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again im making this guide myself, its open to debate.

iv tryed many defensive strategys over the months i have played evony, as fallows is a rough 3 stage guideline to what your wall defences should look like:

1-250k prestiege

8-10k archers towers
500 traps
1000 abatis
1 rockfall
1 rolling log


250k-800k
10k + towers
100 traps
200 abatis
1 rockfall
1 rolling log

800k - infinate:
17-18k towers
1 trap
1 abatis

the above guidelines are what i had at that given lvl of prest., these defences ate time tested and proven deadly effective.

Zitat

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*tip*
upgrading walls to level 10 provide your archers with a rage boost resulting in less losses on defence

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Heros:
once again a good hero is a major factor in deciding the outcome of a battle your hero should be leveld up as high as possable 150+ atk is the best
(refer to my hero leveling guide in the "guides" section for info on hero leveling)

Layers:
just like in offence layers are key, if u are a person who dosent defend every city with 50k+ archers, and keep all your troops in a single city, always keep layers in your city, as fallows are the layers i keep in all of my citys:

1k warrs
1k workers
1k pike
1k swords
100k+ scouts
1k cav&phracts
transports and ballista (enuough to farm to support your troops)
500 rams
500 catapults (for range)****
i personally keep 50k archers+ all these layers per city, and include an extra 3-5k pults/rams******

always keep gates open during an attack and mark your embassy check box that says "allow allied troops to garrison city" doing this will asshure that renforcements can be sent and will fight when they arrive even if you are offline. keep in mind, if you do not have the troops to defend yourself keep your gates open anyway, if they are closed alliance members who send renforcements will not be allowed to take part in the combat until your city loyalty is at 5, and by then it may be too late.....also remember that if your troops dont die with gates closed they will starve from refuge if your food is taken.

one big part of defending is using good judgement, preserver renforcing troops if u cant win, dont sucide others troops, always close gates for scout bombs as they kill archers and bypass layers.

if online and under attak do not panic, state clearly to alliance members how long till the attak hits you, who is sending the attack, your coords and the number and type of incoming troops, which brings me to the next point:

Becon towers:

becon towers work in combination with informatics level to allow you to see who is attacking you and what they are sending, upgrade beacon tower to the highest lvl u can , if u have the extra mich script, make it lvl 10

Embassy:

always check the box to llow renforcements in your embassy, each lvl of embassy allows more wave of troops to be sent to u.
for example: a lvl 1 embassy will allow 1 alliance member to send u a max of 125k troops where a lvl 10 will allow 1 or more members to send 900k+ troops

on a ending note, again i welcome criticisim and plz excuse my spelling ;)

im makin this guide myself so bear with me it may be a lil choppy.

there are many strategys to use with different troops in pvp(player vs. player) combat. im not going to discuss in detail each units strategy rather just the basics of attacking.
the importance of heros:

your hero or the defending hero can make or break your attacks. always use your best attack hero when taking out troops and defences. it is best to give ur hero some tlc and get his atk up above 150 atk..

Offesnive pvp:
when attacking another player the most common unit used is the archer, archers have great range and used against mid level opposition work very well, always layer your archers. it is best to use a mich. script and get your rally point to lev. 10, this allows u to dispatch 100k troops at a time. ALWAYS LAYER....a normal archer wave from a lvl 10 rally spot should look like this:
95000 archers

500 cavs
500 phracts
1000 warrs
1000 pikes
1000 swords
500 workers
500 scouts

the more layers in ur rainbow the better

Always scout befor you attack and resout 10 seconds before your attack hits, good intel makes good attacks. for high level and well defended targets with 250k+ archers defending u must rely on scout bombs to take out the archers. scouts are cheap and effective sucide units. there is however the alternate method for taking out larger thargets housing 2-300k archers. i will discuss this method after i throw down some info about range control

range control:

any good defender knows that with a trap and abitis in place the base range of a battle starts at 5000, there are simple and effective ways to take out the traps/abitis and control the range....

