By popular request, I decided to write this guide. It is meant for experienced users, both experienced in ranking and in hero tournaments, who are reaching for the ultimate goal: winning that one gold medal!
First of all, forget the ranking medal. It seems to be a good combination, but it mostly isn't. In order to win the ranking medal, you need to invest more in skills like healing and merchant, and a strong duelist is just messing with that goal. The reason why the top rankers can win hero gold, is that noone is really competing for it. When you play your cards right, you will have a solid lead in the hero ranking when the top rankers are making their duelists stronger.
However, you can't be too far behind the top rankers, cause you don't want your duelist to fall too far behind. This is also how you can still win a ranking medal in the end: cause others are slacking. But it shouldnt be your primary goal when you want to win the hero medal.
The army
To be competitive, you need to have a strong ranking army. Good options are:
Asia: Samurai, Magar Infantery, Master Duelists, Battle Monks.
Malay Warbands and Kshatriya Warriors should be reasonable too, but Malays need more trainer XP and KWs are slow starters. For this purpose I would pick either Magars or Master Duelists, since they give the best head start.
Europe: Champion
Viking Champions, Jannisaries and Templars are good options too.
Rome: Spartan Warriors, Champions, War Elephants, Immortals, Triari, all good.
Africa: Will be added later
The ranking
Since you have to be an experienced ranker to use this guide, I don't have to tell you how to rank. So I will keep this chapter short. You start like a normal ranker, which means keep apprentices and heal when injured for the first ranks. You keep doing that untill you have the right amount of units, prolly a bit of spares if you like that (max 5). For units like Magars, Master Duelists or Spartan Warriors, you don't need spares. For Champions a few spares are nice, cause the tier 2 has a very low wage. As soon as you have enough units. You start ranking up your units.
You might have trouble hardcapping at some ranks, no worries about that. You will be marshal soon enough.
Hero Builds
As soon as your hero starts competing in the tournaments, he will need the right gear. In the first day, you might have trouble getting the gold for chaning your gear back and forth to healing items, or buying expensive weapons. In that case: just skip the tournament. Early tournaments dont give many points, and it is not worth getting broke. In my opinion there are three solid builds, each with their own counterparts
1) Foot hero: This guy comes with a big weapon, and a big armor. At some levels, he will get a ranged weapon too. This hero will be defeated by the mounted hero.
2) Mounted hero: His weapon is slightly smaller at most ranks, but he compensates with a solid strike in the cav round and a better ranged weapon. This hero will be defeated by the pike hero
3) Pike hero: To get a pike hero, you will have to sacrifice some weight in your armor or your weapon to buy a pike. Remember: the reason you have a pike, is because you want to counter the mounted attack. There is almost never a reason to have a bigger pike weapon (the only exception is the 5 weight cavpike on the rome map on a very few levels). Mostly you sacrifice armor for a pike weapon, cause that gives a better build then having a worse weapon. This hero will be defeated by the foot hero.
None of this builds is the best choice. There simply is no best choice. I have used all three types, and won hero golds wit hall three types, jut because the competition was adjusting too. The best hero is the one that counters most of your opponents. So if most competitors use a foot hero, you want a mounted one.
But how do you know what the competition uses?
Easy answer: you guess by trial and error. You try some setups and see which one performs best and stick with that.
Hard answer: You try to read the tournaments: Which competitors are you winning against mostly. And who are the ones defeating you. Mostly they will have opposite builds. Make a list of all important competitors and the herotypes they are likely using. This way you can adjust your hero to the competition.
Hero skills and mechanics
Before we get to how to distribute your points, lets take a closer look into the skills. What are the most important skills, what do they do and when to use them?
Support skills (less important for your duelist)
Healing: one of the most important skills for ranking. Makes your runs longer. You will be boosting this a lot on all 3 heroes. A bit less on your duelist though.
Merchant: Not that important early on, very important later when you want a ranking medal. Keep in mind though, that a ranking medal isnt your first aim, and that a lot of luck is involved in this skill. Even when you get it pumped to 50, there will still be ages where you barely get good money. Since medalranking is less important when you aim for the tourney, this skill will be developed a bit later than usual. On your duelist, you won't even add it before you reach marq.
Trainer: The skill you start with. In my opinion, trainer is a undervaluated skill for fast ranking early age. Trainer makes your units rank fast, which gives you longer runs, while using a minimum of units
Leadership: Important skill till a certain level. It will spread out the damage amongst your units. Remember, you only need to have the amount of leadership to make your army look bigger than the opponent. Wether the difference is 1 unit or 100 units doesnt matter, you either win or lose the leadershipcheck. I mostly skip it on my duelist at first, cause banners do the trick just fine. Later on I advice to boost it, to help out the country in main vs mains.
Duelist: This skill increases the chance a hero will be picked for a battle: so boost it on your duelist.
