Introduction:
Today we are going to cover the strategy and tactics to employ when fighting a defensive war. What is a defensive war? The enemy at a certain point in time, can be any hour of the day or up to weeks, have numerical and power advantage over your players and want your territory or to tear down your structures.
In a situation where you are at a disadvantage but don’t want to lose territory, you have to fight battles to force the enemy to take more losses than you. In a situation where the opponent is on the offensive that means they have either 1. Numbers advantage 2. Resource advantage 3. Power advantage or all 3 combined. This means they are willing to make even trades or even unfavourable trades because they can afford it in order to take down your flags or CF.
How do you deal with this? Force them to make trades that are far worse than they are willing to accept. This is how we do it.
1 Defending Structures:
Teleport cities or people who can defense close to the point. Bubble up and reinforce the structure. DO NOT TANK A RALLY. The tactic here is to recall armies out of the structure before the rally arrives, and then re-garrison when the rally disperses. Forcing multiple enemy armies to solo hit your structure against your one large garrison force will cause devastating amounts of DEATH to your enemies while maintaining a small ratio of death to your garrisoned force. It is important to make sure the captain of the garrison is set to the player’s army who has the highest tech and best commander because all other garrison troops stats will be based on that player’s talents/skills and research level. Using a peace shield will make your defender’s city unable to be targets of battle, thus giving your enemies no legal target other than throwing single armies at your structure which they do not want to do.
2 Area Denial:
This is where your civilan class players can come into play. Think about which direction your enemies are coming from and where they are likely to teleport to make offensive plays easier. DENY that, have your players who cannot actively contribute to battle teleport to the areas which might be contested to force your opponents to have a longer march to contested points, basically deny them where they would want to teleport first. This is important to slow down enemy troop movement and force long march times, leaving enemy cities vulnerable to counter attack when the time comes. It also serves a defensive purpose of garrisoning friendly armies being able to retreat into that city if they get caught out of position if they extend too far.
3 Avoid Field Battle:
As we discussed, if the enemy is on the offensive that means they have numerical superiority or power superiority. Exchanging fights in the open field will only cause resource loss on your side of the fight and diminish the power of your capable defenders. Your goal is to waste their time, force them to fight you in your well garrisoned and defensed structures- let them know your not interested in playing, and if they want a fight then DEATH will be unavoidable for them. Often times this causes a lot of boredom for the offensive player- they are often looking to pick off weaker players and steamroll your armies into victory. If you deny them the satisfaction, then often times many players are not interested in taking lots of deaths for one flag point, it might not be worth it to lose thousands of troops for minimal gain.
4 Always fight on alliance territory:
We talked about avoiding field battle, but sometimes it is a must or the opportunity is just right. The tech your alliance has put into research is going to make a big difference here. When fighting on alliance territory you gain bonus sustain, bonus damage, and increase to movement speed. There are situations where enemies troops are roaming your lands or caught out of positioning- this is prime opportunity for your fighters to engage and deal loss to the enemy with minimal loss of your own. Alliance tech nullifies a lot of tech advantages that the individual player may have. Use this advantage to slow or cripple your enemies, or event cut-off retreating armies that are injured. The more militia class players you can take out of the battles the easier time you will have defending your own territory.
5 City hopping as a mode of travel:
Mobility is most important factor of any engagement. Being able to get to where you need to quickly. However, in a situation where your on the back foot and the enemies are pushing your land, they most often will have Sharks roaming your lands hunting your farms and scattered troops trying to reinforce points from friendly players- you need to dodge this. Instead of going from point A to point B, you need to leap from city to city to avoid confrontation so your forces can regroup at the defense point to consolidate force for garrison or a counter push. Remember, your goal is to force the enemy into very unfavourable trades into your structures so you need to lessen the damage done to you on the field.
