Castle Age Invasion Guide

Castle Age Invasion Guide by chupacabra

How does invading work?

Go to the battle page, find an opponent and click invade. Yay you’ve invaded! But what was really going on?

The mechanics behind winning an invasion are still a slight mystery, but here what you need to know for sure:

You build an army by inviting other players (from your friends list). Once you invade, you get to use 1 Army Unit, 1 Item, and 1 Magic for EACH person in your army. The only exception to this is heroes, and you can bring 1 Hero per 5 army members into battle with you.

The maximum invasion army size is 501, this means the most you can take into battle with you is 501 army units, 501 items, and 501 magic.

Currently there are not 100 heroes available so this is the only invasion stat you cannot maximize. You can take 1 hero into battle for each 5 members you have in your army.

You can however get up to 501 of each of the other types, which is what we’ll talk about in the rest of this guide.

The specific calculation on winning an invasion is complicated, and much of this is uncertain. But for sure we know that having the best items will greatly increase your chance of success. The rest of this guide will aim to show you path to choosing the correct items to win invasions. There are a few threads out there devoted to trying to determine how the battle formula works, as well as some great posts on the importance of how to allocate your stats to win more. This guide will not focus on your individual stats, but rather how to best optimize your unit, item, and magic choices in relation to their overall value and cost.

Getting Started
1. Getting army members, visit the addme pages, add your profile link or your email depending on the thread. This takes a bit of click-work, but once it’s done it’s done

Getting Army Units
2. Army Units provide the bulk of your invasion stats. The following table shows the best items available, the important part to note is how large a % of the total points come from Army Units.

Army units can compose potentially 70% of the invasion stats! This should be your first focus point when building an invasion force.

Which Army Units should I use?
This depends on your level, what’s available, how fast you are progressing, and how much money you make.

A lot of factors I know, but I’ll list out what I believe are the most common Army Units and how they compare to each other in an invasion scenario.

Tree Ents are the most common starter invasion force. They have the benefit of having no hourly upkeep. When you have a low income level, these make for great units to build upon.

IMO Phoenixes are the next progression item, but this depends on your income and progression rate. I believe you should build your income quickly while you can at the lower levels, and save that money to invest in Phoenixes. This would be opposed to filling out an army mixed with dragons angels and tree Ents. The table below shows the battle values for what I consider the most likely combination of army units:

You should be able to see how drastically having just 250 phoenixes impacts the overall score.

Cost & Strength

Everything costs money, the real question is how do you get the most bang for your buck?

Obviously if you have trillions upon trillions of gold, you should go with 501 of the best Units available. Currently this is Archangels, and they cost somewhere around $96,562,500,000 to get 501.

Now, if you don’t have that much spare change under your couch, lets talk real options.

Your first really good invasion army will be 501 phoenixes. This should be considered your first real invasion goal, tree Ents are just a stop-gap move too protect yourself while you build income at a low level.

501 Phoenixes will give you a healthy defense against the average invader. In fact 501 Phoenixes will be give you an army of about 80% of the maximum available, that’s good news! See the following table:

I’ve highlighted what I believe should be your 3 invasion unit goals.

1. 501 phoenixes
2. 250 phoenixes 250 valor knights
3. 250 valor knights, 250 archangels

I’ve also highlighted the option of 250 phoenixes and 250 archangels. I wanted to make note of this because it is cheap, but it takes a long time to reach the high general rank. It took me around 7000 total battles to achieve this rank, but that’s by no means the fastest possible. I put this up there to show that it does provide a good stat base, however it is still a fair amount (~4.5%) weaker than the valor/archangel balance.

You should notice that once you have 501 phoenixes you have 80% of the maximum army available! That’s a big chunk of our goal. What does this mean? It means an army of 501 Archangels is 20% stronger than an army of 100% phoenixes.

Buying the remaining units up to our goal of 250 valor and 250 archangels will net you another 14% increase in strength. I recommend this path, because once you have a full phoenix army you can buy valor knights as needed up to the 250 needed for our final hybrid army with archangels and not lose anything.

It cost immensely more to fill out 501 valor knights or 501 archangels than it does to create a hybrid army. The benefit is not inconsequential, 6% gains with a full archangel army is nothing to sneeze at, however the time it takes to generate that amount of cash is staggering.

