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Defensive Guide

Background

I boast a relatively low defensive ranking in W1. One could argue that I have less experience than the average player defending my villages. To counter this, I can honestly say that I've watched teamates defend and when I attack, I see how players defend their villages. I've seen the best players defend against unbelievable odds, and have learned, in my opinion, how to defend effectively and efficiently.

Introduction

First, what is the objective of defending? For me, the objective of defending my villages is to slow down an opponent until I can resume the offensive. In the long run, you can NOT defend and win this game. The best outcome you can hope for is a stalemate, and who wants THAT as the best thing that can happen? By defending effectively and efficiently, you maximize your potential to strike back and make gains offensively. Threats do not disapear by defending correctly, they only abate when you show agression and your opponent backs off or you make offensive gains towards them.

Like offense, there are three levels of defense in Tribal Wars. Village level defense, player level defense and tribe level defense. Unlike offense however, the area of focus is at the player level defense. I will examine in detail each of these levels, focusing on the player level defense.

Village Level Defense

As a relatively advanced player, you should know that there are three primary defensive units in this game. Spears, Swords and Heavy Cavalry (hcav). Just a brief recap just so that everyone is on the same page. Spears defend primarily against cavalry, swords and hcav defend primarily against axemen. I advocate the even defense strategy, that is having an equal number of cavalry and axemen defense. There are strong arguments for a lopsided defense and it is highly dependent upon the situation.

Village Structures

10k/10k Spears/Swords Split

This is by far the most efficient setup in terms of farm space. There are two downsides however. First, it takes a very long time to build. To be exact, with a level 25 Barracks it will take 45 days to build; in this game, that is a long time. Secondly, moving troops around is slow. When villages are clustered together this isn't a big deal, but the further apart villages are, the more problematic this becomes.

8k/2k Spears/hcav Optimized Defense

This is a highly popular model of defense. Essentially, you sacrifice 20% of your troop effectiveness in exchange for a faster build time and faster movement. In contrast to the 10k/10k split, this configuration only takes 17 days to build. This is a THIRD of the time required to build the first configuration.

What should you use?

As a default, I strongly encourage players to use the 8k/2k spears/hcav as a default. Besides the reasons I gave above, it is simply easier to rebuild your defenses after an attack with it. After an attack, being able to re-build your defense 3 times faster is a huge advantage. It is virtually impossible to realistically re-build a 10k/10k defense when fighting good players, you just don't get that much time to recover. There is however a place for the 10k/10k defense. For long term support, or other instances where you just need a village stacked, the 20% fighting effectiveness proves useful, just don't lose those troops or you will have a village completely out of commission.

I strongly caution against deviating from these two standards. I have seen people mix spear/swords/hcav. While I can sort of understand the mentality that a hybrid village can fulfill both situations, in reality, you are much better off choosing one method per village and sticking with it. There are very few instances where the hybrid army will be better than one of the more pure forms of defense. Hybrid villages also make thinking through your defense much more complicated, something that you don't want to do when you have 50-2000 attacks incoming.

Player Level Defense

There are two primary ways of defending your villages effectively and efficiently. Both are extremely effective, but can prove disasterous if use improperly. Which system you use depends on your answer to this question: Can I hold off my opponent through defensive strength alone? This does NOT mean, "Can I destroy my opponent's offense?" Offensive troops build much faster than defensive troops, so the concept of troop preservation should be paramount. If the answer is yes to the above question, then your method should be to Stack. If your answer is no, then your method should be to Dodge/Snipe.

Stack Defense

This is a pretty simple tactic to explain and use. Simply put, you put as many troops as you can in a village before an attack lands. The more troops you can put into a village, the more you minimize your troop losses. A W1 player named Undo stated that it wasn't worth defending a village with less than 30k/30k worth of spears/swords or the spear/hcav equivolent. While this is a decent guideline, depending on what world you are on/what your situation is, this number could vary from 10k/10k to 200k/200k (I've personally seen both of those extremes in the past 3 months). Essentially, you are trying to kill enough of your opponent's offense so that you can re-build your defense quicker than they can re-build their offense. This tactic works well when you know an attack is coming, or it is launched from a long distance.

