All attacks come down to one thing…killing masses of archers.
Everything else is prep for that.
There are 3 ways to kill archers: Scout bombs. Cav smacks, and Mech waves.
Sadly, sct bmbs are becoming obsolete with the number of archers folks have now. An optimal sct bmb will kill 20k or so arch. If the target has 500k arch in his city, you need 2.5 million scts MINIMUM to kill them. Plus the scts you needed to kill his scts.
Making and feeding over 3 mill scts is very expensive
cont
You also have to clear out most of their warriors, or your sct bmbs will kill those instead.
If they have 3 times the amount of warr as they do arch, you will waste your scouts on killing warr.
That is where “Clearing Waves” come in. Every method of killing archers efficiently requires clearing waves. I will get to later.
BUT!!! If you are working as a team, ech member of the team can have around 2 mill scts, and that is very doable.
Method 2: Cav smacks/bombs. Cav wave of 99,999 cav (or cav and Cataphract combos) and one sct are very effective at killing masses of archers. You can cheat a bit and send a FEW thousand fewer cav and more scts.
Cav bombs however require the most clearing waves and can be defeated VERY easily by a few abbatis, traps or pike.
The (only real) purpose of spam waves is to clear all traps and abbatis in prep for a cav bomb. ALL PIKE AND SWORDS must also be cleared.
You really need to be right on top of the city to use cav bmbs….if you are too far away the target can easily build traps abs or pike before your bomb hits.
You really need to be right on top of the city to use cav bmbs….if you are too far away the target can easily build traps abs or pike before your bomb hits.
Method 3: Mech waves.
Including small amount of mech (pults rams and ballista) in any wave makes that wave better, but sending a big mech wave is (after clearing waves) VERY effective.
A big mech wave is 10k rams (the most expensive mech) 15k pults (you need lvl 10 barracks to build) and over 40k ballis.
Mech waves are also expensive to build and feed…but I THINK they are cheaper than scts for equivalent damage. They are also more ‘forgiving’ if you mess up or something changes.
After your attack and heal, resend what you get from healing and that will clean up SOME what the first wave didn’t get.
The more the better of course, but once you get 10k rams and 15k pults, start building ballis, they are cheaper to build and to feed.
Clearing waves:
Clearing waves are vital for taking out layers of pike swrd and warr etc. prior to killing archers.
They are based on thirds, so there are 3 basic ones…over 34k arch, over 67k arch and over 99k arch, layered with support troops. Here are the ones I use:
Cheapest first!
36k arch w 1k each of workers, sct, pike, swrd, cav, phract….then as many warr as you can afford. The more warr the better as they “hold off” the targets layers while your arch kill them.
If you up the layers of swrd pike etc to 3009 instead of 1000, that nearly doubles the effectiveness.
The same goes for a 67k arch wave, you can send 67k with 1k layers and it works great…if you up the layers to 3000 it works REALLY great.
You CAN send wavs of 99k arch and 1k scts, or send what amounts to a farming wave of 93k arch and 1k layers, they are effective but in my opinion not good value.
But in a pinch and if the targets layers are gone, 99k arch and 1k will kill up to 50k arch….so if it makes sense due to conditions to trade 2 for one you can.
Ensign waves: This wave can kill up to 500k warr, plus layers
1k each (no more!) of EVERYTHING workers, warr, sct, pike, swrd, cav, phract, transpo, balli, ram, pult and then fill out w archers…about 114k, iirc. Sending without the mech still works pretty well and gets to the target MUCH faster.
Oops again! Fill out your big mech wave w as many arch as you can! Since this is your all out attack, it is a great place to use ensigns
The Ideal Attack
Clear as many traps and abs w spam as possible, so your troops aren’t slowed down.
Two waves of the 36k arch clearing wave
One wave of the 66k arch clearing wave
A full ensign wave w mech
A big mech wave, preferably w ensign.
Then another clearing wave or two to get healed layers
Then the remnants of your healed mech wav
If you have two guys on the targets city, launching the ideal attack, only a Really, REALLY, strong city can stand up to it…if any can.
As you can see, it is VERY expensive to launch an ideal attack! Not just to make the troops, but to feed them as well. A decent War City has a minimum of minus 30 mill food per hour.
Which brings us to the key to the Game: Food/farming.
The only way you can achieve Stupendous Bad Ass Status is to have billions of food.
If you notice, the Big Guys attack and then are quite for a month while they farm and build.
You HAVE TO sell food …to buy resources …to build troops. There is just no way to build a good attack wave with just the rsrcs your cities produce.
That also goes for defense. when I was surrounded by 7 Cents, (and then a Spartan after I ported, lol) I spent 17 billion food to build troops.
So build to farm and defend ….and only when you have a big surplus of food…start building for attac. That way you have to feed as few troops as possible while you build.
HEROS
You WILL lose heros in attacks.
The best way to try to avoid it is to send as many one sct spam waves to hit right before each of your waves.
The VERY best way is to use camp time to have all your hits land at once AND send multi one sct spam right before it hits.