01. Troop Types & The Counter Triangle
Police Chief has three troop types, each trained at its own division building. They form a rock-paper-scissors counter triangle:
Guard
High defense and health
↑ Strong vs Biker
↓ Weak vs Marksman
Biker
Balanced offense, high penetration
↑ Strong vs Marksman
↓ Weak vs Guard
Marksman
High attack, fragile
↑ Strong vs Guard
↓ Weak vs Biker
Troop Skills
All troops have a basic counter-damage skill from Tier 1. At Tier 7+, they unlock a second skill that provides additional combat utility:
| Troop | Skill 1 (T1+) | Skill 2 (T7+) |
|---|---|---|
| Guard | +10% damage vs Bikers | +10% Defense vs Bikers |
| Biker | +10% damage vs Marksmen | 20% chance to penetrate Guards and hit Marksmen |
| Marksman | +10% damage vs Guards | 10% chance to strike twice |
02. Tiers & Stats
Each troop type has 10 tiers, each unlocked by upgrading your division building. Higher tiers cost more, take longer to train, but produce dramatically more powerful units.
| Tier | Name | Rarity | Building Lv Required | Power Each | Load Each | Train Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T1 | Rookie | Gray | 1 | 3 | 108 | 12s |
| T2 | Junior | Gray | 4 | 4 | 124 | 17s |
| T3 | Senior | Green | 7 | 6 | 142 | 24s |
| T4 | Veteran | Green | 11 | 9 | 164 | 32s |
| T5 | Resolute | Blue | 13 | 13 | 188 | 44s |
| T6 | Heroic | Blue | 16 | 20 | 217 | 1m 0s |
| T7 | Fearless | Purple | 19 | 28 | 249 | 1m 23s |
| T8 | Elite | Purple | 22 | 38 | 287 | 1m 53s |
| T9 | Honored | Orange | 26 | 50 | 330 | 2m 11s |
| T10 | Royal | Orange | 30 | 66 | 379 | 2m 32s |
A T10 troop is 22× the power of a T1 troop (66 vs 3), but only 12.7× the train time and roughly 75× the resource cost. Higher tiers are dramatically more power-efficient per troop slot in your army.
03. Training New Troops
Training is straightforward — pay the resource cost, wait the time, get the troops. Each troop type trains at its own division building (Guard Division, Biker Division, Marksman Division). Only one training queue can run per division at a time.
Training Cost Per Troop (Top Tier T10)
| Troop | Ammo | Cash | Electricity | Gas | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T10 Guard | 2,788 | 2,091 | 488 | 101 | 2m 32s |
| T10 Biker | 2,440 | 2,301 | 474 | 109 | 2m 32s |
| T10 Marksman | 1,743 | 2,579 | 433 | 140 | 2m 32s |
Same time across all three types. The resource MIX differs (Guards lean Ammo, Marksmen lean Cash, all three demand Gas), but total cost is comparable.
04. Troop Promotion
Promotion takes lower-tier troops you already own and upgrades them to your highest unlocked tier. Promotion unlocks at division building Level 13. Most players ignore this feature — but most players also misunderstand what it actually does for them.
How It Works
- ▸ Choose a lower tier you own (e.g., T6 Guards)
- ▸ Promotion always jumps to your current maximum unlocked tier — you can't pick an intermediate target
- ▸ You pay only the difference between the two tiers' costs and times
- ▸ Your total troop count doesn't change — the lower-tier troops become higher-tier ones
- ▸ The resulting troop is byte-for-byte identical to a fresh-trained troop of the same tier
Promotion Cost to T10 (Guard, Per Troop)
| From | Ammo | Cash | Elec | Gas | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T1 → T10 | 2,752 | 2,064 | 481 | 99 | 2m 20s |
| T5 → T10 | 2,632 | 1,974 | 461 | 95 | 1m 48s |
| T7 → T10 | 2,509 | 1,881 | 439 | 90 | 1m 9s |
| T8 → T10 | 2,230 | 1,672 | 390 | 80 | 39s |
| T9 → T10 | 1,394 | 1,045 | 244 | 50 | 21s |
A word of caution: These look like savings — and they are, but only if you read them correctly. Keep going to the next section before you decide promotion is "cheaper."
