Thursday, August 27, 2009

The Tiny, Disposable City: How To Be Sneaky and Attack Faraway Enemies Without a Teleport

Do you have lots of troops -- but are surrounded by pesky green flags instead of enticing red ones? Do you have a sweet attack plan, but no teleports to get into position?

Don't worry, my friend. You can implement this ninja/James Bond style forward attack city strategy. The strategy involves creating a disposable city with only the bare minimum buildings needed to launch an effective maximum attack wave.

The idea is to let you get into place quickly and without being noticed; to launch major attacks at high-value targets; and to not present them an enticing target in return, maximizing your gain and minimizing their potential gain.

In short: you move in, whack them, and bounce after they're whacked.


WHAT YOU NEED TO DO THIS

  • An evening to take/build a city (takes a few hours)
  • A city slot, ideally two (one to build your city with, another to take one of theirs)
  • A friend/ally with lots of horses and some free time once your city is ready
  • Helpful: a high-level rally station in one of your main troop cities (so you can keep reinforcing fast)


HOW YOU START

It's best if you can take an abandoned city in the area, so you don't have to spend as much time building. Sadly, these are often in short supply, especially cities in the ideal attack position.

The ideal attack position for me is as close as possible to the targets but just off the welcome screen, so your opponents don't see you when they first log in. In keeping up with the game, many players don't do standard map sweeps of the area every day. They just log in and go.

Be sneaky sneaky, and you can punish them for this. On the map, put your target in the center of the screen. Scroll just off the screen and find a city you can take (ideally) or a flat in good position (realistically), and get ready.

Take one if you can, but most likely you'll be buildin'.

So, you've found spot for your city. What then?


WHAT YOUR CITY NEEDS

This is a forward attack city. You ONLY want stuff that is going to help you launch attacks. You won't be building troops here (probably) – you'll be importing them in from elsewhere.

Your city is going to be a lean, mean, fighting machine that you can just launch attacks from and abandon without regret later. If it becomes something bigger, fine, but don't get attached to it.

Because of this, you can get by with bare-bones. You need:

  • Academy at least 5, ideally 6 or higher. (A 6 academy gets you access to archery 10, which is the key technology. Get it higher if you can but it takes so long at high levels ...)
  • Level 9 rally spot
  • An Inn (so you can build a feasting hall)

  • Feasting Hall as high as possible, but 5 or six will work. Remember hero count determines how many waves you can send.

  • Beacon Tower as high as possible.

  • Marketplace + Barracks (not required, although nice! Use the market to buy stuff you need during the fray, the barracks to reinforce)

  • Other buildings ONLY insofar as you need them to build the aforementioned buildings

I might be leaving something out, but I don't think so. If I had more time, I'd do a “do this building, in this order” post, but this is going to be long enough anyway and I don't have time to do this now. Maybe later when I do this strategy again!

The point is, you only need buildings that'll help you attack. You need a 9 rally spot to send 90K troops. You need a feasting hall to send heroes out to fight. You need a high beacon tower to see when their attacks are coming, so you can send your transports away with resources RIGHT before they arrive. Etc.

Also: You need at least Academy 4 to get archery research at all, and the higher it is, the more research you access. Check in the academy – the number on the right tells you what level your research is operating at in that city. Use as much of it as you can. It helps your fighters.


WHAT YOUR CITY DOES NOT NEED

  • A town hall higher than 3
  • Any wall defenses

The idea is to surprise them and minimize their potential gain by attacking you. Keep your town hall level low, even if (and this is a big if) you have enough time to start upgrading walls. This keeps your city small and, even if they see you, should make you look as unassuming as possible.

Why no wall defenses? So they get NOTHING when they attack you. If you have defenses, they win honor by attacking you. You want them to get nothing.

I can bend on this point, because I understand peeps wanting their opponents to lose troops as a consequence of attacking.

But I think it's even more fun to watch them send 100K archers at me and get ... -4 loyalty in my city, a long march, and like 3 gold coins. I think that's hilarious.


