[Age2] Life as a colony, the ups and downs and REVOLUTION

The colonial options

Disclaimer: I am ultimately NOT responsible for your behaviour, if you happen to aggravate your colonist further through irresponsible consumption of ***** tonic, then you and only you end up kissing it.

So, you got colonized! congratulations on becoming someone's biatch ;)

Well, don't fret, biatches put out but get presents, jewellery, get taken out .. the works...

WHAT! your suzerain doesn't think you deserve all that! wow, the nerve! you need to bite him. Lets discuss how :)

Annoyance Tactics:

1. Valley Stealing - Train a few scouts and hire a few cheap heroes from the inn. Go ahead and take out all the suzerain's valleys. Abandon them as you go so he will need to attack the troops of nature again to get them back. Do this daily.
   
2. Mail Spam - He doesn't like mail? Wow.. uncommunicative grinch ;) how about some mail spam? Maybe you could ask him if he likes 10 day old rotting potatoes.... be creative :) Just don't violate evony terms of use.
   
3. Worker Attacks - make a worker. Get a crap hero. Locate a valley or a second city of his'/her's and send attack. Workers are slow. Transporters even slower. Send just one brave one on a mission to die and keep his light blinking. This is similar to a real life colony sending a single suicide bomber with smoke bombs instead of real bombs. Intention is to open their eyes and ears and make them itch (not to blind them - you need them to see to be able to attend to your plight). Esp useful if they ignored ur mail spam.
   
4. Uprising - Uprise on the daily, twice a day, thrice if you can be bothered. Just to tell them u exist and don't like them ;)
   
5. Organised Rebellion - Get together with other colonies of the tyrant and rise together. He might get tired of the uprisings and choose to not suppress. You win.
   
6. Intimidation - Get a stronger mate in your alliance to scout and/or colonize him ;) Tell them its a NO DEAL unless they take their paws off u.
   
7. Get them killed - A suzerain's army has to come and defend you. Even if that is a zero man army, i.e., they set suppression troop % to zero. Even then, their appointed champion comes fights (from the city that colonized you). While a colony of your "uncooperative" suzerain, pick a fight with someone bigger than them. And get them to attack you. All you need to do is close your gates and zero ur wall defences. The suzerain's army will get wiped out if they come to try n hold on to the colony. This is obviously assuming that the new suzerain would be any more reasonable than the last one! But if all you care for is retribution on the current one, yeah, there is this way. Use with caution. --Idea suggested by Melbear for inclusion--
   
8. Change City Name - can also change your city name every day to confusing things. Such as "City Name" or "Lord5641654". When u got 40 colonies it can be difficult to tell them apart. [I]--Proposed by soniti54
   
9. Colony Stealing - So,they took you as colony. And you asked nicely if there is a way of getting released right? After all, there is no way you can compete with them right now! And the suzerain responded by assigning a suppression army.. hmnn.... Time for some corrective action. Go ahead and find out their colonies. Try to take them. With a few troops each time, 100-1000 warriors etc. Something cheap and replaceable. It is likely that the suzerain isn't defending all his colonies. Especially the dead ones. swipe them from his/her control :) Chance of losing badly on this, but if you catch them napping, they wake up with no colonies but you.
   
10. Take their NPCs - This would require for you to have a decent sized warrior force. Now, the reason they could colonize you was because he/she got the ability to farm NPCs and grew their force exponentially while you were still waiting. Not to worry, capture the level 4s/5s around them and port them away (or just re-abandon them, resetting their natural NPC status, suggested - hold them for a day before you abandon-experimental). At least until they get reliable level10 NPC farming sorted, they would be faced with a diminishing food supply. You will need to slam waves of 100k warriors into the NPCs to take them with cheapest losses. Do this if you are sure about how to take NPCs. --NPCs not reappearing after port and maintenance confirmed by Ninno, na1--
    

Colonization Specific advice:

1. Tribute ZEROING - Go ahead, set your production in the colonized city to ZERO. Supply resources to grow from another city. The suzerain will get no tributes from you whatsoever. So, apart from personal spite, I'd be hard pressed to imagine why they would continue to hold you down!
   
