Battlefield Chaos

** Please note that due to the introduction of the purchasable "truce" within the Valor Store, Playmesh has removed Battlefield Chaos from the game play experience **

Chaos is a term that is commonly used in Valor.  It refers to a defense tactic that is used by players to prevent others from attacking a city that you currently own, prevents others from attacking a city you are currently conquering, and or to prevent a player from defending a newly conquered city by filling it with troops.

The game limits the amount of attacks and support any one city can send and receive - this prevents server clogs for Playmesh and provides an excellent tactic for us to use against our enemies. These queues are called "Commander Slots" and the numbers are as follows:

• You can have only have 40 INCOMING attacks to any one city 
• You can only send out 25 OUTGOING attacks from any once city
• You can only receive 15 INCOMING support (trip wires count) to any one city
• Note that if multiple support is sent from ONE city, once the support lands the game will combine the support into one support commander slot - so to make support chaos permanent send the 15 waves from multiple locations.
• Also Note that battlefield chaos usually takes up an abundance of TIME and it will limit your ability to FARM and ATTACK if the need arises, sending 10 waves from 4 cities will leave open commander slots for you to still function as a productive member of your guild.

To achieve BFC you will need to either not be in the same guild, or drop your guild, send chaos then rejoin.  Its smart for the leadership of your guild to create a designated Chaos Team who are very active and will be responsible for providing chaos to your sister guilds and or allies.  It is helpful for your sister guilds and allies to also have a point of contact to provide chaos for your guild as well.  The more efficient the communication, the more effective this tactic can be. To assist a friendly with chaos, you send one Ram, Sentry or Lancer to the city in need of chaos.  The longer the walk the better, so Rams are typically used.  The city you are Chaos'ing, will stay in chaos until your waves start to land. As soon as Commander Slots start to free up, others can fill those slots by sending in attacks so make sure you have someone dedicated to this task to keep your city in chaos for as long as you need to rebuild, get support or plan for defense.

Now it is speculated that Playmesh created this to prevent exhaustion on their servers, or some also say that its a 'glitch'. I like to refer to it as the poor man's "Truce" but better because you can send yourself support.  Whatever the case it works to your advantage and here's how you can make it work for you.

Battlefield Chaos
First example in how to make battlefield chaos (BFC) work to your advantage is to defend your city - if you have been bombarded and need time to get support from your guild, and rebuild your city - putting your city into chaos will effectively cease all incoming attacks and further damage to your city or to prevent your city from being capped when loyalty is dropped.

Second example is to put a target city you intend to capture into chaos as you are capping it.  This prevents others from sneaking in and taking it from you.  Its a little more work esp if you are bouncing scholars off the city or working with others to cap, but it is well worth it when you have finally capped to not have a surprise incoming sch attack from friend or foe to take it from you after you did all the work.  This is effective best when capping an inactive city or juicy barb far away - you are just leveling the playing field giving your slow ass scholars time to walk the great distance to a new location - good cities are hard to come by and go quick esp by ppl already in the neighbourhood.   This tactic is tested and effective and prevents a ton of work for your diplomacy leaders and as long as you have the legal claim on the city and cleared it, there should be no issues for your leadership to work out.  |It is also effective to put a city you are not quite prepared to clear into chaos to prevent property disputes later on, typically property disputes are settled as who cleared the troops and who has first scholar land.  Its kind of a douche move to tie up a cities commanders for days on end while you take the time to clear it, but w/e, their loss.

Lastly, Chaos is a common tactic used, and most ppl use chaos to defend newly capped cities.  If you want to recap your own city, but need time to re educate your scholar, send in a couple of waves to the city stolen from you just as it is capped - this will prevent your squatter from filling all the slots, you'll be able to monitor landing of the few waves you sent and will be able to fill them with your scholar waves as soon as they do land. Scouts work really well for this, if you send them from far enough away you can time it so that your scholar(s) will be done cooking and you are ready to roll by the time the waves start to land.  If your squatter isn't paying attention, he might not even notice that a few waves are from you, he may just think they are chaos set up from friends, and will get complacent and feel safe.  I love it when that happens, bcs when you finally do recap your city it'll wreck his day.  Good Times.

Support Chaos
An example of Support Chaos to work for you is this - If your city is getting capped, and there's no way you can save it - send yourself 15 waves of support.  Send 1 lancer in each wave, preferably from as far away as possible, giving yourself as much time to recap as possible.  How this works is once your city is capped, your squatter will want to fill your city with support to defend, if all 15 support slots are filled said squatter will be unable to defend and you will be able to recap easily.  Keep in mind that this will only work for support on route, once support lands, if your squatter is smart, he will just send it back to you and send support of his own.

Chaos smart.  Chaos Fair.
Good hunting my friends.

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.

Scholars, Rams & Ballistas

Scholars:
To take over a city you need a scholar. You only send one scholar in each wave, it won't take more loyalty if you send two, so only send one per wave.  Each time your scholar hits it will take off 20 to 30% of the loyalty in your target city.  You keep hitting it until the loyalty is 0% then the scholar stays there, your loyalty jumps from 0 to 25% and the city is now yours.  Each worlds loyalty returns at a different rate so view the world info for more on loyalty.  It will typically take two scholar hits after a city is newly conqurerd to re-conquer it.  Its a safety mechinism built into the game to be fair.  When you are conqurering a city you can't tell if anyone else is hitting it unless you pay attention to the loyalty going down, if your last strike left the loyalty at 50 and your next one conqurers it you know someone else has been hitting it and is probably pissed :)  You will need to go into the report to go into your new city as it takes the server a second or two to register that your city is conqurerd.  If you are in war, you may notice immidately that there are incoming, this maybe launched before you conqurerd your city, so don't panic.  Seek assistance from your guild to support your city with troops and defend it.  You can rename your city once for free by going into the city hall of that city and renaming it as you did your main city.  If you want to change it after that it'll cost you 50 gold so make sure you like it.

• Scholar Trains:  If you land 4 scholars, no matter if they are all from you or you have help from guildmates, and they land within 15 min of one another (usually less is better) you can effectively conquer a city with the 4 hits.  The larger your Scholar Crew is the more loyalty seems to take off so send plenty of support troops with each wave.  Its good to keep two extra scholars on hand in addition to any scholars you need to do your conquering to set up trains - helping out your guild mates they will in turn help you out typically

Rams:
They are the slowest to walk anywhere next to the scholar, and they are useful when taking down walls.  Your prey will get a Wall Bonus, a % of troops killed per wall level.  Your rams land just before your troops do, so your victim's wall bonus is based on the level of wall AFTER your rams land. 

Ballistas:
Ballistas are as slow as Rams, and can take down any building in your target's city hall except the hiding place.  **Note when using Ballistas to take down walls they land at the same time as your troops so your victim's wall bonus will be applied at the level it was when your wave hits.  When in war and you are taking out an enemy, or assisting in taking out an enemy you can cripple your enemy by ballista-ing his Farm, Wall or Academy.  Just remember that what ever you knock down, you have to rebuild once you conquer, so don't go crazy.

Your rams, ballitas and scholars die easily and are expensive so ALWAYS send support troops to accompany them.