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.

Trip Wires

A common term is "tripping" your guild.  This is a safety net cast out by the extremely active to protect those who are away for any length of time, or those casual players who log on once a day or less.  When you have support troops in a guild mates city, and that city gets attacked, you receive a notice saying who attacked, and how many of your troops died.  This early detection and support dispatch can mean the difference between someone loosing their city or not.  To set up a "trip" you send 1 Lancer and 1 Scout to the guild mate you want to watch over as support.  That's it.  When that city gets attacked you know about it.  Your responsibility is to post notification in your guild posting Soinso from guild Power House just attacked guildmate buddyfriend at x,y city.  Please send support or ## support dispatched.
Make sure the crown is aware unless you are in war with the guild who attacked then they probably know about it and are monitoring the forum closely.

To trip wire the entire guild is not possible by one person.  You have a certain amount of commander slots that you can have out at any given time.  25 seems to be the concensus.  So every time you send out troops, to farm, attack, or support it uses up one slot. No matter how many troops you send, until the troops die, or return home that commander slot is taken.  To prevent issues any one guild mate should only trip 5 or 6 ppl.  This way you will still have plenty of slots open to farm and attack till your hearts content.

The reason you send 1 lancer AND 1 scout is you get more detail, scouts kill scouts and troops kill everything, if you can add Soinso attacked guildmate buddyfriend with scouts maybe your leadership can nip it in the bud with diplomacy before any bloodshed occurs.

It is smart to have a place in your forum where people can post if they will be away from the game for any length of time.  I usually say over a 24 hour period.  A lot can happen in valor in a short amount of time, it's better to have your cities watched over then not.  Also keep in mind that just because you have someones cities tripped, does not mean you can defend them during actual war.  If your guild is warring, and your trip wire goes off on a buddy you know won't be back for a week or longer, make note of who is attacking, if anyone can get support there in under 3 hours, do it. If not, re trip and monitor.  You can not see what is coming in, you can not maneuver to dodge, or perform any other defense tactics, there is no sense to leave yourself low on troops defending against a city that can not maneuver.  It sounds bad, but it is better to loose the city, and recap then to fill it with defense troops and pray it is enough. Worst case scenario is the city gets capped by the enemy, you send someone close by to re cap it. Your absent buddy can re re cap it when he returns to active status.