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a

Salsuero

Well-Known Member
Forge of Empires
World: Mount Kilgore

I’m confused

I activated a 72-hour City Shield @8:00am Saturday
Solidgeoff plundered Warehouse @5:10 pm Saturday
Solidgeoff last attack on my city was @10:06 pm Friday
How is this possible?

1) Does a city shield NOT protect against plundering buildings?
2) Can you hold off plundering after a city attack for 19 hours?

Not really worried about the plundering, but would like to know if I’m wasting $$ on a shield.

You activated the shield after he had already defeated you. He can plunder anything you have available up to 24 hours after defeating you, regardless of any actions you take to try to prevent it (short of disconnecting all plunderable buildings from your town hall until his opportunity passes or collecting everything before he gets a chance to plunder you). The city shield isn't a way to stop someone who already beat you from plundering you... it's meant to stop people from getting a chance to fight you in the first place, preventing plunder opportunities altogether.

Edit: uhm... @RazorbackPirate already answered you, but I didn't see the extra page before answering you myself. But hey... hopefully having two answers, worded a bit differently, is sufficient enough to satisfactorily answer your question.
 

DeletedUser10720

Forge of Empires
World: Mount Kilgore

I’m confused

I activated a 72-hour City Shield @8:00am Saturday
Solidgeoff plundered Warehouse @5:10 pm Saturday
Solidgeoff last attack on my city was @10:06 pm Friday
How is this possible?

1) Does a city shield NOT protect against plundering buildings?
2) Can you hold off plundering after a city attack for 19 hours?

Not really worried about the plundering, but would like to know if I’m wasting $$ on a shield.
After a successful attack, you can return to a city and plunder one building at any point within the next 24 hours.

If the attack happens before you raise a city shield, the plunder action is still possible within that window. The city shield only protects from any attack action done after the shield is raised and would only stop a 2nd consecutive attack.
 

DeletedUser36121

This is a well conceived and thoughtful argument. But there's one more thing...

You can take this line of reasoning and extend it to attack boost, and indeed, armies and PvP all together.
If you were to look at the space you use in you city for maintaining an PvP attack army and associated boost buildings I think it might be better financially to abandon the army and just produce natively.
 

RazorbackPirate

Well-Known Member
You can take this line of reasoning and extend it to attack boost, and indeed, armies and PvP all together.
If you were to look at the space you use in you city for maintaining an PvP attack army and associated boost buildings I think it might be better financially to abandon the army and just produce natively.
There are some players who choose not to fight in FoE and do exactly as you suggest, they forgo military structures of any kind. However, given as FoE is a war game, it makes little sense for most players to not build a strong attacking army. For most, fighting is a major play aspect of the game.

On the flip side, you don't 'play' your city defense, the AI does. Win or lose you're unaffected unless your attacker plunders. What this thread shows is that mathematically, it makes little sense to invest in defensive structures, as they rob your city of more production resources than plunder does.

However, dovetailing your thoughts with this thread, I get all my units from GE and don't build barracks, I get all my goods from RQs and don't build goods buildings, I get all my population from Inno Tower and don't build residential, and get all my happy from HS/Traz and don't build cultural buildings. Plenty of room for FP producers, special and production buildings.
 
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Emberguard

Well-Known Member
This is a well conceived and thoughtful argument. But there's one more thing...

You can take this line of reasoning and extend it to attack boost, and indeed, armies and PvP all together.
If you were to look at the space you use in you city for maintaining an PvP attack army and associated boost buildings I think it might be better financially to abandon the army and just produce natively.

Not really the same thing. No point in rendering land useless for producing in order to prevent it from being plundered when there's barely any risk in being plundered. You can already protect your stock without taking up any space in your city - just use 8 current age unattached units in your defence. Everything in inventory is safe already and anything out in the open has its own protection mechanism in how much can be taken and when (GBs/motivation/collection times).