⚠️ The "Promotion Is Cheaper" Illusion
Read this section carefully. This is where most players misread the math and end up making bad decisions about training vs promotion.
Look at the promotion table above. T9 → T10 costs 1,394 Ammo. A fresh T10 train costs 2,788 Ammo. Promotion looks like 50% off, right?
It's not. The "savings" is an accounting trick that ignores what you already spent.
Two Paths to a T10 Troop
| Path | Total Ammo Spent | Total Time | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Train T10 directly | 2,788 | 2m 32s | 1 T10 troop |
| Train T9, then promote | 1,394 + 1,394 = 2,788 | 2m 11s + 21s = 2m 32s | 1 T10 troop |
The cumulative cost to GET a single troop to T10 is identical no matter what path you take. By the time the troop is a T10, you have always spent exactly the same amount of resources and time. The promotion price tag only looks cheaper because it's the bill for HALF the work — the other half is already on a receipt in your recycling bin.
The Mental Accounting Trap
People mentally separate "what I already spent on this troop" from "what I'm spending right now to promote it." That separation is what makes promotion look like a discount. But objectively, your stockpiles don't care which transaction the resources came from — they're gone either way.
Don't train low tiers on purpose just to promote them later. That doesn't save you anything. It costs the same and uses more queue cycles. The only reason promotion ever beats training is if the lower-tier troops already exist in your army from earlier game stages, but even then it's not always the best solution.
Where Promotion Genuinely Wins
✓ Forward-Looking Time Windows
Given the next X hours of game time, promotion can produce more power than fresh training in that same window (more on this in the Speedup section — the gap is smaller than you'd think). The past is sunk. Looking forward, promotion is often the more efficient choice for that specific window.
✓ Sunk-Cost Recovery
You already have T5s, T6s, T7s sitting around from earlier in the game. You can't unspend the resources that got them there. Promoting them to T10 costs less now than training fresh T10s, because the earlier resources are already gone whether you use them or not, but that also ties directly into the next section of density vs. size.
06. Density vs Size
Once you understand that the cost math washes out in the end, the actual strategic question becomes: do you need more troops, or do you need stronger troops?
Training Fresh
+1 troop and +66 power (for T10)
Increases the SIZE of your army.
Promoting (T9 → T10)
+0 troops and +16 power per troop (66 − 50)
Increases the DENSITY of your army.
Players can have a maximum of 6 deployment queues running at once (once all have been unlocked). Each deployment is capped by your march capacity — the total troops a single march can carry, determined by research, hero levels, gear, and buffs. Your effective simultaneous deployment is therefore march capacity × number of queues.
Once your total army exceeds that ceiling, additional troops can't all be deployed at the same time. Promotion takes those excess troops and makes them more powerful per unit so when they DO get deployed, they hit harder.
The Rule of Thumb
Calculate your total simultaneous deployment cap: march capacity × number of queues.
- ▸ Total troops > deployment cap → promote your existing troops to higher tiers. New troops won't see combat.
- ▸ Total troops ≤ deployment cap → train new troops to grow your army. You can use everything you build.
Example: 50K march capacity × 6 queues = 300K deployment cap. If you have 300,000 total troops, every promotion makes them stronger. Training new troops also makes you stronger, but you're spending more resources than you need to create a new troop of the highest tier, AND you're making a lower tier troop obsolete (you can't deploy them anymore because you're at your effective deployment cap). There's an argument to be made about troops at home to defend and extras in case troops die, but that muddies the waters unnecessarily, so set that aside. If you have 100,000 total troops, training new is still useful because you have room to deploy more.
07. Throughput: The Real Promotion Win
Since the cost math washes out, what does promotion actually win on? Throughput. The number of troops you can move through a single queue cycle.
Because promotion only takes the time DIFFERENCE between source and target tiers, the same training capacity buff lets you process far more troops per batch than fresh training would allow.
