Drug Wars - Battles, Unit Strategies, And More

Two days ago, @timcliff wrote the best damn post on the blockchain concerning Drug Wars and how the battle system worked. Now I'm going to take what Tim wrote and help translate it into specific strategies that can help you get better at defending yourself from attackers and (hopefully) getting what you want when you send out your dudes to plunder and pillage. This here's a look at some tactics based on how Drug Wars handles battles that will hopefully make you more effective at fighting.

First things first: go read his post. Once again, it's right here.

All of it. All the way through. Then click 'upvote'. He laid all the groundwork and foundation for what I'm about to write, so make sure he gets due credit.

You're back? Good. Let's talk tactics.

1) The Battle Simulator

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This is going right up top, because this may be all you need. The Drug Wars devs were kind enough to put together a very basic battle simulator which shows the results of a given fight between two people based on the units they have.

You fight it right over here. Bookmark it for future reference.

The Battle Simulator is useful for two reasons. First, it allows you to see the result of a given fight before you commit to it or actually risk troops. If you want to know whether your 19 Mercenaries and 3,000 Rowdies defeat 9 Ninjas, 17 Hitmen, and 350 Bazooka Guys, plug in the numbers and the calculator will tell you who's left standing. (No, I'm not going to spoil it...run the numbers yourself).

Second, it allows you to understand the WHY behind some things which may, on the surface, seem nonsensical. An example of this popped up in the Discord the other day, where one user with nothing but Bouncers and Mercenaries was attacked by another group composed of multiple Gunmen, Ninja, and Knifers, along with 1 Rowdy and 1 Bouncer. The result looked like someone had hacked the game:

Source: Discord

How the hell can that be right? There's more than enough outgoing damage from 55 Bouncers and 8 Mercenaries to kill more than 1 Rowdy and 1 Bouncer, but instead the attacker waltzed in and robbed him blind while only losing 2 units.

What the actual F-?

Plug the statistics into the Battle Simulator, and it tells the story, step by step, of this nefarious virtual felony:

Fight start

Round 1 start

[attacker] 1 x rowdy attack +2

[attacker] 1 x bouncer attack +6

[attacker] 30 x knifer attack +360

[attacker] 30 x ninja attack +1500

[attacker] 20 x gunman attack +500

[target] 55 x bouncer attack +330

[target] 8 x mercenary attack +960

[attacker] 1 x rowdy take damages -330 / 2

[attacker] 1 x rowdy die

[attacker] 1 x bouncer take damages -960 / 10

[attacker] 1 x bouncer die

[target] 55 x bouncer take damages -2 / 550

[target] 8 x mercenary take damages -6 / 600

[target] 55 x bouncer take damages -360 / 550

[target] 36 x bouncer die

[target] 8 x mercenary take damages -1500 / 600

[target] 8 x mercenary die

[target] 19 x bouncer take damages -500 / 190

[target] 19 x bouncer die

Fight ended in round 1

We'll break down what that means here in a minute, but for now just be aware the Battle Simulator will answer ANY questions you have concerning how units attack, take damage, and die. If you model out a battle there, the game will behave in precisely the same way.

To understand why, we need to talk about...

Unit Priority

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Every soldier in Drug Wars has its own priority value. The priority value determines when that unit attacks, but also when that unit takes damage. Units with higher priority attack later and receive damage later than units with lower priority. In other words, the Rowdy (priority 50) will take damage in an attack before all other units, because it has the lowest priority. Tim broke down the priority ranking in his post, so I won't repeat it here, but take note of it because it will bring up some interesting tactical options later on. The chief thing to remember is that melee units all have lower priority than ranged units, so your Rowdies, Bouncers, Knifers, Big Mamas, and Ninjas will all dish out (and take) damage before anyone with a firearm.

Grouping

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The next important thing to know is that all units of the same type attack and defend as a group. In other words, what one member of the group does, they all do regardless of how little logical sense this may make in real-world terms. All of your Bouncers will attack one unit group on the other side, all of your Snipers will attack one unit group on the other side, etc...

Damage dealt by a group never spills over into other groups, so if all your Rowdies gang up on a few Knifers and overkill them by 50 points, that fifty points is lost. This is important, because in the example above, even one single unit can constitute a 'group' for the purposes of battle calculation. Rowdies and Bouncers, with their lower priority, were sent in as meat shields to soak up the damage from the defender's Bouncers and Mercenaries, while the remaining units could focus all their attention on the two main defending groups, and were powerful enough to knock them out in a single round. Despite the defender having enough "attack power" to defeat far more enemies, all that damage was directed at the single units due to their lower priority, and the attacker went home with 20,000 more drugs in his pocket.

