| Ochana | Date: Sunday, 2013-03-03, 11:15 AM | Message # 1 |
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Sergeant
Group: Administrators
Messages: 13
Status: Offline
| OFFENSIVE GUIDE:
There are most definitely wrong answers. Many players will shout about what works best in the simulator, and what's the most powerful. However this neglects two very important factors - how long the nuke takes to build and what defense you are most likely to encounter.
When you start building a nuke, in 90% of cases, you don't know what you are going to throw it against - so a nuke which performs fairly well in most scenarios is generally the best option. Specialist nukes may perform great in the simulator against certain types of defense - but badly against others. The reality is, you don't get to see your enemies’ forces until you are ready to hit nor much choice in which cities you hit. It is especially true if you are hitting villages without scouting them first, which at some point you will need to do, to keep the element of surprise. So flexible nukes, rather than nukes with power are what you should be looking at building most of the time.
Also you need to consider build and rebuild times - especially in a war. An all horsemen nuke may look great on paper, but if it takes twice as long to build as a normal one, then its pretty pointless beyond having novelty value - you just allow your enemy twice as long to build defenses.
And you must not also forget how many resources each unit takes to build. If you are building units that just use rock and not wood, you can find yourself having problems getting enough quickly enough
A fairly average all round nuke will look something like this:
1000-1200 slings (Ranged nuke)
1000-1200 hops (Sharp nuke)
400-500 horsemen (Blunt nuke)
20 Light Ships (Should be included on every attack regardless of the type of nuke)
This is by no means the only build of nuke you should use - but it’s a good starting point. If you build nukes like this, you aren't going too far wrong. The thing is to learn each unit’s strengths and weaknesses and use them accordingly
Pure naval cities are your other nuke option. This should consist of 240-270 ls. You should use waves of naval attacks before you start with land troops - whether you build specialist cities to do this or not is up to you. Using naval attacks first can save you a lot of land troops - biremes take out your transports which kill your land troops before they even have chance to land.
It is entirely up to you how you do it - stick with something standard so you can keep track of all your villages, or mix it up and experiment. But you need to have that basic understanding of units and the principles of build time and flexibility and speed.
The Academy:
DON'T NEGLECT RESEARCH IN YOUR ACADEMY!
Doing the right research in your academy can make a significant difference to your offensive and defensive capabilities and strength. In every city you should have the following researched.
Cartography - +10% faster naval navigation
Battering ram - +10% strength of ships
Phalanx - +10% strength of ground troops
Plow - 200 extra farm space
Everyone of these add to the golden rules. For example having a +10% bonus minimizes your losses, saves you build time, and saves your resources. Don't underestimate the cumulative value of this over time. A culture point may be expensive if you need to reset research in your academy but in the long run, it can be worthwhile.
Number of Offensive to Defensive Cities
If you aren't building cities as either offensive or defensive you are making a MASSIVE error and not using your farm space to its maximum potential.
Again this is another question with no right answer, though people will try and convince you otherwise...
The route you take should take into consideration the following:
1) Your level of activity; the more active you are, the more offensive you can generally be.
2) Your location; if you are on the rim you can generally be more offensive
3) How skilled you are as a player; the more skilled you are, the more offensive you can be
4) Your playing style; some people simply prefer to go more offensive
5) Your level of confidence; defense makes people feel safer.
The thing is to think about each city as you take it and what is best in that location at that time - rather than focusing too much on ratios. Bare in mind that CS are the easiest unit in the game to spot - it’s much easier to take a city from short range than long range.
THE NEXT STEPS - THINKING AND PLANNING WHAT YOU DO
Any good attack needs good planning. Take your time and think about what you are doing. Timing is critical when looking to take any city. Your naval nukes and land nukes should all land within 30-60 seconds of your cs and your land and bireme support should land no longer then 30-60 seconds after cs lands. The closer you can get to the cs land time the better.
Naval Nukes
Land troops are at their weakest when they are on transports. A single bireme can take out an entire army if it is not sent with an escort!
In order to save your land troops and precious build time and resources, you should try and clear the navy before your transports land. You should still always send an escort with your land forces but if you can get rid of the majority of naval defenses before they arrive, it will save you a lot in the long run.
Clearing Nukes
You need to take out some defensive troops and get battle points so good offensive is essential.
Always make sure you have a sufficient force before attacking - it’s pointless attacking with only a few troops. Make sure your offensive is up to the job before you send. If necessary stick in an extra nuke. It’s often better to play it safe than to blow a whole operation, or to have to resend attacks at the last minute.
Second Wave Nukes
Once you have cleared a city, you still need to ensure the city is clear or clear-able when your CS is due to land. Your enemy still has time to get support in, so you should consider the possibility and send extra attacks if you think necessary.
Conquest Ships
Well timed CS with nuke seconds ahead of it? What escort to send with a CS? There's more than one way to skin a cat...
Look at your target! Assess their skill. Think about how far away your target is. Think about how likely and quickly they can get support. Don't fall into the trap of always playing it the same way. CS are expensive, but are far less expensive and time consuming to build than an entire nuke or allowing your enemy time to recover. Fake CS can massively help the success of a real CS landing.
