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TRIPHAM'S GUIDE ON...
How to Successfully Plunder Someone
Introduction
I. Scout Report
II. Troops
III. Attack
IV. Secondary Scout Report
V. Transporting
Introduction
This is basically a guide to help people understand how to successfully plunder a city with a lot of resources and that actually has defending troops. This is NOT a guide on how to plunder people under 30k prestige or something. That's weak.
I. Scout Report
Obviously, you will need a scout report of the city you're about to hit. Things to take in consideration before you scout them are:
Their alliance: How strong is their alliance?
Their prestige*: Is it higher or lower than yours?
If this city isn't something you can't attack after scouting, will they retaliate seeing your scout attempt?
Once you've decided that the city is something that probably has a decent amount of resources and probably a lot of defending troops, you can send some scouts to the city. Make sure you send a lot of them. Once you get your scout report, assuming that it was successful, take these things into consideration.
Resources : Is it worth it to go through all that trouble?
Amount of Fortifications : Do I have the necessary troops to fight?
Enemy Troops : What type of troops is his city holding?
Gates : Is it open?**
Research: What level combat researches does the defender have?
If this is not the right city for you, move on to the next one.
*Does not include Civilians.
** One way to determine this is seeing if there are scouts in the report, and checking if there was a scout battle. If there are scouts in the defending city, but there wasn't a scout battle, than the gates are closed. If there are scouts in his city, but there was a scout battle, obviously the gates are open.
II. Troops
The most important thing to take into consideration in plundering a city is their troops and fortifications and your troops. Whether their gates are opened or not is important, and as well as your rally point. Also, their wall level and archery level. I will be only using archers for this guide. Let's start.
Archer Towers: 5-10:1 Archer to Archer Tower Ratio, depending on your archery, his archery, his wall level, your hero, and your other combat researches.*
Traps: You want to send pre-waves of warriors against this.
Defensive Trebuchet: These are one use stuff, so prewaves of warriors will set these off.
Abatis: These things are worthless if you're sending archers
And there is the enemy troops, if their gates are open, and what their troops are.
Warriors, Swordsmen, Pikemen: 1:1 Archer to Infantry Ratio + Archer to Fortification
Archers: 1:1 Archer to Archer Ratio + Infantry, Fortification
Cavalry, Cataphract: 10:1 Archer to Horseback Ratio + Archer, Infantry, Fortification
Siege Units: I'll have to get back on that
So basically, you will send enough archers to destroy their fortifications, any infantry, any archers, any horseback, and any Siege Units they have.
*Please refer to Satan's guide if you want to have a better explanation. I'm not too good with determining archers.
III. Attack
Not much explanation to do here, but just attack them with your troops. If their gates are open, layer your troops with everything up to cataphract, except scouts, and you can send a battering ram as well.
IV. Secondary Scout Report
This scouting report is supposed to land a minute or so before your clearing wave attack hits. This is to ensure that the guy doesn't do anything tricky such as having garrisoned troops or sent his food away or hid his resources in another city or barracks. This is done with camp time. You will make your scouts camp right before the wave hits.
V. Transporters
After your wave successfully clears out all the enemy fortifications, and, hopefully, their troops, then you can send waves of transporters after him. You can do this with archers and transporters determining on the city wall level and their engineering, but 2k archers should do the trick. Send wave after waves of this, or just one wave of a lot of transporters and archers.*
*I did not include the transporters in the attacking wave, but you can if it isn't necessary to deploy max archers. I have separate waves for transporters just in case they have too much resources to take back.
Note
I would like to remind everyone that there's a difference between plundering and hammering someone. After you plunder them, spare them their cities, and plunder them once or twice and move on to another city. If they are hostile with you, that's a different case. Not to mention, if you take their city, it'd be a waste of a town slot when you can plunder their resources every other day once his resources recover.
Feedback, anyone?
If the target has a high Machinery these can regenerate. Same for traps. Don't assume one wave of clearing effort is going to be enough. Scout when in doubt.
Thanks for your guide!
If the defender has both AT's and Traps, do you send in warriors first to clear the traps? What is the ratio of warriors to traps? Will they not get destroyed by the AT's before they clear the traps?
Send a couple waves of 2:1 warriors, expect them to die. I'm not sure about the battle mechanics of the ATs vs Warriors. I'll have to look into that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Master Shake
Well-written, aesthetically designed guide; thanks, Tripham!
For the 1:1 ratios of Archers to Archers/Infantry/etc (or other ratios for the latter, and so on), do those just come from experience or do they also manage to minimize losses?
They'll definitely minimize losses. Every archer takes on one opposing unit. Cataphracts and cavalries need a higher ratio of archers to horseback because of their higher speed and health than the infantry units. So you attempt to kill all of them before the next round when their troops get a chance to advance. That's why the layering is necessary as well, so that their infantry will stop to attack your 1 warrior, swordsman, pikeman, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kor
Hi
I really appreciate this article, because I had no idea how to bring anything back in large quanitities. So I will be building transporters as well.
My question on plundering is what if we find a city with no military but nice resources. Is it necessary to attack with military - or can we just send along a light team along with the transporters.
Also, why do we have workers in the army, I thought they would be carrying stuff back too, else what is the point of them being in the barracks?
Nice guide :)
Any city with just resources, you can simply send transporters and the necessary amount of troops to get past their wall defenses.Quote:
Originally Posted by ugogo
Workers are faster than transporters, but the transport less and cost more food to upkeep. You also need them for building cities.
well as long as they have rescourses i will attack them
well...u got any guide to stop someone who keeps plundering me? -.-
i cant even recover or train enough troops in time... even wif the truce agreement, i can't train up to 4000+ important troops in 12 hrs....
ALL HAIL LORD TRIPHAM, MASTER OF THE OBVIOUS!!! so thats what transporters are for...
i got one advice for you, try to win a city teleport and teleport out there or, ask for help from active stronger players around or if you joined alliance, ask them to fight him, or just simply make a deal with you if you have good tongue
What if you come across a city with no troops, not much in the way of wall defenses (no traps or abatis), but a ton of archer towers? Can calvary get past the towers and loot the city? I think a scout attack will, but only if the gates are opened, right? I guess my question is, is there any attack method that can get to the resources with minimal losses, or will you simply need to eliminate the towers first?
A little obvious, but nice guide.
Thanks. I'm trying to take someone's much higher than mine, but hes been inactive for quite a while, so I'm trying to take over him.