Capture Strategies

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

• 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. 

 Rally Take Down

• 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 ;)

Fake Out Take Out

• 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.

Scholar Bounce

• 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.

The Double Tap

• 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.

 

Capturing Cities

Capturing player cities is more difficult then defending - they can side step Cleaning Crew Troops. they can get support. they can generally make it difficult. Which is half the fun!! Here are some tactics I've learned to wage war.

• Team up with a guild mate or two. It makes it easier if they get support from their guild mates if you have a reserve supply of troops and a Scholar Train.
• Scout your target and sim your attacks. I can not stress enough how important simulating is. Fwd your scout report to anyone helping you.
• After sending in a cleaning crew, scout again. It's good to have a wave of cavalry in standby to shoot at your victim just in case.
• Keep an eye on it - when ever I assume it's gonna be ok I am always disappointed and usually pissed at the hyjinx your unmonitored troops can get into.

I scout repeatedly in between - but only because I hate surprises. I like to leave time to slip in an extra strike just before my first scholar hits,

If your prey is dodging troops - hide your troops in a fake ballistic attack. More on that HERE.

OK so you've found your Victim.  First thing to do is launch a scout contingency.


Scholar Report

So you scout them, and assess their strength, the example Victim has minimal defense troops for Calvary (Lancers), but is stocked up on Infantry Defense (Guardians).

If you are confident you can always launch your scholar train first, and send clearing waves timed to land just before your first scholar hits. This can be a gamble with the introduction of the purchasable "truce" option in the store, it is better to have your clearing crew in a city that is further away from your target and slow them down by adding one ram or one sentry to adjust the timing so your cc lands just before your train.

Note the Wall Level is maxed out at 25, You'll need to bring it down to prevent loss of troops.  It is quite possible to capture a city completely intact, however for those of us who usually have a need for troops, rebuilding the wall after capture only takes a day or two, depending on how committed you are to it.



Also note at the bottom where he has 250 Lancers outside the city, this maybe support for a guild mate or maybe he is farming, or thinks that they can be brought back into the city just in time to kill your scholar.  Make sure that when you simulate you add those units.




Cleaning Crew Report

The purpose of a cleaning crew is to kill your victims' troops.  Expect your men are to be sacrificed for the greater good of the kingdom, I usually send two waves, the first with Rams and Ballistas to Wall Break your victim and a second wave to mop up the carnage afterward. 

Note that I did not send scouts with this wave, mainly because I knew that I would take down the wall completely, aiming my 424 Ballistas at the wall to accompany the rams bringing it to 0.  I also knew that my Second CC Wave would be following this wave and I'd get a better picture once I got the report back on that.

Cleaning Crew Report #2

A few things to note, first the time the second clearing crew landed.  I timed it so that it would land within 15 minutes of my first attack.

Second, I sent Rams just in case he tried to rebuild his wall or purchased gold to rebuild his wall.  I also needed to slow down this clearing crew, adding Rams slows it down considerably.  I usually only add 1 Ram if I want to slow down my cc or if I want to disguise it as ballistas.   Your victim will leave his troops in city if he thinks you're going to send ballistas to knock down his farm.

I always send MORE troops then actually needed, you collect serious looting, and you can never send too much.  I effectively killed all his troops, and his wall is completely down, the path is paved for my scholar train.

Scholar Report #1

Even though the path was clear, I sent a decent contingency to accompany my scholar.  If he had a decent guild they would have sent support, and hopefully your first scholar hit lives.  I send 4 in a train.  This example is based on a 4 Train Cap.  I recently got cocky and only sent 4 to cap a city that was a 11 hour walk and got burnt hard because even though my scholars landed within 7 to 10 minutes of one another, I only brought the loyalty down to 2.  I had to wait for my scholars to return before I could send more out.  LUCKILY I had three extra scholars in reserve so it wasn't that big of a deal, but still.  Its better to be safe then sorry.

The more resources you can pull away from your Victim the less he'll be able to build to defend.  This guy was clearly not logged on as there was nothing building in queue otherwise you'd see a hand full of whatever troops that is currently building.


Note that my scholar took off 28 loyalty points.  Your scholar takes off between 20 - 30 points with each strike, and sending more then one scholar doesn't take off more loyalty, its just a waste.  If you have two scholars built in one city, divide up your troops evenly between your two waves.

Scholar Report #2

Note the time. This scholar land is from another of my cities, it landed within 10 minutes of my first scholar, I sent my defense troops to protect my scholar because I used my attack troops in my cleaning crew wave earlier. 

Breaking your troops up like this is very effective, you can clear out the troops with your attack troops and protect your scholar easily with a few thousand defense troops.  Note: Guardians are very versatile for this reason, they are great for attack and defense.

He still doesn't have any support, which is good for me :) but had he gotten some  in between hopefully my contingency would be enough to keep my scholar alive.

My scholar brought the victim's loyalty down from 72 to 45.  Because I landed the second scholar so soon after the first, no loyalty built back up between attacks so my scholar took off 27 loyalty points leaving them at 45.

Scholar Report #3

I messed up this land by 10 minutes, because math isn't my strong suit apparently.  It still only took 4 scholars to capture this city, so it worked out, but I've had small mistakes like that cost me a cap.

This is another city where I used the attack troops to hit the city then used the defense troops to accompany my scholar.  I was confident in my troop count, and I also bet that he wouldn't have support.

The scholar took the loyalty down from 45 to 22 that's only 23 points.

Another really good haul resource wise, leaving him less and less to rebuild with.  Clearly he is not doing this as no troops are being built.  There's a really good chance that he is going to log into his city in the morning and whoops! Its gone :(
mwahhahahahahaa



Scholar Report #4 for Capture

I sent a wave in between the last scholar wave and this one to "sweep" the troops and make sure there were no surprises.
With my claiming scholar I sent Guardians which are a good accompaniment to your scholar.  Had i had Bezerkers I would have sent them as well, but I sent them from this city as a sweep to clear out any support troops he could have had.

This final scholar took the loyalty down from 23 to 0 capturing the city as mine and effectively ruining your victim's morning.

That is it, basic capture in a nut shell.  If you don't catch your victim while he's offline like in this example, there will be more back and forth, and your scholar death chance increases significantly. 

A couple things I like to do to before I engage in war with someone is Ballista the warehouse of nearby barbarian cities.  This will significantly limit what they can farm to restock their resources. 

I also like to Ballista THEIR farm in the first attack.  This limits what they can train in city to defend, but doesn't limit their support.  It can be fairly easily rebuilt, and once you capture, it doesn't limit what support you can get either, if your opponent is a worthy adversary, this is a really good cripple tactic.  What doesn't help is Ballista-ing their Forge or City Hall.  If their troops are already researched reducing their forge only frees up farm for them to use in defense troops.