Hello guys this guide is written in 2018's to talk about some winning conditions that you may use in your favor. Before talking about some strategy and plans let's first talk about this old scenario that has been maintained actively.
Orocia is a survival game in which you have to face hordes of AI units, sometimes randomly generated, sometimes ageless era waves, sometimes standardized default waves depending the type of waves you want to face. But in all the waves the unit meta for defending in the game is the same. Let's talk first about unit tiers from best to worst.
1.- Unit tiers
Spoiler:
Top Tier picks
In this place we find all those units that have good resistances values that have both ranged and melee, healers with potential to later acquire high output damage, all units that have one efficient attack at one range but in the other range has slowing or units with nice mobility that are versatile at most terrains but don't have terrible resistances or terrain defenses.
To help a little about this, most important terrain defense is castle defense and flat defense, units that have high defense at moats and aren't frail can work at this. Usually resistance matters more because at turn 33 there is a wave that if played in ageless waves bypasses any terrain defenses by being 70% chance to hit or even higher if playing ultra-hardcore meaning that in this wave unit placing doesn't really matter.
Is viable that a flying but not too squishy scouting unit get so early a fireballs of destruction and they become line-breakers that can literally attack from almost any angle being a very powerful boost in early game.
High tier picks
On here are those cost efficient fighters that have better resistances than most units but that at least have a weak ranged that may be improved from shrine. High damage output mages without healing and line-breakers can be in this place even if they're squishy because their intention is not to be exposed to take high amount of damage in walls their function is to take down all those enemies with high damage output as well. Units that aren't that strong but level up faster can be in this place as well.
Mid tier picks
On here we have all those tanks without ranged, yup even if they have insane resistances you can't have a whole army of this units because you will get wrecked at later waves. If you give fireballs or ocean-waves to this type of units they instantly become to top tier pick but consider that the weapons arsenals are limited and that if you lose an unit with such bonus you can't get back this one bonus.
Other mid tier picks are those units that are really cheap but doesn't have anything special, will work fine for you but not as fine as other choices.
Low tier picks
In this place we have all those units that their mechanics aren't favorable for orocian gameplay. Usually units that have low defense at castle are in this tier. All swift foot may be considered under this tier because they don't work as fine as other units in castle tiles but at flat are stronger than most units. Units that have Lv2 cap are even more impaired than those units that have lv1 cap because they need a way more XP to completely reheal. Usually many low tier units requires more skill than most picks to be viable but can work if used smartly.
Lowest tier picks
In this category here we have all mounted units (except chargers) that have 40% terrain defense or less. No unit that has both ranged and mele may be considered in this tier except if it has terrible resistance or defensive properties. Units with extreme weakness like -50% to arcane and a pair of -20% are in this category even if their total is higher than 0% or even higher because there is no way from fixing such weaknesses even by taking lots of resistances improvement; so pay special attention to units resistances/weaknesses before buying them.
As you can see, some unit tiers varies in the amount of upgrades you find to these, the type of waves and even the level. But of course a well structured army values more than recruiting only high tier picks. Also care with baits like mage of light that are enormously strong units but the amount of XP that they require to advance is definitively not worth.
2.- Priorities
Spoiler:
The thing that matters at most in orocia is gaining upgrades no matter what, even if you don't kill that quickly the first waves but you need at most to stack as many upgrades you can the first turns, which will define your real damage output and survivality at later waves. Also maintaining alive the highest amount of units you can train and not lose is a very important aspect of the game. Basically there are 3 plans that you may consider at highest priorities.
a) stacking upgrades no matter what: for this you will use the minimal amount of units to cover your walls and village, but making sure they don't attack you from your walls !! b) goldrush and banking focus: you may consider about the viability of having lots of gold even at latest waves specially in early game. More units mean you can use more units to attack and still gaining upgrades. This can work but requires more skill. c) ailed tent / arsenals tent rush: If you find a very quick unit can reach in a turn to those tiles and come back this is a very viable fact specially if your faction lacks of "normal" units with "normal properties".
Having a focus at gaining upgrades, at defending your walls and using the lowest amount of units to clean your waves at time is one of the winning conditions you need to know. There are few waves in which is best to kill all enemies waves but those are only at turn 19 and at turn 28 and 31.
Early game focus
- Villages and Gold: Of course, your priority at your early game is building quickly as many permanent units, so you will need gold, priorizing gold over center's upgrades is mostly for early game. The more health and more ways you can clean/upgrade in game's progress will define your endgame outcome.