Defence Boost doesn't give you anything directly and can only be used for one purpose, it simply makes it less likely you'll lose what already belongs to you. If it was possible for your entire city to be robbed (including goods/supplies/coins from inventory) then there'd be an overwhelming argument for a defence boost for those with a significant portion of unprotected land - it'd prevent a net profit from becoming net loss (even more so if you didn't need 3x more defence then your attacker needs attack). But plunderers can barely even touch your city resources on the occasions when they get through.


Attack Boost on the other hand serves a purpose on several fronts. You can't advance through the tech tree without goods. You can't get boosted goods without the continent map. You'd be spending 8x times more resources on goods if negotiating then on your army.

If you wanted to go through the GE it'd take 200 of each current age good per week to negotiate the second half of Guild Expedition. That's 10-15 goods buildings for half a result with nothing left over. And that's not counting the cost of previous age goods or the first half of GE which you;d also be negotiating if you don't have attack GBs

It's simply not plausible to ignore attack GBs altogether and still complete GE unless you have an extremely strong goods economy - in which case you're wasting a lot of time negotiating when you could already be in the next age. While GE is optional it's also a huge source of income when combined with Temple of Relics and Lvl 4 has quite a lot of wealth if you can complete it each week


TL;DR
Single purpose is generally speaking always going to be less profitable then a multi purpose. Defence boosts are barely used and can only be used in one area. Attack boosts compliment almost every area of your city due to both the income military can provide and the ability to decrease resource requirements in other areas increasing the overall efficiency of your city.

Therefore the amount of space occupied by defence needs to be in proportion to what's most efficient for its use and how much that use effects your city. 8 units of current age in defence coupled with collecting from GBs, motivated buildings and tweaking collection times is the most efficient defence for the gain given.
 
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DeletedUser31540

Ive only read this page (#19) but here is my opinion:

Blanket statements such as the title of the thread ‘0 defense = profits’ are meaningless — each player has a unique situation that alters how useful city defense is to him or her ... lets consider 3 made-up players and evaluate how useful or useless their city defense is to them:

Player A - 20 million points, in Virtual Future, hood rank = 55 / 70, 13 gbs between levels 5 and 30

This player has made it to the end of the tech tree but has rushed through it faster than most players and as a result they are severly outmatched by their neighbors ... their defense boost is 18 / 200. City defense is next to useless for this player — they cant stop anyone from successfully attacking, and wont be able to unless they quadruple the boost (which wouldnt be worth it). Tear all the defenses down and let the plunderers plunder - collect on time and make friends !!!

Player B - 20 million points, colonial age, hood rank = 1 / 70, 20 gbs between lv 12 and 80

This player has camped for a long time ... defense boost is 50 / 250. This player has 14 terrace farms and an erratic schedule so they cant always collect on time ... this player also loves to attack their neighbors and so is constantly on their toes in anticipation of retaliation... while a few can break the defense the vast majority cannot. A high Defense is very useful for player B and worth the 50 tiles it takes up in their city

Conclusion: the usefulness of a player’s defense fluctuates wildly — generally a high defense is most useful earlier in the game (PME and below) as once you get to the later eras most players have very high attk boosts and it becomes less and less worth it to have a defense to match the astronomical attk boosts

And while i find it ridiculous to assert that ‘0 defense = profits’ for all players i do agree that more players should take a serious look at their defense and alter it accordingly — whats the boost? How many tiles do i devote to defense? how often am i attacked? How often do i repel my attackers? How often are my city walls breached? How often am i plundered? What could i produce instead if i deleted some defensive structures?

