Today is another post for the Art of War contest, which a contest about strategy to help player dominate there opponent in three kingdoms online. Today it will be about “Using your demolisher effectively” 

Planning where gonna be your demolisher city.

Since the demolisher use six grains a hour, you will need a city that can produce a lot of grain or you will have to reduce the number of other unit you have.

Option one: in your main

Since your main can have resources at level 20 that mean your main will probably have a lot of grain so it can sustain the extra food required for your demo.

Step to have it :

During beginner protection focus on your field and completing quest for the extra cash, try to have 200 of pop by the end of beginner protection because that will give you around 300 of your base unit, you will need this to plunder. If you manage to build 500 soldiers by the end of beginner protection that’s even better.

By the end of beginner protection your field should be at level 5-6 and drill ground at level 5 at the very least.

With your soldier plunder all those zero point cities around you, they hold 800 of each resources so that mean you have to send 54 militias, 80 swordsman or  107 spearmens. And they refill to 800 every 2 days, so attack them every 2 days.

1st step build your drill ground to level 10

Now what, alternate between your ironwork and drill ground until they are level 20, you will have to upgrade the warehouse from time to time.

I you can build some unit to in case of an attack and to plunder.

You will discover something magical is that with the demolisher if you have it and they don’t you can juste prevent them from growing be destroying there building.

A city dedicated to demolisher

Instead of you main you can build a city just for demolisher or a mix of infantry and demolisher.

Pure demolisher city

This is probably insane, you will expect you other city to defend this city.

You build it the same way has explained for the main city except that you need to build some troop to so you can plunder at the same time your building.

The best spot for demo it’s probably a 4 timberland with 5 stone and 3 iron tend to require mostly stone, but that not entirely true since building the ironwork required a lot of iron

A city that have mix of infantry and demolisher.

Since infantry unit are slow the are a good fit with the demolisher and while your leveling your Ironwork and drill ground to level 20 your infantry can plunder surrounding cities.

Depending on the kingdoms the build look like this
Shu
Glaiveman + demolisher
Wei
Guardsman + demolisher
Wu
Sheild Infantry + demolisher

They all require a more iron but since the demolishers require mostly stone and wood probably 4 spot for every resource is better while 3 wood, 4 stone, 5 iron might work, demolisher usually need 900-950 wood each so you might be a little low in wood.

Where to aim

Aim the granary and the warehouse first, so he won’t be able to have the food for support and not enough resources to rebuild.

Aim the farmland after, his city food output will fall in the red and he won’t be able to produce any troop.

Note, if planning to take the city with a lobbyist here what you should do.

Aim his annexe, if you want to steal the city, don’t aim the mansion – It’s worthless, you won’t destroy the resource fields that are more than level 10 or more by destroying the mansion and you won’t be able to lobby is city if you destroy the mansion. Why because you’re confusing main city with city with a mansion.

Yes when you build a mansion in a city this city become your main city, but if the mansion is destroyed the city remain the main city. And the main city can’t be converted by a lobbyist.

The only way to change the main city is to build the mansion in another city.

Other Tactics

Destroying surrounding cities
If your planning a war or they are to strong to strike, you can always send your demolisher to destroy the granary and warehouse of the cities that you know he is farming.

Cutting him this source of revenue will slow down is unit production. and give you time to prepare for war.
Not that if they found out, they might get angry…

Countering the demolisher

Demolisher are actually very easy to kill if you have some defensive unit.

If you know that he is sending a clearing wave before sending his demolisher (it’s obvious when the attack come from a county since a county cannot build demolisher). Just pull your city army out before the clearing wave hit and return your army before the demolisher hit.

Note that demolisher cost a lot of resource and are slow so if you have a lot of offensive cavalry unit, you can attack his city and steal his food.

Your cavalry might even arrives back before the attack land and if your enemy food consumption is in the red a bunch of is unit will die.

The monitor office reduces the effectiveness of the demo so if you can build a monitor in every city (how to here).

Heroes can have a skill and an item that can help by increasing the durability of your building (like Lord Lu’s secret script)