to take out traps send small waves of workers and warriors, iv found a 2k of each combo works great. dont send ur fance heros to do this, this gives u a chance to fill the opponets feasting hall with crap heros and prevent them from stealing your good heros.

taking out abitis....to do this simply layer 60 cavs with 10 scouts and send waves till the abitis are cleared.

once you have range controled and at\'s in place the alternate method to take out highly defended citys are to use cavs/phract combos...send 80k phracts and 15k cavs and 5k scouts and it should clear out all fo the archers as long as range/layers are controled in the defending city.....

what is layer control?.....how would i control layers?
layer control means taking out the defensive layers here is an example of a cav.phract battle with layers in place

u atk with 80k phracts, 20k cavs, and 5k scouts....the defender is defending with 250k archers and 1k of each layer up to transports(worker-cav)
the result of this battle = you lose all of your attacking troops, your opponet loses 30k archers= their layer

you must first take out these layers, in the scenerio above removing these are simple, we have devised a tactic on s6 to remove layers with deadly percision. forst layer up 35k archers with 500 workers, 2k warrs, 500 swords, 500 pike, 500 cav, 500 phracts....this will remove layers very well...send as many clearing waves as necessary to get rid of layers.....

in the scenerio above the resulting troops after 1 clearing wave leaves roughly 242k archers and 500 workers defending. now use your phract/cav combo to clear them.

the resulting battle leaves 27k of ur phracts dead....and 15k of your cavs....but the defender has lost 250k archers.


this is just a quic overview of some basic pvp tactics, as i said before, i made this guide myself from reports/tactics and proven battle results, i am always open to critisim and welcome it, if iv messed up on any aspect of this guide or missed any key issue in pvp offence feel free to fill me in and correct my mistakes.

hi, as u may or may not know i set up these froums for everyone in the alliance to be able to refrence guides from many other sites and players, i hope every1 can find something helpful or intresting here as i, and others, add to the collection of information.

this is a big task managing/updating/researching and carring out other tasks required to run the forum, so if any1 wishes to help out and madbob clears u for admin forum acess ill be glad to make it happen.

all of the forums are open for players to post their own guides/tips/and suggestions however i discourage posting random guides, please feel free to post but try to test the guide befor u post it, if its a attack method, or high lvl npc faming method plz include a report or screenshot for others to see.

again, ty all and i hope the forum gets used lol

The Jaq Attack is the single most powerful attack possible within the limitations of the game. I have used it to crush entire enemy alliances and to farm items from well defended towns. Until now, it has been a closely guarded secret known only to myself and a few trusted proteges.

Warning: This attack is NOT for new players. You must have a solid understanding of the game mechanics in order to make this attack work.

Summary:

The Jaq Attack allows 99,000 of your cavalry to attack enemy archers in the first round, ignore swordsmen, pikes, etc, that may be guarding them, while simultaneously causing the enemy archers to not retaliate for multiple rounds. In practice, this can allow a player to kill several hundred thousand archers with an average attack hero ? with almost no losses, or a particularly skilled player to wipe over one million archers with hardly a scratch. This is achieved by manipulating two key elements of the battle mechanics in the favor of the attacker.



First Element: Hit In Round One

With level 10 walls and level 10 archery, enemy archers have a range of 2,400. With max hbr, your cavalry only have a speed of 1,500. So, how do they close the gap in the first round? Simple, in the absence of traps, abatis and defensive trebuchets, your cavalry get a starting bonus equal to their unupgraded base speed of 1,000. Since this occurs in the first round, your cavalry effectively move 2,500 fully upgraded. (1,000 starting bonus plus actual movement of 1,500 with level 10 hbr) That?s more than enough to close the gap on archers in the first round. Any layers the defending the town will also be at range zero, not having moved yet, and therefore cannot block for the archers.

(I should note that the starting bonus is a special rule which only applies to certain conditions. I will explain this special rule and other fundamental elements of the battle mechanics in a later post.)



