Explination of why Gauls Haeduan have a defensive place and the balanced attacker

    An underappreciated fact about the game is every type of troop has a place.


    Haeduan are essentially the Gauls Legion


    A duel role troop that is good in offense and def they come at a premium however so why on earth would you build them as a defensive player over cheap phalanx or druid riders.


    Well before i go into my best reasons why i will tell you a very basic reason why.


    You must clear robber camps as an effective governor and why tie up crop consumption in def-less swordsmen and thunders when you can have a trooper which will clear these camps but still preform well in def.


    That is the basic concept that most players grasp and appreciate however what i will point out next is something most players do not understand well.


    They consumes 3 crop so i put in brackets what def they have in terms of 1 crop (so they are comparable)


    When you smithy a troop there stats change however so lets study them when fully upgraded.


    An Haeduan has


    88.1 Inf Def (29.36)

    208.8 Cav Def (69.6)


    Now lets compare them to the Druid Rider (there immediate competitor in the role)


    145 Inf Def (72.5)

    76 Cav Def (38)


    Now I am going to show some quick math to highlight there average def by combining inf def and cav def (the number in the brackets) then dividing by 2 to give a defensive value which ignores unit type


    Haeduan Total

    (98.96/2= 49.5)


    Druid Rider Total

    (110.5/2= 55.3)


    So why did i do that? well as it turns out Cav def and Inf is unanimous once you are dealing with a balanced attacker

    What do i mean by balanced attacker?

    If your attacker has about equal attack values in inf offense and cav offense that is a balanced attacker.

    As it turns out when defending against a balanced attacker both defensive values are munched together by the game and your troops preform based on their average def.


    Let me Highlight this with examples

    If you don't believe me run these examples in the simulator and discover for yourself :evil:


    75 clubs attacking 50 Haeduan

    Attacker loses 100% defender loses 100%


    Now lets add 20 Knights to the attacker to make it a balanced force

    keep in mind we just added alot and i mean alot more attackers but how do the 50 Haeduan preform now?


    75 clubs and 20 knights attacking 50 Haeduan

    attacker loses 91%


    Now lets add only 20 haeduan to the defender side because that's only fair if the attacker gets extra as well


    75 Clubs and 20 knights against 70 Haeduan

    attacker loses 100% defender loses 66%


    See where I am going with this?

    All late game hammers will have a fairly balanced force there fore we should only be paying attention to there combined average def which was

    49.5 for had's

    55.3 for riders


    when you really think about it Druid Riders only preform 10% better then Haeduans per crop, not to mention you can now clear robber camps and when defending with Had's I would not be overly concerned about there lack of inf def.

    Another point is when sniping attacks more often then not the pesky ones are pure cav attacks when defending against pure cav attacks the had's give almost a breathtaking 70 def per crop while your riders will get squashed at 38

    There is one more input:

    Troops with higher stats die less so you have to click less to build. Saves you time and ress because you do not waste so much traders and robbed ress. You have to consider that you will not constantly use deff or off, 60 percent of its time will be at home or walk. So that makes + more to your Haeduans.

    I would recommend defensive Gauls build ONLY Phalanx (for defense) in all villages before moving onto any calv troop.
    Phalanx are cheaper and more def per crop upkeep and more def per training time.

    In terms of having small off for robbers, swords work good for that :D

    PaultheGaul wrote:

    In terms of having small off for robbers, swords work good for that

    Not really, swords do literally nothing, but stand afk until a robber appears. Haedus can be used as def. Ok, you could def with swords, but then you're better off build haedus.


    "Balanced off" ... there is more to it than that. The balancing depends on the off type you're building and which tribe the offer plays. Most extreme example would be club off from teuton (426 - 290k) vs. caesaris off from roman (288k vs. 296k), each off with rams, without hero stuff, the latter one due to lazyness. Rams are kinda neglected by you aswell, btw, they cound as infantry. Also the "you have a robber off"-advantage fades away if you build haeduans in multiple villages, because you don't need two of them. On average, druids have 58.5 defense versus a decent teuton hammer, haeduans only have 45.7. Druids are 28% better in this regard.

    Another point, that you completely ignore is the different unit speed. Druids are faster and both horse units are faster than a phalanx. As an active def account, one should always consider this, as a not so active def account, one can just spam phalanx with optionally one haedu village, as Paul mentioned. This is due to the fact, that inactive accounts can't use the druid's speed advantage very well anyway, because well, they're inactive, they are probably not always online, if one needs their druids quickly. But then again, if the whole kingdom has several decent def accounts, which are active and online a lot, maybe with duals / sitters, one doesn't have to rely on its own unit speed, because another def account, who is much closer, can make it with phalanx aswell. The speed factor is very conditional and depends a lot on the circumstances ... but one shouldn't ignore him.

    Another point, that you missed, is that one might not always send the full hammer. If you are trying to farm some less active members quickly or if you intend to sneakily steal some resources with a lot of thunders, it often happens, that you attack with clubs only (for farming) or horses only (for farming or sneaky treasure stealing). Depending on which kind of attack you're facing, druids or haedus are a much better option than the other one.

    Lastly, some other ones already mentioned it, druids and haeduans are much more expensive than phalanxes. You pay 6k resources per hour per level 20 barracks and you get 615 phalanx per day out of it. But you pay 8k resources per hour per level 20 stable for druids, getting only 250 druids (500 def) per day out of it and 9.5k resources per hour for haedus under the same circumstances, getting 615 def per day. So, if you have to decide, what you're doing with your 60k production per hour, you can chose: 10x phalanx queue (6.2k def / day) or 7.5x druid queue (3.8k def / day) or 6.3x haedu queue (3.9k def / day). This is sometimes neglectable (because yes, once the def is trained, those costs are irrelevant), but it is another factor to calculate in. Having a rough time and really aggressive neighbors? Better build phalanx only, because more def per time accross all def villages. But if everything's calm and only few attacks every now and then, one can handle the disadvantage easily and train horse def.

    Due to all of this, and probably some points more which I didn't think of right now, I usually recommend one haedu-village, otherwise only phalanxes and optionally a few druid villages to def accounts in my kingdom, the last one highly depending on the general kingdom state.

    Be2-e4 wrote:

    I usually recommend one haedu-village, otherwise only phalanxes and optionally a few druid villages to def accounts in my kingdom, the last one highly depending on the general kingdom state.

    Yes I totally agree haedu's are a 1 village trick

    PaultheGaul wrote:

    I would recommend defensive Gauls build ONLY Phalanx (for defense) in all villages before moving onto any calv troop.
    Phalanx are cheaper and more def per crop upkeep and more def per training time.

    In terms of having small off for robbers, swords work good for that :D

    i totally agree with PautheGaul ,phalanx in every village ,train some sword and TT(or haeduan) and 1 ram for seige robber hide out at first time,if you get more resources ,train druids and feed all troops.


    druids has the fastest speed in the game for reinforce ,and phalanxs are really good deff with less training time and resources ,and balance in Inf Def and Cav Def.


    and also another fact in the game is that ,gaul is the most selected ones ,and teuton deff select spear for first ,and Roman deff is really less ,so Cav Def is enough and Inf Def is less .so druids are better than haeduans.