I was just in a game where I had four kings...this resulted in me getting ganged up on and only coming in second. It's far from unbeatable.

connor3491 wrote:I was just in a game where I had four kings...this resulted in me getting ganged up on and only coming in second. It's far from unbeatable.

Of course, there's tons of variables here and I'm not saying its unbeatable, but my question is it balanced? The penalty for hiring a king is no shields, while the penalty for hiring a second king is nothing.
Is Absolute cooperation the only answer to someone hiring multiple kings?

Thats why I am throwing the idea around for a Duke, who would be on the frontlines and therefore more vulnerable than a king that is stashed away.

Okay, I'm sure a few of you have played me but if you haven't I am of course a big fan of a multi king set up as it does give an easy win against less efficient players. I've heard the developers may be nerfing the king to force other tactical play, but for now there are a number of remedies for beating the king even in a 1 vs. 1 battle: I'll give some examples using other multi stacked and specialist combos costing no more than lets say double kings (4 Specialists)


1. Thievery: People tend to miss that the thieves ability takes effect before the kings, almost completely countering them. Lets do a quick calculation:- 2 kings with 100 drillers vs. 2 thieves with 100 drillers in sub to sub conflict: 2 thieves steal 30 drillers. so now we have 130 vs. 70, 2 kings with 70 drillers kill 46 drillers. hence the resulting outcome is 84 vs 70, the thieves win with 14 remaining!!! this only cost 2 specialist hires but of course has to be done locally. but it allows for another hire of a general, admiral, tycoon, king and an engineer. Lets throw an engineer into the equation; after the resulting battle 35 would be repaired leaving the guy with the thieves left with 49 drillers after the fight!!!


2. Logistics: simply out manoeuvre the large stacks; if you have 2 admirals (2X speed) you can simply move around any large stacks your enemy has, why would you want to fight a battle you can't win? for every 1 base they capture of yours you might be able to capture 2 of theirs, if they start to divide their forces to counter this then you are quids in and can fight them on a more level playing field again. Eventually you can decrease their maximum capacity and chip away at the larger stacks. again have 1 admiral to still out manoeuvre and combine with a couple of thieves.

3. Shields are your best defence: let people with kings hit them and their stacks will diminish quickly, move your troops out before big stacks arrive (back to logistics), coupled with good logistics this works great, so for example 1 admiral and one security chief, avoid the large stacks and every time they hit you they will lose at least 20 from the stack (assuming your shields have had time to build). One other nice tactic would be 2 helmsman and inspector combos (costs the same as 2 kings.) to keep popping the shields to full before large stacks arrive.

4. Generals: Generals can be very powerful if used correctly even against huge stacks!!! yeah that's right huge stacks can easily be defeated/annoyed: say for example your enemy has a bit of a bottle neck and only one access to you and has 2 bases with 2 huge stacks attacking it. at the base you have a pirate, 2 saboteurs and have a general hidden away. they know they need to hit you with fairly large stacks to beat your drillers, shields and general buff. as the stacks come, fire out a saboteur at each stack then once the saboteur is captured, collect it with the pirate. rinse and repeat and your enemy will get nowhere and gradually lose his stacks at 0 cost to you. (one of my preferred tricks!)

5. One hit wonders: Here's another no cost solution and also I shouldn't be giving it away really (as it's one of my favourites)! Martyrs, go boom obviously eliminating any sized king stack. And same with Double agents, they remove drillers from the stack and any specs swap ownership, so once you use it, you lose it... or do you? If for example you hire an admiral you gain a 1.5X speed bonus, this means that a driller travels faster than a double agent. So if somebody sends 2 stacks at you (they'll do this because they see your double agent) all you need to do is launch the DA at the first stack, then launch 1 driller timed to hit just after the first battle. This will transfer the DA back to you, ready to hit the second stack. Time another driller to hit after this and the DA remains in your control eliminating any stacks coming your way. If you plan to capture the base where the stacks cam from then the DA will be yours upon recapturing it or will remain yours when it arrives.

There are plenty more ways to counter the Kings, but I like to keep a tactical edge on people so can't give them all away just yet. But in my opinion the game is balanced just fine. Although I would happily embrace more specialists to slow the rate of receiving kings. or maybe reduce the amount you get in your personal deck to 2 hypnotists.

@jimidy
(1) please try not to necro old posts! It's okay if you make a new thread and then put a link to it in the post (for example you could have made a post called "countering King stacks" with a link to this post).
(2) Otherwise, this is a nice guide to fighting a King stacker! (And hurray for your first post )