6 Avoid gathering in contested zones:
There comes a point where you are starved for resources and gathering resource tiles is the most efficient way to build up your resource. The enemy knows this. They will send fast cavalry to kill your gatherers just like they do during the Kill Event during Might Governernor Event. When your gatherers are killed, not only do you not gain what you are gathering, but you end up having you spend extra time and resources that you can’t afford to heal injured troops. Instead, port out of the war zone into an area the enemy does not have access to and try to recouperate there.
7 Defend Flags over Center Fortress:
A Center Fortress takes days to burn down. This requires constant babysitting of players with armies parked at a CF around the clock. It is very time consuming and requires players to be attentive all the time. A flag on the other hand, can be burned within an hour- this depends on the level of your alliance research. In a situation where you are presented with either defending a flag or a CF, always prioritize flag defense over CF defense unless the CF is really low on health and going down within hours. At the sametime, it takes longer to recover the health of a CF as well- but this happens passively which is easier to maintain.
8 Keep your resources low and hospital in check:
If you are one of the fighters on your alliance and not going in for the bubble garrison team. Then you need to be aware that your city can come under attack at any time. Because of this, you don’t want enemies robbing you of all your stockpiled resources in case your city is raided- Keep your resource thresh-hold low so enemies do not have much plunder. Spend them on healing or send them to a bubbled ally so they are not stolen. At the sametime you need to keep a sharp eye on your hospital, heal in short spurts so that alliance helps can get your troops healed without expending healing speedups. Also keep in mind your total army size vs how much hospital capacity you have. Once your hospital is full then any damage done is 100% death. Avoid this at all cost. Protip, once your hospital is actually healing- the troops that are currently being healed do not take up hospital capacity, you can time this right before a rally hits or you expect large amounts of injured to avoid taking deaths.
9 Efficient use of resources for the players:
One thing we have to realize is that not all players troops are equal, but all players must pay healing costs when injured. What this means is for weaker players that have resources to spare, it is better to send those resource to players with troops that need healing and have higher tech. A T4 troop can vary between paper thin or tough as nails- this all depends on how far research the player has unlocked. A player with higher tech and better commanders, for the same resources, can have double the impact on the field than a player who has newly unlocked tier 4 troops. In these situations, it is better to send these resources to the players who can contribute more to the fight so they can heal their troops than someone of less development.
10 No turning back…
Your Leader and officers know who is on and who is not. After sometime of defensive war, usually a couple days or can be up to weeks if the entire kingdom is involved, there has to come a point where your alliance needs to be able to do a counter-push or other alliance players are coming to help you fight the enemy back. This is either holding on until some of your stronger players log on or family alliance members arrive to help you defeat the enemy forces and launch counter offensive on enemy positions. If none of this is in the works and all your members are dry on resources and troops are in the hospital… Then its time to face the music and negotiate surrender. This is a game of strategy and conquest- there will be winners and losers, sometimes compromise. Larger alliances are looking for you to join them and work together with their alliance family. If your not cooperative and a hindrance to them, they will be willing to zero all your members and force you to quit the game. No wise alliance want to throw players away and kill their own server- they want to have players on their side to achieve a common goal- but if that cannot be obtained, then they will just take your shrines and alters and care less if you stay in the game or not.
Conclusion:
The purpose of a defensive war is to waste your opponents time and force them to take huge losses in exchange for minimal gain. My employing these tactics you can frustrate your enemy while buying you time for alliance members to assist or other families to back you up. In worst conditions, even time for you to negotiate with another larger alliance for assistance and be part of their family to save yourself. Defense wins wars, period. If the enemy cannot defeat you, they cannot win- but your players cannot defend forever. They need to be able to gather and develop or soon they will drop like flies and either desert or quit. Have a plan, set a timeline, make negotiations and show them the power of fighting on alliance grounds.
Series posts:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RiseofKingdoms/comments/beks3t/rok_art_of_the_conqueror/
Submitted April 17, 2019 at 08:11PM by Ele5ion http://bit.ly/2V9ZNyT
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