Generally, the higher the World Wonder, the bigger the defenses. The longer the race has progressed, the bigger the defenses.
By day two, defenses in player controlled World Wonder villages can run into over 100k. Remember that they consume half crop, so the crop consumption is only around 50k to support a 100k defense army.
By week one, defenses will run into a few hundred thousand crop army and they will continue to increase. Eventually, and on average most World Wonder villages will have between 1 million to 3 million defenders by mid of the end game.
Again, all figures quoted are before the half crop consumption of World Wonder villages.
The defenses of some World Wonder villages never grow beyond this. They just hover between 1.5 million up to 3 million right up to the end of the game. Some more ambitious ones might reach up to 4 million defenders.
However, some alliances are very good at defense and by the end of the end game, when their Wonders reach level 85 onwards, they will grow their defense up to 6 million to 7 million defenders.
My own World Wonder had 6.5 million defenders at level 95. That means, the village is in negative crop 3.25 million per hour. Astonishing!!! Crop is a constant problem and starvation occurs all the time.
But no World Wonder is invincible. Even with 6 or 7 million defenders in them, it is not safe from attacks. I have witnessed many times a World Wonder with over 6 million defenders get hit so hard that it is severely crippled.
So it is a false expectation that you can defend a World Wonder village against attacks. No matter how well defended, it will be hit hard. You can expect your World Wonder village to be hit hard too. Be prepared for it so don’t feel disappointed when it happens.
It is simply impossible not to sustain any damage from a 200k offense army, no matter how many defenders you have. Unfortunately, a handful of players will have such monstrous armies.
You can see from the above, the World wonder host has over 5 million defenders. The attacker had only around a 200k crop army (including siege). And yet the Great Warehouses were smashed so badly.
This should give you an indication of why you need to defend your World Wonder village so aggressively and what kind of defenses you need.
What kind of units should you use? It is better to use infantry defenders because they have the highest defense point per crop.
Romans send praetorian. Gauls send phalanx. Teutons send spearman.
Also ask for settlers. They have the highest defense point per crop.
For scouts, place around 16000 Teuton scouts and nothing should get through that. Do not use the Roman Equites Legati and Gaul Pathfinder because they consume too much crop.
So in essence, your World Wonder village should have only the following troop types:
- Legionnaire
- Praetorian
- Phalanx
- Spearman
- Teuton Scout
- Settlers
- Heros
Tell your alliance members not to send any other troop type and to treat all troops sent to a World Wonder village as lost and get them to retrain their troops. Get them to upgrade their troops in the Armory to the maximum level 20.
Upgrading troops increases their effectiveness by up to 35 percent, and they don’t consume any additional crop.
There will always be some clueless players who will continue to send catas, chiefs, Teuton Knights and so on to you. Send them all back.
You also need to keep a vigilant eye on enemy heroes. Some enemy players will send their hero to your World Wonder village in order to gain experience. When you spot that, just send their hero back.
A little later, when your Wonder has reached level 80, you need to ask for more defenses. You are likely to be attacked soon, at level 90 and above. At this stage of the game, ask for Paladins, Druidriders and Haeduans to be sent to you too. Haeduans are the least preferred defender, but also acceptable as a last resort.
Remember that when you want to increase your defenders, you need to ask for it early. It takes time to build such massive defenses, up to several days in order to increase by one million defenders.
So if you want to jump from 3 million to 6 million defenders, you may need a week to gather that. This is partly due to constant starvation. It might be too late by then because the Wonders build very fast, and the attacks might already arrive. So plan early.
Ensure that throughout this time, the Travian Plus Defense Bonus is constantly activated.
The above is another example where almost 6 million defenders could not even defend against a 185k crop army.