After some playtesting, the necessity for some more explicit synergies has become pretty evident; but I still wanna try to stay away from the way Autobattlers have done it so far: I don’t want them to be completely explicit, but closer to what card games do with archetypes, I want to encourage players to use some units together, but also not force them and let them experiment and find unorthodox combinations.

I decided to start with just 3 archetypes and add some slight overlapping in units. The archetypes are:

• Vanguards: The most basic archetype, in CCGs terms, it would be the quintessential midrange. Stereotypical bruisers, good survivability, good damage, and good crowd controls, but don’t excel in anything. Mostly melee.
• Spells Matter: The “combo” archetype, the units have very clear windows of power; are very reliant on their abilities.
• Berserkers: The “aggro” archetype, what they lack in survivability they get into raw damage.

Then I need to define the sub-categorization of units to define their role in their archetypes:

• Core: the most important units of the archetype, without at least one of them the plan falls apart.
• Enablers: Help to unleash the full potential of the core units.
• Support: Help filling in the holes the archetype might have and support the overall plan.
• Payoffs: Usually only tier 5 units, heavily reliant on one specific archetype, but when put into the right composition are extremely strong. Are not necessary for a strong team composition.

The next thing to talk about is the subdivision into tiers. There will be 5 tiers of units; a higher player level means a higher chance of finding higher tier units, but also lower tier units. This is pretty in line with how auto-battlers have done it so far. Usually though, a higher tier unit has better base stats only. Given my removal of explicit synergies, I want to try to also give these units additional spells that work as a point of synergy within their archetype(s). Right now I’m thinking of adding 1 additional spell every other level, ending with something like:

• Tier 1 and 2: 1 spell
• Tier 3 and 4: 2 spells
• Tier 5 : 3 spells

As for the number of units for each tier, my starting numbers are:

Tier	Number of Unit
1	12
2	12
3	12
4	9
5	6

For this week is all, now that I’ve put down the general stuff, I will go into details for each archetype and unit next week.