Diplomats

Taken from the post "Shûl-nak On Diplomats", Fri 15 Jan 2016, by Shûl-nak


Diplomats are important units to consider in all kinds of situations.

There are five types, each with two tiers except the messenger. Tier 1 types offer better defense:cost ratios, whilst T2 types have higher attack scores and increased functionality, so are better employed offensively.

Scouts

Scouts are perhaps the most important diplomat for military purposes. Tier 1 scouts will give you a report on any resources or troops on a certain square. Tier 2 scouts, when sent to an enemy city, will also tell you the details of all troop movements from that city.

As you can imagine, Tier 2 scouts are of paramount importance in war; you could discover what square an enemy is landing his siege on, see which of his attacks are feints, and choose how best to engage him. As siege encampments are usually filled with defensive troops, being able to camp your own defensive army on the intended landing site can deal serious damage to any enemies whose defensive army is now forced to attack yours.

This is why many military players will choose to fill their cities with scouts, both for offense and defense, and set their Seeking Runes to specifically target enemy scouts. Giving enemies time to prepare to counter your every move will make any engagement far more difficult.

Spies

Spies will give you reports on a city's building and resource levels. Tier 2 spies can also tell you if there are any research or building queues underway.

With one spy report you can see if an enemy has resources worth stealing, how strong their defensive wall is, gain an insight into a city's specializations, and learn whether saboteurs would be worth sending to attack their town due to research and building queues, assuming you sent tier 2 spies.

With two spy reports from the same city you could theoretically calculate the enemy's tax rate and resource gain/loss per hour, assuming they hadn't spent any in the interim. This could be valuable for gauging how vulnerable a city is to spells or units that destroy or steal resources.

Thieves

Thieves, unsurprisingly, steal resources. Tier 1 thieves can steal any basic resource, as well as books and beer. Tier 2 thieves can also steal advanced resources, like spears, saddles and chainmail.

Horses, cows, siege blocks, resources like grapes, hides, and minerals, and the specially-made crafted goods like silversteel swords are currently unstealable.

It's not possible to steal from trade hubs, so your best defense against thieves is storing everything there and simply shipping in what you need when you need it.

Saboteurs

Saboteurs will destroy building queues and delay researches being undertaken in a town. Tier 1 saboteurs only affect the current builds, but tier 2 saboteurs can affect both the current and the next research or construction in the queue.

Saboteurs are units most often deployed in wars, and are a good reason to avoid long research or build queues in conflicts.

Assassins

Assassins can damage or kill enemy commanders. Tier 1 assassins may target one commander per trip; tier 2 assassins can target more than one, and do more damage.

Because assassins can only target commanders in towns who are assigned to armies, your best defense against assassins is simply to unassign commanders from armies when they're stationed at home.

Though this limits their usefulness it can still be devastating in war should you catch an enemy unprepared and kill important commanders, so military players still invest in these in the hopes of capitalizing on a mistake.

Messengers

A messenger's only purpose is to recall armies who are stationed outside the city. They are very fast.


Diplomatic Contingents

This research allows you to attach diplomats to your armies. Currently, only scouts are worth attaching, as other diplomats have no effect on armies camped in the field.

By attaching a large number of scouts to an army you could thwart enemy scouting attempts, but an attentive enemy within diplomatic visibility range of your encamped army could guess your army's size by clicking on it and reading the group size from this table: http://www.illyriad.co.uk/GameInformation/Bestiary

Diplomats who you send out into the world have their own diplomatic visibility range, just like you have around your town. They will also provide this for any army they are attached to.


Remember that unlike military units, diplomats only defend against diplomats of the same type. Scouts vs scouts, spies vs spies, etc.

You can see how much defense rating you have against each diplo type in your diplomacy tab.

http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/Diplomatic