Second Element: Eliminate Retaliation

Let?s say you?ve attacked someone with 800,000 archers with miniscule layers. Your 99,000 cavalry attacked in the first round and killed 200,000 archers. So now what? Wouldn?t the remaining 600,000 archers be able to attack your cavalry and wipe them out? Not with the Jaq attack. The defending player?s units follow different, more rigid rules than attackers. One rigid rule: Defending archers ALWAYS attack ranged units in range before anything else, and in a specific order: First catapults, then ballistas, then archers. In practice, this means that if you attack 800,000 archer with 99,000 cavalry, 1 catapult, 1 ballista, and 1 archer, the battle may look like such:

Round 1:
Cavalry moves.
Cavalry attacks; kills 200,000 archers.
Archers attack; kill 1 catapult.

Round 2:
Cavalry attacks; kills 200,000 archers.
Archers attack; kill 1 ballista.

Round 3:
Cavalry attacks; kills 200,000 archers.
Archers attack; kill 1 archer.

Round 4:
Cavalry attacks; kills 200,000 archers.

Round 5:
Cavalry attacks; defeats wall.
Victory for attacker.

In this way, you?ve completely nullified the defending archers? ability to retaliate by forcing them to waste rounds ? killing 800,000 of their troops and losing only 3 of yours.

(200,000 archers per round is a pretty conservative goal ? should only require an attack hero around the 250 range which is not hard to get. More advanced players will of course be able to achieve much higher.)



Pure/Impure Jaq Attacks:

A pure Jaq attack is like the above example: Cavalry with round-stealing-layers attack lone archers of a large quantity. Impure Jaq attacks involve archers with a minimal set of other units accompanying them in defense. Sometimes called a dirty Jaq attack. The impure attack is one you?ll probably be using more often and is still remarkably effective ? though lacking the stunning lopsidedness of a pure Jaq attack.



The Two Obstacles In An Impure Jaq Attack:

Range Variants:

Abatis, traps, catapults, ballistas and archer towers all have a longer range than archers. This means that any one of them can alter the starting range of the battle. Ultimately, whether or not your cavalry will reach in round 1 will depend on the hbr of the cavalry, and the archery level/wall level of the defenders. If you cannot reach in round 1, your cavalry will run into layers FIRST.



Layers:

Two potential dangers lurk in layers: Large layers, such as 100,000 pikeman that can do serious damage, and large numbers of small layers that can steal rounds from your cavalry.



How To Deal With Them:

Step 1: Thin layers as much as possible. At the very least, you should try to eliminate all cavalry, cataphracts, pikemen, and swordsmen. Warriors may be too difficult to remove to be worth it in some cases ? but if they are a threat to your cavalry, you should at least try. The only time you would not bother to thin layers is when you can reach archers already in the first round, and all layers are quite small (under 1,000). In such a scenario, your cavalry will crush the archers first, then wipe out the small layers one by one.

The most effective way to eliminate layers is with layered suicide archer and/or warriors waves. If the range is less than 5,000, do not use archers to remove layers.



Step 2: Drop the maximum range as low as possible. In order to gain the round advantage, your layers must be within range of defending ranged units at the same time as your cavalry. To do this, you must kill off all enemy traps and abatis. To kill traps, send suicide warriors. To kill abatis, send suicide cavalry. In each instance, send about 10% the number of your suicide unit as your enemy has for a corresponding defense, and always focus on killing traps first. For example, if your enemy had 1,000 traps and 1,000 abatis, you?d send waves of 100 warriors until he had no more traps, then send waves of 100 cavalry until you?ve taken care of his abatis.

To remove archer towers, attack with suicide archers AFTER you?ve removed his traps and abatis. When the battle starts at 5,000, attacking archers will prioritize defending archers. However, when attacking at a lower range, attacking archers will prioritize archer towers instead. This is another special rule which can be exploited for this attack. Sometimes removing the archer towers is worth it if the target town has no ballistas or catapults ? because doing so can drop you into range of hitting their archers in the first round.

(Again, removing layers and controlling range should warrant a more in-depth post. I will certainly write one in the future on this important subject.)



