Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta What is the advantage of bringing armies

When playing campaign; what is the advantage of moving more than one army into a country when expecting a battle ?
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What I mean is that are the armies you bring into battle any better than the ones you can build? Do they represent exactly 1 army (i.e, the same as 1 you build or are they squads of much greater than one ?)
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I played one game today which ended in desync after 30 minutes of rts. The battle seemed to be largely dependent on the armies we built during rts and not on the ones we had at the start but perhaps I am missing something fundamental ?

Depends on your chance to win. If chances are relatively equal your starting units won't make much of an impact. If your chances to win are only 20% you will likely be defeated in the first 5 minutes (at least on high difficulty).

And no, the transition rate is not 1 to 1. 1 unit on the campaign map is a full squad on the RTS map but I don't know the exact transition numbers for each single unit type in the actual beta build.

Infantry is 1:3, Transports are 1:1. Everything else is 1:2.

The advantage to bringing in large armies is that you can spread out to additional capture points much, much faster, and thus get your economy going.

If you have a large starting army and your opponent has a small one, you can just go and crush them at the start. If you have about the same size as your opponent, then the only advantage is the faster economy start.

If I understand you correctly; the starting armies are only useful for 'rush' tactics. If you fail to rush (new player, slow to move - whatever) then the game quickly reverts to standard rts with the starting armies adding almost nothing (i might be mistaken but even at 1:3 it sounds like a very small # for a long running battle). I.e, it sounds like if you can't complete the rts battle in a short period then the starting armies are no longer relevant and it doesn't matter if the initial armies are 1 vs 1 or 1 vs 10 (esp if the person with a single army has a lot of upgrades they can apply to the armies they build on the battle map).
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I'm sure Stabbey has done some analysis here (his other posts are quite detailed with the things he has tried) so perhaps you could provide further insight.
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If what I said is correct I think there is something else amiss here in the game mechanics. There should be a clear advantage to a large starting army (perhaps it could impact the size of the army you can build or the number of citizens you can recruit for building armies) beyond an initial rush tactic.

(of course I say this because I always sucked at rush tactics )

It's not just rush tactics. As Stabbey said the larger army tend to get more map control in the beginning which has a steamroller effect of when your army is dead you now have more map control (and therefore resources) then your opponent allowing you to build larger armies in RTS mode faster than your opponent who couldn't secure as much of the map due to not being able to capture as many resource/building points. So while your 'starting' army doesn't have an effect unless you rush it does set you up in a better economic position than your opponent with a smaller army.

As far as specific mechanics go:

If you don't have any units, you first need to build a factory to make a unit so you can capture the nearest recruitment site so you can build a recruitment centre so you can get enough recruits to build units so you can start to expand, while also building up defences for your base. During this process you may find yourself with the mouse cursor hovering over a build button waiting for the recruit count to go up enough for you to do something.

With a starting army, you can order a couple/few groups to capture the nearest sites, and while they are moving you can build a couple factories. You don't need any new units right away, so your initial recruits can be applied to recruitment centres and your main factories. With a couple extra recruitment centres you will have an easier time cranking out more units.


In the advanced options in the lobby you can increase the recruit cost for units, which would make building slower and the starting units more important.

Along the same lines, I think an understated and underutilized mechanic is just simply capturing as many sites as possible with your starting units. Not just recruitment sites.

If you have a 3-1 unit advantage that can snowball very quickly by getting capture bonuses. The territory is useful but the precious early recruits are even more valuable in terms of pressing your advantage.

Something like that, yes.
If you have a substantially stronger starting army, you can rush the enemy and the fight will be over fast. Otherwise you will have to do the complete RTS procedure, consisting of base-building, unit production and the actual combat.
In that case it is pretty normal to produce a multitude of the units you brought with you.

I too think that this is a bit strange, but Larian probably has chosen to do it like that to give skilled players the possibility to turn unfavourable battles.

However, the discrepancy is larger in multiplayer campaign mode when not playing in teams, since most maps are made for 2vs2 - 1vs1 means that you have much more resources available, meaning that you can produce more and faster.
Also, as Raze has mentioned, you can adjust the build-cost multiplier in the advanced options.
I recommend to try it out, it makes for a different game, since with 2-2.5x recruit costs the battles depend much more on initial units as you will be able to produce much less.

In the full game there will also be 2 player campaign maps, and RTS maps geared to 2 and 3 players.