Protecting against a rainbow attack

[Seaney]

What is the best way to protect against a rainbow attack where the attacker leads with one scout, one cavalry, one worker, one swordsman, one pike, etc?

Given that catapults, walls, traps, etc seem to be almost useless.

Should I leave my gates open?

[DarkZAN]

Fight Fire with fire.

in this case fight Rainbow with RAINBOW. that is the only defense against a rainbow offense.

this is also the main reason why many people leave their gates open.

[Tarrasque]

make sure you have at least 1 of every defence type, that way the battle begins at maximum range which gives your archers and archer towers more rounds to pick him off on his way in. If you have enough troops to fight him off then yes, def open your gates, defences are meant to compliment troops not replace them, even the max ATs will die under attack from a sizeable force without the help of troops from within. Work on the basis that attacking archers need to outnumber ATs and your archers combined by about 4-1 depending on the comparative archery tech levels.

Second, you can also utilise rainbow defence, first by increase the range to max with defences, but then by having a suitable number of each troop type. Remember what targets what:

Cav target archers
Pikes target cav
Swords target archers
Warriors are fodder but waste time, since they are cheap to build have lots of them
Build ballister for defence, they come in realy handy if you have enough of them. You would be surprised what you can do with a good mix of troops in your city and will win fights that on paper you dont think you should, thats because of the wall range bonuses and the potency of archer towers, but remember they are not good alone, they need troop backup

[LordBloke]

If you have traps, logs and trebuchet then the rainbow should be dead before your troops bother with them. I'm not convinced it makes a difference attacking a city, it works great on a flat.

Your towers and archers are supposed to target the enemy troops of the "highest value" which is usually the most numbers, although 50k warriors won't have more value than 40k archers. I've seen battle reports that do "weird" things and it's hard to say what is the most consistant AI behaviour.

Otherwise, have your own mix of all troops should be the best defence. At least 5k of each type, then fill up with as many archers as you can. Well, maybe only a few hundred workers...

[Avalon®]

What is the best way to protect against a rainbow attack where the attacker leads with one scout, one cavalry, one worker, one swordsman, one pike, etc?

Given that catapults, walls, traps, etc seem to be almost useless.

Should I leave my gates open?

You should leave ur gates open only if u know that ur army can defeat the opponent's incoming troops. I personally build 10k of each of the leading troops (scout, cavalry, pikeman, swordsman etc) so that it will decrease the amount of firing rounds which the attacker is trying to increase.

[Seaney]

Hmmm... some different ideas here. I can say that I had level 10 walls that were chockers with towers and traps and it made no difference - most of them were destroyed and my whole army was wiped out. The attack was with 85K archers with only one of scout, pike, etc.

[Aroth]

The real trouble is that the combat system has too many quirks to be rational. It rewards tricks and punishes thought and logic. The best example of this is that you can win a fight against a barb city (for example) with ballista only. If you ADD troops to the fight the quirks of the combat rules result in all your troops and ballista being wiped out. That makes no sense at all, but that is the system as designed.

[deviouz]

The real trouble is that the combat system has too many quirks to be rational. It rewards tricks and punishes thought and logic. The best example of this is that you can win a fight against a barb city (for example) with ballista only. If you ADD troops to the fight the quirks of the combat rules result in all your troops and ballista being wiped out. That makes no sense at all, but that is the system as designed.

wow thanx for that tidbit...your absolutely right!!!