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Empires & Puzzles: Strategies for Titans and War

Small Giant has really raised the bar for Match-3 Puzzle games with Empires & Puzzles. With the addition of several unique Game Modes (Titans and Wars included), there’s a lot to explore. Titans and Wars are both valuable ways of getting some of the rarest items in Empires & Puzzles. Doing well in these two events only increases your chances of these rare items. Let’s look at some techniques for increasing your Titans and War scores in Empires & Puzzles, and thus your odds of better items!


Titans

Titans are the toughest enemies in the game. You will need help from your Alliance in defeating any Titan, but there are a few things you can do to boost your own damage. Let’s dive into some ticks and tricks in our Empires & Puzzles Titans and War Guide to help you beat the Titans.

Items to use against Titans

Items are a simple way of boosting your damage in all battles in Empires & Puzzles. Specifically, against Titans damage boosts and defence debuffs are king. Though the odd defence buff doesn’t hurt either. Ideally you want these effects on your Heroes Special Skills, but Items are a good substitute. If you are facing 6-star or higher Titans, you will want to bring an Antidote to remove their debuffs. Not all Titans have debuffs on their Special Skills, and you can check this before launching your attack:

Empires & Puzzles: Titans Special Skills
Check out a Titans Special Skill before fighting it!

Here is a brief breakdown of the items you should consider taking against a Titan:

  • The Bear or Dragon Banners will give you a decent attack boost.
  • Antidotes and Super Antidotes will remove the Titan’s debuffs.
  • Attack items are generally not worth it as they do very little damage compared to your Heroes.
    • Newer players may find Arrow Attacks useful if a Titan is killing their entire team before time runs out.
  • Mana items can be useful if your damage is reliant on a particular Heroes Special Skill.
  • Health/Resurrection items are generally not worthwhile due to the low time limit of Titan battles.
  • There is no defense debuff on an item, so it’s worth prioritizing your Heroes for this.

When you unlock the Hunters Lodge there will be much more to consider (particularly Giant Harpoons). The Hunters Lodge is a late-game addition to Empires & Puzzles, but the above is relevant throughout the game.

Colour Stacking

We mentioned this in our Beginners Guide, and against Titans is where Colour Stacking really shines. Due to the way the Attack and Defence stats function, each additional Hero you take of colour is slightly stronger than just adding the Heroes Attack stats together. With the high Health of Titans, every small advantage adds up to a big difference over the entire Alliance.

Colour Stacking is a gamble, as you can get boards with very little of one colour. But when you get favourable boards, the increase in damage is substantial. Colour Stacking also allows you to focus on one colour for that fight. If you mostly match your Stacked colour, you will do WAY more damage than normal.

There is a limit to Colour Stacking, which you will only work out though experimenting. If a strong-colour Hero is much weaker than a neutral-colour hero, you might actually reduce your damage by swapping them. You also need to consider what Special Skills they are bringing. Healers are typically not much use against Titans, but a unique buff/debuff might be worth a reduction in Power.

Keep matching!

Titan battles are only 90 seconds long, which means every second matter so much more. This may seem obvious, but every second you’re not doing anything is a second wasted. One of the best ways to boost your damage against Titans is to simply keep matching tiles. In Empires & Puzzles, it’s rare that really good moves are difficult to spot. It can happen, but as you play more you will become better at spotting them quickly. As such, it is rarely correct to take time observing the board for the “best” move in a Titan battle. If your board is always active so is your damage, so keep those tiles moving!

Choosing the correct Heroes

I mentioned this briefly under Colour Stacking, and it’s worth reiterating. Choosing the correct Heroes is a key part of Titan battles. It’s not always obvious, and often the best way to learn in Empires & Puzzles is by experimenting. There are a few things to consider when choosing which Heroes to use against a Titan:

  • What Colour is the Titan?
    • Use the Colour Wheel to Colour Stack the Titans weakness.
  • Does the Titan apply a debuff?
    • Bring a Hero which counters that debuff (overriding it with a buff, dispelling or preventing debuffs on allies)
  • What do my Heroes do already?
    • Try not to duplicate buff/debuff effects if you have equally strong alternatives.
    • Duplicate effects aren’t bad, but the more unique ones you can apply the more damage you’ll do.
  • Am I bringing too many Healers?
    • Healers don’t provide damage unless your team would be defeated before the battle ends (90 seconds) without them.
    • Direct Damage is almost always better than Healing.
    • Healers that give buffs/debuffs (e.g. Boldtusk) can be worthwhile if it’s a unique effect for your team.
Boldtusk is one of the few healers worth taking against Titans.
Boldtusk is a great Healer/Buffer combo!

Wu Kong is one of the most valuable Heroes for Titan damage

It’s worth a special mention for Wu Kong. Wu Kong is one of the most accessible Heroes which can massively increase your Titan damage. He has a unique buff (aside from 1 Legendary Hero), which stacks with other Attack buffs. While the miss chance is negative, nearly tripling your Heroes Attack is well worth the trade-off, believe me.

Wu Kong has one of the best buffs for fighting Titans.
Wu Kong has a strong and unique buff!

Combined with any other Attack buff or Defence debuff, Wu Kong is among the single largest boosts to Titan Damage in Empires & Puzzles. As a Season 1 Epic Hero, Wu Kong is also very accessible, even to F2P players. I take Wu Kong into almost every Titan battle (the exception being Yellow titans).


