Battles

When the battle starts, scan every enemy general. Look for the ones with Pit/Taunt/Muddle tactics. Those are the one you should worry about and you should try to capture/defeat them as soon as possible. If you can Pit/Taunt an enemy officer before he does it on you do so, even if you are not ready to do a combo on him. A single Pit/Taunt won't kill him so you'll have time to surround him after.

The prime prerequisite for winning a battle easily is morale. So use your "builders" or Spies to build a supply depot as soon as possible. Depots raise the morale of every friendly officer in a 3 square radius. High morale allows you to move your troops before the enemy, activate your officers special skills and most important of all, allow your officers to move one after the other without having an enemy moving between two of your moves. For example, let's say the officer you want to capture is "4", that means that only officers 1, 2 and 3 play before him. If you're lucky, officers 1,2 and 3 will be yours and you will be able to attack/combo him before the enemy officer turns. Now imagine that all your officers morale is above 90 and that the highest enemy morale is 76. That means that when a new turn start, you'll be able to move all your officers before the enemy have its turn. That's a huge advantage because you can plan your tactical layout at the start of the turn knowing that no enemy officers will prevent you from doing so !

When possible, build the supply depot on a flat terrain at the back of your army. Having the supply depot behind your army will prevent the enemy from destroying it, and as your armies will be moving forward, the depot won't be in the way.

You should move your entire army on a zone of the battlefield away from rivers, shores, hills, and mountains. The reason is simple, you'll spend most of your battle time around this zone, so you need to have maximum mobility. Plains, grass and barren square are perfect spot for your army. Talking about mobility, when your officers reach morale level 95+, you should no longer need the supply depot so destroy them if they are in the way.

Don't build fence or towers. Fence prevent the enemy from coming at you, which is bad as you want to ambush them. Towers only do damage, so they won't help you capturing enemy officer. Anyway, with a good combo, you do enough damage to kill any officers without towers. The only use I've found with fence and tower is if you have a particular officer who is really weak and don't want him to be pit/taunted. Build a tower or fence in front of him to prevent this. However, a better solution would be to hide him behind the supply depot instead.

The basic tip for battle is : DON'T MOVE TO ATTACK THE ENEMY ON HIS SIDE OF THE FIELD !!! Instead, let him come to you. This way, while the enemy is using his turn to move his troops forward, you can let your officers gain morale by sitting in front of the supply depot and this give you time to place each officer to a position where he will be the most useful. Sometimes, some enemy officers don't move and stay on their side. Don't care about them, concentrate yourself on the enemy units coming toward you, when they are defeated, this will make stale enemy officers get on the move. (Wow, that was a great combo, I want to be victim of one too !) The only exceptions to this is when the enemy general is hiding in a castle. In this case start by getting rid of enemy officers outside the castle, then assault the castle.

While your army is waiting for the enemy officers to cross the battlefield, try to order them in a straight line (horizontally) in front of your supply depot. As the enemy approach, adjust the line to match their advance. If the enemy officer is going for the center of your line, make your two-left most officers advance a square or two. Same on the right. The goal is to make a "U" and make the enemy officer penetrate deeply into it before surrounding him. So the officers on the sides should be facing to the left (for officers on the right) and to the right (for the officers on the left), this will allow them to quickly take the enemy unit in pincer when the enemy is correctly located.

If your officer finishes his move facing an enemy don't hesitate to do a normal attack on him. You will gain some deeds doing so. However, if he is very weak, and you want to capture him with combos, don't attack. That would simply defeat him without reward.

There is an infinite number of combos you can do. However, some tactics complement each other better than other, for example doing a [Surround] followed by a [Pincer] done by the unit coming to help in the surround. Refer to the Combos section for tips & tricks on common 2-3 hits combos formation. Then chain those formation together to get 7-10 hits combos.

Move your "builders" (usually the unit of your strategist) and your spies in the middle of the army. This way, they will be able to quickly go heal or remove confusion from a friendly unit using their invaluable [Heal] ability. If one of those has nothing to do, have him heal units nearby. Finally, don't hesitate to use your tactics ! When a unit runs out of tactics, you simply have to "heal" it and you'll have one tactic back.