Step 3: Test your target by attacking with 200 cavalry, then scout after the attack hits to see what was killed. That?s how you know what your cavalry will hit in the first round. If it happens to be archers, then let your attack go ? your preparations are complete. If you?re hitting someone thing else, then you can?t quite reach. If you?re running into layers strong enough to wipe your cavalry, you may want to rethink your approach and start again at step 1. If you?re hitting a small layer of warriors with your cavalry, and there are no other melee-layers, then let your Jaq attack go and watch the fireworks.



Things To Watch Out For:
# Online players. It?s just common sense to attack someone when you know they?re offline. This is doubly true for the Jaq Attack. Because it?s based on manipulating the enemy?s defensive setup to your advantage, and takes some time to do, so, it?d be easy for most online players to screw it up.



# Ranged layers. Catapults and ballistas are a real pain when using this attack because they steal your layers and reduce effectiveness. If there are few enough of either, then use large layers to compensate.



# Hyper-reinforcing alliances. After you?ve wiped a town once, the alliance it belongs to may attempt to reinforce it. Just keep using the attack over and over. It?s much easier to use on a freshly wiped town anyways. I?ve cleared millions of archers just in reinforcements from a single town before. In this way, you can turn just one town into a death trap for a good portion of an alliance?s armies.



Addional Notes:

This move will almost certainly not work for you if you don?t know what you?re doing. This site is called ?Pro Moves? for a reason. Familiarize yourself with the workings of the game and conventional warfare before attempting.

If you should suffer a massive failure or be ambushed ? do not be discouraged and do not blame the attack. The attack works perfectly if used correctly. I have never had a failed Jaq Attack ever, and I have used it hundreds of times. If you are being ambushed, you need to focus on your intelligence gathering skills so you can start hitting offline players instead.

The Jaq Attack is SLOW because of the catapults. I generally send it off first, especially against distant targets, then send the suicide waves to clear the target up while I?m waiting for it to get there.


The Jaq Attack is very effective for item farming due to its power and cost-effectiveness.

There are some that claim that scouts will layer for cavalry. This is true in some cases, but not for the reasons they expect. Scouts are actually treated as a non-combatant when grouped with certain units ? and you?ll be using at least 1 of everthing for maximum layering. I?d recommend sending 1 scout with the main attack just in case, but don?t rely on it.

Your enemies will almost certainly attempt to retaliate with the same attack. You should welcome it. Because of its complexity, they won?t be able to figure it out on their own.

Cataphracts can substitute for cavalry in some situations but are not recommended.

Of all the elements which decide the success of an attack, the offline or online status of the defender is most crucial. The online defender can set up ambushes, regenerate layers and fortify his towns. Even if you manage to break the defenses, an online defender can still truce, teleport, use speech scripts, comforting, ask for help, or send reinforcements from another town ? preventing conquest. For this reason, pro players almost never try to take a town from a defender they know is online, and even then, only if there is some special tactical reason for doing so. Because of the importance of knowing the online times of a potential opponent, the pro player should always have an arsenal of methods for determining the online status of his targets. I call this status detection. I?ve compiled twelve effective techniques ? meant to be used in conjunction for determining whether a potential target is online:

1. Scouting: In addition to vital information, merely scouting creates a status detection opportunity. Most players reflexively heal slain troops ? including scouts. If a defending player heals scouts you?ve wiped, you know he?s online. This same principle can be applied to the regeneration of layers, if you?ve already attacked the player and killed some or all of his layers.

2. Valley Theft: A sense of property ownership and the need to defend property are deeply rooted within the human psyche. So when you take a valley from another player, they will almost always attempt to take it back immediately. Naturally, you can use this to tell if they?re online. And if you should take a valley from a player while they sleep, recall troops and leave it there. They?ll probably attempt to take it back as soon as they log back in ? providing you precise information about their online times.

