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Thread: Can someone explain a Rainbow?

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  1. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ashanta View Post
    Kinda for the wrong reasons.

    Abatis will only take out cavalry and cataphracts, so if there are none, the abatis will never trigger.

    This has been proven false. Add warriors to the spam and more abatis will die. I still haven't figured out why, but it does. Now with the scouting necessary, hard to prove. I've proven on other threads that warriors with cav will add to their deaths.

    Traps will take out part of each layer in the rainbow affected by them.
    That's what warrriors spams are for.


    Rainbows take advantage of the way the combat system works where the leading wave of melee defenders will stop to engage the leading wave of attackers even if there is only a single attacker and a 1000 defenders or a single defender and 1000 attackers while the ranged units pound them mercilessly.

    Ranged units, on the other-hand, ignore the layering if the opposing ranged units are in range, at which point they simply attack the opposing ranged units.

    What this has to do with taking out wall fortifications is to send waves of warriors + rainbow to get the warriors closer to the walls before taking damage from the towers. This has the side effect of clearing out part of the opposing forces defensive rainbow if their gates are open.

    Something like

    5000 warriors
    1000 Pikemen
    1000 Swordsmen
    1000 Archers
    1000 Cavalry
    1000 Cataphracts

    What that does is take out: Trebuchets, Rolling Logs, Traps and Abatis so that the main attacking force doesn't start combat at max range.


    Archer + rainbow is for taking out opposing armies such that each layer of the rainbow will stop the opposing army for one round allowing the archers/ballistae/catapults to shoot at them. In some cases archers, ballistae and catapults are layers for cavalry and cataphracts.
    I don't 100% agree with all above, but probably some of the best explanations.

    Layers attack opportunistic targets first also known as the fastest ones. Then they switch to ranged targets. Then switch to expensive targets.

    Usually a rainbow is enough to slow down attacks on the strongest force. An archer rainbow could be 1 of warrior/scout/pikemen/swordmen. I personally find warriors do nothing but slow the attack. Others use 1 of everything but swordsmen. They add extra swordsmen cuz they can absorb attacks longer than archers. Say somrthing like 20k. I personally have never done it. seems 20k swords die as fast as 1 in my opinion.

    Some people will add cavalry/cataphracts. This triggers abatis and doesn't seem to help unless they have zero. Seige weapons are slow and never get in the fight fast enough for rainbow archers.

    Now with cavalry and/or cataphracts rainbows, adding some archers is a good thing. Cavalry and scouts are targeted first by opposing archers. This gives time for the cataphracts to get close while the archers are attacking archers.The most effective attack I saw was 15k archers. Not sure if less would do better or worse. When facing 100k + archers, I would assume it works as well as 15k, but haven't seen evidence of this yet.

    Lastly, their is Ram spam. Rams are very slow so everything is faster. Allows them time to get up and personal. Even 1 catapult/ballista don't slow a Ram attack down.

    Every thing I've seen on ballistas have been much less on spam and more on power. The only real defense is archers, and if you are sending fast infantry, the ballistas won't catch up by the time. Everything is dead except archers, depending how many. From what I read, ballista layers only work on barb cities.

    Layers are an attack they take advantage of game mechanics that make no sense. A layered attack is sent either against a weak player than doesn't know the game well, or after the player has been spammed down most/all their non-tower defense. Afterwards, they send a layer to clean the rest out.

    Keep in mind layers work both ways, but is usually better for the offense. The statement has already been written, take down the rest of the defenses with spam and scout that person over and over. If gates closed, layers are great. If open, you have to deal with his layers too.

    Spam and layers are the only two real tactics this game has come down to. What you use is important, but they are both variations of the same thing.
    Last edited by Ulfhere; 09-02-2009 at 05:27 AM.

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