Tridention

The **Tridention** is a unit exclusive to the Aquarion tribe. The Tridention is unlocked by the Spearing technology and replaces the Knight. The Tridention has a ranged attack, high mobility, and the ability to freely travel between land and water. However, it is expensive, and it cannot move through any land tile without roads. This is similar to the movement penalty mountains and forests (without roads) apply to all units, but the Tridention experiences this effect on fields without roads as well.

The Tridention is Aquarion's most powerful unit. It can perform hit-and-run attacks and overwhelm enemies in groups due to the combination of its mobility (movement of 2 and dash and escape skills) and ranged attack.

## Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths:

* **Hit-and-run tactics.** Just like the Rider, the Tridention has the escape skill, allowing it to move after attacking. This allows it to move quickly using its movement, attack and run away. This is even more effective since Tridentions can hit units from a distance, which allows them to be in water, 4 tiles away from an enemy on land, to get near, hit without retaliation and run away, which is like it had 4 range. Even on land, this allows it to basically have the range of a catapult, and a range equivalent to 6 with roads, with the only inconvenience that it can easily take retaliation from an archer or naval unit.
* **Killing high-defence units.** Like all ranged units, the Tridention can easily take over high-defence units without retaliation, and can do this quicker than archers thanks to the 3 damage, and can mobilize and attack a variety of units much quicker than a Catapult thanks to the 2 movement, dash and escape.
* **Sniping enemy cities.** Just like the Rider, the Tridention can attack a unit, even killing a full-health 1 defence, 10 health unit without defence bonus such as a mind bender, archer, rider or catapult and then slide onto a nearby, empty city. They do this even better than Riders due to their range and health, being able to take no damage from retaliation and getting into the city at 15 health.
* **Killing catapults.** The Tridention hasn’t enough movement to reach a catapult like a knight would do from outside its attack zone, but its range allows it to deal with catapults from a distance. Note that this doesn’t work well on land without roads, and that the Tridention cannot chain catapults like a knight.
* **Naval warfare.** Tridentions can move freely between land and water, and are in a very good position placed near land, sniping units on the coast without them being able to reach the Tridentions. They can also deal easily with swarms of boats or even ships.

Weaknesses:

* **Dealing with swarms of weak units.** Unlike the Knight, the Tridention doesn’t have the persist skill and therefore isn’t able to clear large masses of weak units such as archers, riders or warriors. Plus, unlike the knight, Tridentions cannot one-shot archers or riders with defence bonuses or warriors, making them even less efficient to deal with this.
* **Fighting battleships.** Battleships have more movement, as much range, more defence and more attack than a Tridention. A Tridention hitting-and-running a battleship will take a lot of retaliation damage. It can then be killed the following turn by the battleship attacking back.
* **Fighting on land without roads.** Tridention’s limited movement on land combined with it’s low defence makes it an easily reachable, vulnerable unit on land. Therefore, they should only be used on land behind other protecting units, as a replacement for a catapult in the goal of having dash/escape/more defence/health just in case at the cost of an attack point. The tridention becomes more powerful when there is roads, having the equivalent of 4 movement.

## Trivia

* The Tridention is slightly smaller than the Knight.
* The Tridention did not receive a defence bonus in cities until update 1.14, which introduced the fortify skill.
* The Tridention is the only unit that uses a golden trident as its weapon.