These are great questions to ask oneself! But Telling everyone to delete their defense and profit cause it worked for some rando in a completely different Situation is idiotic
 
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DeletedUser

Ive only read this page (#19) but here is my opinion:

Blanket statements such as the title of the thread ‘0 defense = profits’ are meaningless — each player has a unique situation that alters how useful city defense is to him or her ... lets consider 3 made-up players and evaluate how useful or useless their city defense is to them:

Player A - 20 million points, in Virtual Future, hood rank = 55 / 70, 13 gbs between levels 5 and 30

This player has made it to the end of the tech tree but has rushed through it faster than most players and as a result they are severly outmatched by their neighbors ... their defense boost is 18 / 200. City defense is next to useless for this player — they cant stop anyone from successfully attacking, and wont be unless they quadruple the boost (which wouldnt be worth it). Tear all the defenses down and let the plunderers plunder - collect on time and make friends !!!

Player B - 20 million points, colonial age, hood rank = 1 / 70, 20 gbs between lv 12 and 80

This player has camped for a long time ... defense boost is 50 / 250. This player has 14 terrace farms and an erratic schedule so they cant always collect on time ... this player also loves to attack their neighbors and so is constantly on their toes in anticipation of retaliation... while a few can break the defense the vast majority cannot. A high Defense is very useful for player B and worth the 50 tiles it takes up in their city

Conclusion: the usefulness of a player’s defense fluctuates wildly — generally a high defense is most useful earlier in the game (PME and below) as once you get to the later eras most players have very high attk boosts and it becomes less and less worth it to have a defense to match the astronomical attk boosts
What about Player C? LOL
 

Emberguard

Well-Known Member
@Ognor the Hood I agree with your assessment that blanket statements are misleading. Particularly as unless a player understands /why/ a defence boost isn't worth devoting too much of their city on, they're also not going to understand how much would be worth having or where would be the best place to put that defence.

A attacker is definitely the most likely to be plundered. And it also doesn't take into account whether a player has fully outfitted their tavern in order for a city shield to be worth activating in a worst case scenario.

The place I get plundered the most is on the city where I plunder the neighbourhood. But for me it'd take more space to drastically increase my defence unless it's already dead space (1x1 on dead ends) then the amount of stuff that can actually be taken. So I might as well produce and have most of it left over then spend the space on defence.

One other thing - the world age. If it's a brand new world then there's going to be rampant plundering. If anywhere should have a high defence, it's probably going to be the youngest world added to a server
 
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DeletedUser29623

It's simply not plausible to ignore attack GBs altogether and still complete GE unless you have an extremely strong goods economy - in which case you're wasting a lot of time negotiating when you could already be in the next age. While GE is optional it's also a huge source of income when combined with Temple of Relics and Lvl 4 has quite a lot of wealth if you can complete it each week

This isn’t really true, fwiw. I negotiate all the way through GE every week in two cities. It’s not a waste of time— in fact it’s much faster and (in my opinion) more fun. Negotiating is always faster than fighting.
 

Emberguard

Well-Known Member
How long does it take you to negotiate? I use AutoBattle and nothing else.

And I can see why you'd interpret my sentence that way. My mind was thinking time as in the amount of goods needed to advance the tech tree time, not purely GE time
 

DeletedUser29623

How long does it take you to negotiate? I use AutoBattle and nothing else.

And I can see why you'd interpret my sentence that way. My mind was thinking time as in the amount of goods needed to advance the tech tree time, not purely GE time

I'm trying not to advance on the tech tree, since trying to speed up it seems to be the biggest mistake players make. I'm leveling my Arcs, which are both at about 60 right now, and that's much easier at lower levels.

Negotiating one encounter takes maybe 10 to 15 seconds? I go through them pretty fast. When I do decide to fight, for a DC or something, it takes longer because I have to match up the units by their bonuses, but I do auto battle.
 

Emberguard

Well-Known Member
Ah ok, fair enough then. If you've got no where to be anytime soon, why not?

I've just been playing it by ear with my goods stock as my measure of progress and never run into the problem of advancing too fast. I guess it's the fact that me and my two siblings all have one speciality thing that we do in extremes when it comes to war games. I can farm resources, that's generally my thing.