War

As the only directly competitive game mode in Empires & Puzzles, there’s a lot to consider in War. War strategies are best discussed with your Alliance, and anything written here comes second to anything your Alliance says. There are a few ways you can improve your War capabilities regardless of your Alliance’s strategy. Let’s get into the tips and tricks to improve your War strategies in our Empires & Puzzles Titans and War guide

Level up your Troops

While you can only use each Hero once in War, you can use a Troop as many times as you want. This means, for War specifically, it’s worth prioritising improving one or two Troops of each Colour. As Troops will improve every Hero you use, upgrading Troops becomes more valuable than levelling extra Heroes.

Carefully consider the War Aids

War Aids only affect Defending Teams, so you need to plan your Attacks with these Defensive bonuses in mind. There are 3 types of War Aid, one of which will be active in every War:

  • Attack Boost: a stacking and undispellable +10% Attack bonus every time it activates.
  • Arrow Barrage: 25% damage (of current Health) to all Attacking Heroes each time it activates.
  • Field Aid: Recovers 20% max Health for each (alive) Defending Hero every time it activates.

Each Aid comes with its own challenges and considerations for Attackers. War Aids activate before the enemy’s turn, and recharge faster when there are fewer enemy Heroes alive.

Attack Boost

Attack Boost is the Aid which changes your strategy the least. You still want to kill a couple of Heroes quickly, and you don’t want the battle to take too long. The biggest difference is you’ll want to kill the enemy damage dealers early. If they stack up too many Attack Boosts, you’ll risk them one-shotting a lot of your Heroes.

Arrow Barrage

Arrow Barrage does damage based on your Heroes current Health, which gives you a couple of options. Firstly, you could bring a Healer or two on the Attack to keep your Heroes topped up. As long as you time heals well, this effectively turns the fight into a relatively normal raid battle. Alternatively, you could plan to bust through the enemy lines and kill them as quickly as possible, without Healers. When your Heroes have low Health the Arrow Barrage will be fairly meaningless. This does rely on your opponent’s not being able to activate a multi-target attack, or they could eliminate all your low Health Heroes in one go.

Field Aid

Field Aid is considered the most frustrating War Aid to play against, as it can significantly reduce the points you earn if timed poorly. It’s best to focus enemy Tanks first to prevent rapid Field Aids rendering a battle impossible later in a fight. You may need to lower your estimate of enemies you can kill if you’re finding Field Aid difficult. I find fighting enemies approximately 10% lower than my Attacking team’s Power about right. This is particularly important for players with less diverse Hero pools.

The 3 War Aids in Empires & Puzzles
One of these Aids is randomly selected for each War.

Remember, you can always Flee from a War battle. Fleeing just before a Field Aid activates makes your damage stick and scores more points than after the activation. If a Hero ends a fight than more Health than it started on, it will reset to the lower amount. So, you can’t “undo” damage done in previous battles, though you will score 0 points for that Hero.


Tank Busting / Clean-up

This is a more complicated strategy but is very important for newer players to utilise with their weaker teams. While it is optimal to kill all 5 enemy Heroes on the first attack, this isn’t always possible. Particularly when your remaining Heroes are outmatched, or there isn’t enough time left to wait for enemy respawns. In these scenarios, you can always Tank Bust or provide Clean-up, as any damage or kills you achieve in a battle sticks for any future battles.

Tank Busting

It means taking multiple Heroes who are strong against the enemy Tank (central Hero). The aim here is to kill the enemy Tank and open up the flanks for future Attacks. You should take multiple Heroes of the color the enemy Tank is weak to. With this strategy, a team of Common Heroes can kill a Legendary Hero with a little luck on the board. You will not score many points directly like this, but you will open up a lot of points for your allies.

Clean-up

It is the reverse of this, finishing off enemy teams that your allies have softened earlier. This still requires a reasonably diverse line-up to utilize the enemy’s weakness but is also possible with weaker Heroes. There are more individual points available in Clean-up due to Bonus Points, but it’s the overall score that matters. As far as I can tell, there is no difference in War rewards based on your personal score.

With some co-ordination, it is easily possible to take down even the toughest enemy teams with a couple of attacks. It is important to communicate so your Alliance has a mix of Tank Busters and Clean-up crew in any War.


Fleeing at the right time

We briefly mentioned this under Field Aid, but making use of the Flee function can be helpful during Wars. When the enemy has access to Healing (via a Hero or Field Aid), a good heal can reset their team. Points are based on the net damage you do (i.e. starting Health minus ending Health) and each enemy Hero will have their starting Health set to the lower of these 2 values. This means you can Flee just before a Heal and lock the ending Health values at a much lower number.

The message you will see when Fleeing during a War.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is run away!

Obviously, if most of your Heroes are alive and you believe you can still kill the enemies post-Heal, don’t Flee. But when you are down to 1 or 2 Heroes, Fleeing at the right moment can improve your War score. This is particularly relevant when using weaker teams for Tank Busting or Clean-up.


Conclusion

Hopefully, this has given you some ideas about how to improve your Titans and War scores in Empires & Puzzles. While there is no substitute for better Heroes, these tactics should give you some ideas for making the most out of your current roster. Let us know if these strategies have helped you! And let us know if you have any tips or tricks of your own for improving Titans or War scores in Empires & Puzzles! And above all, have fun developing your Empire in Empires & Puzzles!


Did you find our Empires & Puzzles Titans and War tips and tricks useful? Let us know in the comment section below!

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