Dodge/Snipe Defense

The only way that you lose a village is by your opponent nobling it. Lets face it, resources in a village are cheap, walls are cheap. Losing an army or a village is not cheap, both in terms of resources and time. Preserving those two, an army/village are the important things. Many times when you get attacked from close range, or when you are caught low on defense, it is impossible to effectively stack your villages.

The first step is to clean your village. Minimize your losses. Remove your troops before an incoming attack. Send your resources to one of your other villages. What do you lose by doing this? You lose your wall and you lose any remaining resources in the village, small price if this allows you to stop the attack. Very few players disguise their nobles effectively. First, nobles have a distinct time signature because no unit travels at the same speed as the noble. Secondly, most people use noble trains, four nobles sent in quick succession from a single village. By identifying incoming nobles, you can pick out the attacks that you MUST defend against. Beyond this, remember that you can take up to 3 noble hits before you lose the village.

You can't escort a noble with more than one army, and rarely do people escort with more than a handful of troops. By preserving your troops from full armies, you give yourself a chance to take out noble trains. This is obviously a temporary fix since your opponent can simply resend their armies and nobles later, but it buys you time, time that you can use to find defensive troops (yours or teammates) to stack your village with.

A slight adaptation of the noble snipe is quite possibly one of the most effective ways to stop an attack. Instead of trying to stop your opponent from taking your village, you help him. The single biggest bottleneck offensively is the number of nobles available. Killing a noble costs your opponent 1 bundle. Allowing your opponent to take your village and taking the village back costs your opponent the full cost of that noble (anywhere from 1 to several hundred bundles). Usually, what you will do is clear out your village and just before their noble train arrives hit the village with your own nobles, lowering the loyalty as close to zero as possible without taking it (usually 3 nobles). Then, timing a noble to land just after your opponent's noble train. By doing this, you will use one noble to re-take the village, but hopefully this will cost your opponent up to four FULL nobles. For a large player, this could be a couple thousand bundles worth of resources wasted.

There are obvious disadvantages to this strategy. First off, you waste a noble, in other words its costly. Second, you lose any troops that you have from that village, so it is usually best to do this with a village that has already lost its troops (like an offensive village that you have just attacked with.)

Overall Defense

Ideally, when defending, you should be using a combination of all of these tactics to hurt your opponent enough so that they will stop attacking. The key here is defend in full, or don't defend at all. Do NOT spread your troops out thin.

By forcing your opponent to take army and noble losses, you force them to delay any further attacks on you by several days or several weeks, depending on how effective your strategies are. I can't stress enough how playing effective defense is not enough. Once again, all you are doing is delaying your opponent. The only way to really secure yourself against them is to go on the offensive against them.

Tribe Level Defense

I've heard it said many times, "I'm a defensive player". In this game, there is no such thing as a successful defensive player outside of extremely strong, highly organized and structured tribes. The only tribe that has implemented what I'm going to cite is T:V (to my knowledge) and was pioneered by me.

It is highly inefficient to dodge/snipe between accounts in this game, it is really only a player level tactic, not a tribe level tactic. Thus, the primary function of the tribe should be to stack vulnerable villages that are essential to holding. This is again, the all or none philosophy. When you defend a village, defend it strong. I never support someone unless I can ensure that at least 20k/20k worth of defense will be in that village. If there isn't, either I don't send support or I send the full 20k/20k myself.

Who should be supporting? Anyone who is not under attack or is unlikely to be attacked. Caution is good in this game, but there is a limit. Long ranged attacks can easily be sniped, so what is the point in keeping excessive amounts of defense in untouchable villages. Typically, at any given moment, I have 90% of my defense out defending other people that I know are likely to be attacked today. Of course there is always a reserve number of troops, just in case something unexpected happens, but in my experience, you can predict which villages are likely to come under serious attack, and which ones aren't. The key for a tribe is coordinating the movement of troops from their strong points to their borders with enemy tribes.

