Citadel Calculator

The march for an Elven or a Cursed Citadel, built from what you have. It plays the fight out with your bonuses and gives the march that loses nothing, or the one that loses least when that cannot be done.

First choiceNo losses
When your bonuses allow it: the march with the fewest stacks that loses nothing, whichever side opens.
OtherwiseOne tank
Your highest flying guardsman takes the citadel's blows, and the march is sized to lose as few as possible.

Citadel

The citadel you are attacking, and its level.

Bonuses

The strength bonus of each group in the march, as the barracks or an attack report show it. Counters are added for you, against whatever each stack goes for.

Mark what you have and the groups that go show up here.

The march

Stacks—

Troops—

Expected losses—

Mark what you have to see a march.

How it works

Damage builds up on a stack: what a strike does not kill stays on it and counts towards the next. So going without losses is a matter of spreading the citadel's blows over several stacks, each holding units that outlast everything that lands on it. The calculator takes your troops with the most health per unit to take the blows, your strongest silver troops to kill the citadel's stacks before they swing again, and enough siege to bring the walls down in the siege strike, and plays out the combinations until one loses nothing.
When levels 10, 15 or 20 cannot be done without losses with your bonuses, the march is sized the way level 30 is: your highest flying guardsman takes every blow, and the losses shown are what the fight costs when the citadel opens or you do, whichever is worse.
At levels 25 and 30, when it does not go without losses, every stack kills the stack it goes for, except the one that goes for the Bear: that one leaves it with so little health that what survives kills nobody when it strikes back.
With Fire Phoenixes, a Phoenix stack goes for the Bear; without them, a Fearsome Manticore goes for the Pegasus Riders.
The stacks that come after each hit for a little less than the smallest stack still standing, so none of them overshoots whatever it lands on.
The stack on the Life Dragon takes the citadel's whole opening blow, which is the worst case. Those losses are added on top, plus 15 to spare.
Monsters and mercenaries never die: a march in which the fight kills any of them is thrown out and built again without it. And a weak monster is never a cleanup stack: that job is done just as well by a silver flying unit, a Vulture if nothing else, without spending Dragon Coins.
Counters are added to your bonus, not multiplied by it. That is what the game's own journal shows: the «additional damage granted by the squad's features» is exactly strength × count × counter.

Citadel Calculator

Citadel

Bonuses

What you have

Guardsmen

Specialists

Engineer Corps

Monsters

Mercenaries

The march

Expected battle report

How it works