Updating Plunder Mitigation

[Algona]

Hiya folks! I’ve been using this stock answer for years but it’s time for an update.

The list is by order of effectiveness. I’m not quite sure where Galata Tower fits in. Also the list should be reviewed for the game as is today. Is this list missing any other ways to mitigate plundering? Anything that could be deleted? Is the order of effectiveness correct? Specifically, given their respective drawbacks, which should be first Tavern city shield or plunderproofing the city?

Input welcome. Note this is not meant to explain how to do the individual steps, just what to do to mitigate plundering.

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Plundering is explicitly within the rules, is encouraged by INNO, and is a successful strategy. Don’t waste your time getting upset at being plundered, don't send them hate mail, a lot of plunderers live for that. Take these steps and you will reduce your losses to a minimum. If you have questions on how to do any of these steps, ask in the Questions subforum. If all else fails, be patient, hopefully you’ll rotate to a nicer hood in a couple weeks. In order of effectiveness:

PLUNDER PROOF YOUR CITY. Having no plunderable buildings is 100% effective but requires excluding some very desirable buildings from your city.

TAVERN BOOST CITYSHIELD. 100% effective, but limited in time, plunderers know when the shield ends, uses the free Tavern boost slot, and expensive in Tavern Silver.

COLLECT ON TIME. Set your production to finish at a time you know you will be on to collect. Effectiveness is completely dependent on planning ahead and being on when production finishes.

FIND UNPLUNDERABLE GOODS SOURCES. GE, GBG, Goods producing Great Buildings, and Recurring Quests produce unplunderable Goods.

[Quesry: What should be said about Special Buildings here? Should SBs get their own subsetion or should SBs be covered in the mortvation section below? - Algona 1/27/21]

MANIPULATE YOUR NEIGHBOTHOOD POSITION. Players at the bottom of the hood seldom attack the top players in the hood. Slow down Tech growth and put some time and effort into acquiring and leveling GBs. This will move you up higher in the hood.

GET YOUR BUILDINGS MOTIVATED. Switch to 24 hour production, AND reduce Decorations, AND increase your Friends list AND assure your Friends are actively Aiding you AND Aid everyone every day. Motivated buildings can not be plundered. By doing the five steps your motivatable Special Buildings and mundane Houses and Supply buildings will always be motivated. Triple bonus from this: 1) if you miss collection, no big deal, your production is safe until you can collect. 2) Your production from those buildings will go up because Motivation, besides stopping plundering, increases the production of a lot of SBs and doubles production of mundane Coins and Supplies. 3) You only have to collect once a day.

PUT UP YOUR BEST DEFENCE: Put up your best Defensive Army. The more units you kill, the less often plunderers will attack you, they will target easier prey. If you are not inflicting any casualties try changing some of the units in your defense. Some Special Buildings, Monastery, some GBs help with defence. The question of whether or not and how much should be put into building active defensive structures has been hotly debated for years. There is no one right answer to this debate, only what each individual decides.

COUNTERATTACK PLUNDERERES. If you can, take back that which was yours. Even an unsuccessful attack may dissuade a casual plunderer.

TRY DIPLOMACY. Ask plunderers nicely to stop or for their advice on what to do about being plundered. This works more often then you would think. If they want to be paid off it’s up to you, but I’m not a fan of blackmail, giving or receiving.

Good luck!

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Again, advice welcome, especially regarding where to place and what to say about Galata as well as the question [in brackets] about SBs.

Thanks for your time and input.

 

[DreadfulCadillac]

Hiya folks! I’ve been using this stock answer for years but it’s time for an update.

The list is by order of effectiveness. I’m not quite sure where Galata Tower fits in. Also the list should be reviewed for the game as is today. Is this list missing any other ways to mitigate plundering? Anything that could be deleted? Is the order of effectiveness correct? Specifically, given their respective drawbacks, which should be first Tavern city shield or plunderproofing the city?

Input welcome. Note this is not meant to explain how to do the individual steps, just what to do to mitigate plundering.

----------

Plundering is explicitly within the rules, is encouraged by INNO, and is a successful strategy. Don’t waste your time getting upset at being plundered, don't send them hate mail, a lot of plunderers live for that. Take these steps and you will reduce your losses to a minimum. If you have questions on how to do any of these steps, ask in the Questions subforum. If all else fails, be patient, hopefully you’ll rotate to a nicer hood in a couple weeks. In order of effectiveness:

PLUNDER PROOF YOUR CITY. Having no plunderable buildings is 100% effective but requires excluding some very desirable buildings from your city.