Try to get the enemy to advance as close as possible without him being able to launch a tactic. Press the [] button and check the enemy officer, you'll see it's possible movement range. The movement range is always longer if the unit is marching straight forward so act accordingly. For example, suppose that if the enemy officer moves three 4 square forward (his maximum moving reach) he comes in front of one of your officer. In that case, he will certainly launch a tactic. To prevent this, simply move your unit one square back, or one square to the side. Thus the enemy will advance 4 squares but as none of his 4 sides touch your army, you are totally safe (and if he is an archer, you suffer only minor damage). You'll now be in an excellent position to combo him next turn as you should move before him and he is within reach.

Also when deciding which direction to face after a move, there are two factors : 1- Try to prevent you unit from being assaulted by side-dependent tactics like [flank] and [pursue]. 2- Try to guess in which direction you'll be moving next turn and face this direction, this will allow you to cover greater distance in that direction. For example, if your target is an enemy unit, don't make your unit face where the enemy is now but where he will be next turn

Use your spies "Destroy" ability to its fullest when assaulting a castle. Their destroy ability is much stronger than the destroy ability of your army officers. They can destroy (in a single attack) any part of a castle (including the walls), any towers, any depots and any fence ! Talk about efficiency :)

You should try to capture as many officer as you can. This way, you gain some new officers and you gain deeds and experience to level up your officers and have them learn more tactics to use in battle. Sure you could only Pit/Taunt the enemy commander and combo him to death so you win the battle, but later, if you find yourself losing battles because the enemies officers are level 7 and you are only level 3, you'll know why...

Concentrate on one enemy unit at the time. You'll do bigger combos this way.

The exact formula to calculate the number of hits required in a combo to capture an enemy officer is still unknown. However, it seems like the enemy officer's level plays an important role.

When you are preparing your armies layout for a taunt/pit combo, don't place the officer that will taunt/pit in the same line as your target. Move it to one side. If an enemy officer sees that he could be currently pitted/taunted, he will move to the side to avoid this. When everybody is in place for the combo, move your pitter/taunter in line with the enemy unit and trigger it. He'll never see it coming ;)

At the start of a day in which you'll launch a complex combo, you should save, so if you forget something or make a mistake moving one of your unit, you'll be able to reset-reload the battle and avoid this mistake. Common mistakes : placing an officer behind an officer who is trying to decoy, having one of you officers on the wrong tactic, turn order mistake, etc...

How do combos works ? When an officer launch a tactic, a combo starts if the tactic used have an direct effect on another allied officer. An example of direct effect is if the enemy targeted by the combo goes in front of a friendly unit, this unit will try to launch its own tactic if the tactic's conditions are met. Allies positive effects (aid, revive, boost, etc) works if their target has participated in the combo. If more than one officer can use their tactics at the same time, they go in morale order. The one with the highest morale will go before the other. So if you have an enemy surrounded by three guys with [Pierce] and one guy with [Decoy], it's imperative that the one with [Decoy] has the lowest morale. Else, he will act before the other officers and will prevent them from using their tactics resulting in a smaller combo. If two officers have the same morale, the officer whose turn came first will also go first using its tactic. This could be complicated, but in fact this is very convenient as explained in the next point...

At the start of a day, start designing your combo. Find your target, and now try to place every units that move before him in a place where they can participate in the combo. Check to see which one of your officer is the last to play before the enemy, he will be the one who trigger the combo. If he is too far to reach the enemy, choose the previous friendly unit (in turn order). Once you've found the unit that will trigger the combo, check to see which tactics he can use and what he can do to the enemy, place your other officers accordingly. Then when it's turn comes, start the combo, sit back and enjoy.

Don't listen to the manual : don't use [Boost] and [Revive] at the beginning of a battle. Instead, let the supply depot do its job. Rather, use [Boost] and [Revive] later to easily add hits in you combos. [Revive] and [Boost] are also the two easiest tactics to use for starting a linked combo as they can be used on any ally anywhere.

Use your strategist to freeze an enemy unit using "Link". Just remember that you can't use a tactic on a linked enemy. So make sure you'll be able to launch a tactic on another enemy unit or use a Revive/Boost on an allied unit. As soon a tactic is used successfully, this will trigger the link and launch the strategist combo.

If you only have the enemy commander left to beat and don't want to capture him (or can't : not enough tactics left to combo him or if you know he can't be captured), you can use your strategist to link a tactic on him to freeze him. Then, have your officers do normal attacks on him without using tactics. Rinse and repeat. (Yeah, I know this is a cheap strategy :)

Practice using many different tactics so you get to know their conditions and effects. With time, you will get more experienced and you'll be able to instinctively make up complex combos. I'm always disappointed when my combos are doing less than 5 hits...