It is unavoidable to be under attack at some point during the games. After all this is a game of war, this guides give you some idea on how to survive an attack, triump at defending, minimize damage, counter attack or perhaps even enjoying the process of defending.
#1 Avoid direct impact - Run if you can!!!
Assumming there is no demo/rams on the way, if you dont think you have enough defense to OVERWHELM the attacking force YOU CAN ALWAYS RUN!! Dont think that this is being coward, it is an act of wisdom :) . Never defends when you are not ready to, you are just wasting your troops. Save your troops for more meaningful act like counter attack or plundering. Don't worry you wont loose much compare to loosing all your troops.
How to run / fleet save?
- If you are active when the attack is hitting, just send your troops away from the city being attacked. Send them to plunder, go support a friendly city/oasis, do a scrimmage, do a quest. (Remember to send your heroes away too). Then use up your resources, go research or build something, send them to sub/friendly or trade them in market. Empty your city with no troops and resources, attacker will be wasting their times and gets nothing.
- If you saw an incoming but will not be active the the attack hits, use schedule deployment to your advantage. You still can do task or plunder with your troops before the attack and sending them away seconds before the attack is landing. If you have troops in building queue, you can schedule the the departure with existing units and then directly send some units away so that when the scheduled deployment get activated the newly build troops will be sent.
Example: you have 1000 guards and another 100 in queue. Schedule deploy 1000 guards before the attack hits. Then directly sent 100 or more away so that when the scheduled deplayment get activated you will have a max of 1000 guards meaning all will be deployed. If you dont do this, you can only sent away 1000 guards and the other 100 will be completed when the attack hits and will be dead!!
#2 Concentrate defense
If you know how much troops that enemy is sending and calculated that you have enough defend to overwhelm the enemy, go on and take the hits. Remember "Overwhelm" is the key, you wanna take the attack only if you will suffer small damage. If you calculated you will win in defending but will suffer heavy losses you might as well run (except if there are demo on the way and you are force to defend at all force).
When you defending make sure you have strong defense bonus:
-Make sure all your walls are fully upgraded and equips with all devices.
-Make sure archers are in the tower (archer is always the strongest defending units when they are in the tower, but they sucks if not in the tower. So whether your archer is in tower or not make huge defends differences)
-Weak defense units can be sent away first (example archer not in tower when tower is already full)-Use soul heroes with strong defense bonus (iron wall, encourage, archer leader..etc, check soul heroes ability in the heroes stats page here)
-Make sure you assign ranks to your general that carry defense bonus
-Use defend scroll or defend token if you have it
-Gather support from friendly/league, make sure enough food supplies. (It is alwyas good to have friendly neigbour that can help suppport each other, usually player build less def units compare to att, but if you have a few good neighbour you are combining the def units)
#3 Counter Attack
This is one of the benefit of running from an attack, so that you can use your troops to counter the attackers. Imagine this if you are equal power with the attacker and as usual both of you have less defend unit them attack unit, the attackers win!! You want to be the attacker not the defender!!
Example you have 5000 guards and 1000 heavy infantry, so does the attacker. The attacker send 5000 guards if hits you you will loose all troops and the attacker will probably still have 1k++ guards. Then he can continue to plunder you and rebuild his troops but you are doom. But if you hit him first it is the opposite. The first one to hit win!!
In order to counter an attack, it is utmost important to know the exact return time of enemy units to their city. It is usually easier to estimate in early of the games as all units is not valor yet so you know the speed of the units.
After you count the return time of the enemy troops, you can plan to counter. Even if you do not have enough troops to counter you can pass this info to your friend/leaguemates who can. The goals of counter is to make sure you hit them just when they arrived at their city and have no time to escape/fleetsave.
When you have faster troops then enemy (like when you are using wu army) you should first run from the attack then come back after the attack but make sure you come back in time to send out a counter attack that will hit enemy 1-2 s after they reach home.
When you have slower troops you can start schedul deploy your attack units to attack exactly like 1-2s after enemy attack units return. This way before enemy attack unit hits your troops is already out on the way and there is nothing enemy can do if you get the timing right.
#4 Always be prepared
You should not just think of defend when you see an incoming, fact is some time you may not see the incoming and the attack happens without your knowledge. So be prepared especially if there is wars going on.
- Get your basic defends like wall upgraded
- Build some defends units, you can share the defends units from other sub
- upgrade your units armor
- If you have idle archer station them in tower
- send you troops away when you are inactive like sleeping. you can use schedule deployment to your advantage
#5 Hide
If you are lazy to send your troops away plundering you can hide them in your oasis. But becare that your enemy may found out and hit your oasis. if that happen you will suffer more damage as oasis does not have wall defends bonus.
Hiding in friendly is another options but they need to feed your troops.
#6 Siege Attacks
When enemy send their ram/demo, you would better be defending as the building will be damaged. You will know if there is demo as demo take long time to arrive. Usually enemy will send clearing wave to hits all your troops them follow by demo to destroy your city. The best way is to fleetsave the non siege attack wave and just defend the siege attack. However it may be difficult if the attacker is also pro at attacking and leave no room to intercept the demo squad. In this case you will need to gather support to defend all the wave.
#7 Recovering from attack
If unfortunately all defense failed and you have being cleared but still want to continue with the game you need to recover your troops and important buildings. You will also need to protect your resources from being plundered by enemy. It will be a hard journey to recover but not impossible especially if you have good team mate to help you keep the enemy busy.
- Build hidden warehouse to keep your resources, use bronze shovel to increase the hidden warehouse effect if you have it. If you are still actively being plundered, you may want to demo your warehouse/granary first while slowly upgarde them to match your hidden warehouse capacity, this way enemy get nothing out of you and may stop the attack
- Build bunker to hide your troops
- Build troops and send them to friendly city or hide in your oasis, best time to use auto deploy in you have it
- Recall your heroes and send them away to support friendly city first if there are still incoming attacks
- Build a small plundering troops first to help speed up your resources
- Only call back and use your troops once they hit critical mass, no point building small troops size and get hit by enemy, it will just help them increase their attack ratings
- If enemy determine to demo you to dust after clearing you..the only way out is to get help from friendly.. or if you have capital move token, go fly to a safe area and rebuild from there