Rounds

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Battles in Drug Wars last for a maximum of five rounds of the attacker and defender beating on one another. If either side has 0 units at the conclusion of any round, the battle ends and victory is declared to the side with units remaining. If both sides wipe one another out, or if the battle goes for five consecutive rounds and both sides still have living units, the match is a draw. If the attacker won the match, and the defender had any resources outside their ability to protect in storage, the attacker comes home with some bling-bling.

Damage

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Units take damage as individuals, but assign damage as a group. This means that to kill one Rowdy requires only 2 damage, but to kill 50 of them will require 100 damage. Since each Rowdy has 2 defense, that means 50 damage will kill 25 Rowdies, 48 damage will kill 24 Rowdies, and 49 damage will kill 24 Rowdies with one point 'lost'. Damage does not carry over from round to round, so in the previous example, if a group of Rowdies took 49 damage last round, and they take another 13 damage the following round, that's only enough to kill 6 Rowdies--that one extra point from last round and the current round do not stack.

By the same token, 50 Rowdies will assign 100 damage to whatever unit group they are attacking, regardless of how many units are in that group, how much overkill it would cause. Any damage above what's required to kill the group they hit is lost, as is any partial damage. A Mercenary who takes 74 damage on round 1 can soak up another 74 damage on round 2 without suffering any ill effects.

Putting It All Together

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That's all well and good, but let's turn those numbers and orders of operation into actual tactical applications and strategies we can use!

One practical application has already been shown: if a defender has only a few types of groups, it's possible to protect a bunch of your higher-value troops by mixing in low-ranking minions. In fact, a defender has X different groups, all you need to ensure your success in battle is to make sure you include X+(X+1) groups where the first X is low-priority units equal to the number of defending groups, and the second group is equal to a number of higher-priority groups with enough firepower to knock out the defenders smaller groups in one round. You're sacrificing low-value targets to let your heavier hitters work.

Tactically speaking, this means that the best defense in the game comes from having a high mixture of units, as opposed to a high concentration of only one or two. In fact, even if you never plan on raiding resources from another player, your first strategy should be to acquire 1 of every unit in the game. This means an attacker must commit a larger number of unit groups to attack you, as just sending a huge mass of weenies in your direction won't work--if you have one of every unit, . And remember, because of how grouping works, 1 Rowdy or 1 Bouncer will stop an attack by any size group for one round, while your higher-priority defenders get their blows in.

In other words, as long as you have six or more different unit groups, it's impossible for an attacker to send a single group to attack you and win the fight, no matter how massive that group is, because a single group can only destroy 5 other groups at the most. After that, the fight's over. 4,000 Bouncers versus 1 Rowdy, 1 Bouncer, 1 Knifer, 1 Gunman, 1 Big Mama, and 1 Hitman ends in a draw, despite the attacker's overwhelming offense. Model it out on the Battle Simulator for a step-by-step explanation if this still doesn't make sense.

Some More Interesting Unit Info

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For eight out of the ten units, if one fights an identical unit, they both kill one another, because their attack power is higher than their defense. The only units for which this is NOT true are the Super Bouncer and the Big Mama, who have more defense (in the case of Big Mama, waaaay more defense) than offense. Alone, this information isn't all that interesting, but combining it with what we know about unit priority gives us some interesting options.

All melee fighters attack and defend before ranged units do, but the Big Mama has the second-highest unit priority for a melee attacker. The Ninja out-ranks her in priority, which means that, after you've recruited one of every unit, there's something to be said for a wall strategy involving Big Mamas and Ninjas. Mamas don't hit very hard, but they soak damage like nobody's business. Only a Bazooka Guy or a Mercenary can kill a Mama one-on-one; the rest of the units need to gang up to drop her. The problem is that, since the Mama only deals out 12 damage with that rolling pin, she cannot be your main line of defense. A strategy that involves recruiting nothing but Big Mamas is doomed to failure, because someone else can recruit nothing but units with a health value higher than 12 and come at you pretty much at will.

The nice thing about Mama is that she will tank damage before it gets to your ranged units, but she's only effective at this if you have both weaker units in front of her so that she's not bearing the brunt of an offense, and stronger units standing behind her. Therefore, one potential strategy on defense would be to recruit 1 Rowdy, 1 Bouncer, 1 Knifer, and 1 Big Mama, then pump out a mixture of ranged units and Ninja like nobody's business. Sure, an attacker can send a small force of weenies to match yours along with their main offensive force, but they'll be trading blows with your lower-ranked weenies as well, while your higher-priority units lay down a withering field of fire to thin the herd. And the more Big Mamas you have on the payroll, the harder they have to hit and more unit types they have to send in order to absorb the damage.

