WHAT:

Stacking allows flexiblity against your opponents.

During the battle, the unit with the lowest attack initative will always attack first.

1) Your top stack will always attack the most powerful stack that it can attack (note that it will only attack stacks that it is able to attack).

2)Flying Stacks will always attack the highest flying stack that it can.

3)Ranged Stacks will always attack the highest flying stack that it can first.

4)Melee stacks will always attack melee stacks first and cannot attack flying stacks or counter a ranged stack.

A lesson from this: You should usually put a flying or ranged stack as your top stack. Note that all the Ultimate stacks are either Flying or Ranged.

Let me give you an example:

Blue mage with the following stacking: 1)Mind Rippers 2)Ice Elementals 3)Archangels 4)Air Elementals 5)Sylphs 6)Sprites

Attacks a white mage with the following stacks: 1) Dominion 2) Archangels 3) Mindrippers 4) Angels 5) Unicorns 6) Nymphs

Mindrippers (from blue mage) should attack the Dominion first, then the Ice Elementals will attack the Archangels (from the white mage), then the archangels(from the blue mage) will attack the angels, then the air elementals should attack the mindrippers, then the slylphs should attack the unicorns, then the sprites should attack the nymphs.

WHY:

With the knowledge of how to stack, you can defend against your enemies more easily. You can place the order of your units to counter against the more common stacking of your enemies' color. Thus your defense increases.

Furthermore, if you know how a particular mage stacks in the game, you can create a stack to break his stacks. [This is important! Knowing how your opponent stacks will increase your chances of winning in battle.]

Remember to keep something in mind: Don't stick to one form of stacking in a war. The enemy can know & will know your stacking and through such means destroy you.

HOW:

In order to control stacking, the formula is as follows:

Number of units X Power rank X Modifier

Modifier:

Flying = 2.25

Melee = 1.5

Ranged = 1

That is the stack modifier formulae.

All flying units have their net power multipled by 2.25 because of their advantage over ground troops (i.e. Archangels).

Melee units, being the stronger ground troops, get a 1.5 multipier to their net power (i.e. Treants).

And ranged ground units do not get any multiplier at all (i.e Liches).

This is why it is very difficult to stack flying units under ground or ranged units.

A good stack is usually composed of a mixture of the three, having the ranged units stacked low, that way they can be out of reach from dangerous melee units.

Usually but not all of the time,

Flying units get beat up by ranged units example :

Mindipper beats Phoenix

Lich beats Red Dragon

Water Elemental beats Archangels

Ranged units get beat up by ground melee units example :

Treant beats Mind Ripper

Unicorn (with Sword of Light) beats Lich

And sometimes, flying units have an advantage over melee units

But of course, the attack resistances, attack power, and hit points must be taken into account.

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2001