Player Attacks...Then Retreats?

[Mustapha00]

I've noticed something happening to me on a fairly regular basis.
A player will attack my town. One of his units moves, usually a mounted unit (early stages of the game folks). Once it reaches the end of its movement, the player must hit Retreat because the fight immediately stops with no damage done to either side. This happens with players who are more advanced Technologically than I am and thus have superior units as well as with players who are roughly equal to me or even inferior to me Technologically, with equal or inferior military units.
While I can certainly see why an equal or inferior strength player might Retreat rather than fight it out (risk of losing, wanting to see my relative strength, wanting to see what units I use in defense, probably several others), I can't see why someone superior to me would Retreat. Do you receive PvP points just for "picking" fights or do you actually have to fight to win them?

 

[DeletedUser10415]

An attacker must win the battle to get points for it.

What might be happening is the attacker picked the wrong units to attack your defense, and realized it. An example of a lower aged defense that might scare off a higher aged attack is BA stonethrower defense vs IA archer attack. The attacker is going to take losses in this scenario. In the higher ages, someone who attacks using Post Modern Era Universal Tanks would be wise to retreat if faced with Progressive Era Conscripts. Not because they can't win, and it also depends on their attack GB and structure bonuses, and the defender's defensive GBs and structures, but because they're using a unit that has no bonuses vs the defending unit which has bonuses against it, and they're going to lose some of those pretty tanks. That's a two age advantage for the attacker - useless in this case.

 

[Mustapha00]

That makes sense....much appreciated.

 

[DeletedUser8152]

You can make it at least into the TE area of the map with no GBs at all, by using more advanced troops. You'd have to trade up for the goods until you can take the deposits, but that's quite achievable. So GBs are not required at any point, they just make things easier in some ways.

 

[DeletedUser10517]

It doesnt matter what age the player is in.....it only matters what age troops he chooses to use.

So for example, I am in Post Modern on my server, but might select an EMA army to fight with because I am trying to gain a position on the EMA Neighbourhood towers.
I will then click to attack neighbours trying to find those who have an army I can beat so I can get a placement.

If I dont think I can beat the army, I will surrender and move on to the next neighbour but will then write down what your army was.

Because people do make notes, it is a good idea to mix defensive armies up from time to time.

I dont agree that a player will surrended just because he might have losses. Points are points and gaining 5000 points with two losses is better than 0 points.....although that does depend how many fights there are left for the day.

 

[Mustapha00]

My initial thought was that maybe you got a handful of points just for entering a fight, regardless of whether you won it or not. Having just lost a fight to the AI earlier tonight- with one enemy left at about 20% health no less!- I now know that isn't true.

 

[DeletedUser10415]

I dont agree that a player will surrended just because he might have losses. Points are points and gaining 5000 points with two losses is better than 0 points.....although that does depend how many fights there are left for the day.

I'm sorry I wasn't clearer on this point, but indeed how many fights are left for the day would determine if a PvP pointer wanted to avoid losses and the scenario in which I was imagining they wouldn't...involved there being more fights left in the day.