So tough guy, you want to capture your first city, huh? Not sure what to attack but have blood rage to the max and need to shed blood? Here are some easy simple attack strategies that have worked well. Everyone has their own way of doing things, this has worked for me and is common practice within the community. The deconstruction on the "How To" has been explained in the blog Capturing Cities - this is just an explanation on the strategies of capping live targets.
Train
Divide and Conquer
Train
- You will hear the term "Train" or "Scholar train" all over this blog, and quite often in your guild forums. This is the practice of sending 5 consecutive attacks all at once to land within a few minutes of each other to capture a city with the 5th land. You can achieve this by teaming up with a buddy or two from your guild or home grow the 5 scholars within your kingdom. You can grow them all in one city or launch from several strategically placed cities to land all at approximately the same time. When you do this, you have your clearing crews land before hand, then your train. Most send 5 scholars, one scholar per wave as it is pointless to send more then one scholar per wave as it does no more loyalty damage then one scholar alone. This is the grand standard on capping cities within the land of Valor, no matter what world you play, this tactic is the old reliable. You may want to send more then 5 scholars in case your victim gets smart and tries to Snipe you. Sniping your scholar is to kill one wave so your just short of capping his city. The victim usually seeks mad support and truces up so you can't send another wave to cap for an additional 24 hours. If you have enough escort and a 6th wave, you shouldn't need to worry about snipers.
- Escorted Train -- Another way to avoid the Snipe is to time clearing crews to land just before each scholar in your train. This is especially useful if your scholar trains are grown in a single city. It is better to stagger your train with several cities, but that is not always feasible. If you have a large enough kingdom, your clearing waves can be calculated easily, however if you are getting others in on it, make sure they are aware of how critical the strike time needs to be, and work out their math for them. Maybe its because I'm a control freak, but I like to know that they know exactly when they need to launch. The tactic of launching scholars then waiting to launch cc is a gamble with the introduction of Truce in the store. This is one of the main reasons I've adopted fake into my strategy bag, if you fake them, they truce, you know when their truce wears off, they can NOT truce again for another 24 hours. No matter the support they've gotten, nor troops they've built, you can take your time and trust in the knowledge that you have 24 glorious hours in which to take their city from them.
Divide and Conquer
- This is where your guild chooses high risk targets of the enemy guild, posts the cities of the victim in the guild forum, then you each take one or two targets and either coordinate a land time - which will freeze the victims home grown defense troops, or just pick him apart one city at a time. This tactic is the best for full guild participation and a good war planner will know how to choose targets. Some take out mid range and bottom feeders first, this will force the larger players to scatter their defense troops (this is also a good fake out target area because mid rangers always post for support in guild - no matter what type of troop is coming their way), others choose the larger players first because it is more of a challenge.
- This method uses the much loved rally against your victim. The idea behind it is to a) hit your waves within 30 seconds - this requires careful planning on your part, and much more math then I've ever been happy about using. First wave hits massive cc PLUS Ballistas. your victim will likely want to keep his city supported if he thinks his buildings or wall will be destroyed. Set your Balls to destroy the Rally Point - But why Luna? It only takes a minute to rebuild RP! Here's why kids, your second (and third, fourth or fifth) clearing crew lands seconds after your first, preventing your victim from dodging. Make sure you scout and do all the math to clear, plus whatever forces he can bring in just to be safe. You can't ever send too much. Have your scholar train hit seconds after your clearing crew. 5 scholars, 6 if you are uncertain about support, and boom, city is gone before rally point is finished rebuilding. This is a fan fave and is called many different names, I prefer the ball buster - but I'm crude like that ;)
- This strategy is good when you have minimal guild participation and you are going against a larger player. For this strategy to work, your fakes must be in abundance. With the introduction of incoming troop view which is purchasable in the store, your victim only needs to spy one or two waves to figure faux from real so plan ahead and use his gold spending ways against him. Don't only fake cities you have no intention on taking, but also the city you ARE taking - make the fake scholar trains land after your real ones. Group up your fakes to match, so they feel the same to your victim. Stagger fake launches by a few seconds - this will assist in making them 'feel' real to your victim and will make it harder for him to guess what is what. If you have no one else to help you, spend an extra day or so lulling him into a false sense of fakes R us - making them land throughout the day and night, he will get used to seeing incoming and slip into complacency. It will also tire him out. Most people have day jobs, and will spend the first night or two staying up to view landing and carnage reports, or to dodge and counter. I'm not saying using the human need for sleep against your victim is fair, I'm saying its FUN. :) Few things, as you fake, send scouts to monitor your victims behaviour. Watch what he does, how he moves, how quickly support comes in, you can get a good idea where it is coming from by scouting often. You can also get a sense of his play schedule by doing this as well. The more information you have, the better. I can hear you now, but WHY Luna? Why put extra effort into the cap, why not just bombard him ceaselessly till he has no troops to spare then cap him at your leisure? Because kiddo, its fun. Its also harder to take down a larger player by yourself, or with minimal guild interaction - and in my experience brute force is only good if you have cooperation with your mates.
- Not everyone has a scholar train from the get go, and sometimes bouncing your nerd off your victim is the only way to go. For this, if you are going against a real person (not a barb or husk) you are going to want to plan carefully, it is strongly recommended you seek guild assistance, there is always someone who has an extra scholar and most are willing to help. However if that is not the case, or you have no one near by, scout and send clearing waves in between bounces - as you are bouncing, scout in between - constantly bombard your target with incoming to keep him on his toes, and make sure you fortify your scholar accompaniment. To bounce your scholar your target should be fairly close by, you do not want to use this method if you can at all avoid it on anything longer then a 1 to 2 hour walk one way. Make sure you continually monitor your cap if your guild mates do not have extra scholars they may have clearing waves willing to send to your victim - have them do so often as it will keep your target's resources down, and you can save your troops for defending your scholar as he does his job.
- We have all had an instance where you are hap hap happily capping a barbarian city, just to get your final report and see a train barreling down on your 6. What to do?! If your defense cluster is close enough you can always defend heavy and kill off his train, or... and you're going to love this... or... Take a gander at his source cities, if you have the time of course you can always attack and cap his source cities, if you cap his source city before his scholar lands, when it finally does land on your new cap, it will be as if you capped it. Yes that sounds complicated, but it's not - Break down: Any troops that are out supporting, farming, attacking or otherwise are not dead at the time you capture a city instantly become apart of your army! Yes that includes scholars. When you 'inherit' scholars your scholarship goes into deficit, or a negative number (its like a school loan, you still have to pay for the scholarships for the inherited scholar) if said inherited scholar caps one of YOUR cities, your scholars v. scholarships even out because you gain back your scholar once your city gets capped. This strategy is always fun, and causes your would be ganker to have a bad, bad day.