Fighting skills (only important for your duelist)
This skills are meant to transform your average hero into a big badass! When you make your choices, think about the following points:
- Invest into the skills that correspond with your build. No need to invest into pike-avoid when you dont have a horse
Unless you plan on having one later.- It can be better to invest in a lesser skill, when it is a lot cheaper
Parry: The most, I repeat the most important fighting skill. Parry represents the chance you have to avoid the damage of your opponent in EVERY melee round. So when your opponents hero has a weapon which does 20 damage, and you have 25 points spend on parry, you avoid an average of 5 damage EVERY round. That is 50 damage over 10 rounds. Compare that to adding 25 points on your resilence skill
Agility: This is the second skill you want to invest in. Not as important as parry, but a lot cheaper. This is basically the counter to the parry skill. Where the parry avoids damage, agility brings this damage back on the table. So if you invest 25 points, you have a shot of 25% to counter parry.
Marksmen: An undervaluated skill. Most builds will contain a ranged weapon sooner or later. With 50 skillpoints on marksmen, your hero has 100% ranged accuracy. Thats pretyy badass. And besides that: marksmen is cheap. On higher levels, a ranged weapon is a must, so a good marksmen skill can make the difference!
Resilence: Not much to explain, this skill gives your hero more HP, one at a time. (can also be used a bit on support heroes to avoid hero injuries)
Pike-avoid: Counters pike attack, so your cav damage will still go through. Important skill on your mounted hero, but not the first one to max. Why not? When you have this skill maxed and your opponent with a pike weapon maxed his pike skill, the pike attack has still 75% chance to succeed. That's a lot.
Pike: Counters pike avoid. Basically the chance that your pike weapon still works when your opponent counters it with his pike avoid skill. Also not the first to max. Even with this skill is not used, you still have at least a 50% chance that your pike attack succeeds (since your opponent can't boost pike-avoid over 50%)
Points distribution
How you exactly will distribute your points is a matter of taste, but they all have the same basics. My focus is always on trainer early on. I ignore merchant for the first day and use it later. Trainer helps with an early age boost, while merchant is worth more for medal ranking. Since you only need to keep up for a hero medal, merchant is less valuable.
Duelist
16 duelist
15 trainer
10 parry
10 agility
25 healer
After that, you will be on your own, and just follow some principles
- Start with Marksmen as soon as you have a ranged weapon, the first 20 points are cheap anyway
- Start with either pike or pike-avoid around level 16, depending on your preferences. Don't boost it too much untill level 20
- Parry and agility are the most important skills, they should be at least 10 above resilence and marksmen, and 20 above pike or pike-avoid
- Don't start merchant untill you reach marquess
- Boost your healing a few points every level (you still want to rank)
- Boost your duelist with 4 points at general, Vice Marshal, Baron and count
Support
20 trainer
25 healing
10 leadership
After that: mostly boost healing. Raise your leadership with 5 points on Marshal, Baron and Count. You can start merchant on one support around VM and the other around baron. How you exactly wanna distribute points amongst Healing and Merchant is up to you.
Note: When you run an army with more than 43 units at Marquess, like Malay Warbands or Janissaries, add more trainer on all three heroes. Add 1 extra point of trainer on EVERY hero for each 3 units above 43. This goes also for your duelist.
How the gear works
A duel in as well tournaments as in any other battle consists of multiple round. It starts with an artillery round, then a cavalry rounds, and then a number of melee rounds. This melee rounds will go on, untill one of the heroes is injured.
Before we get to builds, lets talk about what your build actually does. Lets forget about the items, your duelist wont be needing them in the tournaments. Your build will consist of armor and weapons. Your armor together with 100 basic HP and the amount of resilence skill determines together the total HP of your hero. When you lose half of your HP, your hero is injured. The fact that you only need to take away half the HP of a hero to injure it, makes one damage worth the same as two HP. Remember that! Besides armor there is a lot of variety in weapons. Lets discuss them in categories. Some weapons belong in multiple categories, you can read that in the reference guide, in the section "hero weapons".
Foot weapons (FS)
Every weapon that does foot damage (FS), is considered a foot weapon. In the reference guide you can see wether a weapon does only damage in one category or in more than one. Examaple with Asia weapons: The Khanda is as well a foot weapon and a mounted weapon, so it works in both categories. A Kanabo however deals only foot damage. If you have a horse equipped, this foot damage will NOT be dealt, making the Kanabo useless. If you have multiple weapons equipped that all deal foot damage, only the highest one will be taken into account for the melee rounds. A foot weapon will do damage in every melee round, so if a duel lasts for 8 melee rounds, it does its damage 8 times. If you have a foot hero, ALWAYS equip the strongest possible footweapon.
