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Total War: Arena

Total War: Arena > Guides > Skiy's Guides
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Total War Arena: Terrain
By Skiy
In a battle with units of equal strength, the smallest advantages can lead to the biggest victories. Knowing where to position your units and knowing what to avoid can ensure victory for yourself and your allies. This guide is about Terrain and how it affects you.
   
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Created by
Skiy
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Category: Gameplay Basics
Languages: English
Posted
Updated
7 Nov, 2015 @ 10:08pm
7 Nov, 2015 @ 10:15pm
1,122 Unique Visitors
20 Current Favorites
Guide Index
Overview
Introduction 
Infantry 
Cavalry 
Artillery 
Maps 
Fin 
Comments
Introduction
For those of you that are unaware, Total War Arena features various different terrain types across every map. There are eight different types of terrain you will encounter (so far) and while some offer no bonuses or negatives to your units, others can greatly affect whether you will win a fight in a one on one situation.

The eight terrain types:

  • Grass - This terrain is found all over the map, confusingly, even sand is "Grass". It offers no bonuses or negatives
  • Long Grass - This terrain hides units. It offers no bonuses or negatives
  • Dry Mud - This rare terrain reduces the Speed and Melee Defence of all units
  • Wet Mud - This terrain, commonly found next to water, significantly reduces Speed and Melee Defence of all units
  • Light Forest - This terrain reduces visibility and hides your units. It offers various bonuses and negatives to units based on weight class.
  • Forest - This terrain reduces visibility and hides your units. It offers various bonuses and negatives to units based on weight class.
  • Road - This terrain is common, but usually not used in battle (aside from Salernum). It doesn't give any negatives but offers some of the best bonuses to Heavy units
  • Shallow Water - This terrain lowers Speed and Melee Attack for all units.

By looking over the below stats, I hope the information will stay with players as they take to the battlefield, knowing that putting Heavy Infantry in a forest against Light Infantry will ensure they will lose the fight and cost their team the game.
Infantry
Terrain considers both Missile and Melee Infantry to be the same.

Light Infantry




Medium Infantry




Heavy Infantry




As you can see, some units are clearly more suited to some terrains, such as Light Infantry in Forest and Heavy Infantry on roads. Initially I wondered about the value of Medium Infantry and if it was worth ever taking them into battle, but after some consideration, it occured to me that Medium Infantry are less specialist and are able to take on enemies in various terrains without suffering from the larger penalties.
Cavalry
Terrain considers both Missile and Melee Cavalry to be the same.

Light Cavalry




Medium Cavalry




Heavy Cavalry




As you can see, Cavalry suffer greatly in forested areas at all weight classes (No surprise really). These units perform reasonably well in Shallow Water, so keep that in mind when you want to run Infantry down, as we know Infantry suffer a rather large Melee Attack and Speed penalty.
Artillery
Artillery is treated the same regardless of weight class, receiving no bonuses even if light units pack away their equipment.




Artillery receives no positive bonuses on any terrain, making them unique. They take large hits to speed in Mud and water, but tend only suffer range and damage debuffs in both types of forest.
Maps
There are currently five maps in rotation with a sixth one, Alpis Graia, just being announced. This below table is all the maps with the terrain types you'll find on them.

Fin
Thanks for taking the time to read this information. I understand there's a lot of numbers, not a lot of pictures and all of the information can be found in the game itself, but I figured it'd be smart to have them all together and easily readable (I hope).

This is the first guide I've ever published on steam, so any feedback is welcome. I want to thank the players in all my battles, especially my group, Seraphim Initiative, for letting me play with units I'm unfamiliar with just to get the proper stats.

See you on the battlefield,

Skiy.
11 Comments
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chosen 3 Feb, 2016 @ 12:28pm 
Think about it: Spears may win at first but the swordsmen can just push forwards, blocking the spears with their sheilds. Once the swordsmen and close, the spearmen cannot fight effectivy in such close combat.

Easy.
Dunpeal 20 Nov, 2015 @ 5:13am 
Continues:

I know that this game is not simulation, but just arcade skirmish experience, but would like for common sense to apply. Swords beating spears in formation style fight is a joke, but in "mash-pit" is quite realistic. Cavalry losing to swords is quite far from truth, sure you can charge from the back and win the engagement, but if your unit get stacked in the fight with them you can already drop them as dead unit.
Dunpeal 20 Nov, 2015 @ 5:12am 
Was wondering same about medium infantry. I'm still at tier 4, so I can't really comment on how things are at higher tiers, but from my limited experience medium suffer greatly in current system. If enemy infantry player is even remotely aware of buffs and debuffs that terrain gives they will not engage on unfavorable environment. Meaning heavies will not come close to shrouded areas, and light will not come from shadows.

Also, I'm interested in units relations. Please correct me where I'm wrong:
Swords beat any other infantry type (i.e. spears) regardless of their and enemy's class (i.e. heavy). Also, I've saw swords beat cavalry.
Spears and pikes beat cavalry, but spears vs pikes is pure randomness, depending will pike bug-out or lose moral etc.
Skiy  [author] 19 Nov, 2015 @ 5:06am 
@Sovery_Simple, there's no bonuses to infantry being shot at in a forest, it would however, make sense to have something like that. As of this moment there is only a debuff applied to the ranged unit in the forest.
Sovery_Simple 17 Nov, 2015 @ 1:15pm 
Hi, thanks for the list, but I couldn't help but wonder about ranged defenses in terrain. Does forest still give any bonuses to infantry being shot at by archers for example?
Jagg 12 Nov, 2015 @ 8:54pm 
@Beans thank you so much. that is incredibly helpful!
Skiy  [author] 12 Nov, 2015 @ 2:12pm 
@Jagg, sorry about that, Beans has the answer there :)
Beans 11 Nov, 2015 @ 6:14pm 
@Jagg - If you look on the Army browser all units are labed with 1 to 3 triangles that look like ^. Units with 1 are light and units with 3 are heavy. Roman T1 swords have one triangle, they are a light unit.
Jagg 11 Nov, 2015 @ 3:46pm 
How do you tell what category a unit falls into? As an example T1 swordsman for the romans?
Aven 8 Nov, 2015 @ 2:16am 
good job, really complex and interesting guide