Chapter 72 Knight Retinues and Mercenaries
When archers advance to rangers, 200 gold coins per unit is quite expensive, but their subsequent advancements are even more expensive.
Rangers have two advancement directions. One is to spend 500 gold to advance to a mercenary, and the other is to spend 400 gold to advance to a knight's retinue.
Xu Lai has 3 rangers. Just like the long archers, he first spent 900 gold and advanced one each to come out and have a look.
Such an approach seems to make Xu Lai's troops more and more disorganized, but there is nothing that can be done. Xu Lai believes that this is a necessary sacrifice.
After all, if he can't even distinguish the specific characteristics of these arms, good from bad, and just piles up scale in one direction, once he makes a mistake in the middle, the loss will be much greater than now.
After advancing, Xu Lai will slowly study their characteristics and applicable situations.
The two advancement directions of the ranger, the knight retinue puts away the sword and bow, changes to the sword and shield, gives up the long-range ability, and becomes a melee armored knight.
Unlike the previous rangers who only had iron sheets on the outside, the knight's retinue can be said to be a complete armored knight.
The war horse under the crotch has been upgraded again, from a prairie war horse to a war horse. It is also covered with a layer of chain armor made of small iron rings strung together.
The knight himself also wore fine chainmail, a steel helmet on his head, steel boots on his feet, and held a round steel shield and a standard imperial cavalry stainless steel sword.
The mercenaries still held swords and bows, but they threw away a quiver and replaced it with a cavalry-strengthened combat spear of about 3 meters.
Of course, the mercenaries' weapons have also been upgraded. The knives have been replaced by heavy-duty war knives, the bows have been reinforced recurve bows, the arrows have been tapered arrows, and the horses have been upgraded to field war horses.
Different from the knight's retinue, the defensive equipment of the mercenaries is not chain mail, but zhao armor and a closed helmet that covers the entire head.
With the addition of armored shoulder pads, bearskin gloves, armored leather boots and half-length armor for war horses, the mercenary is more like a fully armed cavalry.
The difference in equipment between the two alone is enough to explain their respective uses, but to truly distinguish them, we have to start with their characteristics.
[Knight Retinue]: Level 5 cavalry, each consumes 1 unit of food per day.
Characteristic 1: Charge, after use, the movement speed is increased by 100%, the physical consumption of the mount is increased by 100%, and the damage of the knight's followers is increased by 10% for every 30 meters moved, with a maximum limit of 100%.
Note: The charge stops due to various reasons, and the damage increase effect lasts for 3 seconds and then disappears. (Such as being blocked, stopped by a spear, stopped and killed, etc.)
Characteristic 2: Defensive posture, after entering this posture, the body armor increases by 15%, the shield basic armor +15, and the shield durability + 15%, health temporarily +50 points (temporary health is consumed first), attack power reduced by 30%.
(Note: Temporary life only appears once in the same battle)
Characteristic 3: Offensive posture. After entering this posture, the attack power is increased by 20%; the body armor is reduced by 15%, and the shield's basic armor is -15 ( Minimum is 0), shield durability -15%.
Characteristic 4: Mounted infantry. Excellent knights are first of all excellent infantry. The knight's retinue dismounts and fights without losing attack and defense, and has +5 agility.
[Mercenary]: Level 5 mounted archer, each consumes 1 unit of food per day.
Characteristic 1: Sprint, double consumption of war horse's physical strength, increase: 100% movement speed, additional damage to movement speed increased to 50%, can be activated if physical strength is greater than 40%
Feature 2: The waist and horse are integrated into one, and the hit rate will no longer be reduced when riding on horseback.
Characteristic 3: Follow the trend, 1. Kill the opponent while sprinting, and there is a 30% chance of still maintaining the sprinting state.
2. When killing an opponent with a sword, there is a 30% chance of causing the same damage to units on the target side.
This time, Xu Lai did not hesitate too much, and the other ranger was decisively promoted to a more expensive mercenary.
In fact, according to Xu Lai’s understanding, the potential of knight retinue is actually greater, because in the empire’s army sequence, knight retinue can be promoted to level 6 knights, level 7 great knights or level 7 saints. knight. Further up, whether you are a Grand Knight or a Paladin, you can continue to advance.
As for mercenaries, they can be promoted to rangers, and after being promoted to level 7 heroes, it seems that the sequence has come to an end.
That is to say, mercenaries can be upgraded up to two times, while knight followers can be upgraded 3 times in the sequence alone.
According to the secret information that Xu Lai was instilled, there is a final and only way to the knight route, which is an existence on the same level as the empire's highest protector, the ninth-level Seraph.
The only fearless knight at level 9 can only grow from the route of knight retinue.
Of course, Xu Lai can't think so far-reaching now. Think about it, just by promoting these three level 4 rangers to level 5, he went through a harpy battle, and then slaughtered an astonishing number of cavemen, and also monopolized It takes most of the experience.
This is only level 4. The next level 5 will be upgraded to level 6, and level 6 will be upgraded to level 7. Just think about it, it will be a huge bottomless pit.
Being able to successfully upgrade these two mercenaries to level 7, Xu Lai could laugh out of his dreams and there was no need to think about things after level 7.
He only chooses promotion based on the current situation. The knight's retinue is undoubtedly more balanced, and the 4 characteristics fully illustrate this point.
Whether it is fighting on horseback or on foot, whether it is offense or defense, the knight retinue can adapt to it and is also very powerful.
However, the mercenaries have thicker armor and better horses. The most important thing is that they can fight from a distance, which can reduce the casualties of Xu Lai, who is seriously short of troops.
Based on this alone, Xu Lai would definitely choose to be promoted to a mercenary in the early stage.
Besides, although mercenaries only have three characteristics, each of them is designed for offense, which is relatively more popular with Xu Lai.
After being promoted to three cavalrymen, Xu Lai's savings dropped by another 1,400 gold, leaving just over 1,200.
The gold coins Xu Lai can currently obtain are still only 50 gold provided by the gold box every day. The village office's tax revenue is only a few dozen gold a month, which is really not worth worrying about.
Now Xu Lai's subordinates are of high rank, and each promotion costs a lot, not to mention that they have to continue to build various buildings.
Now he wanted to open all the treasure boxes in his hand, but after thinking about it, he held back. There were many resource piles guarded by wild monsters along the way, including those near his own village. Finished exploring.
And when the arrow boat comes out, he can also go to the river to salvage those floating objects. There is no need to rush to open the treasure chest now. He can wait until everything is exhausted.
After upgrading these three cavalry, Xu Lai ordered them to eat and rest. Everyone else has been upgraded, but he has not yet selected a skill.
Upgraded to level 9, and the rewarded attribute points were added to strength, increasing his strength to 13 points.
The one-handed weapon at level 3 gains the ability to hit a critical blow, which consumes an additional 10% of physical strength and deals 180% damage to the opponent.
The most critical thing is of course the choice of specialization. The two specializations that appeared this time have both never appeared before.
One is primary defense and the other is primary tactics.
It is these two specializations that make Xu Lai hesitate until now.
(End of this chapter)