Kingshot Swordland Rules and Guidelines for CSR
If you have any questions about this guide, please bring it forward to Snoo.
Hello everyone, below will be an overview of the rules regarding our swordland strategy this weekend. 🎁
As we get deeper into Swordland, we need to work together with a strategy in order to win. As you guys probably seen last time, we lost by 360 points, it was a sight we don't want seeing again.
Firstly, your presence at your Swordland match is of utmost importance, more people, more strength. The combined combat powers of a legion's top 20 determines its power, and matches us against stronger ememies. If you do not show up, we will go against one more of you in the enemy team, with you absent, putting us at a double disadvantage. And any count over 20 participants will give us a big advantage over the enemy. This is why we require people to respond to a message regarding their availability, we expect everyone to be able to respond to messages, while Battle Request menu is sometimes not understood by some people and some may request a legion they aren't able to attend.
Below I will give a detailed summary of our strategy for Swordland, please read this even if you think you know how to play, it should be helpful to everybody. Strict rules applies mostly to Legion 1, but the knowledge of these strategies would benefit Legion 2 as well.
Please read all categories, you will be assigned a main role, but you may need to dynamically switch and adapt between all three roles depending on the situation in the game.
Before the battle, make sure to activate Anti-scout (or Counter-recon) in the buffs menu (arrow under your profile at the top right), and optionally, a Troop Capacity Boost, Squad Health, Enemy Attacks Down buff. Lethality Boost is also good for berserkers. F2P or low spenders should only activate the lower tier buff, do not spend 20k diamonds please.
During the battle, make sure to pay attention to Map markers set by R4s for our target switches and garrison help requests, read chat if you have the mental capacity to do so as well. We R4s will be observing structures, but if you need help at a structure, share it in chat!!
Below is the priority of structures we are going for, for the most optimal structures to gain points:
- Bell Tower first to decrease first occupation time.
- Stable should be second, to decrease time required to teleport.
- Sanctums after, they offer the most points per second.
- Swordshrine after, when it unlocks. Other structures are optional, and we do not need to hold them to win, but if garrisoners have extra troops, you can send them to those structures below 👇
- Hall of Reformation, majorly increase our damage and defensive potential. This applies a multiplicative buff to our stats and debuff to the opponent.
- Abbeys, if possible later in the game. We can't get too greedy about them, it is hard to maintain garrison of everything, avoid teleporting to Abbeys unless it is for gathering dropped crates from garrison switch, or directed by R4s, we want to keep priority to the main point structures that gives us an advantage. Depending on the strength of the opponent, if we don't have enough power to maintain garrison at all times of all above buildings, it may be best to leave Abbeys to them and focus on the above buildings.
For the first 20 minutes of the battle, strictly NO full march solo attacks allowed on any castle that are less than 3-4 TC levels lower from you. For example, if you are TG1, you can attack TC27 maximum, TC28 if careful and scouted. Exception can be made if only to help out a garrison member repeatedly being attacked; scout, and time your attacks to arrive before their troops return from attacking us.
After the first 20 minutes, if you still haven't reached your personal point target of 180k points, feel free to go attack targets you can beat. Otherwise, shift your role to rally/garrison structures instead, and defend your city with troops at home.
If you have already reached the target points, please leave the lower level targets for others to reach their personal point targets. You shall only attack lower level targets to burn them away, ONLY IF they are at a structure they are garrisoning, DO NOT COMPETE FOR PERSONAL POINT LEADERBOARD BY ATTACKING! Defending and garrisoning structures enemies are attacking also gives points!
Once you have locked your target, always attack with only ONE full march, your strongest march, with 50/20/30 formation, leave your remaining troops home with your second strongest march to defend your city. (You may add extra bait marches with 1 troop, more details below.*)
*If you have any March Skin, you can also bait the enemies you're draining to attack you by sending multiple marches with 1 troop and no heroes, this often makes the enemy think you have no more troops home and will often lead to them attacking with multiple marches on your full city. This strategy works best by itself against enemies equal, or less than 2 TC levels above you. Otherwise, best in tandem with your main march if they are a weaker opponent you are attacking. If you are attacked by someone stronger, QUICKLY speedup your main hero march home to defend your city, this will greatly increase your chances of successfully defending.
Always scout your enemies before attacking, don't attack if they have too many troops or have too strong heroes home for you to beat. In case an individual you want to attack has Anti-scout activated and you cannot scout them, you can also send ~5000-10000 total suicidal troops with your strongest heroes to get a battle report, before attacking with a full march.
