Rise of Kingdoms (iOS, Android) has many possible primary/secondary commander pairings, some of which are amazing, while others are absolutely terrible. Tier lists for commander pairings have been discussed by many people on YouTube, but I wanted to find a way to condense the information in those lengthy videos into a more digestible form. The goal was to create a quick and easy-to-use resource that could answer the question: “which commander works best with ____?”
I ended up creating D3.js force-directed graphs to show viable pairings between primary and secondary commanders, along with the rank for each pairing. One neat thing about force-directed graphs is that commanders with similar roles (e.g. gatherers, infantry) have a natural tendency to cluster together.
The visualization contains multiple graphs, each sourced from a different content creator, and obviously each individual has a different opinion about how the pairs should be ranked. I’m not making any claims about the correctness of the pairings, and nor do I necessarily agree with the rankings. I’m simply collating the original information and presenting it in graph form so that it’s quicker and easier to digest. So, if you disagree with the rankings I would suggest you contact the creator of the original guide! I would also recommend watching/reading the original guides if you want more information about how and why each pairing works.
I’d be happy to add more graphs if you can provide the data file, which is simply a CSV file containing the ranking of each commander pair. Contact me if you want more details on how to do this.
The original data and source code can be found on GitHub.
Graphs
Note: Currently the graphs work best on a desktop browser. I will try to fix this soon for lower resolution devices (e.g. phones, tablets)
How to use/interpret the graphs:
- Choose between different tier lists using the drop-down in the top left
- Commanders are colored by their rarity (i.e. orange for legendary, purple for epic, blue for elite, and green for advanced)
- The size of each circle represents the number of viable pairings that commander has
- The line thickness between two commanders shows the rank of that pair
- Hover over a commander to see a full list of their ranked pairings
- Versatility is the number of viable pairings that commander has
- Rank is how good the pairing is for that primary commander. Rank 1 is the top tier pair for that primary commander, Rank 2 is the second best option etc.
- The graph does not show all possible commander pairs because many were missing from the original guides
EDIT (2/9/2019): Added the new epic commanders to the Legend Rhony ranking
EDIT (1/5/2019): Added Legend Rhony’s garrison commander guide
See the Pen Rise of Civilizations commander pairings by Simon (@sho-87) on CodePen.dark
If you’re interested, you can find my other Rise of Kingdoms posts here.
Great tool! Could you include more options for Mehmed II and add Æthelflæd in?
Could you update with the new commanders please
This is amazing could u update with the newest commander please please
Great work! Thanks a lot!
https://www.gotit.co.kr/rok/commander is it your tier?
can you please update this ? it is really helpful for us so if you could add the new commanders and their pairings please
The problem is that these are based on guides from various youtubers, but I haven’t seen any updated pairing guides from them so I can’t include the new commanders
Can you calculate the best pairing instead of using the frequency of YouTubers?
please include Khan and Alexander
How come, when looking at the Garrison setup on the graph, it only shows Sun Tzu and YSG as a viable pair – they’re not viable in any other configurations at all?! Am confused!
yeah that was based on Legend Rhonys old defense video, but its quite outdated now as a lot of things in the game have changed and I haven’t had time to update the graph. For updated garrison builds, check out the new Garrison master class (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgdXuK76vQc) or Dragothien’s garrison guide (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8ZxotYKLw)
Okay, thanks Simon! I will check them out 🙂
Interesting topic and fancy visualization!
When pairing commander, it is important to understand that, the talents only comes from the primary commander but the skills from both commanders apply. Primary commander should be the one who has better Talent tree. Pair commanders who have specilization on same type of troop. For example, if you are sending an Infantry march then pair two infantry commanders. Now, look in the commanders skills you are pairing. Some commander have very high synergie. This means they grant similar buffs to the troop and these buffs stack together. For example, if your primary commander has additional damage factor 400 and… Read more »
Hola tengo un pequeño canal de Youtube quiciera tu permiso para compartir este excelente trabajo con mis suscriptores y si me das permiso comparto el enlace de este sitio para que más jugadores conozcan tu trabajo que nos facilita muchísimos la vida espero tu respuesta
good job ty brother
Well done sir. Well thought out and presented. Good way to put your skills to work on a passion you enjoy! Keep up the good work. I would also encourage an input area from outside players beyond the two shown. This would give a bigger subset of input for higher methodologies when pairing and drill down to the most used or preferred.
cool
Exactly the kind of guide I was looking for this is underrated thanks