3. Resource Use: An offline player can?t spend resources. If you have been scouting a player, and see a sudden drop in resources that doesn?t coincide with a drop in loyalty/defenses (indicating an attack), then the player is certainly online. Players, however, can GAIN resources while offline, due to normal resource generation, and market sales.

4. Report Scanning: The pro player looks at every war report available to him in order to best understand his enemy. If your enemy attacks with any degree of frequency, he should leave a chronological footprint of his onlines times in your reports, and the reports of his other enemies. By studying them, you should look for a gap, generally 8-5 hours in which he never lands an attack. This is when he sleeps.

5. NPC Patterns: Players will sometimes drastically vary their actions in order to prevent you from discovering their sleep times. Perhaps the easiest way to cut through this fog is to scout their NPC?s. Doing so is undetectable to them and will allow you to see when they farmed it. NPC?s regenerate 1.25% of their total resource value every 6 minutes. So if an NPC has 12.5% of its resource value in it when you scout it, you know it was farmed an hour ago. Next, measure the length of time it would require for his transports/ballistas to reach the NPC from his town. If you have a similar HBR, you can make an estimate just by picking a point of similar distance from your own town and seeing how long it takes to reach it.

6. Whispers: Talking to a player can be an easy way to discover their status. It is most effective when the player does not suspect an attack from you, or when you make the message particularly enticing sounding. For example, if you are messaging an enemy, a ?Hi? is much less likely to elicit a response than, ?Nice move the other night.? In general, people are most likely to respond to compliments, insults, and proposals. Obviously, if a person responds to a whisper, it means they are online. If they do not, it doesn?t necessarily mean they are offline.

7. Mails: Similar to the whisper tactic, establishing a conversation via mail can be an effective method for determining a player?s online times. You?ll want to space your mails out at least an hour apart each. This will allow you to look for gaps in your target?s response times. That gap is when he sleeps.

8. Personal Info: You may find it helpful to know if your victim works, where they live, if they go to school or not. Their location will tell you their time zone, and thus, the range of their most likely sleep times. If they work, then they probably have additional blocks of time of absence separate from sleep time. Knowing the nature of their job can help you in your estimates. For example, someone doing an office job will almost certainly work during the day, while a club bouncer will probably work at night. All of this information can be found through discussions with the victim, or those that know them.

9. Internet Footprint: In addition to Evony, your target likely uses many other functions the internet has to offer ? all of these provide potential data for their online times. One of my favorite tactics is to ask a neutral friend to begin a dialogue on an instant messaging program. The majority of instant messaging programs indicate whether or not contacts, such as your victim, are online or not. In addition, many record the precise times of messages, giving you detailed histories to work with. On top of instant messengers, there?s also forums, social networking sites, etc., which can provide you information on opponents.

10. Attack Fakes: Any player worth his salt will attempt to prevent attacks on his cities. A popular method of doing so is by ambushing attacking troops. Send an attack at a city which will be easy to reinforce for your opponent, but isn?t yet all that well guarded. Be sure to scout first. Send a scout to hit (as a scouting mission) in the exact same second as the attack. Recall your attack at the last possible second. If the victim attempts to reinforce, you know he?s online.

11. Spying: Good ole? fashioned spying. One of the many perks in crushing an alliance, is a few of its members will begin trading information for protection. Spy info is easy to come by and shouldn?t be overlooked. Spies can help you with many of the other methods, in addition to having access to logged sign-in times in the alliance tab.

12. Spreadsheeting: If you?re having difficulty getting an iron lock on a person?s online times, it may help to gather all of the data you have and put it on a spreadsheet. This will help you compile larger amounts of data and discover nuanced patterns. This is particularly useful against people that are adept at hiding their patterns or have very fluid online times.

It generally takes about 3 days of tracking to get a lock on a victim?s patterns. Some will be more predictable than others. There is never a 100% way to know if a person is online at any given second or not. You have to play the probabilities to get the highest possible chance of success. Happy status detecting!