Support
There's no point in taking a village if you can't hold it. Support is something you should think about and consider as part of your plans. Not as an afterthought. It’s your responsibility to consider how you intend to keep a city; you shouldn't really expect your alliance mates to help you out at short notice in most cases. It’s an often neglected area. Remember that as a general rule there is no point in taking a city if you can't hold it
If you are taking a city that is in the middle of enemy territory or some distance from your cities, you want to send support as part of your attack plan so it arrives as soon as your CS lands, and even after you take the city, or you make want to coordinate with a player closer to your target who can get support there quicker whilst you send yours. You should do this in advance, rather than being reactionary and responding to incoming - it can make the difference between holding the city and loosing the city.
Coordinating with other players
This is an alliance based war game. The key to success is to work as an alliance and work with other players to achieve goals. Long term you are only as good as your alliance mates so get to know them and work with them as much as learning to coordinate your attacks from your own cities. Don't be afraid to ask for help - biting off more than you can chew has implications for all your alliance mates. But don't try and be a hero - know your limits!
Communication is the absolute key here. Think about what information you tell your alliance mates, and what assistance you need. BE CLEAR.
Try to think about the following:
1) What help you need – clearing waves or support?
2) Who is in the best position to help you?
3) Do they have the necessary troops available?
4) When you would like their attacks to hit?
5) When do your attacks land?
6) Sharing reports and keeping players up to date as much as possible.
Your alliance mates aren't mind readers!
Timing
The main thing to be a good offensive player is to have good timing. The more you get into things the more important timing becomes. The bottom-line is practice makes perfect.
Learning to read your reports.
Reading a spy report or an attack report is simple. Right?
Well it should be but are you spotting ALL the information they provide?
When you look at reports, you shouldn't just look at the number of troops in a city or the number of troop kills. There is a lot more that you can learn. The goal here is to determine what the cities defense is weak against. When attacking you can choose the defense you face. If you attack with horsemen you will only face the cities blunt defense for example.
MIX OF TROOPS
The mix of troops in a city is as important as the number of troops in a city. A mixture of offensive / defensive troops either indicates a poor player or a supported city.
NAVY
This is often a good clue to how good a player is, especially in the outer rim oceans. It’s very common for lesser players to completely neglect their navy.
Triremes
Better players rarely will use trims. This isn't always true but as a rule, the speed and cost of biremes and light ships make triremes too slow for more experienced players who like to attack or support quickly.
Fire-ships
If there are fire-ships in the harbor, the chances are you are looking at a player who doesn't really know what he's doing. Why? Colony Ships and Transport ships (both fast and regular) are immune to them! Sure, they're cheap and easy to build, and they take on LS at a 1:1 ratio, but you don't want to defend all attacks - only the CS attacks. There are always exceptions to this. If you are being farmed by ls and really want to cripple the ls wave stack with fs as they will defeat them 1:1 whereas a ls nukes can kill a lot more bs then a 1:1 ratio.
The biggest problem with fireships is they only have 1 life. If someone sends 200 ls against your fs and you only have 200 every single one will die. They serve the purpose of 1 attack and therefore are very slow to rebuild. They are also awful for support as their travel speed is very slow.
Transports vs. Light Transports
Like triremes, since light transports are much faster than normal transports they are more likely to be used by more experienced players.
Number of Transports
If you make a land attack on a city you are able to see the number of ships in the harbor even if your attack isn't successful this can still tell you something.
A large number of transports are an indicator that the city has been supported. A quick calculation of the number of bunks available gives you a good indicator of a total number of troops.
Wall
This is an important thing to always pay attention to. Whether it is a spy report or an attack report, walls are a big deal. It can tell you how stacked a city is or how difficult it is going to be to take out the troops.
There are other things that reports can tell you. Don't just take them at face value - look at everything available to you.
Transports:
Something about those transporters because I've seen some people do something wrong about them. Although it's not much of a big deal, but it will help nonetheless.
There are 2 types of transporters: slow one that can transport 20 units (26 with bunks researched) and takes 7 population with 7 moving speed and the fast one that needs to be researched in an academy and carries 10 units (16 with bunks researched) and takes 5 population with 15 moving speed.
When to build slow ones and when to build fast ones?
Slow ones should be built in cities where you launch your CS from because if you launch your CS, transporters and everything else will travel by it's speed that has a value of 3 so there is no use in making fast transport ships that will travel by the CS speed carrying same amount of troops for more fast transports built than slow transports built, that will only fill you population more resulting in having less ships and troops. Constructing both fast and slow ones in the same city is not a good idea and the reason is the same like in the earlier explanation, but this time the slowest unit is a slow transporter and not the CS. Fast ones should be built in all the other cities in order to reach their targets faster. Some defense based cities can have slow ones in order to have more troops in the end, that I leave to you.
Some hints:
- In order to give yourself another shot in coordinating an attack or a support, you can build one slow transporter under a condition that both waves launched with and without a slow transporter, are in range
- Do not have more transporters than you should. It will only fill in the population space leaving you with less troops and war ships than you can actually have because transporters can't fight
- Do not have less transporters than you should because some army will stay at home making them useless for a battle
- If you need to free some population because you have more transporters than you should or there's some other reason why you want them gone, then go support some ghost town and send light ships to destroy them. Make sure that LS land after transporters do of course .
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