Speeding up quest loading

I don't know how anyone could have missed this trick, but it's a slow news day for Saga.

If you load slowly, make sure to turn these three settings Trees, and Grass to None/Near.

This is the only thing that seems to cause the quests to load slowly. I have a strong machine, and I can load up a quest in about 10secs with this turned off.

Tournament at Scratchplace

It looks like someone is holding a tournament for Saga right now:


https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7061


It's sponsered by http://www.sagaunits.com .

I logged in to see if any games have been played, it's looking pretty early in the competition.

If you are interested head over to www.ladder.scratchsplace.com .

Card Submission Contest

New Card Idea Submission Contest on Saga News- https://www.playsaga.com/saga_index.php

Here is my submission for anyone thinking that it's too hard to do. This took me all of 20 mins to put together.




Ice Elementals - Nature - Uncommon -
CP 6, AR 23, DR 26, HP 900, DMG 20-50,
Range 1, Stamina 100, Speed 10, Morale 100, S/A 2,
Res 80, Special: "It's Cold in Here" –
Ice Elemental and all nearby units (20m) are unable to move for 10 seconds. Cooldown: 60 seconds."


"On top of that, the top submissions will be put up for the SAGA player community to vote on, and the three cards that receive the most votes will receive the SAGA t-shirt of their choice. "

Free stuff is fun, give it a try.

Organizing your Troop List

When you get alot of troops, sometimes organizing them is hard.

There are a couple features that help.



First is Sort by Level: (See picture above.)

This allows you to see your troops in a level order. Which is helpful for figuring out what is needed to level.




Second is Sort by Name: (See picture above.)

This is useful because you can rename, (see below), you units to have them groups up in a common section. I liked to see my active troops at the TOP of my list, to make repairing them in between fights easier. So I just stuck an "A" before their name.



You can TYPE ANYTHING you want in the box for the troops name.

Setting up Undead to counter PvP openings

So I was thinking about the standard counters to 150CP PvP battle opening with undead.

Alot of players tend to open the same way in PvP, then adjust as the battle proceeds.

For example Christian's the "PACman" opens with phoenix's and clerics.

Illian tends to open with Treants/stone giants/eagles.

Slobboik opens with heavy cav/ravens/dark elf bowman.

Kheldara opens with chariots/giant bows.

The question is what is standard opening going to be for Undead Players? Figuring this out both lets you plan which troops are crutial to level first, and what other armies need to counter them from the jump.

I think the most successful opening will be Bone Wagons heading to cap opponents buildings and Wights in the sky.

Bone Wagons are counter for heavy cav. They are one of the few ranged units that can deal with heavy cav and trade damage for damage. If you are capping the opponents outer buildings and hopefully shrines, he HAS to bring the battle to you.

Wights will stop the early rush of Air, and force the opponent to go to the ground. If the opponent has Air and rushs your Bone Wagons, the advantage of the Wagons and Wights is they will be slowed and attacked by every unit. Bone Wagons have an advantage over Heavy Cav due to the fact they are still ranged and able to shoot at flyers.

Once the opponent goes to the ground, and fields something to deal with your Wights, like strong ground based ranged units, now you go to your Abominations. Garrison your Wights and bring out your pack of Abominations. I wouldn't suggest rushing their ranged, but instead capping more buildings. With the Abominations hps, passive defence, and speed, they will be able to rush and cap opposing buildings.

And anything, even Lancers that rush Abominations will not make short work of them. They are not squishy at all.

If they go to the sky to deal with your Abominations, then its time for the Wights again. Garrison your Bone Wagons, and bring up your 2nd set of Wights.

In terms of counters, Nature brings alot of long range shooters to the party. However if you concentrate on capping buildings with Abominations, only the elven longbows will be a threat. Treants will have a harder time hitting Abominations through their armor passive. Luckly Elven Longbowman are pretty squishy. One unit of Heavy Cav can make a Elven Longbowman retreat.

Machine brings Wooden Tanks and now the new Improved faster Mech Giant to the table. Machines are definitely a bane of Abominations capping, but luckly you can field 5 behemoths now to counter any heavy machine army, with 3 armored behemoths and 2 regular. 5 level 10 behemoths are frustrating to machine players.

Magic brings the overwhelming dps upgrades of the Dark Elf bowman and Ravens. Sadly the DE bows have little AR, so they will miss Abominations pretty frequently. I would say ignore them. Ravens are no match for Wights, so you counter the two best units of Magic from the beginning. Magic will have to dig in their bag of tricks to counter undead, which means you have the opening advantage.

Light has Heavy Lancers, and Knights, both excellent counters to Abominations. Undead has little to counter those strong mounted units, except for a mounted range units and Wights. If the opponent is good you will need to roll over to Arbiters to counter his lancers. I would include the Death Bringer snares for help with that battle. 2 Arbiters, 1 Death bringer, and 2 Wights will give you a chance at battlefield superiority, long enough to cap his buildings.

Orc has Snipers, which in a pack of 3 troops can shred Abominations. However Rock Smashed Scissors, and a troop of 3 units of charging Heavy Cav will shred Snipers.

Undead vs Undead is a good matchup. You need to counter wights with wights, and Abominations with Death Bringers. Death Bringers counter with Humongus's. Bone Chariots with Humongus's.

So looking at the above Theorycrafting, here are the units I think I would need:

• 6 troops of Bone Chariots
• 6 troops of Wights
• 6 troops of Abominations
• 6 troops of Heavy Cav
• 3 troops of Armored Behemoth
• 2 troops of Behemoths
• 3 troops of Arbiters
• 6 troops of Death Bringers
• 3 troops of Humongus's

This is around 1000 CP, but it has counters for most armies.