In stronghold I'll have 300-600 man army with 12 granaries running on double rations and a full stockpile I have to keep selling stuff on to make room. But fighting? My oldest brothers' 15 men decimated my 300 man army without any of his men getting a scratch on them. He has a minimal amount of everything and manages it in such a way that it can topple much larger cities. Usually he;ll be just keeping his head above water for food stocks. And the younger brother? They build the best defences. Neither of us can touch him. But his men will be with no food and a bunch of beer instead xD

Makes me wonder how they'd go in a game like Forge of Empires.
 

Volodya

Well-Known Member
TL;DR
Single purpose is generally speaking always going to be less profitable then a multi purpose. Defence boosts are barely used and can only be used in one area. Attack boosts compliment almost every area of your city due to both the income military can provide and the ability to decrease resource requirements in other areas increasing the overall efficiency of your city.

Therefore the amount of space occupied by defence needs to be in proportion to what's most efficient for its use and how much that use effects your city. 8 units of current age in defence coupled with collecting from GBs, motivated buildings and tweaking collection times is the most efficient defence for the gain given.

This is certainly true... IF one values "efficiency" over everything else. That's not however the only viable way to approach FoE. I play games in large part (though not exclusively) because I enjoy friendly competition. The most direct competition available here is PvP. I don't like to lose those battles. The battles are what matter to me, not any resources I may lose as a result of losing a battle, so I make different choices.
 

DeletedUser29623

This is certainly true... IF one values "efficiency" over everything else. That's not however the only viable way to approach FoE. I play games in large part (though not exclusively) because I enjoy friendly competition. The most direct competition available here is PvP. I don't like to lose those battles. The battles are what matter to me, not any resources I may lose as a result of losing a battle, so I make different choices.

Exactly. I don't enjoy the battle element, so I don't really do it. But it's the main point of the game for many players, which I entirely understand. I like playing at being rich and winning prizes, planning and designing the city for maximum productivity. And like most rich, powerful people, I don't do my own fighting! I've even gotten into the significant amount of math that the game becomes at its more advanced levels. It's all about the math, really, once you get past a certain point, especially when you're not into the battle element.
 

Emberguard

Well-Known Member
well then, that makes a lot of sense as to why arguing about defence boosts is pointless then. The fun factor :D (aside from whether they actually stop anyone or how much defence would stop someone if someone wanted to stop plundering altogether and not just put what they feel like)
 

DeletedUser31882

well then, that makes a lot of sense as to why arguing about defence boosts is pointless then. The fun factor :D (aside from whether they actually stop anyone or how much defence would stop someone if someone wanted to stop plundering altogether and not just put what they feel like)

Eh, I would only say it is pointless if the argument is meant to convert, rather than explain, discuss or elucidate.

I think that is why the title was worded as it was; profits should evoke or relate directly to productivity while not invoking a direct link to the broad, subjective, 'fun factor' variable. The interesting part is how defensive the fun factor arguments are, at times. I've noted that some arguments appear to take umbrage to others talking to the reality of '0% = profits' as a direct attack to their beliefs and/or play style. Some then waste space/profits take the time to defend the use of defense buildings.

My imagination likes to conjure the idea of @empireforger12 making this thread to attack the defense players with the intent to pillage, but ran into a very big wall. If I had the power, I'd award those defense players with a big 'Green Thumbs Up' forum badge.

In pillaging reporting news: I got pillaged a handful of times since the last time I reported being pillaged. I have no regrets in adopting a berserker approach to city defense. I don't think I'll ever have a 0% defense city thanks to special buildings & the inevitability of me picking up the TA GB, but I think this concept will stand true until Inno decides to add something to defense % contributions, other than its current singular purpose.
 

DeletedUser

finally get to posting my final numbers.
recorded a solid 6 months of data from multiple game worlds. sampling various ages/hood positions/play styles.
all with 0% defense of 8 current age troops .