Scout Bomb - Priority Targetting - Exercises

- One key tactic that much of this guide is based on is the usage of the scout bomb tactic (as originally developed by Pokey after the wall/defense changes). That is, sending in 100k scouts on a kamikaze mission to attack an enemy base with gates open, killing about 20k archers (varies) , to be used repeatedly to eventually wear down the enemy enough, for your real 100k archer/rams/calv force to clear all troops. You can refer to that thread here: <add link that i can't find right now>
- One aspect of this depends on the game mechanics of priority target. That is: with all things being equi-distant reachable by range, the attacking units will choose the unit that is most "valuable" as defined by # * resource cost.
- It may somethings be difficult to figure out what your units will target, especially when you see something like 80k swords , 100k archers defending (for example), what will the scouts attack?
- The way to find out, is to use Exercises from your rally point. Exercises from rally point, will almost always tell you, exactly what your scouts will attack, given the correct reading of defending troops. The # of kills will be wrong, but who to attack is always right. This way you can plug in #s, and find out which unit will be killed by scouts, and find out when to stop sending scouts.

Gates Open/Close

- It's important to realize that scout bombing does not work when gates are closed.
- It is also important to note that scout bombs do NOT work when there's any other unit in the attack force. So sending in 99k scouts , and 1 warrior, will effectively nullify the scout bomb effect (of attacking archers)
- Additionally, if the defending opponent has Archer towers up, your scouts will break on them, 100k scouts, even with 20% attack bonus will only kill about 700 ATs (some of which gets instantly repaired depending on his tech). If he has 18k , you are looking at a lot of losses for little gain.
- I do not think this is winnable with brute forcing a closed gate with 18k ATs up. (Though i've never tried)
- It is my proposal, that it is best to use maneuvers as described below post to overcome this, to detect player online/offline and gate open/close is key.

Losing Heroes

- It is important to note that even with loyalty 90+, you can still lose your heroes on attacks with scout bomb kamikazes.
- This is based on if the defending city has empty spots available in their feasting hall.
- Attackers need to be extremely careful sending in their prized 200+ ATK heroes on scout bombs. You need to either know that the guy is offline, or his heroes in feasting hall is full
- Yet, the amount of archers you kill is directly proportional to the ATK power of your hero. So it is best to send a strong ATK hero, if you can risk it. You could always send fodder , hired heroes (ATK 60/70), but those will take more scouts to kill the same # of archers.

- To mitigate the risk, one tactic here is: before your 100k scout bomb lands, send in a bunch of small, 1 scout, or 1 - whatever attacks. have them land 1 second before your 100k scout bomb attacks. Use crappy heroes as fodder. That way the person has not enough time to go to his feasting hall and "release" his captured heroes from the small fodder attacks.
- If he has scouts and open gates, then even better, send in your scout on scout missions with a hero, which will also get your bad fodder heroes captured, and ensure the survival of your good hero when your real attack lands.


Distance/Forward base

- It should be obvious by now that the effectiveness of your attack depends on the relative distance of you vs the attacker, in order to achieve the element of surprise.
- It is best to position an attack base / city at the next tile of the enemy.
- You can do this by either setting up and building a forward city, or conquer a lvl 10 NPC.
see this thread about how to conquer a LVL 10 NPC over great distances : http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=45...ghlight=forward
- The distance to your enemy is directly inversely porportional to your rate and chance of winning the conflict.

Marking a Target / Element of Surprise

- Because of the beacon tower advantage, fighting an online opponent is extremely hard, they can see your attack timed to arrive down to the second, and do all sorts of maneuvers to counter it.
- What I've found is useful is to "mark" the target of attack with a 1 worker attack, camped at 99 hrs.
- This will initiate an attack of time: 100 hr on the target city.
- Your opponents UI for reports button will start blinking continuously for the next 100 hours.
- He will need to have the reports menu open the whole time in order to see when a "real attack" is on its way, instead of be notified by the blinking birdie.
- The purpose of this is to 1) get the player complacent about the blinking birdie, and 2) put him on edge so he has to worry about it 24/7, and 3) hide your real attacks.
- Doing this greatly increases your chance of success because you have the element of surprise. I typically send the 100 hr attack 24 hrs before I land in my forward base, so they get complacent, the down side of this they know you are about to hit them and they teleport away before you even get there!

