FRONT SQUAD and other AXIS troop setup -BY BONEMASH

[/color]THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT GOOD SETUPS, THIS IS ONLY ONE OF THEM THAT HAS WORKED FOR ME.


All Troop set-ups for Axis events are similar :

DDD DDD DHD DD DD DD DD DD (for a total of 18 fakes and one Hammer) This is erring on the side of caution!

The Dummies are the normal 1/1/1 Hastatus and 1/1/1 Sagittarius.

The first two waves of three Dummies are to take some of the sting out of the Principes you are attacking. Principes have two rounds of missile attack that can be deadly.

The position of the Hammer is important...as is the setup for the Hammer.


The amount of Equites varies depending on the Axis Forces you are attacking.

Front Squad Fill the back line first, with 0 / 5k / 0 Ballistae. This way you can make sure you can place enough Ballistae on your hammer. The Ballistae at the back absorb a lot of the damage taken by the Onagers and some of the remaining missile attack from the Prinspes you are facing. 5H / 5H / 30k Equites (or how many Equipes you are able to place with the remaining Faculty. If you cannot fit enough men on one hero, you need to train him up or boost his faculty stats (Caesar Marque and/or Cicero Medal) before attempting Front Squad.

When u see the Battle report you will be able to tell if you can reduce the number of Dummies sent.

Using the Report tab at the top helps, you can also use the enter button to "Confirm" the attack to reduce the time needed when launching your forces...practice before attempting Front Squad for the first time....If you cannot get enough Dummies in it could result in major losses to your forces.

Hammer Placement: I have learned that the middle spot is the safest spot to place your hammer when hitting Axis. Why I can't tell you but it is. So rather then send DDH, start sending DHD. If you are still using 18 dummies that's fine just be sure to place send your hammer in the 8th position.

Disclaimer: this isn’t a correction, only addition information to consider… just to make your head spin a bit more

For your dummies, sending 1/1/1 hast/sag is all you need. However, you can load your dummy 5/5/5 hast/sag and it will come back with 4/4/4. Then you can send it again, without reloading, and it comes back with 3/3/3, and so on. Loading dummies is a pain!!

quote: "(for a total of 18 fakes and one Hammer) This is erring on the side of caution!"
yes very cautious hehe. you probably won't need this many dummies. I usually tell people to send 10 dummies and a hammer like: 6 dummy/ hammer/ 4 dummy
However, it's not a bad idea to send extra when you first learn how to hit the AoI. Then you look at the report and find how many you actually need. You find the last dummy on the report to take losses, all the dummies after that (that have zero loss) are extra.

As far as hammer placement goes, I have seen on my battle replays that the princ missle attack has hit my hammer in the third and fourth rounds. (Not just the first two as the Testudo ability states) So this is why sometimes your hammers take less loss when you use 7 or 8 dummies in front of your hammer, thus putting it in the middle or bottom of the field.

It shouldn't happen, but when it does it's more likely in the higher up AoI, when the last princ hero doesn't spend his missle attack because your dummies already got wiped, he'll use it the next round even if it is the third. So princ/onag dummies may also help.

Alternate setups...
Front squad:
front: 5k hast/ 5 hast/ 20k equi (no more than 25k equi)
rear: 5 sag / 5 sag / 2.5k onag

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(don’t bother with Front Squadrons or Front Cohort, they are basically a waste a pac aglets since you only get 10 a day. Grind FS(front squad) for the Rome, Parthia, and Lion emblems for gear. You’ll be interested in Draco’s and tempted to hit cohorts for them, but drop rate is much better from the divisions. When you can take out a FS in 5 rounds when sending dummies in first, you can consider moving to the FD(front division). If you don’t have any gear, I’d recommend waiting until you have one or two pieces first. And strongly recommend not doing Light Armored Squads until you have three pieces.)
Front division:
front: 5-10k hast/ 5 hast/ 25-30k equi
rear: 5 sag / 5 sag / 3-4k onag

Light Armored Squad:
front: 10k hast/ 5 hast/ 40k equi
rear : 5 sag / 5 sag / 5k onag

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Alternate arena setups:
8 dummies / hammer / 4 dummies (this was how I sent until I acquired some gear)
or
hammer / 6 dummies (yep, that's right, no dummies in front)
you only do this if you have gear... at least three pieces of Lion. here's proof:

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Take the gear off of that hammer hero, and it's a wipe!

