Advanced Military: Vampire Commanders

Here's a trick which is particularly useful in local siegebreaking situations:

It's possible for commanders to gain XP that you need not apply immediately, so they effectively remain at level 1 while having enough experience to be turned into a good offensive commander at a moment's notice.

Using elite divisions, I often train up a barracks of such level 1 commanders by attaching them to armies with my hunting commanders until they get enough XP for max heroism, then killing them off without spending their XP and replacing them with fresh recruits.

What this means is that one can benefit from a barracks full of T2 cav commanders who take 1 hour/1k gold to resurrect, who can then immediately be given 10 heroism and sent into battle.

In the event a siege lands on the door of your town, you could resurrect 5 of these max heroism commanders every hour, equip them in crafted gear, attach a minimum of 60 cav to their army to maximise the heroism bonus, and send them to their glorious deaths against the encampment.

With cav elite divisions punching very hard for their size, combined with the fact that you need only use a very small number of valuable troops to maximise your commander's effectiveness, this is a tactic which allows even very small players to put up a ferociously effective and economical defense.

It requires a small effort on your part, but once your roster is filled with level 1 vampires, they can sit there forever until required; hence the name. Just prick your finger, put a drop of blood into the coffin of ashes, and send them off before they get hungry for the blood of your townsfolk...

This is generally a tactic worth pursuing for any military-minded player, however; there's no limit on the number of dead commanders one can have, so it makes sense to fill up on level 1 commanders who can be skilled to replace your higher-level ones that may take days to revive.

Defensive commanders (say ranged commanders who skill both max defense vs bows AND swords, which are both often used to attack mountains, along with +health skills, FM etc.) typically require far more XP, and thus far higher levels, than their offensive counterparts, so training defense replacements for these commanders is also a very, very good idea - though you will need to have each useless tagalong in your hunting armies for longer.

http://arcanum-illyria.com/wiki/Commander_Upgrades
XP requirement chart for commanders.

Count how many ranks you want in each skill, then check the chart to see how much XP a commander would need to fulfil those levels.

Nice little tidbit of info.  So if you already have five leveled commanders should you kill one off and begin this or not? Also, would it make sense to kill off all five for reserve and begin a fresh five for this?

Grrosh O'ssk wrote:Nice little tidbit of info.  So if you already have five leveled commanders should you kill one off and begin this or not? Also, would it make sense to kill off all five for reserve and begin a fresh five for this?

It's basically a strategy that has no drawbacks and only provides advantages. Your commanders will die in prolonged wars because battles will inevitably arise where they will be fighting an unwinnable battle to inflict maximum casualties, or they will have taken enough damage over successive battles to eventually wear them down.

The alternative is being forced to miss launch windows and send drastically underpowered (and slow) armies out being lead by fresh recruits, all because you stuck with only the 5 you could keep alive at once, instead of building a roster of quick replacements when you had the opportunity. You don't want to be scrambling to train up commanders or be waiting on days-long respawn timers when your allies' cities could be in desperate need of help.

There are a few ways one could follow; I keep 2 hunting/training commanders (maxed heroism, FM, div atk bonus, rest of points into however much vit and accel healing feels necessary - generally these guys are Death Packs or Fists), and then use the other 3 slots for cycling between trainee vampire commanders.

If you had the troop building capabilities, you could simply send armies headed by 5 level 1 commanders at the biggest NPC camps you can find. Using the 'XP of losses' part of the illy battle calc will be handy here. You could get enough XP for your commanders and simultaneously kill them all at once. Neat.

Often the trainee commanders will die after a few battles since they have poor health pools and health regen, but resist the temptation to put points into accel healing/vitality! The whole point is that they maintain that 1h res time, so when your other commanders are dead in an actual conflict they can be pulled from the grave ASAP. Just resurrect them and put them back into the training army as and when you need to, and finally leave them dead once they've achieved the required amount of XP.

How easy you find this strategy will depend on the availability of enemies and NPCs for XP gains, of course. Fighting non-alliance players (or your alt) for the purposes of training such commanders could be useful, if it doesn't feel too much like gaming the system, but trying to find enough XP in overhunted, overcrowded areas could be problematic.

Grrosh O'ssk wrote:Nice little tidbit of info.  So if you already have five leveled commanders should you kill one off and begin this or not? Also, would it make sense to kill off all five for reserve and begin a fresh five for this?

If you are going to kill off any of your commanders to make room for new vampire commanders, consider resetting their commander skills first before retiring, that way they can be brought back in an hour too. It does take 15 pres to reset tho.

Also, I find that most players really do not know how or what skill to apply XP.  Which skills you level is critical in success.  A helpful outline would list the most to least import skills for proper leveling.