Honor Points

- Don't worry about honor points.
- I've realized that it's best to be at 0 honor. After a few scout bombs you will up the defender's honor, and lower your own to the point that they will only get 10% back on Heals, while you get 50%
- This is actually to your advantage if you want to "win" by conquest. (note: will will lose by honor points, if you use that metric)

Manuevers

Feint/Multiple Cities:

- This is farily standard and doesn't even rely on solely on scouts bombs. The idea here is to attack multiple targets of your enemy and use camp time to have them land at the same time.
- This forces your oppoent to defend two positions instead of 1, and thus have to split his forces. Allow the attack to land on the undefended city, and recall the attack on the defended city at the last moment.
- This tends to not work well at the end game, against big players, since everyone has enough defending armies in all cities to defend against your simultaneous attacks.

Gate open / close Detection:

- The situation here is that your opponent is online 24/7. (Or perhaps he's got friends who can play his account all the time.)
- He will see your scout bombs coming and close the gate at the last second, and always open the gates on archer attacks. (see above on why this is bad)
- note that: distance / marking target really helps with this situation (as described above)

Gate open/close can be detected by this way:

1) Relying on enemy scouts:
If the enemy has scouts defending his base, that is sometimes a *good thing*.
Even if you outnumber his scouts and can kill them, don't... leave them there
Instead use those enemy scouts to your advantage to indicate whether or not the gate is open or closed at the last second.
This resolves into a Simple Tactic, which is key:
send a 1 scout , scout mission.
if his gates are open, and he has more than 1 scout, your scout will die. red bar dissapears
if his gates are closed, your scout will return. red bar becomes blue bar.

Opponent Online/Offline Test:

You can combine the above maneuvers to see if the person is online / offline during a given period by doing a test:


- If the gates are open. Send a 100k scout bomb at the target. Then send a 1 scout , scout mission to land at the same time. Pull your 100k scout bomb at the last second. If you see a toggle in gate, you know the guy is online.

- If the gates are closed. Do the opposite, send a 100k archer attack to the target, and send a 1 scout mission (or attack for method). To land at the last second. See what happens. Does he open the gate at the last second?

- Special note here: that if you use attack method (as opposed to the scout method), you need to be aware that most high end players have friends playing their account in the same alliance. So these guys will scan war reports while they are on their main account.. and if they see your "test" attack land, they will go and logon to their friends account.

- Always pull your troops last second to avoid unintentional losses. Remember this is just a test to see if he is online. If he knows you are doing a test, he might counter it by faking... but he takes a chance either way, because maybe you are not testing and let it land.
- Depending on how paranoid you feel you can test once/twice/three times... before you make your real move.


Pincher (ATs up, online):

- The situation here is: the defender has 18k archer towers, and lots (even 900k) archers on defense, you have 3 million scouts you are ready to unload, but he is online and flipping gate open/close status

If he is offline things are easy:
gate closed - send 100k archers to remove ATs, then go to town to drop loyalty to 5, then bomb.
gate open - just straight up scout bomb it.
The hard part here is if he's online trying to prevent the scout bomb. (open gate when scouts are about to hit, close gate when archer has to hit.
This requires a pincher maneuver.

Here is the tactic:
Send either a 100k archer/100k calv wave. Let say that lands in 6 mins.
Over then next minute send a 100k scout wave, to land at exactly the same time your archers land, to the second. Using camp time.
Next minute, send another 100k scout attack wave, using camp time.
Repeat, as much as you are willing to risk with scouts.
You now force the defending player to choose:
open the gate - and suffer archer losses, due to the scout waves
close the gate - and get his ATs destroyed. (Losing your ATs is extremely hurtful, tacitcally in the long run)

- You must time this to land on the same second. To the point where the guy's click of open/close is not granular enough to differentiate the multiple attacks.

