Building your Armies

So I thought I'd try and help people with understanding more about how to build an army, there is a little bit more to it than just queuing up units to build.
You need to understand an army's purpose, then you will have a better idea of what units to queue up, but before that there is a fundamental rule that you need to learn and apply to your builds
(Nearly) Every Unit builds at the same Power per Hour (pph) according to it's purpose and resource.

Offensively your units build up to 480 pph, or 430 pph when built from Maranian Amulets
Defensively your units build up to 450 pph, or 380 pph    "       "       "           "             "

This means that in terms of maximising your build queues there is little difference between Warlocks and Pikemen when you queue up an hour's worth of building.

This does not account for levels in lost arts or skull runes. But as they are both percentage based and both max out at the same percent (40% and 12% respectively) you can directly compare and choose based on whichever is higher, ie. Level 20 pikemen gives more pph than Level 12 warlocks.

With that in mind, here are some purposes for which you might build an army.

Offensive                     Defensive
Farming                        Castle Defence
Battlegrounds               Friendly Garrison
PvP - Raiding/Quest    Team Defence
PvP Beacons                Beacon Defence

Farming:
Normally you can get by with anything for farming but as time goes on you may wish to build an army specifically for the purpose of farming, in which case you are typically looking at building very fast units like Wyverns and Chimeras. Wyverns move at 4 kph and Chimeras at 5kph. If you have sapphires to spare you may want to buy Thieves, units specific for farming but very vulnerable to dying in combat. If you don't have access to them then Seekers (4kph), Eldritch Necromancers and Knights (3kph) are good substitutes. Consider how much you are taking in rss from your better targets to determine how many units (and their total capacity) you build.

Battlegrounds:
Often you will want to be building units that maximise your pph so build whichever units are high level and have points in reducing queue times. These units don't have very far to travel, so speed doesn't matter, and they usually won't live beyond the next bg quest so food consumption isn't important either. Pikemen are great for this as they are usually one of the first units you get to Level 20 and you'll have probably put some runes into it's build time. Paladins are actually a poor option, in an exception to the 480 pph base rate their rate is only 450, so unless for some reason you have more Levels in Paladin than Pikeman you should always prefer pike building for bgs.

PvP - Raiding/Quest:
This is assuming a general raiding cycle based on the global tournaments.
Like bgs you usually want to maximise your pph but as you typically won't lose much more than half your units in raids (as opposed to bgs where you will lose an approximate number depending on the level of bg and your army makeup) you might want to think about having more of a focus on units that give you more Power per Food Consumed (PFC), generally what we consider more 'powerful' units like your Cavalry, Occult and Bestiary units. This helps lower the total lifetime cost of units that are more likely to stick around for several weeks.

PvP - Beacons:
Attacking, and taking over a beacon is a league-wide effort that requires sizable armies from everyone attacking. As the time for an attack approaches you'll want to focus on maximising your pph but by planning ahead and prebuilding Maranian Amulet based units like Seekers and Priestesses you can reduce your food burden whilst providing a comparable army.

Castle Defence:
This ultimately depends on your play style and your relationship with local active players. If you're managed to make yourself a popular target then you'll want to build fast, your army likely won't be around for long so don't worry too much about the upkeep.
For those who have a better relationship with their neighbours go for those low food units. It will take you longer to get a similar sized army but you won't have to do it nearly as often.

Friendly Garrison:
These units are nothing more than an alert system to let you know when your friends have been spied on or been attacked. You want as cheap as possible. Archers, and then Lost Ones when they become available, are the best bet. You'll only need to keep one on each castle.

Team/League Defence:
For me these are typically made up from units that I have built in order to balance out the iron/gold ratio after building my offensive units. For the more conscientious among you, you might want to preference building nomads. Defensively you have very few fast units outside of the eldritch varieties, even barbarians, equal to nomads in overall power, cost and consumption are strangely 1/3 slower than nomads. Fast units = fast response.

Beacon Defence:
Maximise your pph, beacons get attacked a lot and you need to get defence there often and in size. Send a mix of unit types to get the best performance from them.


Good luck, build big and build smart and remember that your units are just another resource.