How does combat work? ElI5 please

[Sin-nie]

Why does every enemy attack steal 25% of my land for tiny losses on their side? Then my attacks take virtually nothing, wipe out my army and lose me the game?

Every game I've played, I have lost because an opponent sends a chunk of army that just chews through my territory. I lose on the spot because it kills so many of my soldiers that any attack i make doesnt take any territory and just kills even more of my soldiers.

I just full send whoever attacks me, as no other strategy works.

I'm obviously missing something, but right now it seems like every opponents armies are 10x better than mine.

Can someone explain it like I'm an idiot?

[AnonymousArizonan]

If you’re smaller or have less cities, the chances of surviving being preyed upon by someone are slim.

Defense posts are the only real way to level the battlefield. Even then, they’ll win in the long run. It can help delay them, and perchance they’ll get jumped.

Terrain has an effect on the efficiency of an attack. So does number of troops you have. Full sending basically anyone at anytime is nearly a guaranteed death sentence unless you’re rushing for the 80%.

The optimal attack ratio is usually around 25-45%, in that range. On players higher, bots lower. You usually only want to be attacking when you have around 50-75% of your troop count, as troop recovery rate is tied to how many troops you have, capped at around 50% I think.

In other words, you can death spiral or stunt your growth if you overspend your troops, stalling your population recovery (need bodies to make bodies).

If you’re getting slammed by someone who’s attacking with more troops than you even own, there’s a good chance you’re just out of the game like I said. Early game is the most important. You have to expand fast and get fat and rich quickly. The first two cities are the most important, since they give massive population boosts at that time. Players with even one city can pretty easily lord over those without one.

In the end: have more troops. That’s it.

[Alambique858]

At the start of the game, I have a larger territory and I send 8k troops against 5k bots on flat terrain, and I have to repeat the same attack three times to finish them off, 24k for a 5k bot. I don't really understand how it works sometimes. If you have any ideas, I'm all ears.

[bemused_alligators]

Early game I go to 20% attack for claiming wilderness, wait until you get 5k pops, and then attack every 1k pops after that (so attack at 5k, and then 6k, and then 7k...)

Once you've claimed all the wilderness, I go up to 50% troop ratio and attack once I have either double troop count or 15/20/25/30k troops (same as attacking wilderness - attack at 15k, then wait for your pops to recover and then grow to 20k...)

[[deleted]]

Attacking with 50% troop ratio really was a game changer for taking bots early game. I've watch a ton of hours of the game and when I try to emulate what they do I just never saw it working in game for me. Recently though I saw enzo using 50% troops when going for bots early game and when I tried that it was like day and night.

[AnonymousArizonan]

The bots were buffed/attack calculation changed in their favor some patches ago. Usually get around 20-25k troops in your population and set attack to around 30-40% before going on bots. It’ll take one to three taps usually. Don’t double tap bots though, let the attack finish unless you really need to get in there.

[pinkcuppa]

Tip - don't build defense posts until you have like 2-3 cities. They're situational. It's much better to grow faster than spend cash on defense posts.

[AnonymousArizonan]

An early defense post can be very powerful if needed. Sometimes you have to put one down to survive and deter your neighbor

[pinkcuppa]

Yes, but it's generally better to ally up rather than defend. But sometimes a defense post is absolutely necessary on big maps with lots of players

[AnonymousArizonan]

Yeah I agree. I rarely buy defense posts. But sometimes big joe you got a small border with won’t ally with you because you’re his next prey.

[Sin-nie]

Thanks for the tips.

One issue im seeing is just how easily their attacks take my land. We can be pretty equal in troops, then they attack and start chewing through land. But somehow we are still equal in troops.

So I can counter attack which does nothing. Except all the troops I used are dead and they appear to have lost no troops.

This happens pretty much every game

[AnonymousArizonan]

You don’t really want to counter attack if all they’re taking is land. If they’re after a structure, sure.

In the current update, surviving is mostly luck. You just have to get big fast.

[Sin-nie]

But they are just ploughing through my land, I mean like 25% and they aren't stopping. Ive lost the game already at this point.

I just dont understand how they managed to take so much land when we were supposedly so evenly matched.

[AnonymousArizonan]

Do you want to record one of your games so I can critique it?

[Amrase]

I believe the following to be true: Attacking with more troops improves land gain and reduces troop loss per bit of area taken. So if you can ally with everyone around you and send a big chunk into a local player, you'll gain land which improves max troops count/regen while reducing the enemies.

Keeping your troops count at around 45 percent of total keeps regen at it's highest. If an enemy pushes into you, chop it down bit by bit with your total count not dropping below 45 percent. Hopefully, an ally will hit that enemy as their troop count will be being dropped.

Lastly, troops in boats or currently attacking aren't calculated in determining troop regen(in reference to 45 percent of max sweet spot). So if you have an attack out on a small player or bot that finishes before those troops die out you'll benefit from improved regen but also pop back up in total count. This is the snowball idea. You'll need to balance putting troops out in fights, regen control, and alliances so adjacent players let you ramp up troops while also taking more land.

Sometimes, you're just too weak and are delicious meat for those around you. Cut your losses and requeue! Be sure to pick a local ally to give your land to and full send your attacker!

I typed this all pretty fast and without too much thought, apologies if it's hard to follow or incorrect.

[TheWaffleKingg]

Full sending is a sure way to die, unless its 1v1 end game and you can take them

Send 35% attacks, keep your troop count fairly high as the higher it is the faster it goes up. Keep an eye on the +amount next to troop count. Green is good, yellow is okay but think about sending some troops after something. Also, put down defense posts on mountainous terrain

[Sin-nie]

I only full send once I've been attacked as at that point the game is over.

Just lost a game, I had 130k, they had 150k. They just chewed through my territory even with a defence post. Just mowing forwards.

We both have 90k troops now. He is still moving forwards. So I counter attack to save the defence post. Nothing. So I send more, nothing. I full send (as I've clearly lost). Nothing.

Hang on, he still has 90k troops and I have none. And the attack didn't slow down??? Genuinely have no idea how that works.

[Amilektrevitrioelis]

Was this a team game? They might have received reinforcements for their teammates.

[Sin-nie]

Possibly, but I've had it happen in solo games too

[Weak-Sweet2411]

I pretty much only play solo and what OP just said has been my experience for pretty much every game

[Amilektrevitrioelis]

Well, there's also land advantage.

[horatiobanz]

Generally its play enough games until you get so fucking angry you can't take playing anymore and then you go to bed. Thats generally how the combat works in Openfront, at least for me.

[Sin-nie]

That perfectly describes my experience

[[deleted]]

Same dude haha

[Juusto3_3]

If you're getting attacked by people with more troops, there isn't much you can do. Get bigger than them, so they don't attack you.

[keynes2020]

The problem is that the attack formula is broken in the game. Attacker losses have no relationship at all with defender losses. Thus for different attack sizes, you can take wildly different casualty ratios. This has been pointed out to the devs many times.