I would never tell a player to put up less than the best defense he possibly can.
What I would tell him is that it will be of next to no use in most circumstances, save, as you pointed out, to act as a deterrent against players looking for easy wins.
Have you noticed that, in pretty much every case, if an Event Reward set offers a defensive boost, it offers an offensive one as well? All that does is to retain the status quo; it does nothing to restore balance.
I think you do a disservice to inexperienced players with your oft repeated advise and viewpoint that gives the impression that defenfing is near worthless.
No defence can hold against a determined attacker. But you make it sound as though because there are such out there that there's no point in trying to take easy and reasonable steps to mitigate attack and plunder. In addition you've been saying that the offense is getting more then the defence, and that is just plain wrong.
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'next to no use in most circumstances' Can you enumerate 'most' circumstances and describe them?
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I'd submit that to the average player in the average hood that they are more exposed to casual attacks that can be deterred by a good defense then any other problem.
I freely admit that trying to figure out if an enemy has been deterred is difficult because
deterrence is an effect that takes place in the enemy commander's mind.
The best we can do is judge based on our experience and the limited evidence of our PvP Towers.
My startup is 4 months old, same hood for the last 4 weeks, EMA and IA. Lots of aggro players in the lower Eras. I get attacked frequently, most players hit surrender, I run 8 EMA troops with a 5% nppst from the kqr set. 5 attackers in 4 weeks carried through the attack, 1 won, none of those attacked again.
Week after week in the PvP towers there are a half dozen people who have dozens of fights 2 of whom attack me daily. They hit surrender and move on. They score low, they are beating up cruddy defenses. I keep winning the Tower with half the fights because I'm fighting in GE, they obviously don't.
I haven't been attacked in my main CE city in 4+ weeks. 8 current Era troops defending, 14$ biist, kqr set, cherry set, helicopte base.. Same thing in the towers though, lots of attackers scoring few points per attack,
That has held true for my main city for 2 years, most of that time I haven't eun any defensive boost. I don't get attacked much, but there are always aggro players who are doing a lot of attacks for a low average of points in the PvP towers.
Take a look at your PvP Towers, you can pick out the folk who are beating up the wimpy defenses they are the ones with lots of fights but a low score per fight. Are they attacking you as well?
So please quit hurting inexperienced players by dissuading them from defending the best they can.
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'In most every case' How many sets have there been? 3? 1 was pure defense, 1 was balanced between defence and offence. 1 gave a higher defence. What's your point?
What 'balance'? There's more defensive boosts available then offensive boosts. Go read SJS thread. Biggest Special Building boost available is defensive. Highest boost per tile is defensive. More Special Buildings give defensive boosts. Best Tavern boost is Defensive. Ritual Flames from GE.
INNO puts out much more defense despite the fact that it;s obvious most players want to attack and ignore the defence.