Note: For each valor knight you buy, be sure to sell a phoenix! They have the same upkeep, so you won’t incur any extra income cost over your 501 phoenix army, and there’s no reason to keep more laying around sucking up your hourly income.

Take Away:
The thing you should take away from this is that overall having a hybrid army is a great way to build up your invasion stats without having to dump tons of money into one unit type. If you start with phoenixes, get 250 valors, then get 250 archangels you only sacrifice the cost of 250 phoenixes, which overall is almost nothing.

Getting Items
The next most impacting factor are items. When invading you can take with you 1 item for each army member up to 501 items. You can see from this table that Items can potentially make up over 20% of our total invasion stat!

dueling items vs invasion items
There are a number of items that make excellent dueler gear, these are not however necessary to have a great invasion army. The main reason is that you can often only have ONE of each of these items, and since we’ll be invading you’ll want to 501 of each of the best available item.

Also keep in mind, that when invading you get 1 item per army member, regardless of which item slot it fills. Weapons, Amulets, Shields, Armor, etc are all compared equally when invading, and Castle Age will take the best available item to use regardless of what type it is.

Which item is considered the “best available” is something determined by the so called “battle formula” which is always a hotbed of discussion. Castle Age users have yet to nail it down perfectly, but the general belief has been than when attacking OR defending it takes the items with highest combine Attack + Defense values. This could always be changed by the devs, but for the purposes of this article I’ll assume the above to be true.

Which items should I get?

The best starter items will be Steel Plate. If you can get 501 of these you’ll be in decent shape to start. Focus on the steel plate first to fill out your invasion attack stats.

The following table should show why I recommend you invest in the steel plate over saving for the gladiator swords. There’s only about a 500pt difference between the two!

*noteAxes no longer help with the recent change in the battle forumla. The current formula will pick items with the highest combined attack and defense

At first the cost of these may seem a bit intimidating, but with an income of about 20 mil per hour, you can get 501 steel plate in about 2 days. So buy that land early and keep boosting that income!

I’ve, again, highlighted the 3 steps I think are most logical.

1. Steel plate
2. 250 gladiator swords & 250 commander plates
3. 501 commander plates

I’ve added in the dragonbanes to show how they fit in, but since they’re a gift item it will take a large amount of time to get enough of these to impact your overall point value.

Since gladiator swords and commander plates both have upkeep, if you have over 501 combined be sure to sell off any excess to save yourself the hourly expense.

Because some of better bulk-purchase items are very expensive it is recommend you spend you down time (ie when you are saving money for the big ticket items) to look at some other options:

Many many thanks to Reigheena for this post.

Here is a list of items superior to the gladiator sword and champion’s aura that you can get through other means. Please note that many of these items are unique and you cannot have multiple copies of, however many you can. Dragon rewards often grant you access to getting multiple the lower stat demi items, while you are waiting to fill out your collection of better items these make excellent additions!

Items Greater Than or Equal to Gladiator Sword – that are available in bulk
Helm of Dragon Power (30/30) alchemy
Moonfall Shield (10/15) Aurora (2200)
Moonfall Mace (8/11) Aurora (1500)
Shield of Artanis (7/10) Treasure (common)
Sun Blade (10/5) Treasure (common), dragon
Lionheart Blade (8/7) Corvintheus (2200)
Demon Blade (9/5) Treasure (rare)
Rune Axe (8/6) Treasure (rare), dragon
Dreadnought’s Plate (8/6) Keira
Angelic Crown (7/7) Treasure (common)
Lightbringer (7/7) Treasure (uncommon)
Commander’s Plate (7/7) BR 12 High Commander
Crystal Rods (9/4) Treasure (uncommon), dragon
Jewel of Fire (7/6) dragon (red)
Dragon Scale (4/9) dragon (frost)
Elven Plate (6/6) Treasure (common), dragon
Dreadnought Greatsword (7/4) Keira
Dragonbane (5/5) dragon, alchemy
Tempest Shields (4/6) dragon, Ambrosia (1500)
Serpentine (4/6) alchemy
Lionheart Helm (4/6) Corvintheus (1500)
The Dreadnought (3/7) Keira
Moonfall Crowns (6/3) dragon, Aurora (900)
Dreadnought Horns (6/3) Keira
Berserker Amulet (5/4) dragon, Malekus (900)
Gladiator Swords (5/4) BR 3 – Elite Soldier