TAVERN BOOST CITYSHIELD. 100% effective, but limited in time, plunderers know when the shield ends, uses the free Tavern boost slot, and expensive in Tavern Silver.

COLLECT ON TIME. Set your production to finish at a time you know you will be on to collect. Effectiveness is completely dependent on planning ahead and being on when production finishes.

FIND UNPLUNDERABLE GOODS SOURCES. GE, GBG, Goods producing Great Buildings, and Recurring Quests produce unplunderable Goods.

[Quesry: What should be said about Special Buildings here? Should SBs get their own subsetion or should SBs be covered in the mortvation section below? - Algona 1/27/21]

MANIPULATE YOUR NEIGHBOTHOOD POSITION. Players at the bottom of the hood seldom attack the top players in the hood. Slow down Tech growth and put some time and effort into acquiring and leveling GBs. This will move you up higher in the hood.

GET YOUR BUILDINGS MOTIVATED. Switch to 24 hour production, AND reduce Decorations, AND increase your Friends list AND assure your Friends are actively Aiding you AND Aid everyone every day. Motivated buildings can not be plundered. By doing the five steps your motivatable Special Buildings and mundane Houses and Supply buildings will always be motivated. Triple bonus from this: 1) if you miss collection, no big deal, your production is safe until you can collect. 2) Your production from those buildings will go up because Motivation, besides stopping plundering, increases the production of a lot of SBs and doubles production of mundane Coins and Supplies. 3) You only have to collect once a day.

PUT UP YOUR BEST DEFENCE: Put up your best Defensive Army. The more units you kill, the less often plunderers will attack you, they will target easier prey. If you are not inflicting any casualties try changing some of the units in your defense. Some Special Buildings, Monastery, some GBs help with defence. The question of whether or not and how much should be put into building active defensive structures has been hotly debated for years. There is no one right answer to this debate, only what each individual decides.

COUNTERATTACK PLUNDERERES. If you can, take back that which was yours. Even an unsuccessful attack may dissuade a casual plunderer.

TRY DIPLOMACY. Ask plunderers nicely to stop or for their advice on what to do about being plundered. This works more often then you would think. If they want to be paid off it’s up to you, but I’m not a fan of blackmail, giving or receiving.

Good luck!

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Again, advice welcome, especially regarding where to place and what to say about Galata as well as the question [in brackets] about SBs.

Thanks for your time and input.

Well here's where I think the galata fits in:

Galata Tower: There is another way that can help mitigate plundering, which is the GB called The Galata Tower. This is a no age great building, and straight at level one it gives you a 16% chance 2 times per day to invalidate a plunder. This means that if you get attacked, and someone try's to plunder you, there is a 16% chance that their plunder fails. You do have to significantly level this great building up to a point in which it has a good chance at invalidating a plunder however. Only effective to the %chance it gives.

 

[Emberguard]

I’m not quite sure where Galata Tower fits in.

I'm not entirely sure either. But keep in mind the protection is two-fold. You're not just protecting your goods buildings productions, you're also getting plunderproof goods without having to spend goods to place the Great Building. You'll always have a Forge Point source that can't be touched by plunderers (the hourly FP regeneration). If you can get a Galata then you've got a guaranteed source of goods that can't be hindered or taken away while you also build up the rest of your city.

So perhaps (for beginners) it fits as a launchpad to build your city by using the resources plunderers can't take to produce other resources you need that plunderers also can't take.

 

[Johnny B. Goode]

PLUNDER PROOF YOUR CITY. Having no plunderable buildings is 100% effective but requires excluding some very desirable buildings from your city.

Should definitely be #1. Requires no ongoing attention or expenditure. Completely foolproof.

COLLECT ON TIME. Set your production to finish at a time you know you will be on to collect. Effectiveness is completely dependent on planning ahead and being on when production finishes.

Should really be #2. Does require some minimal planning, but requires no expenditure. Free solutions always beat solutions that require spending resources.

FIND UNPLUNDERABLE GOODS SOURCES. GE, GBG, Goods producing Great Buildings, and Recurring Quests produce unplunderable Goods.

This is actually part of #1, not a separate item.

GET YOUR BUILDINGS MOTIVATED. Switch to 24 hour production, AND reduce Decorations, AND increase your Friends list AND assure your Friends are actively Aiding you AND Aid everyone every day. Motivated buildings can not be plundered. By doing the five steps your motivatable Special Buildings and mundane Houses and Supply buildings will always be motivated. Triple bonus from this: 1) if you miss collection, no big deal, your production is safe until you can collect. 2) Your production from those buildings will go up because Motivation, besides stopping plundering, increases the production of a lot of SBs and doubles production of mundane Coins and Supplies. 3) You only have to collect once a day.

