As mentioned, I personally subscribe to the notion that the best defense is a good offense.
When you come under attack, the best thing to do is to counter attack. Round up your catas and cropkill the attacker. You will need a strong offensive army to do this. You may still lose some troops in the process, but an attack completely neutralizes the threat – and the attacker will not attack you after this.
Having a strong offensive army is the greatest defense against players in your neighborhood. If you lack a strong offensive army to cropkill your attacker, then get in touch with your alliance members and organize an attack. This is much more effective than asking for reinforcements.
However, a strong offensive army will not prevent attacks against you during an alliance war. In contrast, top players become a target of attacks because your enemy alliance fears you and deems you to be a threat.
In an alliance war, you cannot hope to defend against a coordinated group of players. You need to depend on alliance reinforcements.
In an offensive game, your first basic rule is to have a large offensive army. You attack often, you raid and conquer. But you do not get into unprofitable fights by attacking the wrong players (ie other aggressive players).
The goal is to expand quickly, completely dominate your area and become an asset to your alliance.
Do not stop players from settling near you, in your 7 x 7 grid. That’s just silly. As an offensive player, welcome them to settle near you, because they are only building your future village. If you stop players from settling near you, then you would have no one to conquer.
Remember, your growth constraint is a lack of culture points, so let them settle near you, and when you have enough CP, just conquer the village. Just be careful that they do not build their capital there, so keep a watchful eye for 15 croppers. Also try to stop allied players from settling near you because you can’t conquer allied players.
As an offensive player, you will grow very quickly and by end game, you should have somewhere between 35 to 45 villages. In the process, you will earn the following merits:
- Top Attacker of the Week Award
- Top Robber of the Week Award
- Top Defender of the Week Award
- Top Overall Ranked Player
- Top Offensive Ranked Player
- Top Defensive Ranked Player
How can an offensive player earn a Top Defender Rank?
As mentioned, if you are an aggressive player, nobody will dare to attack you. That is true, nobody in your neighborhood will dare to try to farm you or conquer your village.
But you will be attacked by players from far, far away – from as far as 48 to 72 hours away (cata time) as part of an alliance war. Other meta alliances will view you as a threat, and by virtue, they will attack those whom they view as a threat.
Although not often, but it takes only a handful of large attacks, and that is enough to put you into the top defender ranks.
As an indication, on one of my previous servers, I received only three really large attacks (excluding fakes), but that was enough to make me the number one defender on the server. I finished the game as a Top 20 Defender of the server, but if you did not count Natars and the World Wonder hosts, I’d finish in the top 5 Defender spot.
There are many benefits of being an offensive player. The big picture is to grow and expand and be an asset to your alliance. That is possible only with a large offensive army.
Offense or defense? That’s an easy one. Offense always.