Stick War Strategy Guide: Every Unit, What It Costs and What It Beats

Stick War looks like a click-and-watch game until the second battle, when the enemy brings a unit your army cannot beat and your gold runs dry. Every battle is really an economy game with a fight at the end. Here is what each unit costs, what it is for, and how to spend a campaign’s worth of gold.

The economy

Gold comes from two places. Your castle adds a slow trickle — one gold a second — and your miners do the rest: each walks to the ore by your statue, swings until its bag holds 100 gold and carries it home. A miner costs 250 and takes four seconds to train, so it has paid for itself after a few trips. The population counter in the top bar stops you at 20 units, miners included, which is the real limit on every battle. Spend the early minutes on miners; spend the rest of the game deciding how many of those 20 slots can afford to be fighters.

Every unit, cheapest first

Swordwrath — 150 gold, 3 seconds. Fast, cheap swordsmen. They win early skirmishes by numbers and die quickly to arrows and spears. Good for a first push, and as a screen in front of more valuable units.

Miner — 250 gold, 4 seconds. Not a fighter. Keep them alive; every miner that dies is 250 gold and several trips of income lost.

Archidon — 400 gold, 8 seconds. Archers. They shoot over your front line and are the answer to Swordwrath and to the Magikill, which the game itself says are weak against a few archers. Ranged units do reduced damage to giants and statues, so do not count on them to finish a siege.

Spearton — 400 gold, 10 seconds. The strongest infantry in Inamorta, according to the game’s own tips. Their shields block arrows, and a line of them holds against Swordwrath for a long time. To beat enemy Speartons you need more of them than the enemy has.

Magikill — 1200 gold, 20 seconds. Wizards that stun enemies and summon minions. The minions are useful for wearing down a strong enemy line; the upgrades add stun time and extra minions.

Giant — 1400 gold, 20 seconds. Huge, slow and very good at smashing the enemy statue, not so good at hurting infantry. Against an enemy Giant, take control of a single unit and surround it — it is slow to attack.

The three orders

Attack sends the whole army at the enemy statue. Defend holds a line in front of your own statue. Garrison pulls everyone into the fort, where they are safe and some of them shoot arrows at attackers. Garrison is the button that saves lost battles: pull back, let the arrows thin the enemy wave, rebuild, and come out again.

Taking control

Click any unit and you control it directly: W A S D or the arrow keys move it, and Space attacks. A controlled unit is sharper than the computer’s version, which is how the game suggests beating Giants. Click inside the game first so the keys reach it.

A plan that works on Normal

1. Open with three miners while the army sits on Defend.
2. Look at what the enemy sends first and build its counter: Archidons for Swordwrath, Speartons for archers, Archidons for Magikill.
3. Keep adding miners up to five or six, then fill the rest of the 20 slots with fighters.
4. Attack once, with everything, when the enemy wave has just broken on your line.
5. Add a Giant late in long battles to finish the statue.

Upgrades between battles make the plan stronger: pick the ones for the units you actually build, and the mining upgrades for everything else. Ready? Play Stick War from the first battle, or read how the series continued in Stick War and Stick War 2.