Talk:Understanding Stacking

[quote="Jacko"]Hello everyone, Im still enjoying a long break from TR. However, during the many many years I have played this highly addictive game, I wrote some guide to help mage perform better.

So I have decided to post 1 or 2 of them in here to help new mages!! Those were written a few months/years ago. So I hope they are still accurate!!!

Enjoy!!!!

Jacko ____________________________________________________________________________________

Recently, I notice that a lot of you need help with some ingame strategy, more specifically; the way each stack will attack other in combat (which hit which).

Ill try to clarify it as much as possible.

When you’re looking into combat, there are 4 classes of creatures:

1-Flying creatures 2-GROUND units with BOTH RANGED attack (primary and extra attack) 3-GROUND units with 1 melee and 1 ranged attack (exemple leviathan, medusa) 4-Ground units with ONLY melee, pure Fire attack and pure magic attack (exemple treants, Horned demon, unicorn

Now, the way each stack hit each other can easily be determined. Let’s take this exemple:

Invader: 1- Red Dragon 40% (flying belong to category 1) 2- Chimera 20% (flying belong to category 1) 3- Efretti 25% (possess both ranged attack, belong to category 2) 4- Wraith 15% (flying belong to category 1)

Defender:

1- Djinni 35% (flying belong to category 1) 2- Leviathan 30% (possess 1 ranged attack and 1melee, belong to category 3) 3- Mind Rippers 20% (possess both ranged attack, belong to category 2) 4- Unicorn 5% (possess 1 magic and 1melee, belong to category 4)

Ill try to simplify it as much as possible:

Units in category 1 and 2 will attack the NEXT NOT Hitted stack; whatever the stack is flying or ground (category 1, 2, 3 or 4).

Units in category 3 will hit the next NOT HITTED ground stack (category 2, 3 or 4). Units in category 4 will also hit the next NOT HITTED ground stack (category 2, 3 or 4)

If all the enemy stack was hitted once (your attacking a short stacked mage or one with few ground stack, if you heavy ground stack), then your remaining units will hit TOP flying (if the units belong to category 1 or 2), or it will hit TOP GROUND stack (if the units belong to category 3 or 4).

Note: Item and spell won’t change the matching stack order. If one stack is slowed down by Slow, or Spider web to 0 initiatives, it will still “virtually” hit his stack and the stack matching order won’t change. ALL THIS MATCHING IS INDEPENDENT FROM UNITS INITIATIVE.

The correct matching is the following:

1. 1-Red Dragon hit #1-Djinni,
2. 2-Chimera hit #2-Leviathan,
3. 3-Efretti hit #3-Mind rippers
4. 4-Wraith hit #4-Unicorn

Now the tricky part:

1. 1-Djinni will hit #1-Red Dragon

1. 2-Leviathan will hit #3-effreti; Leviathan belongs to the category 3, it has a melee attack and a ranged attack, but it will attack ground units first (if there is any ground units.) So the next NOT hitted ground units was effretti. That’s why it will hit efreeti.

1. 3- Mind ripper will hit #2-Chimera. Mind ripper belongs to category 2 (ground units with all ranged attack). The next NOT hitted target is Chimera (since the #1 red Dragon was hitted, the next one (#2) chimera is now the target.)

1. 4- Unicorn will hit #3- efretti. Unicorn belongs to category 4, they CAN’T hit wraith (next not hitted stack) because they can’t flies and don’t have any ranged attack. They will however attack the top ground stack which is efretti.

Now, you can see that the % of net power beside each stack DO NOT determine the matching sequence. Only the true battle power (order they are presented in your status page) will determine the matching stack.

Now lets take an other exemple against an ALL flying stack:

Invader: 1-Djinni 2-Vampire 3-Leviathan 4-Mind rippers 5-Water elemental 6-Horned demon 7-Medusa 8-Unicorn 9-Psychic wisp

Defender: 1-Archangel 2-Djinni 3-Vampire 4-Wraith

Item/spell: No carpet, No Call Hurricane, No Flight.

Since the defender is all flying and they belong to the category 1, they will hit the stack in the correct order:

1. 1-Archangel will hit #1-Djinni (invader)
2. 2-Djinni (defender) will hit #2-Vampire (invader)
3. 3-Vampire (defender) will hit #3-Leviathan
4. 4-Wraith will hit #4-Mind rippers

Now the tricky part again the invader units will attack like this:

1. 1-Djinni (invader) will hit #1-Archangel
2. 2-Vampire (invader) will hit #2-Djinni (defender)
3. 3-Leviathan (invader) will hit #1-archangel. There you go, that’s the tricky part. Why won’t the levy hit the vampire since it’s the next not hitted target? Levys belong to the category 3 and it should hit the top stack ground troup. However, this is an all flying stack. So it will AUTOMATICALLY hit the Top flying stack. In that case AA. Medusa, is in the same boat and will hit AA too.

1. 4-Mind rippers hit #3-Vampire
2. 5-Water elemental (only 1 attack which is a ranged attack, belong to category 2) hit #4-wraith
3. 6- Horned demon won’t attack (category 4; no ranged attack)
4. 7-Medusa will hit #1- AA. Medusa is the same as Levys.
5. 8- unicorn wont attack (category 4; no ranged attack)
6. 9- Psychic wisp (only 1 attack which is a ranged attack, belong to category 2)

will hit #1- AA

Hope this might help guys. ___________________________________________________

After reading this guide more carefully, I noticed that there is certain information that arent accurate. The % of net power (NP) of the stack is important. Lower NP % stack will not go for the top stack enemy if that stack is huge (high NP %). they will go for lower stack.

Thoses change occured about 8-10 months ago when the "Fakes stack" combat assignement rules were changed.

But overall, this guide can and will help lots of mages to understand combat matching.[/quote]