With the Ninja's higher attack priority, this actually makes them lethal on both attack and defense, since she'll be swinging those 50-point katanas from behind the safety of Big Mama's apron. Same with all of your ranged attackers, in fact. This makes Big Mama one of the most important units in the game...but only if she's got little guys in front of her, and big boys behind her. Without the cover afforded to her by the Rowdies, Bouncers, and Knifers, she's an incredibly weak unit since all she can do is suck up attacks and knock down a couple enemies per round.

The Hitman is also vastly more powerful than I realized. In an earlier post, I suggested the purchase of 16 Rowdies instead of investing in one Hitman, because for roughly the same number of weapons, you got a much bigger attack and defense bang for your buck. Hitmen, however, have very high attack priority, meaning they hit from behind Big Mama's wall. Once you have a few Rowdies, if you have more weapons than you know what to do with, Hitmen are a much better investment.

The Tactical Attack

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Losing a battle as the defender means you've lost your entire army, and probably a chunk of resources too. The good news is that you get a six-hour shield protecting you from further attacks. The bad news? Six hours ain't a long time when the average school or work day is 8+ hours.

But you only get that shield when you lose your entire army. If an attack drains off a bunch of your soldiers, but doesn't get any resources, you get no protection. In fact, there's nothing preventing the same attacker from coming at you again, and taking advantage of your greatly diminished state.

There's also nothing stopping a friend from noticing your weakened condition, sending over just enough troops to win the fight and cart away a couple hundred resources, and putting your shield up. If you notice a buddy who just got their ass handed to them, running without any defense and no shield, consider throwing an attack their way just to put their shields up so someone else doesn't take advantage of the situation.

There's also nothing stopping you from messing with an opponent by draining off his resources if he's not doing a good job of defending himself with multiple layers of defense. For instance, someone hiring only Mercenaries is going to be in for a world of hurt if an attacker comes along with an equal number of Mercs and a single Rowdy, as the Battle Simulator will show you. Thus, for the cost of 600 weapons, you deprive an adversary of tens or even hundreds of thousands of resources. Even if you don't steal anything back, this is a devastating blow to players who don't understand grouping and unit priority. A few times of this happening could potentially demoralize a player into leaving the game, which leaves their gang down a member and you with a potential farming target. Savvy defenders will make sure to employ a mixture of units to make sure this strategy isn't viable, and there's no excuse for being a dick to random people, but being aware of it means you can bring it to bear if necessary.

The Weenie Rush

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Thanks to how grouping and attack priority are handled, it's possible to use the exact same number of attackers, but spread across different battles, in order to inflict heavy losses on an opponent by sending in attacks one group at a time. Consider:

You have 500 Rowdies on your payroll. Assume your opponent has a nice mixture across all the categories, say 10 in each, because they're playing the multi-layered defense strategy. Now, if you send in all 500 Rowdies at once, they'll re-enact the Charge of the Light Brigade and get cut to ribbons. In exchange, they'll kill all 10 of your opponent's Rowdies before they die. That's a terrible trade.

What happens if you send in only 10 Rowdies? Same thing--your guys all die, you kill all 10 of your opponent's Rowdies, and the battle ends in a loss for you. Except you still have 490 Rowdies, and your opponent lost all of his. Do the math and send another group, enough to take out all your opponent's Bouncers. You'll need 50 Rowdies to take out his 10 Bouncers, so send them in. Once again, they get cut to ribbons, your opponent loses his Bouncers. Now you're down 60 Rowdies, but your opponent has lost all 10 Bouncers. Another 25 Rowdies takes out his 10 Knifers on a one-for-one basis, and you can see where this is going. So unlike a Zerg Rush in Starcraft, which requires a swarm of enemies overwhelming your opponent's defenses, you carefully sacrifice just enough weenies to debilitate your target, striking once, taking your losses, and racking up losses until you've used your guys to burn through a ton of his units. This can lead to a final, massive sweeping attack with your other units, or just as a harassment tactic to deny a target the helpful defense that having a small horde of low-priority melee units brings.

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Keep in mind, everything I've written here is just my musings on potential strategy. It's not a 'how-to-win' guide, just more of a 'what to be aware of' guide. Each of these tactics has a way to defend against it, and it'll be up to you to figure out what those are, and how to best exploit them. Remember too that this is a game currently in development--just because a certain strategy works now doesn't mean it'll keep working in the future, especially if the devs implement new units, re-balance existing ones, tweak unit priority numbers, or change the way combat functions behind the scenes. In the end, Drug Wars is just a game, so make sure to keep it fun. And, in the meantime, follow @timcliff for his ultra-informative and in-depth write-ups.

Until next time, I'll see you in the Meth Lab!