To me, a teammate or an ally losing a village is as big a problem as ME losing a village. First off, it hurts the tribe's interested, but also, more selfishly, teammates losing villages puts you in a more dangerous position. I have zero qualms losing troops in teammate's villages instead of my own. The fact that my teammates know this also means that if I need support anywhere, they will do what they can to help me quickly, no matter how much defense I need. It is simply good business to protect the interests of the tribe as a whole.

Offensive Guide

This is hopefully going to be the first installment of many on the things that I have learned playing this game. I consider myself to be a pretty good player, but most of all, I have access to some of the best players in this game. I am still an active player, but as W1 winds down, I think that its time for me to share some of the things that I have learned. It is doubtful that these chapters will significantly hamper T:V in W1 since all of our enemies know most of this, or they simply won't read here. I hope that these will become a guide for the medium to advanced players here.

Who am I and why do I think that people should listen to my advice? I am a member of T:V, the dominant tribe in World 1. I have optimized many aspects of this game and have been able to over the past year and a half experiment with different techniques. Unlike many players in this game that have played for as long as I have, I have also optimized the tribe level of offense as well having worked to eliminate over 20 major players. The original group that I lead in World 1 became the most efficient branch of T:V and while they are all exceptional players, it was the fact that we learned to work together as a team that made us some of the best.

Introduction

There are three levels of offense in Tribal Wars; village level offense, player level offense and tribe level offense. The key to being a successful player is optimize all three of these levels in terms of efficiency. All operate independent of each other and are all essential.

Village level offense

On the village level, the most important part of building offense is building the strongest army possible as quickly as possible. Offensive armies should be made up of three units, Axes, Light Cav and Rams. Looking at the statistics for each unit, axes are by far the strongest offensive unit produced in the barracks, the light cavalry are the strongest unit produced by the stable and rams are essential, which I will talk about later.

It should be easy to see that axes are better than spears/swords for attacking. But what about light cavalry over heavy cavalry? The key here is in farm space. For every two hcav that you build, you can build three lcav. When you build a full army, lcav are the better unit to build and far more economical. Rams, rams, rams. I can't stress enough how important it is to use rams for offense. An enemy's wall amplifies their defending ability significantly. The only way to break through heavy defense is with rams.

Now, how many of each should you build? The optimal build ratio is approximately 6000/3000/240 (axes/lcav/rams). This assumes that you have a level 25 barracks and level 20 stable. I have heard it over and over again, "but axes are better than lcav", so I should build more axes. I can not stress how misguided this is. It is true that in terms of numeric attacking power, axes are per farm space better for attacking, but there are important considerations. First off, this ratio, 6000/3000/240 is the fastest to build. You will have more armies faster if you build this ratio, which means you can attack more often. Secondly, most players build either an equal number of spears and swords or more swords. They also tend to use hcav which defend like swords.

Since most player's defenses are sword heavy, having a higher lcav ratio is highly adventageous. It is very very rare for a player to build more spears than swords.

Lastly, the 240 rams. This is the optimal number of rams for eliminating the effects of a wall. This is a complicated subject and is unbelievably situational. I will leave this discussion for another chapter. However, it is simple enough to say that you need 235 rams minimum with each attacking army. The extra 5 rams are for faking, which is a part of the next section: Player level offense.

Player Level Offense

First, groups. I recommend that all players have two groups (in addition to others that you might have). "Offense" and "Building Offense". I will explain what I have found to be the most efficient system at building offense both quickly and with as little hassle as possible. Lets face it. The more easily you can do book keeping, the more efficient you will be as a player. A skill that I think a lot of players miss is the ability to change village's groups often and regularly to make their management easier.

Using the "Building Offense" group, if you have all the villages that need to build offense in one group you can easily see which villages are not building and which villages need certain resources. Since each village in this group is functionally doing the same thing, logging onto your account, within a few seconds you can easily do everything that you would need to to ensure that your offense is rebuilding as quickly as it possibly could be. No more remembering villages, no more searching for villages or forgetting which villages need building. Once a village finishes the army that it is building, it should be moved over to the "Offense" group.