2. Troop Hiding - Make troops, but send them to valleys or to your other cities. Or to allies in your alliance (reinforce). The suzerain would be unable to levy these.
   
3. Scouting - Scout his valleys to get info about his techs. Useful to plan a real uprising with.
   
4. Wall Building - Build up your wall. The suzerain can't even touch it. A fully/substantially built wall would help greatly in your uprizing effort when you bring in the troops (your's allies'...).
   
5. STOCKPILE - Stockpile your resources. If you don't mind paying the tributes, then keep stockpiling your extra resources. Sell them at the market to make the resource fields keep ticking over :) This pile would help greatly in hosting a garrison when you decide to uprise, and also for building back up after you break free.
   
6. Keep your gates SHUT - Suzerains can scout you. Keep gates shut if you have scouts. It will also help reduce the chance of him dropping loyalty on your heroes.
   
7. Protect your heores - Keep their loyalties at 100. Better still, keep the best of them out of the city. Fill it with crap disposable heroes.
   

Actual effective ways of breaking a suzerain's hold [aka BRUTE FORCE]:

External help method:

1. Find someone willing to attack you - This might work if you port somewhere else and somebody more powerful willing to help you and accept you into their alliance and teach you how to play.
2. Find out suppression settings - Have them attack you with something small. Keep your gates closed. This would reveal on your battle report what the suzerain had set as the suppression army and the hero to be faced. The person helping you will need this info.
3. Sit tight and hold your nerve - Now, provided the person thinks he can help you by killing all those troops that will come to keep you from getting free, tear down your wall defences. Keep your gates closed and get attacked. If the attack succeeds, the guy that helped you should -
   1. recall his troops &
   2. either friendly your alliance or take you in
   - either of those would mean you don't end up being his colony instead of the first person.

Alliance help method:

1. Get reinforced - Have alliance member/s reinforce you. They will need to manually enter your coordinates in their rally spot and select the option to reinforce.
2. Find out suppression force numbers - A few different ways of doing this -
   
   1. Get someone to hit you ~1/2 an hour before the suppression battle with something small (lets say 100 warriors). This would tell you what is coming after you.
   2. Get your alliance to scout the person, at least the city that he has you colonized from, but better still, all of them.
   This is still not a guarantee that he did not hide his troop strength somehow, but you do what you can.
3. Sit tight, hold your nerve and WIN your freedom - Now, lets wait for the showdown and hope you win. The outcome will depend on how many troops you were able to put up and how many allied troops you could get, also, the better built your wall, the better it will fight for you :)

Later Stages, anti-colonization:

1. Lay a trap - Have a stronger alliance member make a cheap, badly constructed city close to ur suzerain. But with lots of good resource fields. Put in warehouses if u like :P
2. Wait - Have ur friend wait to get attacked :)
3. Let them get colonized - Your friend should lose their first fight, this should not be difficult as it will most likely come as a surprise!
4. Reinforce - Just before the suppression battle, get your friend reinforced to the hilt. By anyone that can. Cream that Suzerain's troops.
5. Uprise - Now that u've all beaten him once, its time to get your freedom :) uprise away and get reinforced as in the alliance help method above. Hopefully, you have weakened the suzerain enough to get a victory, or at least shaken their confidence enough.

For what exactly colonization is, please read this Chaoticjoy's Newbie colonization guide guide before you read this one, i.e., if you read above and find urself confused, go read that and get some basics right then come back and read this one.

Thnx a bunch for all the reps :) I'd like to thank individually anyone that leaves comments and name with theirs'. Keeps me motivated to post :)

PS: This is always under construction. Leave comments, suggestions, flowers, dungbombs (NOT), kisses, hugs, all accepted :) reps are great if you feel like them

postnumber 2 : reserved

status update: Updated 19/05. Some ideas put forward by ppl incorporated. Now this is a community driven guide :) More suggestions/tips, help make it better :)

If anyone wonders why the guide is not geared as advice to suzerain's, well, first of all, suzerain's need to be responsible and take colonies after they know how to manage them. Secondly, most people can look at the post and work out reverse ways of dealing with some of it. Conratulations to those, you most likely deserve your colony, wishing you a successful age2 life.

