By mid server, a 50k crop defense army is not uncommon. Later, defense numbers can grow up to 200k crop armies, even in non-capital villages.
Usually the limiting factor in the number of reinforcements you can take is based on how many troops your village can feed.
So how do you support such massive reinforcements?
The standard strategy that many players use is to ask for alliance crop. Through experience, this isn’t always the best strategy because depending on others to send you crop is very unreliable. Anybody who had to depend on alliance crop knows just how few players actually respond to crop requests.
A better strategy is to build support villages all around your capital, and build multiple granaries in each support village. During peacetime, stockpile crop so that you have a huge reservoir of crop.
Supposing by mid game, you have 20 villages, and seven are support villages. In each support village, build at least 2 granaries and stockpile 100k of crop in each village. Never use this crop, and never let your balance drop below 100k.
This takes some forethought and planning on your side. But when you are under attack, ask for alliance crop. When alliance crop doesn’t arrive, or when there are gaps in between, then use your crop stockpile.
This is a guaranteed way that you will be able to support massive reinforcements.
Defending Against Cata Attacks
Because of the need to destroy multiple structures in a single attack, cata attacks are usually sent in waves. A fully upgraded rally point can fire at two structures and needs only half the number of waves.
The first wave is usually the cleaner. The cleaner is a very large army whose purpose is to kill all defenders in the village. It is usually sent with rams.
The second wave onwards are the catapults. Once the village has been cleared of defenders, the catas attack in waves, destroying the village structures.
Sending multi wave cata attacks is a very risky process even for experienced players.
Supposing in the following sequence of attacks on a village :-
Attack arrival at 01:00:00 – cleaner
Attack arrival at 01:00:01 – cata wave 1
Attack arrival at 01:00:02 – cata wave 2
Attack arrival at 01:00:03 – cata wave 3
There is one cleaner followed by two cata waves. Since the cleaner has a large offense army, then the cata waves are relatively weak.
| – Vengence – | Attack against Fury | ||||||||||
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| 10000 | 3000 | 350 | 120 | 1 | |||||||
| Arrival | in 0:04:43 hrs. at 01:00:00 o’clock | ||||||||||
| – Vengence – | Attack against Fury | ||||||||||
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| 110 | 110 | ||||||||||
| Arrival | in 0:04:44 hrs. at 01:00:01 o’clock | ||||||||||
| – Vengence – | Attack against Fury | ||||||||||
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| 110 | 110 | ||||||||||
| Arrival | in 0:04:45 hrs. at 01:00:02 o’clock | ||||||||||
| – Vengence – | Attack against Fury | ||||||||||
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| 110 | 110 | ||||||||||
| Arrival | in 0:04:46 hrs. at 01:00:03 o’clock | ||||||||||
A skilled defender will try to avoid defending against the cleaner and slip in defenders to kill the 3 cata waves.
Since there is a 1 second gap between each of the attacks, that is enough time to slip in defenders to kill the catas. This is called cata sniping. You can snipe the catas by sending reinforcements from another village so they arrive at exactly 01:00:00, right after the cleaner and before the cata.
If you don’t have troops to snipe from another village, or if you wish to use your village’s own troops to defend, then you can also do a dodging defense :-
- Ten seconds before the cleaner attack arrives, send your troops out to another village.
- Six seconds before the cleaner attack arrives, cancel your reinforcement order.
- Your troops will return back at exactly after the cleaner attack where they will kill the cata waves.
An example of an actual snipe is shown below:-
There are 5 attack waves. The catas snipers are shown in blue. These reinforcements are inserted between the attack waves to kill the cata waves.
What happens if there are multiple same second arrivals? How do you snipe against these? Take the example below of the attack arrival times.
Revenge Attack against Fury:-
Wave 1 – Arrival in 1:48:03 hrs. at 10:30:00 o’clock
Wave 2 – Arrival in 1:48:03 hrs. at 10:30:00 o’clock
Wave 3 – Arrival in 1:48:03 hrs. at 10:30:00 o’clock
Wave 4 – Arrival in 1:48:04 hrs. at 10:30:01 o’clock
Wave 5 – Arrival in 1:48:04 hrs. at 10:30:01 o’clock
As you can see, there are only two arrival times – 10:30:00 and 10:30:01. In such an event, target your reinforcements to arrive at 10:30:00. It will be inserted between wave 3 and 4.
You can snipe attacks with a one second accuracy.
It is also impossible to snipe wave 2 and 3 because they arrive at the same second with the cleaner (wave 1).
As you can see, sniping accurately is very much a time sensitive event. If you missed the moment even for one second, then you would have missed the cata waves.
Sniping accurately becomes very tricky when there is internet lag. Before you snipe, you need to experiment with your timing delay because latency depends on line conditions. There can be a 1 or 2 second delay, sometimes even more.
Before trying to snipe catas, or dodge defense, its important to first find out your internet lag. Send a unit, any unit to reinforce another village. And take note of the delay in seconds.
For example:-
| Halberd | Reinforcement for Sword | ||||||||||
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| 1 | |||||||||||
| Arrival | in 10:04:49 hrs. at 01:00:00 o’clock | ||||||||||
Click the Ok button at precisely 01:00:00. Then go to your Rally Point and take note of the actual arrival time. It can be between one to a few seconds late. That is your internet lag.
Repeat it 3 times, so you know for certain whether your delay is 1 second or 2 second. You can always cancel the reinforcement from your rally point, so your troops return back. Once you have measured your lag, you can compensate for the delay by clicking a little bit earlier.
Unfortunately, lag is something that is beyond your control. Sometimes when line conditions are poor, you will find inconsistent delay times ranging from 1 second to 4 seconds or more. There’s nothing much you can do about lag, but you can increase the number of chances you have to snipe.
As you probably already know, your reinforcements will travel at the speed of the slowest unit in the group. Therefore, you should have a mix of slower units in your sniping village. For example, if you wanted to snipe with 1000 paladins, then ensure you also train 1 cata, 1 ram, 1 axeman and 1 spearman too in your village.
Because the different units travel at different speeds (cata 3 fields, ram 4 fields, axeman 6 fields, spearman 7 fields, paladin 10 fields), then you have multiple attempts at sniping.
In your first sniping attempt, send your paladins with the single cata. If you miss, you can try again with the ram. If you also miss that, you have three more chances with the axeman, spearman and paladin.
Yes, these are tried and tested methods and everything that is said here is actually used during actual gameplay. We specifically train slower units in our defense village solely for the purpose of sniping.
Inserting defenders between the cleaner attack and cata wave is a deadly cata killer. If executed successfully, the attacker will think twice about sending multi wave cata attacks at you again.
Use it when you think you are unable to defend against the cleaner. At minimum, you can at least snipe and drastically reduce your damages.
The best troops to use for sniping are anti-infantry troops such as praetorian, druidrider and paladins. This is because catas are counted as infantry.
This concept can also be used to defend against conquer attacks. Instead of sniping catas, you’d be sniping chiefs/senators.