Defending Against Conquer Attacks

Conquer attacks are the most damaging of all attacks. To successfully conquer a village, it must be attacked by about five chiefs. The number of chiefs required varies as it depends on a lot of factors, but five chiefs is the average. Fortunately it requires a lot of resources to train so many chiefs, so most players use 1 or 2 chiefs and make multiple conquer runs.

Assuming the attacker has the necessary chiefs and a large hammer, and makes no mistake in his strategy, it becomes extremely difficult to defend. The only really effective way to defend against such an attack is to use brute force.
But before you can defend against a conquer attack, you must first be able to spot an approaching conquer attack.

I will explain all the strategies here. You can use a combination of one or more of these strategies.

Spotting A Conquer Attack.

Look out for these characteristics which indicates a high risk of a conquer attack:

• The attack is directed against a non-capital village. Capitals cannot be conquered.
• Single wave attacks coming from several different villages (at least 2 or 3). This is the key identifier, the typical pattern (one attack wave from several villages).
• The attacks travel either at cata speed or ram speed.
• The attacks are timed well to arrive within a few minutes or seconds of each other.
• More than one player timed his attacks on your village.
• Usually the village under attack is larger than 500 population. Villages below 350 population are unlikely targets unless it holds a strategic value (such as 15 croppers with high oases bonus). When you see these signs, you should take precaution as they are almost sure indicators of an approaching conquer.

A Typical Conquer Sequence

The moment you spot and identify an incoming conquer, immediately build up a massive defense in your village. Alert your alliance and ask for reinforcements. A high wall will help in increasing your odds in defending.

A well executed conquer is completed within seconds and uses a very large army.

An effective strategy is to attack from 2 villages – one of the attack is from a capital. Up to six chiefs can be sent. Remember you can train up to 3 chiefs in any village by building a Palace and then demolishing it.

If a great celebration is held, three chiefs can reduce loyalty anywhere from between 60 to 85 points.

However most players do not have enough resources to train three chiefs in one village, or to hold Great Celebrations. In such cases, attacking from multiple villages is necessary or multiple attack runs has to be done.

A typical conquer sequence is as follows :-

	1st wave Attack arrival at 01:00:00	–	Attack from capital, large hammer, 60 catas to destroy residence.
	2nd wave Attack arrival at 01:00:00	–	Small escort army from capital, 3 chiefs. Great celebration is optional.
	3rd wave Attack arrival at 01:00:01	–	Small army, 1 or more chiefs from another village. Great celebration is optional. Repeat as required.

In such an event, the conquer is complete within seconds. As you can see, there is almost no chance to defend against the attack except with a huge defense army, large enough to defeat the first cleaner (very unlikely).

There are however a few tactics you can use to foil the conquer.

Capital Defense

Capital Defense is a very sneaky trick that involves moving your capital around. A capital cannot be conquered. So if one of your village is being conquered, quickly build a Palace in it and designate it as your capital.

There are many players I know who shift their capitals as soon as they realize an opponent is trying to conquer them. This happens even as late as mid game.

Such players never build resource fields past level 10. They rely on huge granaries and support villages to send crop regularly to feed their offense armies.

There are many setbacks to this strategy though. First, you can only have one Palace. You need to cata or demolish your existing palace in order to build another palace.

Also once a capital is moved, all resource fields above L10 in the old capital will be lowered to L10. Stonemason (if any) will be destroyed. If you have Great Barracks and Great Stable in your new capital, it will also be automatically destroyed.

So its of limited use, especially if resource fields have been extended beyond level 10. Nevertheless, this is an excellent tactic in the early to mid game.

Another application for this tactic is for players who built their World Wonder armies from non-capitals. If they are discovered, the enemy will try to conquer the village in order to kill the world Wonder army. A capital defense can be used to prevent the village from being conquered, although it comes at a high price.

Palace Defense.

Here’s an important tip. Never keep a Palace. It serves no purpose except for Culture Point generation. But not having a Palace is a very powerful tactic that will allow you to do many other things.

You can only have one Palace at any one time in your kingdom. As soon as you have trained 3 chiefs in your Palace, demolish it immediately. This means you are always free to build a Palace in any village that needs it.

Players will always target your Residence when trying to conquer your village. So build a Palace there and surprise them when there is no Residence and their catas hit at random.

The same goes when you are scouted and it shows you have a Residence. After they have sent off their attacks, demolish your Residence and build a Palace in its place.

This is a simple, yet very effective trick, but will work only if you haven’t built a Palace. Also, it will only work once against top players as the next time they come attacking, they might just do double targeting against both Palace and Residence.

The most important advantage gained from this is it buys you time. By foiling the first conquer attempt, it leaves you with plenty of time to build a massive defense.

Great Celebration Defense.

If you have a Townhall L10, hold a Great Celebration to make it difficult for the attacker to lower your village loyalty. This is very effective because most players either don’t have enough chiefs, or they send only just enough to complete a conquer (to prevent conquering from themselves).

Holding a Great Celebration will greatly upset their conquer plans.