*important to note that hood position has strong impact on attack / plunder numbers. i tried to keep the sample balanced with various hood positions to get a reasonably accurate overall picture.

183 weeks of 6 day event history. [1098 days. 3+ years]
average hood position 34.5 of 73.2 (47.2%)
79290 possible attacks.
769 attacks
409 retreat
360 breaches
183 plunders.

screen shots of all my weekly data:
mar30-may14 https://prnt.sc/leotqk
may21-jun9 https://prnt.sc/leoue0
jun16-jun30 https://prnt.sc/leouxy
jul8-jul22 https://prnt.sc/leovap
jul28-aug18 https://prnt.sc/leovst
aug26-sept16 https://prnt.sc/leow66
sep23-oct14 https://prnt.sc/leowm6

screen shot of my weekly summaries:
https://prnt.sc/lep4uu

SPLITS:
effectiveness of 0% defense by age.
EmA - 87.5% of attackers surrendered to 8 current age troops with 0% defense [56 attacks. 49 retreats.]
HmA - 69.6% of attackers surrendered to 8 current age troops with 0% defense [112 attacks. 78 retreats.]
LmA - 47.6% of attackers surrendered to 8 current age troops with 0% defense [168 attacks. 80 retreats]
ColA - 54.7% of attackers surrendered to 8 current age troops with 0% defense [234 attacks. 128 retreats.]
Indy - 62.6% of attackers surrendered to 8 current age troops with 0% defense [107 attacks. 67 retreats.]
PE - 25% of attackers surrendered to 8 current age troops with 0% defensee [16 attacks. 4 retreats]
ME - 10.3% of attackers surrendered to 8 current age troops with 0% defense [29 attacks. 3 retreats]
PmE - no data sampled
CE - no data sampled
TE - 0% of attackers surrendered to 8 current age troops with 0% defense [4 attacks. 0 retreats]
FE - 0% of attackers surrendered to 8 current age troops with 0% defense [44 attacks. 0 retreats]
AF - 4 weeks of data. 0 attacks.
OF - no data sampled
VF - no data sampled


attacks based on players hood position.
top 10% in hood - 30 weeks. 24 attacks [0.8 attacks per 6 day week]
10.1%-20% in hood - 26 weeks. 28 attacks. [1.08 attacks per 6 day week]
20.1%-30% in hood - 7 weeks. 9 attacks [1.29 attacks per 6 day week]
30.1%-40% in hood - 10 weeks. 29 attacks [2.9 attacks per 6 day week]
40.1%-50% in hood - 23 weeks. 71 attacks [3.09 attacks per 6 day week]
50.1%-60% in hood - 7 weeks. 15 attacks [2.14 attacks per 6 day week]
60.1%-70% in hood - 19 weeks. 94 attacks [4.95 attacks per 6 day week]
70.1%-80% in hood - 33 weeks. 191 attacks [5.79 attacks per 6 day week]
80.1%-90% in hood - 16 weeks. 131 attacks [8.19 attacks per 6 day week]
90.1%-100% in hood - 12 weeks. 177 attacks [14.75 attacks per 6 day week]


in 3 worlds i left valuable buildings uncollected for the entire sample period. so if any attacker breached my 0% defense they would always have something to plunder.
in 78 weeks of data from those 3 worlds, i had 202 breaches and 134 plunders.
meaning 33.66% of the time people did not plunder when they had easy opportunities right after their breach.


plunders per week from 183 weeks of data:
weeks with 8 plunders: 2
...7 plunders : 3
...6 plunders : 2
...5 plunders : 3
...4 plunders : 6
...3 plunders : 8
...2 plunders : 16
...1 plunder : 39
...0 plunder : 104
Geez, all that work and nobody cares.
 

DeletedUser

'm glad to see you've taken from the knowledge shared in this thread and removed virtually all your defense from your main city.
you dont need to thank me. your city is a shining example to the help i have provided you.
You apparently have no idea which is my main city as it still has full defense.
 
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