Basic defending
Dear Sir;
What is the procedure for defending one's own city? What are the steps for deploying your units to defend your city? Sincerely, B. Lasater
When someone attacks you city, you will see a yellow icon with a sword as well as a timer showing how much time is left until the attack arrives at your city. In the following example, my city Alexisis on Phi has two attacks incoming:
As you can see on the left side of the picture, there is an icon with two swords where it is indicated how many attacks are heading towards me in total against any of my cities. Right now, I only have those two attacks heading towards me. On the bottom right of your screen, a little notification icon will pop up whenever a significant event happens. If an attack is sent but then recalled later, you will an icon will still be left to show than an attack was launched. Right now, I can see that only two attacks were launched. I had a trade going on, and the attacks were launched before that trade completed (events are listed in a descending chronological order):
So, another has decided to attack me. That could be for several reasons, but most likely one of the following:
1) Wants to conquer city
2) Wants battle points
3) Wants resources
People very rarely attack active players just for the resources, since it almost never pays off, so this is an unlikely reason. The attacks are from close by, which is why they take so little time. If there is no city nearby that can send a colony ship to my city in around the time it takes for the last attack to arrive, I might assume that this is just an attack to get battle points, not to conquer my city. Of course, it might still be attacks that are sent to soften up my city's defense (most importantly my city wall, which gives me a huge advantage in defense) for a conquest that will come later.
If I click the first attack (not on the city name, but on the spear icon), I can see its arrival time:
So, what has my city got to defend itself? If I look at the right side panel, I can see that it's empty, with no units present in the city, with the city being full of resources:
Now, I do have units from that city, they are just somewhere else. Since Short D, the players attacking me, does not have cities close by, I don't espect that any conquest attack with a colony ship will be incoming. So, all I'm facing are a couple of normal attacks that could take my resources and destroy my city walls (if they have catapults). I now have a few options:
1) Dodge the attacks (remove any units in the city, spend resources or send them away). Only defend against the attack if I can do so at a great advantage.
2) Stay and defend against the attacks, sending lots of support from other cities and perhaps recalling the units that I have sent away from this city if they can get back in time.
3) Time support from other cities to defend against just one of the attacks, dodging the other.
If people are just attacking you for battle points, it might be a good idea to ddoge if you are short on defensive units. If you get all your defensive units killed without having to, then you are left with a limited defense when you have to face conquest attacks. However, I have plenty of mobile defenses, and I don't want to risk Short D destroying my city wall. While I have been writing this and making screenshots, some time has passed. I switch to my closest city
Frezono, which has biremes than I can send to defend. However, as I have been writing and making screenshots, some time has passed, and the first attack is arriving in 26 minutes now. AS I can see, it takes my biremes from Frezono a little over 32 minutes to arrive:
The last attack arrives in 38 minutes right now, but I suspect Short D might be onto something, so I have cast the spell Wisdom on her attack to make sure it isn't just a fake attack with few units (note: you cannot cast Wisdom on an attack that already has a spell cast on it, but this attack did not):
I see this is a great attack to intercept with my biremes. There aren't that many light ships, and once I kill those off, I can kill the transporters and thereby easily kill a lot of the attacking units with only limited losses. If I send right now, my support will arrive after the first attack and before the last one. However, lets imagine that several attacks were incoming and I only wanted to fight against one of them. I must time my support to arrive just before the last attack arrives. Therefore I check its arrival time (by clicking the attack icon, as described above). It arrives at 12:55:00.
So, I will try to time my biremes from Frezono to arrive just before the attack. To make sure my support does arrive after the attack I send it to to arrive at 12:54:47 due to the 13-second anti-timer in Phi (to read more about the anti-timer, read my
battle strategy guide. As you can see, my support arrives faily close to the attack now:
As described in the defense guide, I enlist my city's militia. Normally, if you don't expect a CS to be incoming, you will enlist militia right away if all attack arrive in less than three hours. That means that if more attacks are sent later, you will be able to enlist militia again (you can only enlist them every three hours). Now I can see the militia on the right side panel:
Since Short D is actually a fellow member of my alliance, she asked me not to kill off her units for this demonstration. So, I recalled my biremes, removed a few of the resources from the city and left the militia to fight the incoming attacks:
As you can see, the first attack was just a small fake attack with hardly any offensive units (Short D sent the minimum amount of units required to send the attack). The second attack easily killed off my militia, but the milia only cost me three hours of reduced resource-producing efficiency, so it wasn't a bad exchange for me, with my militia being supported by a big city wall. However, as I hadn't removed all the resources, she was able to conquest some of those with her second attack.