Baits

The words "baits" and "forts" were coined by the Empire Strike community itself. It is actually part of the strategy of putting together attack formations.

A "bait" is a troop that does not have the characteristics of a "fort", it is in most cases a troop that strategically is sent to suicide, that is to say, that after the battle we know that it has many possibilities of dying.

In general the denomination of "baits" is given to any troop that, being part of the army, is only 5% or 6% of the total troops. The most common is that if defending, the troops chosen to be "baits" are placed at 5% or at most 6% of the total army (each bait at 5-6%) and if attacking they are usually placed at 6-7% (so that they act even after being attacked by the enemy militia or heroes). If an enemy troop that is at a high percentage attacks a bait, one loses, at most, 5-7% of the troops, since it is evident that it cannot kill more than those that are there. On the other hand, if you attack a troop at a higher percentage (strong) you can lose much more depending on the attack and damage characteristics of the enemy troop.

In short, that is the function of the baits, to lose as few troops as possible in battle.

===Why in general is a bait a bait and not a fort?

For several reasons:

• They are weak or low level troops that kill practically nothing, and some utility must be given to them.

• It receives many attacks from enemy troops, so it is better to put it as bait, so that the other's forts kill 5 or 6% of your army instead of killing a higher percentage of some of your strong troops.

The other option you have is to put them at much higher percentage than a fort (for example if you put 2 forts, one of them would be at 30% and the other at 40%) so that if it is attacked first it can counterattack causing some substantial casualties (an example of such a troop would be the N20 Golems of Dark Elves).

• The troop is good, but in attack not so good. So it can be used as "counter bait". For this you put it so that it represents between 10 and 17% of your army with the idea that, in combat, it eliminates the enemy's baits.

There are troops that seem to be prone to attack bait... if it is very prone to that, it is not a bad idea to prepare it to eliminate 5% of the opposing army (a known case are the N20 Lethal Archers of Elves that in attack often attack bait).

• It is a fast and bad troop for the starting day. A troop that has a considerable speed but that, given its level with respect to the general troop level of the players, can do almost nothing and serves to have baits of various speeds (a known case are the N8 Gargoyles or N14 Vampires of Undead).

• The troop is slow, but no longer useful and available in large numbers, it is put as bait because it has some protection or simply because in general, being slow, the enemy attacks it first and usually by strong troops (known case N6 Sylphs and N7 Druids of Elves).

In fact, it could be summarized that for baiting we use those troops that we have to spare, are slow or of low levels, and we are willing to lose. Many times you don't have many troops and other times you are plagued with them, so you have to know how to make them surrender.

Its use also depends on the defense of the empire to attack, so it is useful to siege. If you know that the defender uses many forts, it would be ideal to place many baits prone to be attacked by these enemy forts. If, on the other hand, the enemy defends with many baits, it might be convenient to place in your formation some troops as counter bait and several fast baits that get to kill something before dying.

There are many ways to attack, just as there are many ways to defend, the important thing is to test and study what works best.

There is no perfect defense, just as there is no perfect attack either.

Example:

In this case we have used N2 Dark Elf Lancers and N4 Dark Elf Scouts as bait, and their main troop Dark Elf Crossbowmen defending as fort has attacked our bait of N4 Scouts. The Crossbowmen could well have killed more troops, but as there were only 9 N4 troops (i.e. 6% of our army), they could not kill more.

Because troops can only attack once in the whole battle, their Crossbowmen

occupied their attack against our bait, dropping 36 levels (9 x 4). But our attack formation still has troops to attack, so in subsequent rounds, our troops cause him 45 casualties (He started with 144 and ended with 99), which being N3, represent 135 levels (45 x 3).

So, we lost 36 levels, and the enemy lost 135 levels. Result: Victory!.

• In this attack we see the importance of the bait.

This troop has spent its attack destroying at most only 6% of our army when it would have been able to destroy more than 30% or 40% if it attacked a fort of our formation, this is how we get a lower number of casualties.

Although we cannot guarantee that enemy forts will always attack our baits (because troop crossovers are random) it is clear that if we place more baits, the greater the chance that an enemy fort will hit a bait.

But... Beware!, placing more than 4 baits in our army can weaken our formation too much.

More information...

In the forum users expose their combat experiences. Here is a very interesting thread about troop formations:

[Troops as forts and baits]

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