#3 If you still have buildings that can be motivated after implementing #1 (such as SoKs or Tribal Squares), this would be next on the list. Most buildings that can be motivated and that you don't want plundered should be high on the aid priority list, so this shouldn't be an issue. (Having regular houses or regular production buildings plundered should not be something to worry about. If it is, you need more help than this thread will give you.)

MANIPULATE YOUR NEIGHBOTHOOD POSITION. Players at the bottom of the hood seldom attack the top players in the hood. Slow down Tech growth and put some time and effort into acquiring and leveling GBs. This will move you up higher in the hood.

#4 Even if you do nothing else on this list, winding up near the top of the neighborhood list will just naturally cut down on the number of hood members who will even try to attack you.

TAVERN BOOST CITYSHIELD. 100% effective, but limited in time, plunderers know when the shield ends, uses the free Tavern boost slot, and expensive in Tavern Silver.

#5 While it is foolproof while it is active, it does require expenditure of Tavern silver, and thus requires a large and active friends list. And even then it is not a long term solution, as you will probably eventually run out of Tavern silver. Not to mention that dedicated plunderers will pay attention to when the shield expires and hit you immediately if you aren't quick enough to renew it.

where to place and what to say about Galata

#6 Effective when it triggers, but doesn't trigger 100% of the time. Also requires leveling to be effective.

TRY DIPLOMACY. Ask plunderers nicely to stop or for their advice on what to do about being plundered. This works more often then you would think. If they want to be paid off it’s up to you, but I’m not a fan of blackmail, giving or receiving.

#7 This is a hit and miss strategy. Some plunderers will respond positively, others will ignore your diplomatic advances. Some will even specifically target you.

PUT UP YOUR BEST DEFENCE: Put up your best Defensive Army. The more units you kill, the less often plunderers will attack you, they will target easier prey. If you are not inflicting any casualties try changing some of the units in your defense. Some Special Buildings, Monastery, some GBs help with defence. The question of whether or not and how much should be put into building active defensive structures has been hotly debated for years. There is no one right answer to this debate, only what each individual decides.

#8 Almost a worthless strategy nowadays. Might have worked in the early days of FoE, attack boosts are so far ahead of defense boosts that it isn't even a contest. Not to mention that the 1 unit + 7 Rogues attack combined with the defense AI deficiencies makes defense almost...well, indefensible.

As far as the question about SBs, they should be considered part of strategy #1 along with goods producing GBs. This is why I avoid sets that cannot be motivated.

 

[Emberguard]

#8 Almost a worthless strategy nowadays. Might have worked in the early days of FoE, attack boosts are so far ahead of defense boosts that it isn't even a contest.

That being said, some plunderers will go out of their way to only plunder those with a 2 spearman defense. So even if it's not effective, it can end up reducing plunderings just through the mindset of the plunderer

 

[MJ Artisan of War]

A motivated player can always beat Your city defense, Your goal should be to cost them as many units as possible. Remember that Your units on defense regenerate automatically so it costs You nothing to defend except the initial units assigned to it. But the more attacking units You kill each time the less likely You are to be attacked. Always review the replays of attacks to see how Your defense is working. Some serious plunder players will actually write down Your defensive units so they can adjust attacking units the next day. For them, consider changing Your defensive army make-up when required.

 

[DeletedUser]

That being said, some plunderers will go out of their way to only plunder those with a 2 spearman defense. So even if it's not effective, it can end up reducing plunderings just through the mindset of the plunderer

Two spear fighters are an automatic plunder in my books , I 100% agree with this.

 

[Johnny B. Goode]

That being said, some plunderers will go out of their way to only plunder those with a 2 spearman defense. So even if it's not effective, it can end up reducing plunderings just through the mindset of the plunderer

A motivated player can always beat Your city defense, Your goal should be to cost them as many units as possible. Remember that Your units on defense regenerate automatically so it costs You nothing to defend except the initial units assigned to it. But the more attacking units You kill each time the less likely You are to be attacked. Always review the replays of attacks to see how Your defense is working. Some serious plunder players will actually write down Your defensive units so they can adjust attacking units the next day. For them, consider changing Your defensive army make-up when required.

Two spear fighters are an automatic plunder in my books , I 100% agree with this.

So let me clarify my position on city defense. It will never stop a determined attacker. Period. No matter how you build it up, someone will be able to get past it. Neither, however, do I advocate neglecting to place the best possible units in city defense. While there's no stopping some/most determined attackers, it's stupid to leave a city open to attack/plunder by even the lowliest of hoodies.