There is also a way you can optimize your losses, and recall the correct attack(s) at the last second.
Feint-Pincher:

Optimization Option 1) use your scouts gate detection.

This method requries the enemy to have a scout advantage, and also to not know about sending away his scouts to prevent this tactic)

The idea here is to send a 1 scout, scout mission, 1 second before your attacks land.
If you know he has scouts in his base. Your scout mission will return if the gates are closed, and the scout mission will die , if the gates are open.
You have no time to click the report, and read the report.. what you will need to do within that 1 second is:
OPEN your feasting hall menu. Assuming here you know which hero is on what attack.
Watch the lower left corner of the screen for the RED/BLUE bar.
If the red bar dissapears, your scout mission failed, and he died (gates open)
If the red bar turns to blue, your scout mission succeed, and the gates are closed.
You use this feedback and watch at the last second, to pull whichever attack you want. This will prevent your troops from dying unncessarily

Optimization Option 2)
- Take a gamble, it's like rolling a dice: 50/50. Try to predict which way the guy will go. And pull the attack you think he won't avoid. (This may not be that worthwhile). If you know your player, it may work.

Calv Attrition: (ATs down):

- Once ATs are down, the defender is at a huge tactical disadvantage.
- Your scout bombs, even if he closes the gates, will not all die, they'll just return... (remember you still need to worry about losing your heroes).
- At this point, the defender will probably leave his gates *closed* by default, and only open them on real attacks (100k archer/calvs).
- What I usually do here is to use attrition and send 100k calv waves to slowly "catch him" on a closed gate to loot his resources.
- This requires careful online, gate open/close detection. To protect your calv for running into an open gate.
- Running into an open gate with calv isn't completely disastrous, depending on defensive configurations, you'll take something out.. (but its usually not worth it.)
- The best bet is to loot them by detecting their gate status, and only let your attacks land when you detect the gate is closed.

Calv tactical superiority
- Sending in calv is best because : they are fast (sneak in 1 minute attacks to catch them off guard), and they can loot 20m resources, and even if they hit an open gate they have a chance to damage the enemy due to their speed. Always good to have 100k calv lying around to do this.

Dealing with Heavy Meat defense - priority targetting:

- Eventually everyone will understand priority targetting, and they will arm their defenses with something like 300k swords, and 280k archers. Scout bombs will trade 100k scouts for maybe 4k swords.. which will make it extremely expensive to attack the enemy. (vs 100k scouts , and 20k archers)

- In this case you need to be willing to trader archers for killing swords/pikemen. If battle range starts at 5000 (if abistis are up), you will have around 4 rounds of opportunity for archers to hit their pike/swords, before your archers are annihilated. But you must also send rainbow layers. The best defense for this ironically would not be 18k ATs, but a combination of rolling logs , etc to take out layers.

- In this case you will need to send archers FIRST, to clear some swords/pikemen, before you can start scout bombing. This adds a new layer of complexity, and the defender can always send his swords away on a reinforce mission at the last second. So you'll have to combine this with surprise or pinchers using archer/scouts.

Win by Attrition:

- This is more of a strategic realization, but one must sometimes realize that it may sometimes just not be possible to win by doing one massive 4 hr sitting. Because the defender comes online and does everything to counter, everything you do.

- In these cases, the best bet is slowly attack them with repeated feint/pincher maneuvers over a several days period. Send attacks at random times, some at noon, some in the middle of the night. There is no way that he can be online to catch them all.
- refer to "marking the target", helps a lot with this. There's no way that he's looking at the reports screen every second.

Know your opponent:

- Finally, in true Sun Tzu style: know your opponent, research him, figure out how he plays and more importantly: WHEN he plays.
- Find out what timezone he plays in , and when he sleeps.
- One thing I've used: for the frequent forum posters, is to search through his forum posts on evony forums (just go "search by poster") to figure out his play times. I've successfully used this to estimate when one opponent of mine, at his weakest time availability, and caught him offline sleeping in.