PS: Woldere, u can't send one catapult, you can't even attack your colony ;) there is a 24 hour lockdown on attacking again if you decide to release the colony and attack again :P
I guess I need to add in the "how to be a decent lord" section.. haha

Haha, I like this guide.

Only 1 thing, If someone would start doing this to me, I would most certainly not leave him alone, but instead give him some special attention. (especially cause of #2 and #3, rest is pretty standard I guess)

Edit: and I'll send you 1 catapult back to keep ur light blinking.

I don't play AgeII but this post makes it seem really fun, lol. Evony should hire u because a lot of ppl dont like to be colonized but u after hearing your take on it i might make a age II account just to fight my colonizer, lol

ty :) I continue to play for friends like you that make enduring evony a pleasure ;) give me a buzz if you do, the least I can do is supply you up.

1.) The suzerain just needs to post a few troops in each if this happens and the colony will never be able to get anything from it but lost scouts.
2.) Blocklist.
3.) You can ignore attacks so the reports wont flash.
4.) There are quests that involve having to hold a certain amount of cities. Setting production to 0 hurts the colony more than the suzerain.
5.) That works.
6.) That will just serve to destroy all defences of the colony and make it harder to uprise in the end.
7.) This gets annoying for a suzerain. However after so many failed uprisings the colonies do just give in.
8.) This can work but most colonies do not have relevant informatics and beacon to get a good report.
9.) They have tried this and it failed.
10.) That's a good one. A suzerain can not levy your wall defences.
11.) That is a good one.
12.) As a suzerain it would deter me from scouting if I knew I would take even a few losses because I don't really care enough to be determined to get a report.
13.) That is a good idea. I once went through 6 heroes to get one with a base of 69.

hehe.. 1) is awesome, u kno wy?
lol.. it ties up a rally spot ;) it is hilariously annoying to have to reinforce all ur valleys :P Can't march anything else cuz.... ahahahaa
3) is gr8, if they do that... lol.. just send a bucketload of them and sneak in a small rainbow that will kill something like cav :P
9) hehehe.. its a personal experience where it messed up the suz's plans a bit ;) in the end it initiated dialogue and we found common ground :)
PS: I would just get rid of a pesky no-good colony and play oldskool if I was annoyed for my own bad behaviour.
Lets keep helping these peeps get their game back :) A fighting chance, even if a guerrila's fighting chance ;)

Very entertaining thread. I'm 2 weeks into the game and I haven't declare war on anyone or have been colonize. Just want to know do you have to defeat all of their troops first before you can colonize them?

Also, what is the benefits of colonizing other people, is it just to receive resources only or you get troops, gold and heroes too?

If you are colonized, can another person still attack you? And if so does that mean the suzerain have to protect or not? Thanks.:)

1. If the 'city' being colonized has gates open either at first attack &/or suppression attack - YES.

2. Resources are the fist benefit. You recurve a tribute. Apart from that you are able to keep a general overview on their city (aka troop numbers, res, heroes). Also, once a day, you can levy some troops from their army to add to your's (the most hated part of being a colony btw). Suzerain can also hurt the colony's heroes.

3. Suzerain has to protect the colony. Period. BUT, they can set the % of troops set to go defend/suppress to Zero and escape that.

I personally think that suzerains and colonies need to work out co-existence and cooperate sinc. They share the same area. It can lead to a really strong territory defence. But some ppl are mean to the little ones. Bullies without any shame. This thread is dedicated to their aid :)

If you have been colonized and you teleport to another area or state. Do you remain a colony of the suzerain who colonized you?

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Originally Posted by Seakereth

If you have been colonized and you teleport to another area or state. Do you remain a colony of the suzerain who colonized you?

