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DeletedUser25166

#1 in my hood killed my defense first day of the new hood and I obliterated his army. I have 5% Defense from the cherry set and he has 271%. Neither one of us has been able to plunder the other...yet. (My city is way better than his though, because his is so crammed with watchfires)

Here's what I sent him in a message:

That was embarassing for 271% defense! Thanks for the 1 champ/7 rogue strat. Man, just think of what you could fit in your city instead of all those watch fires.
What am I fitting in my city instead of my watchfires? Goods buildings? I get Goods thru Plunder and quests. Please do tell me what to do with all my space. Some of you just don’t get it, people look at cities before attempting to attack, they see mine, they don’t bother. You can’t count in non attacks, because you can’t see how many people look at your city
 

DeletedUser31882

That was embarassing for 271% defense! Thanks for the 1 champ/7 rogue strat. Man, just think of what you could fit in your city instead of all those watch fires.

Ha! Let us know if they respond. We've got good feedback from the green thumbs up of the city defense supporters, it'd be interesting to see anything from the high defense, thumbs down crowd.

What am I fitting in my city instead of my watchfires? Goods buildings? I get Goods thru Plunder and quests. Please do tell me what to do with all my space. Some of you just don’t get it, people look at cities before attempting to attack, they see mine, they don’t bother. You can’t count in non attacks, because you can’t see how many people look at your city

The point is, you could be getting 'more' goods if you threw out the watchfires. The other point is, it can be argued that building a big enough defense to stop/dissuade pillagers is actually an inefficient use of land space, depending on the amount of pillagers that are around you and cost/benefits comparison between differing land investment strategies.

Nobody is telling you what to do with your space, just showing how it may be more costly to defend one's ego and pride than it is to eat the occasional pillage. Of course, everyone's mileage will vary.

As for not counting non attacks? By that logic, you negate your previous argument on how people may look at your city and not attack because of what they see. I believe empirebuilder's idea is to count every 'potential' attack to show how infrequent pillaging is. Nobody can metric who looks at your city, but we can record the amount of players who could.


My data: I'm suspending on gathering more. I've been too lax and missed recording multiple pillages (No terrace farms, goods buildings ~2-4 times, I think). I'll dedicate the time I had for data collection to compile a (hopefully) helpful addendum to the "Help, I'm Being Plundered!" guide. Pros and Cons for the 0% defense stance & the Big City defense stance and that sort of stuff. Thanks for the discussion starter empireforger.
 

DeletedUser19567

On korch I have a defense of 912% and no one gets thru not many bother attacking me anymore if they do make it thru there isn't anything much to plunder (i collect on time)
 

DeletedUser29295

Empire, I admire your comitment to your plan: and to be honest, at some point I may do this. Not because of good buildings (I have none: all my goods come from profit trades and taxing my hood), but mainly for more troop buildings. It is good information you are providing.
 

DeletedUser32824

So for the past 3 hoods I think I've been plundered maybe 5 times (by the same person, actually). They got a TF on 2 occasions and the other 4 they got my van gogh thing for 1 FP. So in total I lost 14 FP from plunders.

Last hood I plundered a guy every day and I'd say 50% of the time I was able to plunder his maharaja's palace--ohh maybe 10 times. So I'm in the green overall :). Have 0 land taken up by defense in my city and haven't been plundered once this hood.
 

DeletedUser6192

Interesting topic. I didn't read all 17 pages but I got the gist of it. I wish I was in your worlds. I'm in Oceanic Future on A, C and E. I have been at the bottom of the 'hood for 3 years. I get attacked and plundered daily depending which diamond players are in my 'hood at the time. I time my goods and set a Terrance Farm for 5 minutes and still get hit. I will say that Defense buildings don't offer any deterrent in the advanced ages.
 

DeletedUser29623

atttacks really down the last 2 weeks...lowest since i've been recording

Possibly due to the changes in Daily Challenges? Since the introduction of the “Defeat this X-sized Army”, they less often require wins or defeated units that lead to players attacking neighbors
 

DeletedUser33280

Interesting topic. I didn't read all 17 pages but I got the gist of it. I wish I was in your worlds. I'm in Oceanic Future on A, C and E. I have been at the bottom of the 'hood for 3 years. I get attacked and plundered daily depending which diamond players are in my 'hood at the time. I time my goods and set a Terrance Farm for 5 minutes and still get hit. I will say that Defense buildings don't offer any deterrent in the advanced ages.
I've been camping for a long time on S, and I'm almost always at the top of my hood. I never even look at defenses when I attack the bottom 50-or so players (and I autobattle them 90% of the time). I also have to wonder about the use of a "bait" building in this game. I might want to get 5 FPs from a TF, but it really doesn't hurt my feelings or deter me when I don't get it. However, not using a TF for goods or FPs as a deterrent prevents you from getting those resources as well.
 

