Thursday, January 20, 2011

Defense in Kingdoms of Camelot

In Kingdoms of Camelot, the defenders have several advantages over the attacker. The following information will provide you the information on how to be an effective defender for yourself and the alliance.

Defensive Tactics
There are two aspects of playing defense in this game. One, make it too expensive for the attacker to keep attacking you. Two, make it not worth the effort for the attacker to keep attacking you. If you can accomplish both aspects of defense, then the attacker will stop coming back to you.

To make it too expensive for the attacker to keep attacking you, you need to put all of your resources and troops into one city. This will allow you to use ALL of your troops to defend while the attacker can only send a maximum of 125k troops. You will have the numerical advantage of defeating the incoming attacks. In addition to using all of your troops, the wall mounted crossbows will also help with killing the incoming troops. Having only one city to defend will also make it easier for the rest of the alliance to reinforce you. The alliance can strengthen your one city to resist even multiple wave attacks. Again, pick one city and turn it into a fortress.

The second aspect of not making it worthwhile for the attacker to keep attacking can be accomplished by having zero or next to zero resources. Use up all of your resources by training troops, building and upgrading your city, and building more wall defenses. Any remaining resources can be given to other alliance members or sent to your main city. If you have a storehouse, which is not recommended, then maximize the level to hide any remaining resources. When the attacker gains nothing or next to nothing, he will look for other cities to attack.

Executing both aspects will allow you to grow in might, keep your troops alive, and weaken your enemy at the same time.


Defensive Teamwork
Defensive Teamwork isn’t just about reinforcing other alliance members. Reinforcing is a big part, but It’s also about detecting and coordinating defense with other online alliance members. Defensive teamwork will have a lookout and a coordinator. The job of the lookout is to continuously watch the alliance report for any scouting and attacks on other alliance members. It’s best to have two lookouts, so that they can switch off and take care of their own barb farming and cities. The job of the coordinator is to coordinate the defenses of the alliance. He will tell who can reinforce who and with what type of troops. Don’t expect the coordinator to be Superman and save everybody. In times of war, the entire alliance will be targeted and he will prioritize the defense to cause maximum damage to the attackers.


City Buildings to help Defensive Teamwork
There are two buildings critical for defensive teamwork: Embassy and Relief Station. The Embassy will garrison any reinforcements from other alliance members so it is best to maximize the embassy. A level 9 embassy can hold up to 900K of troops while a level 10 embassy can hold up to 1 million troops. A city with that much reinforcements will not fall so it would be for your own benefit that you maximize the Embassy. Keep in mind that the city being reinforced is also responsible for feeding all of the troops. So make sure you have plenty of food or plenty of incoming food.

The relief station will help shorten the travel time to reinforce another player. A level 9 relief station will make the troops move 5.5 times their normal speed and a level 10 relief station will make the troops move 6 times their normal speed. The faster your troops can reinforce other players, the better your chances of catching and wiping out the incoming army. Also, you can reinforce an alliance member over 100 map tiles away in 15 minutes or less. For the benefit of the alliance and the person you’re reinforcing, maximize the relief station. Make sure that you send food with your reinforcements. Not everybody have a lot of food in their cities to sustain several 100K of reinforcements especially the cavalry and “bottomless stomach” heavy cavalry. It would truly suck to lose troops to starvation after you killed off the incoming army.


Requesting Reinforcements
When you have incoming attacks, don't just say "I'm under attack". The first thing you need to do is see what kind of incoming attack you have. If you determine that you can't handle the incoming attack or doubt you can win, then provide the following information:

The coordinates of the city under attack
The amount of time before the attack hits the city
The number and type of troops attacking the city

These information will allow us to send you the reinforcements needed to defeat the attack. If you don't get reinforcements before the attack hits, then hide your troops. It's better to preserve your troops so you can fight another day.


Sending Reinforcements
Archers and pikemen are the two types of troops that you should send as reinforcements. They are the two best defensive troops in the game. Archers can kill any infantry and pikemen will kill any horsemen. So when you reinforce somebody, send 90k of archers and 90k of pikemen. Never mix and match different types of troops into a single wave, always send the maximum number of archers or pikemen in different waves

City Walls for Defense
Wall-mounted crossbows is required for all wall defenses. Everything else will help the wall-mounted crossbows be more effective. The very first thing to do with the city walls is to maximize the wall-mounted crossbows. A level 9 wall can hold up to 11,250 Wall-mounted crossbows and a level 10 wall can hold up to 13,750 wall-mounted crossbows.

To make the wall-mounted crossbows more effective, you need both caltrops and spikes.
Caltrops and spikes will slow down the incoming army at maximum range which will give the wall-mounted crossbows more chances to kill the incoming army. Caltrops will only slow down infantry while spikes will only slow down cavalry, heavy cavalry, and siege weapons. The best ratio for caltrops to spikes is 4:1. All armies have more infantry than cavalry.

Don’t bother with traps or trebuchets. A smart player will send a wave of militiamen to trigger the traps so it isn’t worth the resources or time to build them. Trebuchets will give the attacker a chance to clear out caltrops and spikes with little or no losses and will give the attacker a chance to clear the wall-mounted crossbows with minimal losses with the following attack waves.