Items Greater Than or Equal to Gladiator Sword – that are unique
Sword of Redemption (50/30) Azeron (4500)
Moonfall Amulet (40/40 ) Aurora (4500)
Moonfall Robes (15/20) Aurora (3100)
Lionheart Plate (10/25) Corvintheus (4500)
Berserker Axe (20/13) Malekus (4500)
Blade of Vengeance (17/15) Azeron (3100)
Holy Avenger (12/12) Quest (earth boss)
Berserker Helm (12/10) Malekus (3100)
Lionheart Shield (7/15) Corvintheus (3100)
Amulet of the Tempest (10/11) Ambrosia (3100)
Cowl of the Avenger (12/7) Azeron (2200)
Amulet of Cefka (6/12) Quest (water boss)
Robes of the Tempest (7/8) Ambrosia (2200)

Magic Greater Than or Equal To Champion’s Aura
Tempest Storm (17/10) Ambrosia (4500) unique
Lightning Storm (15/7) Quest (mist boss) unique
Demonic Circle (9/6) Treasure (rare)
Angel Fires (8/7) Treasure (common)
Lightning Bolt (8/6) Treasure (uncommon)
Wall of Fire (7/7) dragon (gold)
Berserker Frenzy (6/7) Malekus (2200)
Wolf Spirit (7/5) Treasure (common), dragon
Demon Strength (8/2) Keira
Avenger’s Oath (5/4) Azeron (1500)
Greater Fireball (6/1) dragon
Holy Shield (4/2) dragon, Corvintheus (900)
Moonfall Aura (4/2) Aurora (400)
Champion’s Aura (3/3) BR – 9 Champion

Breakdown by source: (source, # above cmdr plate, # above glad sword and below cmdr plate, # above champ aura)
Ambrosia – 2, 1, 1
Malekus – 2, 1, 1
Corvintheus – 3, 1, 1
Aurora – 4, 1, 1
Azeron – 3, 0, 1
Quest – 2, 0, 1
Alchemy – 1, 2, 0
Dragon – 2, 8, 4
Keira – 1, 3, 1
Treasure – 6, 2, 4

Note that you can get multiples of the items from alchemy, dragons, Keira, and treasure. So while you’re waiting for that gold to accumulate, here are some things you can go for to increase your stats.

Getting Magic
This is overall the least impacting factor in our invasion stats. As you can see below it makes up potentially only about 9% of our overall stats.

now that said, 9% is still a big chunk if you can fill it out. The main problem here is cost and availability. The only “easily” available magic item is the Champions Aura, and the problem here is they are very expensive to get 501 of. It takes about $77,250,000,000 gold to get 501 Champ. Aura’s, now again that’s incremental cost so it’s quite reasonable to attempt to get 250 or more of these in a reasonable amount of time. They have the added benefit of having no hourly cost.

Dragon Charms are probably the 2nd most easily available item en-mass, but are dependant on your Army size and how active your friends gift you.

This is one area most average players are lacking support in, most don’t spend the $ to buy the Aura’s once available OR have only a marginal amount. This isn’t an area to ignore, but it certainly shouldn’t be your 1st priority when looking to spend money on your invasion army.

Terminology: In castle age the term hero and general is almost synonomous, as both can be found under the “heroes” subsection. However you must select an appropriate “general” for each quest. When invading Heroes + Generals are the same, and there is no difference. All the Heroes/Generals found under the “Generals” tab will be available when invading.

When you invade someone you can bring with you one General for each 5 members in your army. So if you have the max army size of 501 you could potentially bring 100 Generals as part of your invasion force.

First off you should go buy every single general you can, once you have enough income to easily support them all. As a starting player this is a nice chunk of nearly-free invasion support.

Once you have all the purchasable generals you can look toward favor point general, such as the treasure chest of the Monthly Release items.

Currently this is limited by the amount of generals available. I won’t list them all but each month (roughly) a new one is released and is purchasable via favor points. Does this mean you have to spent real to get these? Not really. One answer: dragons.

IMO dragons are the easiest way to earn favor points, kill a bunch, kill ’em often. It’s pretty easy for me to gain the 30 favor points a month through this method, and thus gain a new general each month without spending real money. There are many ways to earn favor points, and I won’t delve into all of them, but what you should take away is that this is one area you should consider. Each monthly general bring around 29 attack + defense (normally it’s 14 atk / 15 def or 15 atk / 14 def or so). If you plan on playing for a long time, this can pay off pretty big.