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Yes. The practicality of maintaining control over long distance does kick in though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by practicalfool

I personally think that suzerains and colonies need to work out co-existence and cooperate sinc. They share the same area. It can lead to a really strong territory defence. But some ppl are mean to the little ones. Bullies without any shame. This thread is dedicated to their aid :)

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If Age I taught me anything about most players it's that they simply don't care about anyone else who's flag isn't green or blue. If your flag isn't green or blue, they don't want to co-exist with you unless by co-existing one means them taking everything they can or killing all of your scouts daily.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ashanta

If Age I taught me anything about most players it's that they simply don't care about anyone else who's flag isn't green or blue. If your flag isn't green or blue, they don't want to co-exist with you unless by co-existing one means them taking everything they can or killing all of your scouts daily.

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We shared a state between three alliances. Including my 4 branch alliance. And not everybody liked everybody else at the best of times.

Well, cooperation has it's place and so does kicking the absolute crap out if ppl. But unnecessary bullying sure doesn't. Anybody with a mouse or credit card can build and feed a large army and destroy anyone and everyone around them. The smartest players however help people and keep around them friends that they made, not ones given them (read allies).

PS. Blues are sometimes far more annoyng than reds or Greys. And greens maybe even more.

So there is no way of getting out of being colonized except by the suzerain deciding to free you?

PPS: I was mean to guy once that just refused to leave my area. Would no have been if he was a least making an honest attemp to play properly and keepin a lid on his loud mouth. N the idiot was a host to boot.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Seakereth

So there is no way of getting out of being colonized except by the suzerain deciding to free you?

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Yes, there is. You build up your wall and troops, bring them to the city that is colonized. Get allies to reinforce you if possible. And fight a battle of uprising. There are general battle tactics to win fights that you may want to look up on these forums. Ppl more knowledgeable than me have written about battle tactics in great detail :)

good luck.

Pm me if u want any specific advice.

Many Age1 players are not getting that this is a different game. I've seen many players colonize others in the mistaken belief that they are protecting access to a historic city. My guess is that Age2 gives you a choice: historics OR colonies. Only the biggest can do both. Once you have colonies you are stuck with maintaining them, which is difficult to do when competing for a historic. And the idea of historics is to get automatic tribute from the surrounding area. You're hardly going to achieve that by driving potential tribute cites away.

Most of the original ideas are actually quite good, although you are sealing an absolute antagonism with your suzerain. Some can be talked to reasonably and most I have seen will let you go if you were to change alliances and move to another state.

However, exercise caution because a upset would-be suzerain theoretically can turn the tables and repeatedly harrass a would-be colony for no other reason than to drop loyalty and frustrate.

I saw an interesting tactic the other day (although it didnt work). A smaller player who was colonized by one alliance declared war on 3 members of a completely different alliance in hopes that one of them would send an attack and wipe out his suzerains troops. LOL

hehe.. I like that one ;)

It was going in my guide but I hesitated :P

Oh well, It will and credits to u :)

btw, these tactics are sometimes necessary to make the suzerain talk. A fair few of them are "uncommunicative grinches" that need some waking up! They have no realization that they are just blindly spoiling the game for some ppl. Not everybody is a pro! In fact if they were, the game might become unbearable. lol.

u guys rock, keep helping the little peeps :)

And this is the reason a lot of people don't like Age II..

teeheehee

I'd give u rep satan if If the forum let me ;) It says I need to spread it around :P

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Originally Posted by practicalfool

teeheehee

I'd give u rep satan if If the forum let me ;) It says I need to spread it around :P

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Don't even bother. I'm -53 rep anyways haha.

What do you do if the person that is colonizing you is just a big bully, that could in fact wipe out your city in a matter of minutes?

If the person is playing age 2 they really arent the defintion of a bully which is someone who maliciously and repeatedly attacks for no reason whatsoever and grinds your city daily to dust and zero loyalty because he can. My opinion only.

He had no reason to attack me. Plus he is much, much bigger than me, came in and killed all my troops.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by inuyisha123

He had no reason to attack me. Plus he is much, much bigger than me, came in and killed all my troops.

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This is a war game, you don't need a reason to attack someone, other than them just being there. You are very lucky if you play age 2, because in age 1 they would just take your cities. The power players will always dominate the weaker players, and it should be like that. Its kinda pointless playing Evony IMO if you don't have the intention of at least trying to be a power player. This isn't the sims.