Some Items are easier to get the others

So alot of the end-game grinding is training your troops to Level 9 or 10, and gathering powerful enough items to waste shards enchanting.

PvPing with level 6 troops vs a Nation with Level 10s with enchanted Dragon Might is an exercise in futility. Alot of the PvP constructed deck Nations play the game of run in attack, retreat and heal.

This is especially true if they have a special damaging attack like Phoenix's or Dark Elf Raven Riders.

They play as long as they can with a triad of flyers, and because of the healing retreating, your ability to damage these units is limited to the window in which you are attacking them, and your ability to snare/stun them as they run away.

Thank god for Undead. I literally jumped for joy when I read the Wight notes:

Wight
Attack Speed: Medium
Range: Medium
Movement: Medium - flyer
Armor: High
Health: High
Damage: Medium
Stamina: Medium
Maximum Unit Size: 4
Special: Chilling Winds - flying units in target radius (15m) suffer -25%
defense rating and -50% movement speed for 30 seconds. Cooldown: 60 seconds.

Wight's ability to snare a pack of flyers to let your ranged units attack them before they retreat back to their healers is an ability that is very useful for constructed deck PvP. And stripping them of DR is just a bonus.

Anyway, back to items:

The problem with gearing up, is that all items are not as easy to get as others.

The difference between a item suffix like "Dragon Might" and other is pretty significiant. Just having a great item can make certain troops just stronger then others.

Also, there are definitely mission/quests that drop the harder to get items, but the problem is their drop rate is so low that it is actually easier to level troops that can use the easy to find weapons instead.

Easy to get Endgame Items

Twelve Trials Part 3 - Boar's Tusk - Swords Spears Charms Axes
Twelve Trials Part 2- Dragon's Might Wards
Twelve Trials Part 3 - Deadly and Brutal Bows
Mithril Mines- Bows Swords Chain Hammers Weapon Enchants Leather Armor Xbows Guns Staves


Hard to Get End Game Items:

Polearms
Plating
Cloth
Platemail
Lances

One cavaet:

There are certain quests that spawn mobs that are Faction specific. For example "King of the Hill" at Gold level 30 drops good gear, but whoever STARTS the quest, all the enemies are your faction. Kheldara says farming lances in that mission is easy, but as a Nation army, I never fight a lance carrying mob, because all the enemies are Nature faction.

Raiding is FIXED, but only the really angry will raid

So raiding is INDEED fixed. I spent the last two days testing, and defenders beware. You CAN be raided now, pretty successfully.

Here are some of the realities of the raiding:

• Walls can be targetted. Wooden walls take about 20 secs to go through with 3 troops. If the walls are destroyed the first raid, they will have 0 hitpoints the successive raids and post no threat.
• Defenders use their speicals! Maybe not intelligently, but this helps a ton of troops become more useful, including the massive human crossbowmen with their 120 range.
• Denfending troops once they kill your raiders will go RECAP every node you have taken. This doesn't seem to hurt your plunder if you held the node for awhile before racap, but it is something to be aware of.
• Defenders AGRO range has been unbugged. Before many troops wouldn't agro you until you were very close to them. Now they will almost cross the entire board to get you.
• Raiders can start anywhere on the edge of the board. This is massive buff for raiding as I can usually take 3 nodes at the start of the fight.
• Defenders don't spawn in places where they can't move. Often defenders would spawn in the middle of the moat.
• If you reenforce your troops they spawn somewhere differently then where you setup your troops.
• God favor cost is WAY up. Not only due to the doubling of the raid cost, but the fact the active defender troops tend to cause you troop loss during the raid. A full raid on a defended territory can EASILY cost 4000 god favor.

Alot of troops that sucked for defending now became awesome:

1. White Dragons are now worth using, (See video above). I actually saw one blink over to me while attacking, and it was pretty annoying. Considering their new high armor, and low trade cost, they become nice for people defending.
2. Human Light Cav is still awesome. Light Lancers are awesome. Sabercats, Hell Hounds, Minor Daemons, Wood tanks anything super fast, or with a speed special. At one time I had a spawn of two level 1 Light Cav, two level 1 light lancers and a ballista pounding me. Even with level 10 troops thats alot of attackers.
3. Level 1s are actually good defenders now. Before they were so buggy that you often could ignore the defenders, or kill them in secs. Now they can swamp you and the respawn before you can wipe them all.
4. The high god favor means people have to raid you with less CP. I was rolling mostly with 3 troops on my raids, and that makes it way tougher. That still cost 2500 GF a raid.

So don't think you are unvulnerable anymore. Anyone with time and cash can easily burn town alot of your buildings. However the days of easy money while raiding are gone. A level 20 Nation with a bunch of level 1 defenders can make even a full geared level 35 nation take pause.

I recommend EVERYONE to go wilderness if you can meet the following requirments:

1. For each of your wilderness territories can you field at least 400 CP of level 1 common troops, and leave them there?
2. Have you built out the 8 watchtowers in your wilderness?
3. Have you put walls on natural borders to annoy the defenders if possible?
4. Do you care if you have to repair buildings with god favor every now and then?
5. Do you spend your shards if you get over 100 as quickly as possible?

If the answer is YES, then by all means, you will find the 12 extra nodes very valuable for your production. For every wilderness you get an extra gold/ore/wood node. And 16 mana shards a day.

Raiding Trick - Capping while fighting

So in the last couple patchs defending armies are a bit tougher.

You will get rushed while raiding, and if you want to get your plunder you will have to learn this trick:



In this video I am the fire elementals. I get rushed by two level 1 defenders which is no problem, but I still need to cap this mana mine.

As you can see in the video the trick is manuvering them so that your back is to the cap, but they aren't in range to counter cap the node.