[Beginner’s Guide] A Guide to Lineup Transition and Officer Formation

 

Hello, everyone.

As you spend more time playing the game, I’m sure you have become familiar with how the battle mechanics work. In the early game, your Forces are mainly used to deal with the Garrison stationed in resource tiles. However, PvP battles will be your main focus after that phase. Therefore, your Forces will need to be shifted to a battle-focused lineup instead.

Today, I am bringing you a guide to lineup transition and how to choose the right Officers for your team. Hopefully, you will find inspiration here in regard to your team transition.

I. Basic Concepts

As a player of this game, there are some concepts we must get familiar with. It is only after getting a hang of these fundamental know-hows are we able to build a team around a certain strategy.

1. Troop Quality: There are 5 Troop Types in this game: Cavalry, Bow, Spear, Shield, and Siege. Each Officer has different Troop Qualities. There are 4 kinds of Troop Qualities, and they are S, A, B, and C - from best to worst. S-quality Troops have 120% attributes, A-quality Troops have 100% attributes, and B-quality Troops have 80% attributes. That’s why we want to include Officers with 3S Troop Qualities. In addition, Mystics (e.g. Zhang Jiao, Hua Tuo, Zuo Ci, and Yu Ji) have a 30% attribute bonus in the Preparation Phase before a battle starts, so make sure to include them as well.

2. Affinity Bonus and Faction Bonus

Powerful Officer Affinity Bonuses such as The Peach Garden Three, Tiger Generals, Tiger's Might, and Star of Chaos can be the cherries on top for various team compositions. However, an Affinity Bonus such as The Three Kingdoms is not worth it if you have to pull multiple key Officers away from your team to make the bonus work. Putting three Officers of the same Faction in a team triggers a Faction Bonus that provides a 10% bonus on each of the four attributes to the Commander.

3. Forces: The size of an army led by an Officer grows as the Officer and the Camp level up. There are 3 things you need to know about Officer Formation. Firstly, you lose when your Commander’s Forces drop to 0. Secondly, the Forces of an Officer determine that Officer’s damage dealt with in real-time. In addition, an Officer cannot have more than 10,000 Forces, so a team of three Officers cannot have more than 30,000 Forces. Now that you have this information in mind, these are your takeaways: 1) Your Commander must be tough enough not to get sniped. 2) Take into consideration how long your team is capable of dealing effective damage. You must decide whether it is going to be an aggressive team that outnumbers your enemy during the first 3 rounds or a scam lineup that aims to wear down your enemy in an 8-round battle? 3) An Intelligence-focused Officer deals about 3000 damage in 8 rounds with normal attacks, and a Weapon Damage-focused Officer deals about 5000 damage in 8 rounds. When we put our team damage to the test, a single Tactic must deal over 3500 damage on average to be effective enough.

4. Officer Attributes: Strength determines Weapon Damage (Physical Damage). Intelligence determines Strategy Damage you deal and take (similar to Magic Attack and Magic Resistance). Defence determines the Weapon Damage you take (Physical Defence). And Speed determines whether you go first or second in combat (but you won’t take an additional round because of it). Please keep in mind that when dealing damage by normal attacks and Weapon Damage Tactics, your Strength is first deducted by the opponent’s Defence and then multiplied by the Tactic’s damage rate (excluding Damage Bonus and Damage Reduction). In the cases where both teams have First Strike, the one with higher Speed goes first.

5. Tactic Types: There are Passive Tactics, Formations, Troop Type Tactics, Command Tactics, Active Tactics, and S. Strike Tactics (these types of Tactics take turns to trigger from left to right). Passive Tactics, Command Tactics, Formations, and Troop Type Tactics will activate as soon as your team enters the Preparation Phase of a battle. As for Active Tactics and S. Strike Tactics, they activate by chance in each round.

There are things you need to keep in mind:

First, regarding damage dealing Tactics, we need to determine exactly how many times they will activate in a single battle (you can calculate how many times it activates by multiplying the Tactic triggering chance by 8). If it’s a Tactic that takes a few rounds to prepare before it can activate, it has only 7 rounds left to activate (you can calculate how many times it activates by multiplying its triggering chance by 7). The latter has a greater chance of being interrupted, so if there are two Tactics with the same expected damage output, pick the one that can deal damage instantly. Regarding Control Tactics, we divide them into categories based on their effects. Awe is the best one, Forlorn is in the middle, and Disarm is the worst. We exclude Confusion-type Tactics as they are too inconsistent.

Secondly, we must understand how Tactic effects work together and under what circumstances do they refresh. Control Tactics of the same type do not stack. For instance, if Tactic A has inflicted Forlorn on your enemy, Tactic B may not inflict Forlorn on the same enemy for a second time. Similar rules also apply to other debuffs such as Confuse, Disarm, and Awe. As for Special Damage Tactics, their refresh mechanic works like this: After Officer A uses a Fire Attack against an enemy, Officer B’s Fire Attack against the same enemy will refresh that effect and reset its round duration. These Special Damage Tactics include Sandstorm, Flood, Fire Attack, and Poison. That’s why you must be aware of the number of Tactics of the same type. Don’t equip too many of them at the time. However, this is acceptable in some teams that really need a certain debuff, such as the Grand Marshal of Wu - this team needs as many Fire effects as they can get.

II. Officer Formation Concepts

Every player has a dream team in their mind, which is why people are drawn to this game. However, before you can put up your own all-star team, you need to understand the specialties and unique edges of your lineup.

First, we must determine in what round we want our lineup to end the battle, ideally. Are you going to build a team that aims to outnumber your opponent in the first 3 rounds (Lu Bu Other Bow), or are you going to build a team that requires 8 rounds to deal enough damage to the enemies (Zhu Jun and Chen Gong Other Bow)?

In addition, we must consider the synergies between Officers, such as the consecutive Control synergy of The Peach Garden Three.

Alternatively, we have the consecutive damage synergy from the Wei Shield lineup consisting of Xu Huang, Dian Wei, and Cao Cao. In this lineup, Dian Wei protects the Commander while Cao Cao provides the damage buff. This build relies on Ride the Tiger’s frequent activations and multiple Passive Tactic stacks, with Xu Huang being the main damage dealer.

Other than the burst damage lineups, you’ll need at least one good support Officer in your team to ensure your main damage dealer’s survival. As many of you know, damage dealers come easy, but good supports are hard to find. Cao Cao is the only good support in the Wei Faction. Without Cao Cao, many lineups wouldn’t be as good. Don’t focus on damage too much. A truly experienced player knows it is better to build an all-around team that excels in both offensive and defensive.

That’s about it for this guide to lineup transitions and Officer formations! I hope you learned something from this guide.

Thank you for your time!