In age 2, I really didn't bother colonizing too many people, I would go in and clean people out of their troops/wall defenses just to keep everyone around me buttered up. I only aimed to get the achievements for the increased item drop %, and you only need to start a suppression to get credit for that.

What some people call bullying, I call just playing the game.

Maybe if you showed a will to fight back or to at least bring the guy that wiped you out he would give you some respect as a player.

Pvp means playing with others, NOT YOURSELVES. The power of mail is greatly underappreciated. ;)

How are we able to send reinforcements to our colony to prevent an uprising?

Once the supression period ends your troops return home.

There is no 'reinforce' button from the map and from the rally point it says I can't perform this operation against this target.

I'm very confused.

cheers
dwight

you click on your lord city (in the right hand pane) and then from the pop-up panel of your colonies, you click the one you want, there, click on suppression settings and set %age of each troop type to be sent out for suppression battles.

all you now need to do is move the appropriate troops into that city and then wait for a % of that to be sent automatically.

thank you very much

cheers

This is why colonization fails. Colonization doesn't make a better environment; its impact on "bullies" is suspect and it causes as many problems even if it does solve that issue. Colonization transfers power and reduces accountability. In Age 1, valley stealers usually end up having their cities barbed. In Age II, where valleys (especially lakes) are fewer and thus at a premium, a player can be annoying without fearing much consequence and none if they are already colonized. The same applies to all of the other stellar behavior promoted in this guide.

The threat of conquer and/or barb may not be pretty. It may be something that limits the appeal of the game. However, it does make players act a bit more responsibly with their words and actions. To be sure, the attack button leads to "bullies" who destroy the fun for many. However, eliminating the attack button didn't eliminate bad behavior; it just ceded it to a different group.

That's not a solution. It's just bad policy in the guise of progress.

It is fine with me and this ISN'T a guide.

Lol. Bad behaviour is bad behaviour :P shifting it from one group to another matters least ;)

what works in my thinking is that it's the skillful players that get the challenge of putting up with it.

Age1, well. Punished ever so many ppl. Zeroed ever so many ppl. It became boring. If age2 was gonna be same of the old… well, not sure if it would appeal to me! Lol.
Besides, the little tactics I mention do get old fast if they don't work. And they work best against touchy ppl that haven't yet realised that age2 needs to be played a different way. I.e. The smashalot types. Basically, making enemies costs longer term in age2.

Pssttt. I am still waiting for any/many of my of my few colonies to try this out on me :P At least I'd know who is alive and worth a fight in the future. Haha.

Isn't that what the game is abt? Fighting ;)

yes you remain a colony of the one that colonized you even when u port out of the area/state

one way to get rid of the suzerain is to have your alliance officer boot you from your alliance then have one of your (ex)alliance members colonize you, thus booting out the bad colony, then get an invite back into the alliance and since your in the same alliance as the person that is your suzerain now, the colony is nulled. :duh:

You are raising annoyance to the level of a skill. It isn't. Social constructs - whether it's a nation, neighborhood or player base - operate based on a set of written and unwritten rules that are usually a fairly dynamic amalgamation of risks, rewards, consequences and expectations.

As demonstrated by this post, Age II offers all sorts of "nothing to lose" ways to play the game. Transfer that to a society and it's obvious that "nothing to lose" isn't a quality that leads to lasting or stable places. The developers took away the big stick of conquer -which, like any tool, can be used in many ways - and replaced it with a realm where "it can't get any worse."

Now, with little effort and investment, you can easily be annoying and there isn't anything anyone can do about it. That's not a neutral thing. That's not new rules and we all just need to adjust. Think if you transferred this policy to a neighborhood. It would eventually become a cesspool or the citizens would take matters into their own hands regardless of rules and authority.

How do you stop a frustrated player from sending a few scouts on a whim to capture your valleys? The answer is that you can't and you can't discourage the behavior anymore. How do you stop a player from sending email and whisper spam? The answer is that you can't and there's no punitive action you can take. Even an anarchist will tell you that there always needs to be checks and balances to behavior. With colonization, we dumped the existing system (which may have been flawed) in the toilet without bothering to include some elements to replace that order.

