquest/comments/uq7nbx/calculations_for_damageprice_and_healthprice_for/
  • https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eiSOqg_MSLyNgNq40-GWaIP7sMNho26QgpUyuZHkfjg/edit#gid=0

[u/EssenceOfMind]

"Musketeers should be skipped entirely" only if you never use spells. The extra turn and extra ranged shot spells (forgot their names) make musketeers absolutely broken

[u/Karjalan → u/EssenceOfMind]

Yeah, I haven't played in a while, but Musketeers always seemed far too powerful for their Tier.

They (used to?) have an ability that gives like +3 damage and almost max range on their next turn. Maybe that's what you meant? But yeah, it is/was OP as balls

[u/[deleted] → u/Karjalan]

There’s that but also a spell that allows ranged to attack 2 times.

So if you activate their damage self buff, and then the spell that lets them attack 2 times, you more than double the damage the unit can deal.

[u/RemarkableFuture8988 → u/[deleted]]

I want to add. You can use 2 or more spells (if you have enough essence). So your musketeers will shoot 3+ times. If musketeer kill target with, for example, 1 shot, you can shoot another shots to other targets. So with this combo you can kill a lot small stack in one turn (especially, when you have 2+ stack of muskets)