Hi there, Lightbringers!
A few days ago, we launched a new army unit patch in which the recruitable army units have been redesigned into new categories. Taking this opportunity, in this week’s dev blog we will talk about the new changes and refresh how to build your army as well as train and manage your troops.
If you want to develop an empire, you'll need a strong army to conquer new lands and defend your domain. As you know, in Empire of Ember you will be able to command and lead your troops in battles of up to a hundred units... but first things first! You will need to train new soldiers before you get there.
The first step in order to grow your population, and therefore having enough units to join your army, is building farms. These produce vegetables to feed the lower classes and the extra food grants you an extra unit in your army (level II farms will produce +2, and level III, +3 units). With the recent patch, farms are now more powerful and produce population, but cost gold to maintain. This has been changed to support the undead unit playstyle, which we will explain later.
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You can manage and build your army in the chest of your mage tower. Your militia both serves as garrisons to defend your city from enemy attacks or to accompany you on missions. Besides needing them to attack other cities or to free occupied villages from enemy control, the roads of Domus are dangerous and you never know when you can find an enemy camp or roaming hordes in your travels.
Before the last patch, there used to be 3 types of units (melee, ranged and mages), which have now been updated to heroes, siege, magical and undead.
Heroes mostly cost gold and steel to train and upkeep, and you can make the most of them by keeping them alive and upgrading them. The basic units are Farmers and Leather Warriors. Some other units in this category such as Archers, Rangers and Warriors (all of them divided into male and female types), will be available when you level up, upgrade specific buildings, and have enough resources to unlock, train and maintain their upkeep.
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The main siege unit is the catapult, a powerful device you will only be able to unlock once you make advances in the game, and that is quite costly to train and upkeep.
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Magical units fill special roles and tend to be more powerful but cost spellbooks to recruit. The ranged Spear Goblins are the basic units of this type.
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Finally, undead units use population as a resource, where units killed by zombies have a chance to rise up as new zombies, a stat that is based upon your leadership skill level. Undead units fit the playstyle of having large numbers of disposable units. Plague bearers are the basic type.
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For some of these units, you will be able to choose their weapons, changing the units’ attack speed, protection, or their damage type between blunt or slash for example.
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All units require having enough resources (gold, steel, population, spellbooks, etc.) to be able to unlock, train and maintain their upkeep, except for the most basic ones which may not have unlock or upkeep costs.
Trained units will automatically join your garrison; you can move them to your army by dragging them into the army panel and sorting them into ranks. When units win fights, you will be given the option to upgrade them to higher units at a certain cost.
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There are other types of units that you’ll unlock when completing certain missions. If you roll a high result in the research dice mini-game, you will be given a list of quests to complete. Each quest leads to a dungeon or overland combat mission and if you are successful you discover a new type of unit.
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There is a limit to the number of units you can upkeep that basically depends on the number of points you allocate to the leadership attribute, and the farms you have built in your city.
Also, if you are running low on units, there is an option to hire new recruits in the villages and cities, but you’ll need to have a good relationship and loyalty points in order to do this.
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And this will be all for today!
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Take care and have a great week!