If an enemy is attacking you first, the optimal strategy is to defend your city until all their marches have hit you (you may want to temporarily speedup recall from the nearby structure you may be garrisoning if the opponent is equally or stronger than you), and then send back an attack timed to arrive when their remaining troops returned. Double the damage, injure their troops both defensively and offensively! 🥳
Once you have an idea of their troop count (generally this is easiest to get when enemies forget to activate their anti-scout at the start) take mental note of their total Power Number as well, and if they have sent out troops to garrison buildings, this will help you estimate their troops remaining without having to scout again. Very useful to know if they have healed their troops back before launching a surprise attack.
No solo attacks are permitted on any structure unless you have scouted and are certain you can beat their garrison. Same principle, the garrisoner should be 2+ TC levels below you, and have the same or lower amount of troops. Launch a rally otherwise, invite those who are at the structure with you to join.
Rules regarding rally making (and joining):
- Only make rallies to structures you are next to, and use your strongest combat heroes.
- Rallies must be at least 2 minutes, or 3 minutes, unless you have multiple people next to you ready to join. (5 minute rallies are too long, avoid those too, judge by strength of enemy in the structure, and the strength you need, longer rallies generally guarantee more people can join)
- Always invite those next to you when making a rally. Optionally invite the strongest players too. Make sure to watch out for rally invites.
- When joining rallies, always make sure you have sped up so your troops can arrive before the rally departs.
Always leave enough troops home to defend, OR leave NO TROOPS home (garrison structures with all troops). For a good standard, never leave between 1-200k troops home, either zero or more than 200k, preferably 250-300k+. If an attacker attacks your city with zero troops in it, you do not suffer any troops injuries, you only have to extinguish, so if you go without defending your city, be wary at all times and ready to extinguish immediately if attacked. It is recommended for Garrison Leads and Berserkers to maintain 250k+ troops home, and Garrison joiners shall leave Zero troops home.
ALWAYS extinguish if you are garrisoning a building! Send all your troops out if you have someone much stronger harassing your city, either to garrison, reinforce stronger allies, or to join rallies, and just keep extinguishing.
In case of emergency, sending your troops out to occupy tiles near you is also a good way to save them, beware enemies can also attack those tiles. Your garrisoned troops are removed if you get burned to spawn (this is why we, mainly the Berserkers, will burn the opponent. if they don't extinguish in time, they will get sent to spawn). So, stand your ground as long as possible and waste their time; expect to spend a few thousand gems extinguishing throughout the match, especially if you're lower combat stats, and cannot defend your city with remaining troops.
At the start of the game, there will not be anything to gather, wait until our attackers and garrison leads secure structures first and then teleport to already secured structures to help garrison. Send all your troops out to garrison, do not keep any home. Extinguish your fire if you get burnt.
Once Undercellars appear, and you can teleport away, please stay away from structures, and near gathering spots, make sure to send all your marches out to gather, and be ready to teleport.
Be wary of any structure that is held by either the opponent or us for a long time. Crates will drop when the holder switches, between ally and opponent, be sure to teleport immediately to gather any large sums of points when the structure holder switches.
- You get FREE speedups to your marches! Please make sure to use them to reach rallies or to garrison buildings, don't waste them on solo attacks.
- You also get FREE Heal Speedups! Use them wisely, adjust your healed troop count to use them efficiently. They won't be enough alone, you will have to contribute your own healing speedups.
- You also get FREE teleports! Especially with the Stable structure held, the cooldown is lower. Relocate strategically when your cooldown ends.
- If you are in NEED of personal points, don't be afraid to use an advanced teleporter if you see either 1. any individual with low Town Center level, but high Power Number (meaning lots of troops left) you can go zero them, 2. any structures you scouted that you can certainly beat solo, 3. any high-pointage crates dropped from structure garrison lost/taken. You will get 2 teleports back from Swordland victory, we expect you to use these for the fight. A strategically well-fought Swordland fight should only cost you 2-6 teleporters, even if you are a berserker.
- Reminder once again, even as a Berserker, you can play the bait and defend strategy against players equal or stronger than you. It isn't always about attacking first, drain their troops first before you attack to burn them away.
- If you are really low on troops, and don't have heal speedups left, you can decide to leave the battle. Leaving the battle heals all of your troops, but you will only be able to rejoin after a 12 minute cooldown. It is wise to leave and rejoin if you run out of troops and heals in the first half of the game. Use this wisely, any time lost is potential points lost for us, hence why we want to avoid troop injuries to stay in battle the longest, it's not a battle of who's strongest, but also who uses their strength sparringly. Obviously do not leave in the last 12-15 minutes, if you are running out of troops during this period of time, switch to Gatherer role instead of either combat roles.