Rise of the Witch King

Welcome to the new Tip of the Week! This Tip will help you use stances properly for swordsmen and archers. Using stances properly will help you a lot and sometimes turns the game in your favor and puts you in a great advantage. Most of the players use stances correctly during early and mid-game but in late game due to the intense fight they forget to put their units in the appropriate stance. If you manage to put your units in their correct stance even in late game, you can ensure yourself a great advantage over the opponent! Now let's see which stances and when they should be used for swordsmen and archers:

Swordsmen

Aggressive Stance: +25% Damage, -18% Armor, +100% Autoacquire Range
Defensive Stance: -15% Damage, +33% Armor, -90% Autoacquire Range

You have to use different stances in different situation, and the only way to get good at this is to practice a lot! Since each unit has three stances, let's see when to use which stance:

Aggressive Stance

1. Attacking a Building
Whenever you're attacking a building you should use Aggressive Stance. Even if your swordsmen are getting attacked you should use this stance since the damage done by most of the swordsmen units to the building is more important compared to the damage that they receive. It's better for your swordsmen to take down an enemy structure rather than to last longer but not succeed in taking down the enemy building.

2. Attacking Heroes Who Don't Have Splash Damage
Use attack stance if enemy Hero doesn't have splash damage. But even if enemy Hero has splash damage, Use attack Stance if your units die in one hit regardless of Stance, Battle Stance if it saves you from that fate, and Defensive Stance if Battle Stance isn't armor sufficient!

3. Chasing an Enemy Unit or Hero
You should use Aggressive Stance when chasing low health enemy hero or unit if you give the possibilty that your swordsmen hit the enemy hero or unit.

4. Attacking Enemy Cavalry that are Slowed Down
Cavalry are always superior to swordsmen but sometimes they get bogged down and experience speed reduction when entering into mass hordes of swordsmen in result of them not able to trample more. In this case you should finish them using Aggressive Stance before they escape from the heart of your hordes and trample your swordsmen once again.

Battle Stance

1. When too busy!
When you're too busy fighting just let your units use their default stance and pay more attention to more important things. Anyway, Your units shouldn't be in Battle Stance a lot.

Defensive Stance

1. Fighting Other Units and Heroes (Who Have Splash Damage)
Your swordsmen should always fight other units in Defensive Stance since the armor bonus is superior to the damage bonus you gain from Aggressive Stance. So whenever your swordsmen are fighting against enemy pikes, swordsmen, heroes, etc., they should be in Defensive Stance. Note: Some Swordsmen such as Goblin Warriors have such weak armor that they get killed in one shot by some (not all) other units even if they are in Defensive Stance. So it's better for them to be in Aggressive Stance to deal more damage! So it depends on you to decide whether your weak swordsmen die in one shot regardless of their stance or not. It all depends on your type of swordsmen and the type of unit who they're fighting against, for example your Goblin Warriors should be attacking in Aggressive Stance against strong swordsmen such as Black Numenoreans. But in a Goblin mirror they should be fighting in Defensive Stance against other Goblin Warriors...
This goes the other way aswell, For example Gondor Soldiers should always fight Goblin Warriors in Battle Stance since it takes only one hit for them to kill Goblin Warriors in Battle Stance instead of two hits in Defensive stance.

2. Whenever Under Attack by Archers
Your swordsmen should be in Defensive Stance if you intend to attack nearby archers who are attacking them. Don't forget that swordsmen are strong against archers so armor bonuses are very useful in such cases.

3. While Retreating
Since Defensive Stance does not affect the speed of swordsmen in moving, it's better to retreat them in Defensive Stance because of the extra armor.

4. While Moving
Moving in Defensive stance is the best thing for Swordsmen. If you can pay enough attention to your Swordsmen Stance then put them in Defensive stance since the extra armor is important.