- Castle holding: For this, before even focusing in upgrades, consider always positionate yourself countering the wave making it no-longer harm. You decide if cleaning mostly with counter-attacks or rush in case you can kill'em all in a single turn (or at least, neutralizing the wave as harmless status. Use the least amount of units to do this but reminder that this is top priority (in sometimes, even more important than holding villages).
- Center's upgrades: Once you have like 6-9 units, you should focus at gaining 2-4 upgrades in average per turn. Upgrades are that strong that in turn 20 you can harvest a lv1 with already lv2 stats with just center's upgrades, yup they're THAT IMPORTANT.
- Arsenals/Alied Tent: This could be listed in early game goals in case you REALLY NEED THEM, usually a flying and very movible scout that reaches arsenals shop before turn 9 gives an enourmous boost to early game clear speed. Ageless best examples are Gnat, Vampire Bat, any other. Also Daffold's sword for flying scouts with irrelevant mele. Alied tent unlike arsenal's isn't as recomendable for early game, because it increases upkpeep by so much which will decrease seriously your mid/late game amount of units... only viable if you need urgently a reinforcement because of crap early game.
Mid Game focus
- Arsenals/Alied tent: Between turn 13 and 24 , taking any of the tents is much more recomendable. With more patience, you can give fireballs to a more resistant and bulky fighter to make him a hybrid mele/ranged fighter that can retaliate well at both ranges. This is much more useful in mid game/Late than the early game's scout with god balls. Same variation can be used to a ranged archer that has very poor mele (or even no mele) to give daffold's specially if your faction lacks of magical attack types such as Fire/Cold/Arcane. After having 8-9 units taking alied tent will not decrease your amount of units in the late outcome, which is much better indeed.
- HP increase: usually you can mind in very specific situations, using XP mod to increase the general HP of such units that received only strikes/damage upgrades but that ended being glass cannons. This will help sligtly in their survivavility and to not lose the very valuable carry.
- Movement increase: Important units must always move more than 7 tiles if possible. Reaching the right tile will help you to distribute the healing and upgrades as you please instead of adapting to situationals so try to not leave this as a random conditional and try to leave it to your will.
Late Game focus
- HP increase: This is necessary, fortunately you can incraese health at cannon glass units like ghosts/air elementals or any unlucky mage that didn't get many HP upgrades, focusing their kills to just increase their max health before even lv3 is most optimal for these cases.
- Movement: yeap, you will need movement specially in your main damage dealers, it's a real crap that your best unit can't reach tought target because of not enough movement. Apart that movement upgrades are more notisable than damage upgrades in all non +36 turn waves.
- High focus on walls at 36-38: it's most important to covering well the walls specially at these waves, on this, cover as much you can except with these units that need to heal more to then be placed there to cover. Skip upgrades at this wave except if covering with certain units could cost you an unit... in center you can place some healers and most wounded units at turn 36-37 for healing. Remember to prevent units to climb the walls or to harass at various angles, because on turn 38 suviving units will gain backstab special. In case you have a very bulky unit with really high damages at mele/ranged you can consider the calculated risk of placing an unit alone in that outsider castle tile absorivng all damage and dealing tons of damage to enemies, be cautious that lv2 ageless palette of units contains everything (mages, berserk, chargers, slowers, debuffers, etc)
- Turn 40 KILL'EM ALL: yeap, on there, you have 2 choices to do this, considering covering a wall's side or 360º defense or just rushing all enemies in one direction and slaining everything and trusting that enemies in the other side will not reach you because they're slower than you. If you have played well turns 36 to 39, wave 40 will be easier and will not feel like reinforcements of previous waves, instead will look smooth and as one of the easiest waves.
3.- Common mistakes
Spoiler:
In this list we will mention the most common seen mistakes that gives you the risk to lose a game from the begin or even making you lose an already won game.
a) at ageless random waves, being in road tiles but not covering walls: oh yeah, how many times I've not seen a guy that only has 4 or 5 units but before waves he doesn't even bother at covering his side of walls and in a turn some units reaches his units and attack them at 40% flat while being in 50% or 60% defense at those castle tiles.