DeletedUser11463

A good defense is near useless once you get up to arctic or Oceanic. I have 51% A/ 586% D and get hit daily by a couple "enemy guild" players. I even change up the defense army and doesn't help. At the higher Era's, the attack ratio's can be very high and the dumb AI is geared toward the attacker. Also, the idea that someone with a level 30 or 40 Alcatraz is worried about losing even 7 troops is ludicrous. Heck I blow a few hundred when playing a GvG session so troop numbers don't mean a thing to higher end players.
For a newer player, having a few WF's or RF's is probably a good thing but later on it makes less sense. I've been debating getting rid of some of those RF's because they really don't help at the higher levels.
 

qaccy

Well-Known Member
The OP apparently has an infallible argument by comparing production buildings to those which produce nothing. Not very hard to say you're going to get more goods from a goods building than you are from a watchfire, which this post essentially boils down to.

Defense is meant more to be a deterrent than anything else, kind of like security systems in real life. Thieves go for the low-hanging fruit most of the time, and having better security affords more peace of mind. In a world where I don't have to even worry about my defense being broken, I no longer have to worry about making sure I'm available to collect as soon as my productions are available, or hoping I don't get plundered while I'm away if I'm unavailable. I'd argue that THESE are the benefits of defense, not trying to compare their resource production.
 

DeletedUser29552

Defense items are put where you can't fit goods buildings, especially in later eras where goods buildings get fairly large. So there is no trade off between them and potential goods buildings, which is what his whole post is based on. :rolleyes:
Only partially true. That's usually where they are placed, but x# of 1x2 flames/Monastery, etc. still = Arc+. If a single road piece connects it, you've got goods/GBs/specials, instead of defense.
 

DeletedUser31498

The OP apparently has an infallible argument by comparing production buildings to those which produce nothing. Not very hard to say you're going to get more goods from a goods building than you are from a watchfire, which this post essentially boils down to.

Defense is meant more to be a deterrent than anything else, kind of like security systems in real life. Thieves go for the low-hanging fruit most of the time, and having better security affords more peace of mind. In a world where I don't have to even worry about my defense being broken, I no longer have to worry about making sure I'm available to collect as soon as my productions are available, or hoping I don't get plundered while I'm away if I'm unavailable. I'd argue that THESE are the benefits of defense, not trying to compare their resource production.

Right but his entire point is EVEN with no defense, he STILL doesn't get plundered much. I don't really get what your comment is refuting.

The peace of mind argument is fine, but if you could just produce more with the land, and lose that production sometimes, you're still better off. If your brain can't handle the stress of maybe losing it, then yeah arm yourself.
 

DeletedUser31882

Defense is meant more to be a deterrent than anything else, kind of like security systems in real life. Thieves go for the low-hanging fruit most of the time, and having better security affords more peace of mind. In a world where I don't have to even worry about my defense being broken, I no longer have to worry about making sure I'm available to collect as soon as my productions are available, or hoping I don't get plundered while I'm away if I'm unavailable. I'd argue that THESE are the benefits of defense, not trying to compare their resource production.

I agree, I think the majority of the arguments early on in the thread relate directly to what you say here.

In the end, I think OP is also arguing that there are no to very little thieves that exist. And the few there are simply cannot take enough from you to make it worthwhile to invest land with a large deterrent defense. Thus, if production is the Prime Directive for a city, city defense should be thrown out the door.

The problem with the real-life connection is, thieves may be rare there as well, but the laws of physics do not constrain them to taking only one item from your stronghold. In fact, they are even allowed to take much more precious things than material objects.

To hijack your real-life analogy, the FoE world is magnitudes safer than real life and we have people in real life that (allegedly) live out their lives never locking their doors...

So does that mean there is something disturbed with the mind of one who needs to build a gigantic defense to defend their city?

Nah. It's just a game. Fun should be the Primary Directive objective.
 

