Explanation of basics for squad building as well and information about unit placement, compositions, unit types and more…
Creating a Squad
Symphony of War is a squad based tactical game. One of the most fundamental things you need to do is to create squads.
Creating squads becomes available to you after the initial Chapter 1. Simply go towards Organize Army from the main menu between chapters
Once inside the Organize Army screen, click on the Form new Squad option on the right hand side.
You will then be shown your army reserve units and potential squad leaders will be shown with a star next to their unit sprites.
The main thing when creating a squad is to seek out those with a higher leadership score. Here is an example of an advanced unit’s status.
This unit has a leader ship score of 72 .
This leader ship score of the squad leader represents the maximum capacity of the squad.
Each unit added has a cost based on how many units are in a squad, its loyalty, leader traits, difficulty settings and the type of units as well.
The base cost of a unit, aside from dragons and the new panthers is 10 and the later have a base cost of 15.
Each unit beyond the first 5 gets an incremental capacity cost of +2 so 10+2 for the 6th, 10+4 for the 7th and so on.
Other modifiers such as loyalty and squad leader traits can further change this and will be discussed in the upcoming sections.
Unit Loyalty
Loyalty is a measure of a unit’s commitment to your cause. The more loyal it becomes, the less it costs to put in a squad.
The modifiers for loyalty progresses as follows
Mercenary which is cost +2 (Worst)
Non Commital which is cost + 1
Neutral which is no icon and no cost changes
Committed which is cost – 1
Loyal which is cost – 2
Loyalty is improved as you expose units to fight and capture objectives with them. A smell mention here to make you aware that affinities can play a role in the progression speed of a unit’s loyalty. Notably, fire and light will becme loyal faster than lightning or dark.
Leader Traits
Leader traits are traits units have or can learn through books which will affect a whole squad but only if the unit with the trait is the leader of it.
Leader traits normally are highlighted with a light blue square around their icons as shown below for the Archer Captain trait.
Some of the squad leader traits can affect some units’ capacity cost to include in your squad.
As an example, Jules, one of the early hero you receive, starts with the aforementioned Archer Captain trait which reduces the cost of every archer unit you add to his squad while he is the leader of it by 2.
As such, a basic bowman with a base cost of 10 would cost 8 instead when added to an Archer Captain’s squad.
This includes the basic bowmen, crossbowmen, rangers, horse archer, warbows and raiders for Archer Captains.
Other capacity cost reduction traits includes Knight Captain (for melee cavalry), Soldier Captain (for heavy infantry) as well as Shock and Awe (for firearm units)
Squad Composition & Movement Types
Now that we have covered how to make a squad and how much each unit costs to add to a squad, let’s talk about composition.
To begin with, lets look at movement types which there are 5
– Slow (5 squares)
– Infantry (6 squares)
– Light (6 squares but ignores penalty for rough terrain)
– Cavalry (7 squares)
– Flying (high movement with no penalty and can fly over obstacles)
These 5 movement types apply to a squad based on how much of its composition has the trait with the slowest movement type applying to the overall squad with the exception of flying which is a bit special.
For example, if your squad has 3 mages and 2 soldiers, your movement type will be slow because 51% or more of the squad has the slow movement type.
Some types can also be mixed. For example, a unit with 2 knights and 3 scouts, would make for a light cavalry units since 51% or more are horse units (100% are) and 51% or more are light types (60% in this case).
Light unit types can be identified by their guerilla trait which gives them additional defense in rough terrain or with hit and run for light cavalry who gets the bonus on open terrain instead.
So when creating squads, you may want to see how you mix and match the various units to better suit the role for what you want out of the squads. I.E. for quick units that can move further and flank weaker squads, cavalry or light cavalry might be best where if you want a solid squad to withstand just about everything, a regular infantry squads with several sturdy units with 2 healers might be best.