Remember that the most important thing is to be sure you have covered your side of the walls and not smiling to the RNG.
b) full aggro but no upgrades focus: other of the most common misstakes is that some players in the first waves clean their waves super quickly but acquire almost no upgrades and this happens almost in any wave. Remember that if you don't gain upgrades you're condemned at later waves.
c) imprudence at hardest waves: happens much that a game was going fine, but at least one player over-exposes to damage at very dangerous waves such as swift (turn 21) wave or chargers (turn 31) loosing in some cases very powerful units because of being unlucky. It's highly recommended that you always expect the worst at those waves, ageless is full of chargers, berserk and mages with insane damage output , it's better to stand closer the walls except if you have an exceptionally good unit that can survive that kind waves himself
d) not covering walls at turn 36, 37: NO MATTER WHAT, it's most important that at those turns you completely cover your walls because at turn 38 all units with skirmisher (in ageless ave) will acquire backstab meaning that lv2 units can have lv4 damage output easily. It's also important that the 3 players adjust their exposition to enemies depending their army size and strength leaving place for all 3 sides to replace too wounded units. Administrating this point is probably the most decisive winning condition of all.
e) 1 or 2 healers per side: a very common mistake is that players usually thinks that 1 healer per side is enough, but this is an imprudent decision as well. Usually it's best that each player has 2, 3 healers so units will commonly have higher health and will need much fewer replacements commonly. As said previously, an healing mage is not very different from an heavy damage mage just that with few damage upgrades the healer is much better than the other mage. All units may acquire damage, resistances and health but you can't acquire specials such as leadership or healing from shrine.
4.- Positioning in orocian castle
Spoiler:
Not all casttle tiles work exactly the same, some tiles have more angles to be attacked while the keeps are safest of all castle tiles, it's important to have a little analysis of castle tiles.
Tip: Those tiles are exposed to be attacked by 3 units, place your strongest units at here. Usually the water tile in front of each keep can work at this for very solid aquatic units, swift foot or even flying units, decreasing by 1 this type of tiles and giving a temporal strategic advantage. It's best idea to place tank units that have good ranged and melee damage for fastest clean speed at latest waves. The good use of these tiles and keeps award best players for higher winning rate. Brink: Those tiles are exposed to be attacked by 2 units, place solid units at here. Those tiles are the most common in orocian castle. Keeps: those tiles are special, you can place almost any unit at here with the only condition that it has to surely survive 1 attacker a turn and AI will commonly ignore the unit that is on there !! this is the best place to place not so squishy healers, +40 hp lv1 units or almost any temporal unit on there. Who knows to give a right use to this kind of tile at turn 36 and 37 will have an enormous advantage and a self winning condition.
5.- Conditional strategys
Spoiler:
There are some strategys it's better to consider if you have the opportunity to. These situations are not always present but if they appear it's highly recomendable to follow them as they give you as situational advantage.
Nuker: Not all factions have a "Nuker", but basically these are units that have VERY POWERFUL strikes as of default Thunderer for example (18-1 / 28-1 / 40-1). Priorize at most giving upgrades to them until they gain at least 1 or 2 extra strikes, which are promising early game damage dealers. Nuker units that are Nukers are at mos 1 strike units, but in this category we have the Shock Tropper from default or even Loyalist's Halberd. Many units in mid/late game with shrine upgrades can become into Nukers but will not have the same potential of Nuke damaging as of Natural Nukers that only precised extra strikes to be in this category.
Gattling Nuker: This type of units is more obvious to notice, these as of nuker have brutal early damage potential, but these are units that instead of having massive damage at few strikes instead they have a lot of strikes and few damage per hit. Obvious thing is giving them enough damage upgrade to maximize their potential. These units are so much better for early game cleanse as their large amount of strikes allows their commit to kill enemy units with really high chances and in case of failure they will hurt a lot the enemies leaving them be easily killed by other units of yours. Also Nuker tier units previously mentioned have much better late game as they can deal full damage in few strikes preventing a lot of damage taken by killing their enemies in retaliation really fast in few strikes.
Accuracy Nuker: This is obvious for some people, but +Magical / +Precision / etc that boosts chance to hit is mid/late game units deleters. Having high accuracy is something very valuable, as they can deal most of it's damage with the garantee that it's not common from them missing their very first strikes. Also in case any unit get a large amount of damage (let's say more than 120 in total) any upgcoming damage will be less notisable if it's not an Accuracy Nuker. High chance to hit is always good, even you can consider very squishy units as the case of RE - Forest Dwarve's Gnomes to give you the missing magical from these dwarves to can delete all these annoying high defense units that your dwarfs and giant's can't kill efficiently.
