Mechanics · troops

Troops, tiers & counters

Under every rally is a set of small integer base stats and a rock-paper-scissors triangle. The percentages get all the attention, but they're percentages of these numbers — so this is where the math actually starts.

1. Base stats, T6 to T11

The numbers in the in-game training panel are display placeholders. These are the actual base values the engine uses. Every troop, every tier, also has base Lethality = 10 and base Defense = 10 — only Attack and Health vary.

Probable. T11 (Truegold) base stats are now in the simulator (the row above), and troops fight with their TrueGold procs across the full T1–T11 × TG0–TG8 grid. One detail is worth flagging: T11 archers take a survivability nerf, with arc HP / inf Atk dropping to ≈0.689 versus the steady 0.75 that holds T1–T10. T12 (Tempered Truegold) still has its slot reserved with no values — it'll be filled from data, not guessed.

2. The pattern behind the numbers

The tiers aren't arbitrary. One relationship holds across all of them, which is a useful sanity check whenever a new tier's values surface:

Archers hit hardest per troop and die easiest; infantry are the wall. The percentages you stack on top don't change this shape — they scale it.

3. The counter triangle

Infantry beats Cavalry, Cavalry beats Archer, Archer beats Infantry. When your attacking squad counters the type it's hitting, it deals +10% damage — and that's the whole of it. There is no defensive type bonus; countering never makes you take less, only deal more.

4. Cavalry bypass & archer volley

Two troop traits bend targeting and damage:

• Cavalry bypass (Ambusher) — about 20% of the time, a cavalry squad skips the frontline and strikes archers directly. One roll per round per cavalry-attacking fighter. Confirmed as an ability; the 20% is the community-quoted figure. (In old SoS this was deterministic every 20 rounds; KingShot made it a per-round roll.)
• Archer volley — a 10% chance to fire twice in a round. Probable — the trait is in the description, the exact rate isn't independently confirmed for KingShot.

Expected mode bakes these in as fractions; Monte Carlo rolls them. The bypass especially can decide a fight, because archers are the squad least able to survive being hit early.

5. Casualty splits by battle type

The troops you "lose" in combat aren't all gone. After the fight resolves, losses split into permanently dead, severely wounded (infirmary), and lightly wounded (auto-heal) — and the ratio depends entirely on the battle type. The simulator applies the right split after combat, so what it reports as permanent loss matches what the game actually takes.

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Related: the damage formula · hero skill stacking