How Combat Works in Goodgame Empire
For my first few months I fought terribly – I dumped everything from the barracks into an attack and then stared at a red report. From the outside, combat in Goodgame Empire looks trivial: you send soldiers, wait a few minutes, a report arrives. But behind the "Attack" button runs a decent machinery of fronts, flanks and waves. Once you understand how melee covers the ranged units and why the defender almost always stands better than you, you'll stop burning units for nothing and start cracking targets you couldn't touch before. I've written down how I think it really fits together and where the fight is actually decided.
Left, center and right flank – this is where I lost most often
Both attack and defense are split into three sections: left flank, center, right flank. As the attacker you spread your waves across these three columns, and the defender places soldiers and tools in them. And because each flank is calculated separately, it's not one battle running but several at once – and the defender rarely holds all three equally well.
I'll admit my first attacks on player castles looked like this: I split the army into even thirds because it felt fair and safe. The result? Weak everywhere. Against a cleverly built defense, this is by far the most common way to lose even with superior numbers.
So send a spy before an attack whenever you can. When the report shows a packed center and empty flanks, pour the overwhelming majority of your strength onto one weak flank and only fill the other one symbolically so the defenders there don't shoot you in the back. Sending more soldiers to a flank you'll crush anyway is a wasted army – the surplus doesn't spill over anywhere else. Concentration beats spreading out: find the thinnest flank and hit it with full force.
Front line and rear line – melee covers the ranged units
Every army, yours and the enemy's, stands in two rows. Up front are the close-combat (melee) units – swordsmen, spearmen – they take the impact. In the back are the ranged units, meaning archers and crossbowmen, who fire over the heads of their own front row and only take hits once the ones in front have fallen.
Here's a detail a lot of people get wrong (and I got it wrong for a long time too): these aren't two separate battles. It's one calculation of your attack strength against the defense on that flank, just with an ordering rule – your melee has to break through the enemy front row first, and only then do your ranged units get at their ranged units. If you pile in nothing but ranged units, nobody's covering them and the defender's front row cuts them down before they even fire. If you send nothing but melee, you're missing the fire from the back and your front row bleeds out on something your ranged units would have taken down long ago.
So always a full front row of melee, and behind it as many ranged units as your attack capacity allows. And remember that superiority in one row doesn't carry over into the other – having ten times the melee and zero ranged units simply won't help you against a ranged defense.
How strength is calculated and why the commander decides
I'm not 100% sure exactly how the game multiplies and adds things up internally, but simplified it works like this: the game adds up the strength of your units in a given row and on a given flank, throws in bonuses (commander, castle, research, items, alliance fortress) and sets it against the sum of the defense on the same flank. The order applies – melee against melee, then ranged against ranged – and no superiority carries over between rows or flanks.
The commander is your biggest multiplier, I have no doubt about that. Watch what bonus he has: a commander with a ranged bonus calls for an army crammed with ranged units, a commander with a siege bonus pays off on a fortified target. Always attack with the best one you've unlocked, and build the army around his bonus, not blindly.
And don't underestimate research and items. The same army against the same target will win or lose purely based on the technologies you've researched and the commander's equipment. Before you start complaining that "combat is random" (I've heard it from fellow players plenty of times), check whether you're going empty-handed against someone who has everything upgraded.
You often ask why you lost when you had more soldiers
This is probably the message I get most often. And the answer is almost always one of three things: either you spread the army evenly across all flanks and the defender outfought you on each one separately, or you sent the wrong ratio of rows (say a pile of melee with no ranged units) and the surplus didn't carry over anywhere, or you simply went in with a worse commander and no research against someone who has everything upgraded. The number of soldiers by itself means nothing – what decides it is where you send them and in what composition. How many times have you looked only at the total number? I did for a long time.
Walls, gates, towers and the courtyard – what the defense does
When attacking a castle you're not just fighting soldiers, but buildings too. Walls and towers give the defender a hard defense bonus and on top of that raise his capacity – meaning how many defenders and tools he can even put on the front. Without battering rams, siege towers, catapults and ladders, your melee gets wasted just on climbing over the wall. Battering rams and catapults target the fortifications, the siege tower and ladders get the infantry up top – pick them based on what's holding you back most in the report.
Watch out for the gate. Don't take it for granted that it's the weak spot. With robber barons on default defense, sometimes yes, but an experienced player will do the opposite and reinforce the gate with tools and turn it into a trap – if you aim your main push there, you run right into where he's waiting for you. I personally learned this lesson the hard way, and since then I don't guess, I read from the report where the defense is actually thinner.
The finale plays out in the courtyard, once the walls have fallen and the defender has lost the advantage of the walls. But the attacker is at a disadvantage for the whole battle because of the structure of the defense – so always attack with a reserve, not "just enough". "Just enough" isn't enough against fortifications, period.
Attack waves – you crack a big target step by step
You won't take down a big castle or a fat robber baron in one blow. The attack runs in waves, each with a cap on both units and siege tools, and the defense stays damaged between waves – whoever you kill in the first wave is no longer standing against you in the second.
So treat the first waves as a breaker: cheap units plus siege tools for the walls, towers and elite defenders. Only once the enemy has been thinned out do you send the main strike with your best commander. Throwing top units and expensive tools into the first wave against a full defense is the fastest way to take a loss – I know what I'm talking about.
And above all, read the report after every wave. The game shows you exactly how many defenders and tools are left. A few times I found that one or two waves fewer than I'd originally planned were enough, and I sent the army I saved straight at the next target.
Army composition – read the defense and save your top units
Two players with the same number of soldiers will end up completely differently depending on what they sent and where. If the target is defended mainly by ranged units, your melee will break through his thin front row, but then his fire from the back shreds you unless you have enough ranged units of your own to take them down first. The rule is simple: reinforce exactly the category the enemy is stronger in – not the army as a whole.
With robber barons the defense composition repeats by level, so you'll quickly memorize the mix for specific levels: low-level barons only need cheap melee and a few battering rams, higher ones already want a balance of melee plus ranged units and catapults for the towers. With player castles it's purely about spying – read the melee vs. ranged ratio in the defense and build the exact counter.
And one saving that will spare you thousands of units: keep expensive top units for PvP and big targets, and send cheap infantry and siege tools at ordinary barons. I once looted a baron with an elite army that I then couldn't replace before a neighbor showed up – and all of that for a handful of resources. A textbook loss.
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