Picking your first ground pair

Note

In the Overview, I explain my thinking. This is a fairly long article, but contains a lot of useful background information if you want to understand how I arrived at these conclusions. If you just want to be told what to do, you can skip it and dive right in here.

For Free to Play Players:

This will be the fourth general you look at. It is lower priority than your Mounted General, Ranged General, and Wall General.

Trajan will be your main general. He honestly isn’t great, but there are no better options available to free players.

Trajan must have the Ground HP skill book.

There are NO good free assistants. You will want to look for a premium assistant that you can win. There are a few ways for even free players to do this, but it is hard.

Look for any of (this is an ordered list, but your options are likely to be extremely limited, so take what you can get):

• Aurelian
• Alessandra¹
• Epaminondas²
• Maeda Toshiie (I recommend against him in case you become a light spender)
• Turenne²
• Lu Xun**
• Guan Yu
• Basil II
• Carus
• Scipio Africanus (I recommend against him in case you become a light spender)
• Soult²
• Alexander the Great (I recommend against him in case you become a light spender)

Keeping in mind the one mandatory skill book above, spread the following 5 skill books between your two generals:

• Ground Troop Attack
• Ground Troop Speed
• Ground Troop Defense
• March Size
• March Speed

Caution

Specific General Notes

• While Lu Xun has the highest attack buff, he has abysmal defense and HP buffs. As such, I recommend against him. Survivability is absolutely crucial in ground troops.
• Note that if you use Epaminondas, Turenne, or Soult, you cannot use the Ground Troop Attack skill book on either general.
• Note that if you use Alessandra, she must have the March Size Increase Skill Book.

For light spenders

Stay away from the temptation to invest in Elise. While until Aurelian, she was theoretically the best ground general out there, that is only true if you can give her a dragon. You are likely to only have 2 dragons for a LONG time - one for ranged, and one for mounted. Elise stinks without a dragon. While Ludwig is not quite as attractive as Elise, he suffers from the same fatal flaw, and so should be avoided for the same reason.

I strongly recommend one of the following as your main general:

• Guan Yu (fragments available from the VIP Premium Packages for $50, and from events)
• Carus (fragments available fairly regularly if you buy the alliance shop card for $20/month)

From what I have found so far, these two will be the easiest to ascend of the premium ground generals. This is why I recommended against Maeda, Scipio and Alexander, as each of these will not pair with at least one, and sometimes both of the two ground generals I am recommending as main generals. Sticking to one of the ones below will give you the greatest flexibility/power trade-off.

An observant reader will notice that the same objection holds true for Aurelian. However, a Trajan/Aurelian combination is almost as strong as a Carus/Alessandra combination, and allows for the possibility that you might get extremely lucky in events and someday be able to ascend him. Aurelian is such a strong option, especially considering that he does not require a dragon, that it is hard to say no to him should you win him. After-all, he currently is the lead general for four of the top five and five of the top ten pairings.

Look for the following generals as assistant (ordered list):

• Alessandra (217)¹
• Turenne (205)²
• Basil II (199)
• Soult (182)²
• Trajan (163) - start with him, but try to avoid investing rune stones and replace him when you get someone higher up the list

Follow the same skill book recommendation as the F2P above.

Footnotes

1. If you use Alessandra, she must have the March Size Increase Skill Book. ↩ ↩²

2. Using Turenne or Soult means that neither general can have the Ground Attack Increase Skill Book. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