Batch Size Multiplier vs Fresh Training
| Source Tier | Batch Multiplier | With 1,000 Train Capacity |
|---|---|---|
| T1 → T10 | 1.09× | 1,090 troops/batch |
| T5 → T10 | 1.41× | 1,410 troops/batch |
| T8 → T10 | 3.90× | 3,900 troops/batch |
| T9 → T10 | 7.24× | 7,240 troops/batch |
This is the practical benefit. If you've got 200,000 T9 troops sitting around waiting to become T10s, promotion gets them all converted in a fraction of the queue cycles fresh training would require. Total power gained is the same in the end (because cumulative cost is the same), but the rate at which you can complete the conversion is dramatically higher. Less queue management, less micromanagement.
08. Speedup Strategy
Here's where the math gets nuanced. Speedups burn real time off a queue. The question is: does promotion produce more power per minute of speedup than fresh training? The honest answer is "sometimes yes, but by a lot less than you might think."
Power Per Second by Path (Target: T10)
| Path | Power Each | Time Each | Power/Sec | vs Fresh Train |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh train T10 | 66 | 152s | 0.434 | baseline |
| T1 → T10 | 63 | 140s | 0.450 | +3.7% |
| T5 → T10 | 53 | 108s | 0.491 | +13% |
| T7 → T10 | 38 | 69s | 0.551 | +27% |
| T8 → T10 | 28 | 39s | 0.718 | +65% |
| T9 → T10 | 16 | 21s | 0.762 | +76% |
Power Per Second by Path (Target: T8 — as another example for lower level accounts)
| Path | Power Each | Time Each | Power/Sec | vs Fresh Train |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh train T8 | 38 | 113s | 0.336 | baseline |
| T1 → T8 | 35 | 101s | 0.347 | +3% |
| T5 → T8 | 25 | 69s | 0.362 | +8% |
| T6 → T8 | 18 | 53s | 0.340 | +1% |
| T7 → T8 | 10 | 30s | 0.333 | −1% |
The Honest Picture
Promotion's power-per-minute advantage scales with the gap between the source and target tier's train times. The T10 train time barely exceeds T9's, which is why T9 → T10 promotion is unusually efficient (+76% over fresh training). For more typical scenarios — promoting low or mid tiers to a target only a few tiers higher — the advantage is much more modest, typically 1-15%.
And in at least one specific case (T7 → T8), promotion is actually slightly worse than fresh training on a power-per-second basis. The tiers are too close together for the time savings to offset the small power gain.
Real Example: What 9.5 Hours of Training Time Buys
| Path | Troops Processed | Total Power Gained | Power Per Minute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh train T8 | 501 | 19,038 | 33.4 |
| T5 → T8 promotion | 820 | 20,500 | 36.0 |
In this realistic scenario, promotion gives you 319 more T8 troops than fresh training would, but only 7.7% more total power. The throughput advantage is large (820 troops vs 501); the power advantage is modest.
Practical Speedup Rules
- ★ For converting a backlog of T9 troops to T10: Use speedups on promotion. The +76% advantage is real and large.
- ★ For promoting mid-tier troops (T5 → T8 territory): Speedups on promotion are marginally better (5-15%), and you get many more troops processed.
- ★ For promoting adjacent tiers (T7 → T8): Don't bother prioritizing. The power-per-minute is basically a wash.
- ★ If you need MORE troops (under deployment cap): Train fresh. Promotion can't grow your army size.
09. Troop Training Events
Important caveat: Promotion DOES score in Troop Training events, but only on the power DIFFERENCE, not the full target tier power. A T9 promoted to T10 scores points based on 16 power gained (66 − 50), not the full 66.
This matters because the power-per-second numbers from the previous section also tell you your scoring rate during Troop Training events. The same advantage (and limitations) apply: promotion only wins meaningfully when the source and target tiers have a wide time gap.
Event-Day Strategy
- ▸ During the event: Use speedups on promotion queues if you have a backlog of T9 troops. The +76% rate advantage compounds across all your speedups.
- ▸ If you don't have T9s to promote: The advantage of promoting from lower tiers is small (1-15%). Train fresh top-tier troops and don't overthink it.
- ▸ Don't train low-tier troops just to promote them later for "more points." That's the mental accounting trap — total points scored across both transactions equal what you'd get from one fresh train.