Spear Head Unit: Let's say you commited to sucessfully made that strong a single unit (very resistant, good mele/ranged damage, high values in everything!) congratulations, you can send that unit in the castle tile outside alone to pre-clear certain waves! take in consideration that the Spear Head Unit needs the garantee to not die to do such risk (there is ALWAYS a chance you get an AI berserk/charger/magical, etc) so consider very much preparing that good. But if commited sucessfully upcoming turns of peace are notisable from which you will have time to upgrade peacefully your units or even to help other sides if they're not doing that good.
Things you must know A) You will always have a stronger unit, DON'T use it to kill very weak enemy units except if it cannot reach anything else. The strong must kill the strong enemies giving you a certain garantee that the event will occur and will receive less damage from retaliation. B) You don't need to always kill all units as they spawn always! it's enough by only neutralizing the wave. What I do refer as neutralizing the wave? simple, it's when with a correct formation or even killing few AI units from a wave it becomes "no longer dangerous" meaning that the wave is no longer a harm and that if the situation is absolutely ignored at that one case and the actual formation is fine, that there will be no real risk by allowing AI to do what it wants this turn. C) Don't be that optismistic? This is a simple but not common topic, as example if you have a 10-5 magical unit, do your plans as if they will hit 3 or 4 times instead of the full 5/5 times. This is very important that you always have a plan B except if it's worth even failing at trying something... this topic is necessary to be mentioned before the more important D) part.
D)Calculate your Promised Event: This is quite not done very commonly but that almost any very skilled player does intuitively. Let's say, the chances of killing an enemy unit is really poor, but you find a better plan at hurting it enough so a weaker unit that is almost leveling up can kill it (Let's say, enemy unit at 40% def terrain, it has 50 HP ... you attack is let's say 12-5 without chance to it boosters...) in that case chances you kill the enemy unit is really low (Only 1.024% of hitting 5/5 lol) , but most probable events is that you will hit 3 or 4 times, so expect the unit being left to 2 or 14 health and plan your plan as if that will occur in this way. Chances of failure is really low as you need to hit 2/5 (or less) or 5/5 to misstaken at your plan, but if you did your bets to 3/5 or 4/5 sucessful strikes you have really high chances to sucess this way.
E) In case of an offensively nearly useless unit: If it cannot even harm that much and no blocking is needed, just upgrade it !! nothing you do at using a 7-3 spear attack over a +40 hp unit in mid/late waves !! you will need to spend upgrades at that unit while your stronger units clear or defend what you need. But any unit if given at least 15 turns of random upgrade can become into something useful even if Lv0 !!
The guide is under construction, grammatical improvements and more content are going to be added soon.
Last edited by IPS on March 23rd, 2020, 3:53 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Creator of: Deathmatch new in 1.12 server. Co-creator of: Era of Magic in 1.16 server Developer of: Empires in 1.12 server, Ageless Era in 1.10 to 1.16 servers (but innactive recently)
Try My winning Orocia Guide
I just stumbled across this guide and found it very interesting. I really like the suggestions and ideas in it and am looking forward to playing it again with these ideas! Thank you!
Hello, I really liked the guide, thanks for posting it.
Judging by the date of the post this thread is likely dead at this point, but if you could please keep updating the guide I'd really appreciate it.
YankeeGD wrote: ↑February 8th, 2020, 1:42 am
Hello, I really liked the guide, thanks for posting it.
Judging by the date of the post this thread is likely dead at this point, but if you could please keep updating the guide I'd really appreciate it.
I should really apologize, the guide is incomplete! I just remembered this today, and I will extend its content.
Even, actual content is somewhat helpful, but there are still missing content that could be greatly useful for new players looking for recomendations.
Edit: Exttended content in part 2) priorities, adding early/mid/late game priorities as well. More expansion to this content will be done soon again.
Creator of: Deathmatch new in 1.12 server. Co-creator of: Era of Magic in 1.16 server Developer of: Empires in 1.12 server, Ageless Era in 1.10 to 1.16 servers (but innactive recently)
Try My winning Orocia Guide
Continuing the Guide, added 5) Conditional Strategys. Mentioning these units that for maximizing their damage potential must focus on upgrades at most and few but very important fact and strategys that can lead you to a notisable advantage if knowing how to do them.
Creator of: Deathmatch new in 1.12 server. Co-creator of: Era of Magic in 1.16 server Developer of: Empires in 1.12 server, Ageless Era in 1.10 to 1.16 servers (but innactive recently)
Try My winning Orocia Guide