Mounted weapons (CS)
Mounted weapons work exactly he same as foot weapons in the melee rounds. The only difference is that you have to have a horse equipped. In the cav round however, a mounted hero deals extra damage, twice the strenght of the equipped weapon. This damage is only dealt when not countered by a pike weapon, and only in the cavalry round. If you have a mounted hero, ALWAYS equip the strongest possible mounted weapon.
Ranged weapons (R)
Ranged weapons work on every type of hero. They do a fixed amount of damage in the artillery round. The chance they hit depends on the marksmen skill. Your Ranged Accuracy is equal to your marksmenskill + 50. That means that you already have a 50% chance to hit when you dont even have marksmenskill. To determine wether to use a ranged weapon and how strong it should be, I always compare the average damage it does, to the amount of armor you have to sacrifice for it. Never use a smaller foot weapon or mounted weapon in exchange for a ranged weapon!
How to calculate it?
Your average damage is the ranged damage of the weapon, corrected for ranged accuracy. So if you have an Hankyu (Asia example), it does 30 damage. If you have boosted your marksmenskill towards 30, your total ranged Accuracy is 80%. So on average you do 24 damage. Since we already learned that damage is worth twice as much as HP, you can exchange use a Hankyu if you have to sacrifice less than 48 HP for it.
Footpike and Cavpike (FP, CP)
Footpike and cavpike weapons operate in the same way. Cavpike only works with a horse equipped, footpike only works without. A pike weapon has 2 types of damage: pike damage and regular damage. The regular damage will be used in the melee rounds, but only when there is no bigger weapon equipped too. The pike damage will be dealt when your hero duels against a mounted hero. Bonus is that this also prevents the extra blow of mounted heroes in the cavalry round. The pike damage and avoiding the cav damage only works when it is not countered by the pike-avoid skill (which can be countered by the pike skill)
Basic builds (Asia)
Like I told you before, there are 3 types of heroes that are good enough in my eyes: pure foot, foot pike and mounted. Since your hero will reach level 20 pretty fast, I will only talk you through the basic builds of level 20 and higher. For now, I only made them for Asia, other maps will follow later. Feel free to leave comments to prove me wrong about this builds
Foot
Level 20: Kanabo, Shan Wen Jia, Kie Tun, Lamellar Steel Helmet. When your rAcc is above 83% , you can use a Hankyu instead of a Steel helmet, but in that case you likely boosted your skills in the wrong order.
Level 21: Kanabo, Shan Wen Jia, Piao Ch'iang, Lamellar Bronze Helmet.
Level 22: Kanabo, Shan Wen Jia, Piao Ch'iang, Lamellar Steel Helmet. When your rAcc is above 67% , you can use a Hankyu and a Kie Tun instead of a Piao Ch'iang.
Level 23: Kanabo, Shan Wen Jia, Piao Ch'iang, Lamellar Bronze Helmet, Hankyu. If your marksmen skill is maxed, you can also use a Kie Tun and a Recurve Bow instead of the Piao Ch'iang and a Hankyu. This is pretty even, but I feel it is slightly better, cause your damage is dealt at the start of the battle.
Foot pike
To start with: never use any other pike weapon than the Dangpa in Asia. Just dont, it is not worth it
Level 20: Kanabo, Shan Wen Jia, Kie Tun, Dangpa. Actually I dont advice pike on this level, cause I think you have to sacrifice too much, but I can be wrong with that.
Level 21: Kanabo, Shan Wen Jia, Kie Tun, Lamellar Bronze Helmet, Dangpa
Level 22: Kanabo, Shan Wen Jia, Kie Tun, Lamellar Steel Helmet, Dangpa. When your rAcc is above 83% , you can use a Hankyu instead of a Steel helmet.
Level 23: Kanabo, Shan Wen Jia, Kie Tun, Lamellar Bronze Helmet, Dangpa, Hankyu (your rAcc should be above 67% at this point.
Mounted
Level 20: Horse, Khanda, Shan Wen Jia, Piao Ch'iang, Lamellar Steel Helmet. When your rAcc is above 67% , you can use a Hankyu and a Kie Tun instead of a Piao Ch'iang.
Level 21: Horse, Khanda, Shan Wen Jia, Piao Ch'iang, Lamellar Bronze Helmet, Hankyu
Level 22: Horse, Khanda, Shan Wen Jia, Piao Ch'iang, Lamellar Steel Helmet, Hankyu. If your marksmen skill is above 67%, you can also use a Kie Tun and a Recurve Bow instead of the Piao Ch'iang and a Hankyu.
Level 23: Horse, Khanda, Shan Wen Jia, Piao Ch'iang, Lamellar Bronze Helmet, Recurve Bow. As soon as your rAcc is almost maxed, you can completely forget about the standard build and use this one instead: Horse, Khanda, Shan Wen Jia, Kie Tun, Daikyu
That's all for now, I hope you liked it and create some competition in the tournaments!