**Also note, it always takes 2 minutes to launch an AoI arena. The return time may vary, but cannot be more than 15 minutes.**

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This shows battle order, techniques, and strategy fairly clearly. The 5k hast and 6k bal absorb the damage as the princes are smart enough to attack where they can do the most damage. The bals here only actually had to be only 1500, since the enemy killed 1399 of them with its full attack, and only got to attack for one round. In that case, the required faculty for the setup is 110,010. You can win without the extra has and bal, but will take damage to the ponies and onags. You can win with less ponies and onags, but the fight will last longer, requiring more dummies behind.

Actual losses came out to be 857 hast, 19 ponies, 280 bal. The payout was one red pass, one bread, 1 Rome emblem, 1 Parthia emblem, and 421,564 experience for the hammer hero.

If you are having ANY problems with the game, your browser, whatever, freezing, seeing the lag clock, while doing one of these attacks, STOP JOINING, at least if it's before you add hammer. Better to lose some physical on a few dummies and a Pac Aglet, than to try to outrun the train coming at you. If you don't get enough dummies in after the hammer, YOU WILL BE CRUSHED. You will lose 4-5k ponies on a fail. It's not worth it.

lol, speaking of lag. I was having a nasty bout of it today. BUT, I send hammer first!

Luckily, it came out better than I had thought it could. You shouldn't be hitting LAS without a few pieces of gear, this hero had either three or four pieces of Lion; boots, helmet, and shield at least, might have had the armor too.

note: hero is over lvl 175 and POT8

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This snippet is from two different battle reports. Same hero, same trait points, same troop count, same armor, against 2 different Lvl 1 Light Armored Squadrons, both in Hammer-Six Dummy Formation. The only difference is putting eq and ona on top instead of bottom.

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Prin go for the internal anvil of has, as they know that's where they will do the most damage. Their missiles also cause collateral damage (bad aim!). In the normal shape, the ponies take damage from the prin division across from them first. On the next two enemies, the first prince division does collateral damage to the second row of dummies, so the second division of princes attacks the third row of dummies, and the third division of princes is free to again attack the hammer's internal hast anvil. So although the ponies are never actually the target, they take five or six collateral attacks.

Regular Hammer Replay
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In the Mirror Hammer, the ponies take only one collateral damage hit, from the first division of princes.

Mirror Hammer Replay
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Losing a hundred hast vs losing 50 ponies in real terms on this level of AoI, but an observation to keep in mind for higher stakes princ encounters, be it RC, COR, fortresses, wilds, or other players.

PS1 - Hast internal anvil only has to be 5k in this scenario, just enough to not be wiped out. If they're wiped out, pony will take damage. And adding 20k or 50k more makes no difference. They don't do damage, and enemy can only do a certain level of damage maximum.

PS2 - Not sure what the minimum number of ponies needed here is, but again, no need to overkill. You need only enough in one stack to wipe out the strongest enemy hero. No reason to add a pony stack to the middle either, to "soften up" the next round. Doing so only causes that stack to take collateral damage, at least until faculty of 305k or so, in which case you can do a second full stack of ponies to wipe out the second hero in the first round. If your hero is that big, he should be doing something else though...

Now, these set-ups aren't used for lowest loss. These are used for speed mainly by reducing the amount of dummies you need. They're also based on LAS, and I haven't experimented with numbers, so they will probably need to be adjusted if you don't like the losses you suffer or hit a smaller/bigger AoI. Remember too: your hero level, bravery/parry, and gear will affect losses and number of rounds, as one of the following examples will reflect.

The 1 Rounder
Main advantage: only 2 dummies needed and a pony only hammer, great for quick multiple launches at one time. Faster hammer return.
Disadvantage: if you're not geared, you can take a good amount of loss. Best used with higher level heros and at least full lion gear.

The hammer is 3 equal stacks of ponies, with enough ponies in each stack to take out an entire enemy hero in one round. So for LAS 40k ponies per stack normally does the trick. RS gets around 55k a stack, so your looking at using lvl 190+ heroes for those.

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The 2 Rounder
This is for speed and to save some ponies. On enemy heroes the middle stacks usually hold the bulk of thier troops, so on your hammer the middle stacks are just a couple ponies(or hast/sag if you use any rear divisions) to avoid the biggest the hit your hammer would face.

The hero I used here didn't have a Lion sword, or sword period, so it actually lasted 3 rounds, thus I didn't send enough dummies and took more loss than I should have. It showcases the setup just fine though, so you should manage lower losses than shown.

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Alternative 2 rounder with onags: saves even more ponies, however you get a 15 minute return for it.(same hero as above, thus it actually went 3 rounds again)
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The Hast/Sag Hammer
With Fearless gear and Lion sword/Rain hat, these bad boys can kick ass! But even with just some lion gear, and NO RoA ability, they can be very useful. What's more, you don't loose a single pony, and hast/sag are cheap and fairly quick to make.
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