DeletedUser34800

As I said earlier in the thread, I can see the merits of having 0% defense. Not giving any land to defense means you can fill it all with useful buildings for goods or whatever you want. With the new 'city reconstruction mode' coming out Soon™, it will be even easier to properly plan and layout a perfect city with no wasted space.

With the data presented here, there is a strong case for going the 0% defense route. It's not for everyone of course, but if people don't care that 1-2 neighborhood thieves plunder a single building a couple times a week, then they can happily give up whatever defense they have and just put down production buildings. That's not even counting that just collecting on time means there is nothing to plunder anyways, which is the best defense in the game.

A case could also be made for using the city shield to stop a really annoying plundering neighbor if you wanted as well. I have over 300k tavern silver (and rising. I don't spend it unless a quest asks me too. I just don't think about it for boosts I guess). I could sit inside a city shield for weeks if I wanted, with 0% defense and just pumping out goods and whatever else with no issues.

Now, I won't do that because I like a defense. Not because I want to deter attacking, but because I like watching people fail when they do attack me. I have a solid defense% and I also have Progressive Era and soon Modern Era troops defending my Industrial Age city. Always fun watching people get slaughtered. Bet they're surprised to see those advanced troops hahahahaha. Sadly, I haven't been attacked in over a month and a half now. So, technically, all my space wasted on defense buildings (SMB for one) could be better used producing goods and I would have had far more in the 1.5 months than I made while having all my defense.

Anyways, I still think this is a good way to go for people that don't care about the few times they may get plundered.
 

DeletedUser11463

If you are in the higher/highest ages AF, OF, VF, defense becomes near impossible. Many people in these ages have attack ratios 300 and some have 500 plus. Even with a few high end defensive buildings and defense of 500% or more, it is very easy for these folks to beat the very dumb AI. I've seen people with 800% defense being taken down and how much space does that waste to get that percentage?
With that said tho, a "fair" defense of 200-300 will prevent most people from attacking you, but seriously how often do you get attacked anyway? What the OP stated is true, a few extra buildings will offset the plunder.
 

DeletedUser10720

now at 2+ years of data.
127 weeks of 6 day event history .. 762 days .. from worlds with 0% defense

average over all hood position 45% (33rd of 73)
[going to continue sample till average hood position gets to 50% ..so sample is more balanced.]

54918 possible attacks :: 486 attacks (3.8 per week)
288 retreats (0% defense caused 59% of attackers to retreat)
198 breach (1.5 per week)
108 plunders (0.8 per week)
=
attacks/hood position splits
top 33.3% - 46 weeks :: 40 attacks :: 7 retreat
mid 33.3% - 41 weeks :: 147 attacks :: 96 retreat
bttm 33.3% - 40 weeks :: 299 attacks :: 185 retreat

=
age/0% defense effectiveness splits
Ema - 56 attacks - 49 retreats - 87.5% of attackers retreated to 0% defense
Hma - 88 attacks - 60 retreats - 68.2% of attackers retreated to 0% defense
Lma - 45 attacks - 29 retreats - 64.4% of attackers retreated to 0% defense
CA - 201 attacks - 112 retreats - 55.7% of attackers retreated to 0% defense
Indy - 49 attacks - 35 retreats - 71.4% of attackers retreated to 0% defense
PE - 1 attacks - 0 retreats - 0% of attackers retreated to 0% defense
ME - 23 attacks - 3 retreats - 13% of attackers retreated to 0% defense
TE - 3 attacks - 0 retreats - 0% of attackers retreated to 0% defense
FE - 20 attacks - 0 retreats - 0% of attackers retreated to 0% defense
AF - 0 attacks - 0 retreats - n/a% of attackers retreated to 0% defense

[dont have enough data in all ages to get complete numbers for this split. but interesting / can start to see effectiveness of 0% defense diminish with advancement...which is not a surprise ...but interesting to see.]

While in higher ages, the attacks seem to have a higher rate of follow through vs retreat, the frequency of attack seems to take a sharp nosedive at PE.

Perhaps after this point the challenge of battling becomes higher risk in the hoods (usually due to more defenses and stronger units on average) so PvP activity declines, but the odds of successful retaliation mean attacks should be finished more often?
 

DeletedUser26120

Would like to see the numbers on this if player was in top hood of the world. :)

That said, I am in the top 15 there (US25) and I recently did drop 100%+ worth of ritual flames for more SoKs. I so rarely get attacked but not sure I would have done the same thing if I was in the bottom half instead.
 
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