10. Wounded Troops & Recovery
When troops are wounded in combat, they go to the Hospital. Healing them costs roughly 10% of fresh training cost and about 10% of the time. The Hospital has a capacity limit — wounded beyond capacity overflow into the Recovery Center. Without getting into the nitty-gritty and the cost details: don't let your hospital fill up to capacity. Always try to avoid troops hitting the recovery center (sometimes it's unavoidable, like if you get hit repeatedly by a whale during a kill event).
Cure Cost vs Train Cost Per Troop (T10 Guard)
| Action | Ammo | Cash | Elec | Gas | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Train fresh T10 | 2,788 | 2,091 | 488 | 101 | 2m 32s |
| Heal wounded T10 | 279 | 209 | 49 | 10 | 15s |
11. Which Tier to Promote First
Assuming you have a mix of lower-tier troops sitting in your army and want to promote them to T10, which tier do you tackle first?
Argument for High-First (T9 → T10)
- ▸ Fastest per troop (21s vs 140s for T1)
- ▸ Highest batch multiplier (7.24×)
- ▸ Best power-per-second rate (0.762)
- ▸ Best return on speedups burned
Argument for Low-First (T1 → T10) ★
- ★ Far more power per troop (+63 vs +16)
- ★ Converts dead weight into deployable units
- ★ Strong T9 units remain deployable while you process lower tiers
- ★ Every interim state of your army is combat-ready
★ The Right Answer for End-Game Players: Low-First
By the time you've unlocked T10 (building Lv 30), resources aren't your bottleneck. The throughput advantage of promoting T9s first matters less than the strategic advantage of converting dead weight into deployable units.
Promote T1s first because your T9s are already deployable and effective — they sit in your army doing their job at T9 power while you process the lower tiers. Your T1-T6 troops occupy a slot but never march. Converting them first turns dead weight into combat units, and each one gives you nearly 4× the power gain of a T9 promotion (63 vs 16). At any pause point in the process, your army is stronger than it would be with the high-first approach.
Recommended Promotion Order
12. Decision Framework
Q1: Have you hit your deployment ceiling?
Calculate march capacity × number of queues = your max simultaneous deployment.
- ✓ Total troops > deployment cap → Stop training new. Focus on promotion to increase per-unit power.
- ▸ Total troops ≤ deployment cap → Train fresh to grow your army. Promotion can wait.
Q2: Where should your speedups go?
- ▸ If you have T9s to promote → promotion (+76% efficiency).
- ▸ If you have T5-T8 to promote → either works (5-15% advantage to promotion).
- ▸ If you need more troops → fresh training regardless of efficiency.
Q3: What order should you promote in?
Low-tier first. T1-T5 give the biggest power-per-troop gain and convert dead weight into deployable units. Save T9 → T10 promotions for Troop Training events where the best power-per-second rate matters most.
Q4: Should I train low tiers on purpose to promote them later?
No. This is the mental accounting trap. The cumulative cost to GET to T10 is identical whether you train T10 directly or train low and promote. Training low first costs the same, uses more queue cycles, and leaves you with weaker interim units. Just train your highest unlocked tier directly.
TL;DR — The Quick Hits
- 1. A promoted troop is identical to a fresh-trained troop of the same tier. The decision is about HOW to get there, not WHAT you end up with.
- 2. Promotion looks cheaper because the price tag only covers the last leg. The cumulative cost to GET to T10 is identical regardless of path. Don't fall for the discount illusion.
- 3. You have 6 deployment queues max. Once total troops exceed (march capacity × 6), training more is wasted — those troops can't all deploy at once. Promote them instead.
- 4. Promotion increases army DENSITY (power per troop). Training increases army SIZE (total troops). Use the deployment ceiling math to decide which you need.
- 5. The real benefit of promotion is THROUGHPUT — up to 7.24× more troops per queue cycle. Useful for working through a backlog.
- 6. Speedups on promotion produce only modestly more power-per-minute than fresh training (typically 1-15%). The 76% advantage only applies to T9 → T10. Don't oversell the benefit to yourself.
- 7. Promote LOW tiers first (T1-T5). Higher power gain per troop, converts dead weight into deployable units. Save T9 → T10 for scoring events.