WHAT YOU SHOULD SEND TO YOUR CITY WHEN READY

  • Bigass breaker troops, lots of archers and warriors
  • Transporters (to send resources away in)
  • Horses? Maybe, esp if you have a lot and want to take a city.
  • Scouts? Sure, why not?

This is why it helps to have a high relief station in your main cities. You can reinforce your forward attack city with troops faster.


Just be sure you have enough troops to hit 'em hard.

Another potentially hilarious thing is to load your city with scouts. Imagine if they scout you and can't get in.

They won't know what the hell is going on. You can get off a few extra attacks just while they're bewildered. And who knows, they might even be afraid to attack you! After all, 90K troops are coming from this city. If you couldn't scout it, wouldn't you be scared about what might be lurking?


BUT WHAT IF THEY SEE MY WEAK-ASS CITY AND ATTACK ME? WHAT DO I DO?

So they hit you. So what? If you keep the gate closed, they can't kill troops. If you don't build wall defenses, they can't get honor.

And, since you know you're going to be online, they can't steal your loot. Every time they send looters, you just send away all your resources in the transporters you've wisely kept on hand – recalling them after the attack hits – so they can't get your resources!

If you set up your comforting resource train well, they probably can't take the city either, unless a) there's lots of them online, b) they're well-organized, c) have lots of horses and d) either know this strategy or figure it out quickly.

ALL of those things have to be true in order for them to take the city. Plus, there's a strategy explained below that can prevent this from happening even if all those conditions are met. And even if they take the city, who cares? You were going to abandon it anyway.

You hit their core cities. They hit a throwaway town you don't give a shit about. So what do you care if they hit you? (You can also NPC the city right before the wave hits and own their troops, too, if you want. But it won't come to that.)


SO HOW DO I STOP THEM FROM TAKING MY CITY, AND HOW DO I KEEP ATTACKING?

That's where your friend comes in, chief.

So, they can't take your honor. You've got no wall defenses. They can't kill your troops. You've got the gate closed. They can't take your resources. You're on the stick with the transporters.

But they can take your loyalty. You need to guard against that. Here's how.

First, have a friend with tons of horses – say, at least 10K – who will be online at the same time.

Second, make sure you have enough gold in the city to pay your heroes. When you're ready to attack, set the tax rate to zero so you get 100% loyalty.

Third, unleash absolute fucking hell on them with attacks. You'll have the element of surprise, and they might be offline. If they are online, it's still cool.

A typical attack will kill loyalty by 4 points at a time until loyalty reaches 15. That means they need to hit you 21 times before loyalty even hits 15. With loyalty loss coming much slower under 15, that probably means another 30-35 attacks to take the city. At least!

That's a lot of damn attacks. Unless you are in a nest of tons of them, and they are all online, and they are well organized, and they see what you are doing, you probably won't face that many. Even if they have that capability, you still have the element of surprise, so time is on your side.

And all that isn't even taking into account comforting, which is key.

You can pray every 15 minutes. It increases loyalty by 25 every time.

To make sure they can't take it, have your friend set up to deliver you cavalry waves of food and/or gold once every 15 minutes. Take the stuff, immediately pray with it. They can't get it now.

Doing the math, this means they need to hit your city seven times every 15 minutes just to stop you from breaking even on loyalty. There's almost no way they can do this. Once you get down below 5 loyalty, if you do, it's even harder – nigh impossible, I'd wager.

Just keep hitting them until your troops run out. If your forces are stronger than theirs, it doesn't matter how strong their city is. As long as you can successfully break attack their city or cities, you're golden.

Obviously, stuff goes wrong. I'd be interested to hear peoples' experiences, and problems they could see.

In my experience, this is a fun, no-cost, and often very entertaining strategy. Watch their big bad level 10 cities fall to your weasely little thing that looks like it just got out of beginner's protection.

Good times!

2 comments:

  1. So what's the farthest out you think this stategy can work? The guys I'd like to do this on are 175 miles away.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is old and oudated, if your serious about attacking a far away city check this out:
    http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=45727

    ReplyDelete