Reveling in this aspect is either misguided or shortsighted. Ultimately, this isn't some "sticking it to da man" issue. It's undermining the social contract that governs any interpersonal actions to the point where they just aren't viable.

Dude. This is a game. Think about that awhile.

And. Afaik, even in age1, a person that stole valleys etc is usually a 1 city account with little prestige. They can't lose their city, they have nearly nothing to lose. BUT, in age1, if one is forced to play on like that, their growth and the chances of them learning enough to become a serious player vapourise.
In age2, just cuz ur being bullied (yes, bullied) you don't lose everything. And on top of that, you have the usual means that ARE present in age1 as well to stick it back to the MAN. Age2 gives very few new tactics to annoy ppl. And I conscientiously tried to leave those ones out. These tactics have always existed. Just that not everyone knows them or how to use them. Age 2 brings players from outside the age1 playerbase to evony. To let the age1 group of bullies ruin the experience outright for them without teaching them a few old tricks is pretty much cruel. Downright cruel. After all, these new players spend the dollar just like the older ones do. And trust me, if the older ones don't HAVE to give them a chance, they won't. They would regard age2 as just another variation of age1, meant to be monopolized and ran aground when the server is full of expd players.

So, stop cribbing about it and learn how to do things so ppl aren't tempted to do these things to you. Having your troops n walls zeroed is deterrent enough for most ppl to stay away from these tactics. And most ppl, if offered to be left alone will stop such tactics against their suzerain. This is meant to help the ones that just can't get their suzerain to leve them the ***k alone in anyway at all.

It's called "living space" or "liebens raum" (excuse my bad German). If you don't give someone that living space, they will either die or they will make some.
Philosophy is best administered from the viewpoint of the aggrieved, and before you go on ranting about my little "guide" - if you can call it that making life difficult, plz look if you are the one causing the greviance in the first place. What do they say, you don't clap with one hand. One handed claps are called Thumps. But Sometimes, what ur thumping might have a nail in it. Just a little more alive than you expected ;)

You have listed many of the problems with colonies... Personally, I usually leave most everyone alone -- except for those who are stupid enough to attack/scout/annoy me. These people I like to stomp into the muck (Age I). I don't know how well this style of play will work in Age II. If you can't destroy the city of someone who annoys you, what is the point? Especially when it is so easy for him to keep on annoying you. There are no consequences...

From a historical viewpoint, those cities that dared to have uprisings were usually razed to the ground by their suzerain. I think the game needs to be modified to allow a suzerain a window of time to re-conquer and destroy a city that has had an uprising. This would be much more historically accurate.

Chol.

Alot of this can be avoided with diplomacy, i have had several talks with would be suzerains, or people attacking others within my alliance, and most of them ended wtih the person pulling out and usually with me, or my alliance gaining an ally. However, i do agree, some people are just complete aces and the day i meet one i will follow every step on this list lol, if he starts using policies on me i will make him suffer with everything i got =D :soapbox:

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Originally Posted by Verinium

Alot of this can be avoided with diplomacy, i have had several talks with would be suzerains, or people attacking others within my alliance, and most of them ended wtih the person pulling out and usually with me, or my alliance gaining an ally. However, i do agree, some people are just complete aces and the day i meet one i will follow every step on this list lol, if he starts using policies on me i will make him suffer with everything i got =D :soapbox:

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LOL. You are already looking at the problem from the wrong point of view. What happens when you play the game for several months, and some idiot starts stealing all your valleys... someone you could easily beat a dozen times over daily. So you take them back, and he starts annoying YOU for the next several months in reprisal -- this list and many other things. Nothing you can do... You can't kill him, you can't drive him away... the worst you can do is try to annoy him back...

Right now you cannot afford to garrison your valleys because it takes up a valuable rally spot level... if you need to garrison all your valleys you can't attack anyone.

A newbie in beginner protection can take away all your valleys a dozen times a day, and you cannot even colonize him for 7 days. By then he just deletes and makes a new player, and starts harassing you from beginner protection all over again.

And so on...