Using the "Offense" group, it is easy to see how much firepower you have at your disposal. There are very few instances when you should be attacking without a full army and by grouping your villages this way, you will again be able to see quickly how much offense you have ready to go. This also makes storing bundles easy, because none of the villages in the "Offense" group need resources for building troops, you can easily store bundles in mass with out worries of forgetting a village or having to go through each village one at a time.

Keeping one's offense organized allows that player to become an effective fighting machine. It also allows that player to help other players out. The more under control things are, the more aid can be offered to other people, which leads into tribe level offense.

Tribe Level Offense

Arguably, this section could be several pages long, and maybe when I have a chance (probably when I quit) I will write up a good long version of this with high levels of details and illustrations. But this will have to do.

Of all the places where one can create an advantage, this is by far the largest. With out question, the ability to co-ordinate multiple players' offenses is the holy grail of this game. Just a few examples of things that I have personally done with the aid of teammate coordination: Noble 56 villages in less than 38 hours with a single account, cause an enemy player to lose more than a million points in less than 48 hours, eliminate players in enemy strong holds.

The easiest way of taking out a large player is through teamwork. Not only is it easier to take them out but it is more efficient. Players are less able to stack or play effective defense if they have to defend against multiple players. The key here is organization. You need a system for assigning or claiming villages. Spreadsheets work well, but there are a lot of options. The point is that everyone should be able to see who is supposed to be attacking which villages and people should be able to see which villages they are supposed to noble and which ones they are supposed to stay away from so that their teammates can take them.

click on this ! [url]http://www.loh-inc.net/TWNet/spreadsheet.jpg[/url]

Another huge advantage of working in a team is that you can optimize resources. Many times a player will have excessive offense and few nobles, or the reverse. By being highly organized a team can utilize both player's assets for the good of the tribe. An example of this is in the sample photo above. Most of this kind of teamwork can only be learned by trial and error, but it is well worth it.

Lastly, there is the issue of 'fakes'. Fakes are attacks that are mean to look like an army, but are in fact a single unit designed to 'fake out' another player. Clever use of fakes can be used to mask a tribe's true intentions. By sending fake attacks at neighboring players to a target, those players are far less likely to support the real target. But this is an over simplification. Most good players can see through fake attacks just by looking at them. So how do you make convincing fakes?

I detailed in the village level offense section that each village should have 240 rams and that only 235 should be a part of an army, leaving 5 rams in the village. Lets say that we think that we will need 2 armies to clear a particular village, and we have two offensive villages to work with. By sending two attacks at one village and sending 1 ram at 5 surrounding villages, it is impossible to know which village is really under attack. From a defender's perspective, all they see are 6 villages that have two attacks incoming. If you do this with multiple villages, it becomes almost impossible to decipher and you will be able to clear many villages very quickly.

Another common tactic against good players is the fake noble train. By sending four consecutive single ram attacks, a defender may mistake this for a noble train and hurry defenses to a village that you aren't really planning to attack. An added twist (kudos to burns for teaching me this), if a player is sniping noble trains, you can send an army from one village and then three single ram attacks and then a full army from a second village. To most players, this will look like a clearing army and then a noble train. If the player has been sniping nobles, they will usually remove their defense and let you clear their wall and then put the defense back after the first army hits. By doing this, you will attack their defenses without a wall.

Without teamwork, this game ends up becoming a stalemate. From the receiving end, a well organized offensive is virtually impossible to stop, no matter who the player is. Tribes have virtually infinite time to organize an offensive, meaning that they can coordinate perfectly in battle time. Defensively, while players have a built in advantage (they can stack troops), as a tribe, it is very hard to coordinate on the fly, even if the attack is from long range.

Conclusion

This guide is aimed at players 100k points and up. I doubt someone with fewer than 10 villages will find this guide useful. There are a lot of holes in this guide and a lot of things that I didn't put in. Primarily because this is getting pretty long and because its hard for me to organize my thoughts. Perhaps I will revise this and put in more details later. Any questions and/or comments/feedback is appreciated.

Side Note

This guide was written without consideration for worlds using archers. If a player is on an archer/mounted archer world, this guide will still be very helpful but some tweaking of troops should be considered. (side note added by Usti Wahya, not the original contributor)