Note
In the Overview, I explain my thinking. This is a fairly long article, but contains a lot of useful background information if you want to understand how I arrived at these conclusions. If you just want to be told what to do, you can skip it and dive right in here.
For Free to Play Players:
This will be the fourth general you look at. It is lower priority than your Mounted General, Ranged General, and Wall General.
Spread the following 5 skill books between your two generals:
- Ground Troop Attack
- Ground Troop Speed
- Ground Troop Defense
- March Size
- March Speed
As your sixth skill book, there’s a fair amount of debate. Pick either
- Ground (Movement) Speed
- Siege Range Bonus
Caution
Specific General Notes
- Some of the ground generals with the highest attack buffs have very low HP and defense buffs. Survivability is absolutely crucial in ground troops, and so the balance between the attack statistic and the other two will be different for this type. Your milage may vary.
- Note that a number of desirable choices conflict with one or more of the above skill books. If that happens, fill in with ranged skill books.
- Note that some generals have march size buffs in their built in skill book, and yet do not conflict with the march size book. If you have one of these, give that one the March Size book.
For light spenders
Stay away from the temptation to invest in Elise. While until Aurelian, she was theoretically the best ground general out there, that is only true if you can give her a dragon. You are likely to only have 2 dragons for a LONG time - one for ranged, and one for mounted. Elise stinks without a dragon. While Ludwig is not quite as attractive as Elise, he suffers from the same fatal flaw, and so should be avoided for the same reason. At the time of writing, both Elise and Ludwig are hopelessly outclassed even with dragons by generals with covenants anyway.