Subscribe
Follow Us
Symphony of War is a deep game that requires a lot of strategizing, in and out of the battle. The game's battles are given an additional depth thanks to the upgrades players can make during the preparation phases of the game, which includes its tech tree. In this guide, we teach you which are the best tech to get early and tell you also what follow through you should have so you can maximize your success in the game.
Editor's Note: While this tech tree guide is meant to give players a more optimized build that will make the game easier to finish, players might still want to build their own tech tree first based on their own preferences and play style. There's no need to follow this guide, the game should be just enough of a challenge for you to finish it on your own! So, don't be afraid to experiment yourself as the game doesn't punish you too hard for not following this guide.
Symphony of War Tech Tree Guide
Overview
Symphony of War's tech tree is composed of three paths, each specializing in a particular area of expertise. These are:
- Academy of War – This tech tree gives direct upgrades to your units and your squads, mostly boosting stats and increasing growth or starting stats of newly recruited units.
- Tactics and Command – This tech tree opens new tactical options for your squads, including different kinds of attacks, increased mobility, and tactical upgrades like exerting zones of control and increased squad effectiveness.
- Crafts and Technology – Affects equipment, artifacts, and effectiveness of weapons such as the ability to ignore weather conditions when firing artillery.
Completing one path of the tech tree will unlock that tree's Capstone tech, which is a useful end-game tech that gives your army a big boost in strength. You also gain an extra capstone tech when completing two tech tree paths, specific for those two tech tree paths.
General Strategy
Knowing that there are Capstone techs in the game, it becomes imperative for players to focus on a particular path instead of going wide. But it's impossible to know which path to prioritize as these techs are not revealed at the start. For your benefit, these techs are:
- Academy of War: Professionalism – Newly recruited units will start with mastery to all Tier 1 classes, start at Level 3, and have full Loyalty. The marginal Mercenary capacity cost is removed and the cost of hiring Mercenaries is halved. This immediately makes your recruits hardened veterans who can immediately fight at the front lines, even if you're recruiting them in the endgame. Makes the game less grindy as now you can send your newly recruited units to battle right away.
- Tactics and Command: Grand Army – +10 capacity limit to all Squads in the army. Very straightforward upgrade that will allow you to slot in one more unit to your squad or equip an additional artifact.
- Crafts and Technology: Industrial Furnace – The cost of using Iron and Obsidian is decreased by 1. This means you'll be able to upgrade your Tier 1 and Tier 2 troops more cheaply, making it more possible for you to upgrade all of your units, instead of being limited by your resources.
- Academy of War + Tactics and Command: Dragon Bond – Unlocks the Dragon Rider Class which allows your leaders to ride their dragons to battle, ignoring terrain. Dracarys!
- Academy of War + Crafts and Technology: Rifled Artillery – Siege Cannons get +1 Range. Put them on hills and your enemy will not know what hit them!
- Crafts and Technology + Tactics and Command: Musketeer – When engaging the enemy on the attack, your Firearm units will attack twice. This allows you to put the pressure on your opponent!
Best Capstone in Symphony of War
Article Continues Below
In our opinion, the Best Capstone tech in Symphony of War is Industrial Furnace. If you have Permadeath on, then it's very important to keep your units alive across chapters. With that said, if you're doing a great job, you won't need the bonus of Professionalism by the time you unlock your first Capstone (which would be around Chapter 20-26). It's also more important to focus on your army's quality over quantity, so being able to upgrade more units to Tier 2 and Tier 3 is much more important than getting to add that one additional unit to your squad from Grand Army. After completing the Crafts and Technology Tree, complete Tactics and Command next to allow you to always be on the offensive at all times.
Symphony of War Best Early Tech Guide
Now, for your early game build, which ones would you actually want to get first?
Psych Warfare + Identify Command Structure
Our objective is to get the capstone tech immediately, and the tech that will help you do that is the Tier I Tactics and Command Tech Psych Warfare. You get more tech points the more enemy units you get as prisoners of war, so attacking them for surrender is a better choice than completely obliterating your opponent. It also helps you preserve your units. To support this strategy, get Tier I Tactics and Command Tech Identify Command Structure. With this tech, you could focus your attacks on killing the enemy leader first, which should lead to your opponent's morale shattering, allowing you to submit to surrender the rest of the enemy squad.
Merchant Envoys + Adept Artificer
Getting Tier I Academy of War Merchant Envoys early will give you access to Tier 2 mercenaries that you can recruit. They are more expensive but totally outclass many enemies in the next chapter where they appear. This will also allow you to skip the grind of building up a unit. Getting Tier I Crafts and Technology Adept Artificer will also allow you to build more around your Leader units, making them stronger and less susceptible to death, turning them into one-man armies that can take on enemies. It's more important to strengthen your Leader units than to fill your squads with units, so equipping them with more artifacts is preferred.
Crafts and Technology
To unlock the second tier of techs, you need to unlock seven of the Tier I techs. Likewise, unlocking Tier III techs requires seven from the previous tier unlocked. Since we already have four above, complete the rest of the Crafts and Technology path to unlock Tier II. Focus on getting the rest of the Crafts and Technology techs, with the other two Tier II techs being up to you. But if we're to suggest, Tier II Tactics and Command Adaptive Battlefield Command and Tier II Tactics and Command Adaptive Battlefield Command would be our choices. These two techs allow you more options in battle and also bring you closer to unlocking your second Capstone tech.
Collect Them All
As mentioned earlier in this article, Symphony of War doesn't punish you harshly for not planning out your tech tree, so it's entirely possible for you to finish the game by not putting much thought into your tech tree if your battlefield tactics alone can carry you to victory. On top of that, it's possible to unlock all techs way before the final chapter, so you'll really unlock everything towards the end of the game, giving you access to all content and not locking you out to any particular build. This kind of flexibility should let you appreciate how this additional depth is more for your convenience than anything, although sometimes some builds end up feeling too broken at some points in the game.
Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga is currently out only on PC through Steam. The game’s first DLC, Legends, is out now.
