How the Combo Scores Work

The idea in one paragraph

Each of the 131 heroes is reduced to a measurable profile read from its eight skills: how much damage it can be expected to deal over a battle, what it heals, blocks, debuffs and controls, which battle events its skills create and react to, the range of every attack skill, and how strong its era's stat package is. Every possible three-hero formation is then assigned front, middle and back rows that its skill ranges actually support, filtered through composition checks (three damage dealers with nobody keeping them alive is not a formation), and graded out of 100 on eleven named checks. The score is the rank — the order on the page can always be explained by the scorecard next to it.

The eleven checks

These are the same audits a strong player runs before fielding a lineup, with points attached. This is why a note might say "damage output (11/18)" — that combo earned 11 of the 18 points available in that check.

Those sum to 100. One deduction exists outside the table: a lineup that harms its own side (self-damage, friendly damage taken) loses up to 8 points for it.

Expected damage, not printed damage

The single biggest difference between this scoring and reading skill descriptions: "45% chance to deal 410% damage" is treated as roughly 185% per round, not 410%. Every hero's skills carry activation chances, preparation rounds and cooldowns, and they differ enormously. A guaranteed pre-battle effect always happens; a combat skill rolls its chance every round; a skill that needs a round of preparation can be interrupted before it ever resolves. All damage is converted to expected damage over a full eight-round battle so a reliable 250% hero and an unreliable 500% hero are compared honestly.

Tiers: lineups are ranked within their hero economy, never across it

Rise of Castles has two hero economies. Season 0–4 heroes — from the Season 0 starting heroes every account begins with through Season 4 — complete with just 4 copies. X-season and SP heroes need 34 copies, and many are paid. No real account fields starting heroes beside an X29: whoever completed the X29 has outgrown their starters, and whoever is on starters cannot afford the X29. So this site never ranks those worlds against each other.

Every lineup is placed in a tier by the newest hero it requires you to own: Current meta (needs X16-or-later or SP), Mid progression (nothing newer than X15), and Starter (all three heroes are Season 0–4 — the best lineups anyone can field for free, ranked seriously rather than buried under lineups that need paid heroes). Scores are comparable within a tier; across tiers, the score gap mostly measures power creep, which is exactly what it should measure.

One hard rule follows from the same logic: a lineup may never span more than one adjacent economy band. A Season 2 hero beside an X29 hero is a pairing no real roster fields — whoever completed the X29 outgrew their starters years ago — so such lineups are rejected outright rather than scored. Adjacent bands (an X15 beside an X24, say) are normal account progression and stay allowed. The only exception is lineups recommended by the game's own developers, which are always shown with their badge.

Power creep is real, so it is measured

A skill multiplier only hits as hard as the stats behind it. An early-season hero carries a passive package around Might +40%; a current-season hero carries +65% on the squad, +40% on the legion, plus extras. Raw damage is therefore scaled by each hero's own stat chassis and by its era. Debuffs, control and mitigation are not aged — a −60% Might strip takes the same bite out of the enemy whoever applies it — which is why some veteran support heroes stay relevant while veteran damage dealers fade. That matches how high-level players actually field them.

Paid heroes are marked, not penalised

Some heroes cost real money — SP heroes are the most expensive, followed by paid X-season heroes; the rest are free. Being paid does not change how hard a hero hits, so it never changes a score. It changes what you can field, so it is marked everywhere instead: every paid hero is labelled in the combo explanations ("Saladin (SP · paid)"), and any lineup whose three heroes are all obtainable without spending carries a budget note saying so. Free-to-play players can find their best real options at a glance.

SP heroes are dated by the developers' own groupings

SP (premium) heroes carry no release season, but they are not all the same age — and pretending they are would overrate the old ones. Each SP hero's era is estimated from the dated heroes the game's developers field it with in their own recommended lineups: an SP hero the devs group with Season 1–3 heroes is priced as that generation, while one they group with X27+ is priced as current. This is official evidence, applied hero by hero, and it is why two SP heroes can sit far apart in the rankings.

Synergy means a trigger chain, not three big numbers

When a note says "Saladin's prep-skips set off Lancelot's bonus effects," that is a literal claim about the two heroes' skill text: one hero creates a battle event (an extra basic attack, a dodge, a cast-chance boost, a prep skip) that the other hero's skills react to. Chains built on rare events score higher than chains built on events every hero produces anyway. A lineup with no chain at all is told so to its face: its note says the three work side by side rather than off each other.

Rows come from skill ranges

Your front row stands at distance 1–3 from the enemy rows, your middle at 2–4, your back at 3–5 — and every attack skill has a range. A formation is only shown with row assignments its ranges actually support, preferring durable heroes and counter-engines (kits that feed on being attacked) in front, and the biggest ranged hitter in back. When a hero gives up an attack skill by standing in the wrong row, the scorecard says which skill and which row.

Developer picks

Lineups recommended inside the game by its developers are always shown in the ranked list, marked as developer picks, at whatever score they honestly earn today. Their scores are never inflated: the badge plus the scorecard tells you "the developers recommend this core, and here is what it is worth against the current roster."

The engine speaks the game's language

All of the above only works if every word in a skill description is understood exactly the way the game means it — Silence versus Disarm versus Suppression, Burning versus On Fire versus Flammable, Dodging (guaranteed) versus Evade (a chance), Fatal Blow's +100% versus Destructive Strike's 200%. The full vocabulary the engine reads — every skill type, attribute, control status, fire effect, mark and modifier family — is published as a complete Rise of Castles combat glossary, so you can check our definitions against the game's own text term by term.

What keeps this honest

Three outside sources are used to test the model — never as inputs. Real high-level lineup usage from the community, the in-game developer recommendations, and corrections from players who are deep in the game. When the model and those sources disagree, the disagreement is investigated down to the specific skill text that caused it, and whichever side turns out to be wrong gets fixed. Several genuine bugs in earlier versions of this ranking were found exactly that way.

The model is deterministic: the same hero data always produces the same list. When a new hero ships, its skills are entered as written in the game, and the whole ranking — scores, rows, chains, notes — recomputes with no manual placement anywhere. If you believe a specific score line is wrong, that is exactly the kind of correction that improves this site: tell me which line and why.