At the moment this guide is somewhat small, as I am still learning all the mechanics of the game like most people. However, in my experience with Cyclopes I noticed already a few differences when compared to other races, most of which are not mentioned in game (and I found in the developer blogs from months ago). Also, there are indeed a couple of ‘tricks’* too, which I don’t know whether they will be permanent in the game. Keep in mind that this is an EA game with a competitive online gameplay, so balancing patches may occur in the future.

*By tricks I don’t mean, of course, exploits/glitches or anything that results in your fighter being overpowered. I refer to not-so-obvious tactics and strategies you might have taken for useless because it didn’t work with other races.

I think the guide should get started with an overview of the stats for your average Cyclops. First off, I won’t dare making stupid approximations in numbers, because there is no way to tell the exact defence or health points of a character unless you look into the game scripts; for such a reason I’m going to be using the ‘measurement unit’ the game offers: stacks of bars for the main stats, hearts for the health pool. An exception to this are the non-blunt attack value and the movement ‘speed’. As for the damage threshold of our fighters, we do see a number which is largely based on the weapon; as I complete this guide more values are going to be added for each weapon type in order to provide the user an accessible comparison between the Cyclops and other melee races.

A lvl 4+ Cyclops, with a light sword, no helmet and a small shield has the following stats:

7.5 out of 10 Hearts (the assumption that this means 75 hit points might be correct, but unless a developer confirms this, I won’t change it)
3/5 Movement tiles
13* DMG
1 3rd of a DEF bar
1 3rd of a BLOCK bar
(almost) 2 DODGE bars

Has the following powers: ?% Chance of slinging units away with a power blow, which also decreases their mov. tiles next turn;

*This value represents the whole damage, but there is something special about it which I’m going to show in a moment.


Another thing that is not really evident in-game, and may or may not be explained in one of the many tooltips appearing in the loading screen, is that all fighters gain more basic stats as they increase in level. The amount of stats that is gained for the Cyclops will require of me some effort and time but I’m going to get back at this section and update it as I learn more of it. So far I can tell that:

A lvl 1-4 Cyclops has 7/10 HP as stated above.
A lvl 4-??? has 7.5/10 HP. My most levelled Cyclops is at level 26. The health increase is the same as the level 4 one.

In short this means: heaviest weapon, heaviest helmet, heaviest shield.

My experience in PvE has taught me that a heavy loaded human is a thing, and an heavy loaded Cyclops is another. Meaning, while the stat loss is clearly there for both races, it does not happen in the same degree. If you load them too much, humans have a decisive decrease in attack, defence and movement to the point they become almost useless in battle; Cyclops keep at least two movement tiles (a small stat drop being 3 the base value), and by using big mallets (this is fundamental!) they have only a moderate loss of damage. I’m going to show you why I believe an over-encumbered Cyclops tank is a viable option and certainly a better one compared to a 90-100% loaded tank. See the screenshots below.





This one on the left has a big sword, the one on the right a medium sword.

.................

I generally keep my tank as you can see below, the one on the left wearing the viking sort of helmet.


Now you might be wondering:

The point is, unlike humans, who have no access to heavy mallets, the rule that the heavier a fighter the smaller his damage is nullified. So if you want a very powerful tank you can use the heavy mallet high damage threshold at your advantage, overloading your fighter so that it still has good damage (including a blunt bonus) and yet very good armour.

This is the trick that I anticipated earlier. With any light sword, your hits are doubled for a total of, well, two. I have found this perk is actually a very good one and makes light swords a weapon of choice for one of my 3 big boys. I think the best way to go with such swords is to use one with an elemental bonus, on a very light armoured Cyclops. As Danpaladin stated in a comment on the discussions, the heavier the weapon the higher the rate of applying elemental effects to enemies you hit, so you won’t have an extremely high chance of poisoning an enemy fighter, but even if it is a 10% for each hit, then you’ve got 20%. You must also apply the same reasoning to other effects such as the slinging/flying perk which all Cyclops have.

Look at this GIF[gfycat.com]

In conclusion of this section, a word of warning. It seems that having that 13 of damage I mentioned earlier divided in 2 separate strikes, makes harming armoured opponents even harder. I'm going to update this in the next weeks as I get more reliable info on the matter, but think about it:

Cyclops A strikes opponent B, with a damage pool of 6.5 (?), that damage is reduced by the opponent's helmet which grants B a DEF of 2 points for a resulting attack of 3.
A strikes B again, resulting in a damage of 4. The turn is over, the damage output was 7.
A strikes B with a medium sword, dmg pool is 13. That damaged is reduced by B's helmet by 2, for a damage of 11. Of course like I said, this needs to be tested, but this was my experience, especially as it seems the light swords suffer a higher damage reduction compared to medium swords, when striking armoured opponents.

I maintain the idea that most teams composed by 1 or 2 unit types only are crap, tactically speaking. The exception to this are humans and Cyclops due to their versatility – the two fellows share in fact a common feature: high gear customisation. With a different load-out for each of your Cyclops, a team might be composed by one mallet-wielding tank, a medium fellow carrying a mallet too, and a light cyclops with a small sword and perhaps a throwing item. I find that this variety allows you to face most situations decently enough and without getting bored, but there are really too many balanced strategies that mine is certainly not the only option.


For PvE I can guarantee the best tactic is to go tanked up and with 2 of your big boys carrying mallets and a third carrying a sword. Given the presence of non helmeted people on the battlefield, a single sword Cyclops should be more than fine. Since it will take its time to catch up with those quick little bastards we know as archers; either deploy it with no armour to have 3 moving tiles or give it a medium shield.



I hope my guide has been to your liking. I am welcome to any suggestion, correction, and will credit helpful readers accordingly.