So, you want to break hammers?
This guide is going to be written from a Gallic perspective, but is adaptable to the other tribes as well.
Now, you may have seen people say that defense is better than offense and it is for this reason that a good attacker uses fakes to hide his intended target. Defending is simply easier.
Defenders have the advantage of combining all defensive reins as 1 grouped army, where the attackers attack per village and 100 troops per wave for 2 waves is not equivalent to 200 attackers.
You see many references in the early game to how many troops someone has, but the real figures to know is how much attack power, or how much defensive power you can produce per hour. The other consideration is how much attack or defense you get per wheat consumed. This is what determines the real effectiveness of your military and wheat becomes a big limitation.
Now, to see the strength behind an anvil lets take a look at how a proper hammer is made.
Generally you have a 15c capital with a good wheat bonus. A village next to it, can be your hammer village. You do not make it in your capital because you cannot create a greater barracks or greater stable in a capital village, this would severely limit your troop production. You build up production infrastructure. Barracks to make Infantry, Greater Barracks to create them faster even at triple cost, Stables for Cavalry, Greater Stables to make them faster at an increased cost. Siege workshop to 20 always making cats and rams.
The math that you want to know in your hammer producing village is how much attack per hour is it producing when everything is running. To simplify I will use some created numbers and not consider all variables. Lets say your Teuton and can create 1 axe per 3 minutes 23sec in a 20 barracks. If you have a 20 Greater Barracks you can spend 3x more to match that productivity… so for total production you can make 2 troops per 3:23 but at 4x the cost of each unit. (1x for the Barracks plus 3x for the Greater). Also, I am only considering raw values, no hero bonus or armory/blacksmith upgrades.
3:23 is equal to 203 seconds
86,400 seconds in 24 hours.
86400 / 203 = 425 axes at 1x cost in a single barracks, double the troop for 3x additional cost is now 850 axes per 24 hours at 4x the total cost.
850 axes at 60 attack per is 51,000 attack power per day, divided by 24 is 2125 attack power created hourly.
490 total resources to create 1 axe…. X4 to keep a barracks and greater barracks going is 1960 per pair of axes.
For 850 axes x 980 resources per axe that’s 833,000 resources per day to keep it running for 24 hours.
So, 800k resources for 51,000 attack at the max daily. 200k if you only make 425 per day in a single barracks.
Now, lets look at the advantage of being an anvil…
The main advantage is you do not suffer the limitation of being required to produce in a single village. Also, a good cropper is not really required to be a good anvil player
Lets use the phalanx as our counter to the Teutons Axe.
A Phalanx creates in 2:56 in a 20 barracks. For an anvil we will shoot for efficiency and forgo the use of a greater barracks at all. If you had a ton of resources you certainly could, but I will do some math to show you why I never bothered.
Lets say as a Gaul you have 4 villages in which to produce troops in. (You could very very easily have far more, and every expansion can add to your production giving you a huge edge over a hammer)
2:56 is 176 seconds and is 490 phalanx per day in each village.
A phalanx is 40 infantry defense, 50 cavalry defense. For this example we will use the infantry defense only.
490 x 40 is 19600 defense or 817 defense per hour per village.
The cost per phalanx is 315 total resources.
315 x 490 is 154,350 resources per day to keep a Barracks going.
x4 to cover all villages the total comes to 617,400
So, in summary…
Hammer
Troops per Day = 850
Total Attack Power per Day = 51,000
Cost of Creation = 833,000
Anvil (4 villages)
Troops per day = 1960
Total Defense Power per Day (infantry only) = 78,400
Cost of Creation = 617,400
This does not even include the wall’s defensive bonuses.
The only real downside is that each village needs to have its barracks to 20, which most people should eventually do regardless of playstyle, and also you need to do armory upgrades in each village. Yet, this is a small price to pay and you can easily see the savings in the total cost of production can be spent here. It takes very little to match the production power of the mightiest hammers. On top of that, the defensive bonuses you can get outweigh what the attackers can get. Wall Bonuses can add huge value.
Now, lets say you get a bit further in the game…
12 villages…
5880 Phalanx per day
235,200 infantry defense per day.
Lets say you do this for a week…
That is over 41,000 phalanx.
The problem for a good anvil actually comes in the form of storage issues. 41,000 wheat per hour is not easy to come by.
Lets say your goal in life is to break hammers. You used the ideas above and you have created 20,000 troops over a few days but have run out of storage room. Life is boring, no one is currently attacking. You party in all villages and expand but you have excess resources and cant make more troops due to space.
Give troops away. (You could even take small donations for them, but overall your cost is not that high and you still have the ability to recall them if absolutely necessary)
I had a really bad cropper on s5 and got very low wheat. I would get on the forums and say… “I got lvl 20 phalanx free to a good home, I may have to recall them in defensive needs but as far as I am concerned they can be live in defenses”
I would get responses… “Hey, I can take 1000 at these coords”… 500 here, 250 there.
Thing is, over time its easily possible to own over 100,000 phalanx and only be paying for 15,000 or so.
An alliance needs good anvils, but it does not need to be a 1:1 ratio. A good anvil can supply a ton of defense and have even more standing by ready to be sent. It just takes a bit of planning and a good sense in getting others to take in your troops. There is also a sick satisfaction behind crushing an enormous hammer in a random non-allied village and the other person having no idea who did it.
The numbers can speak for themselves here. If you have a cluster of villages you will be very hard to damage, about the only way to truly hit is to send many fakes and hide the target. Nearby allies will love to have you close as its comforting to know that 20,000 troops are within an hour of you. Long range attacks with no fakes sent can be easily broken by you alone, but having many anvils means we should be very capable of breaking just about any true threat.
On S5 we had a couple of us using this same strategy within a couple of hours of each other.
Also, even if your going hammer… building defensive infrastructure in all your feeder villages will allow you to reverse into this same type of production in times of need. There is nothing to say a Gaul can’t have a few feeder villages and a huge hammer, and 12 other villages running this same strategy.
I hope this guide helps those less aware, or that the numbers raised some eyebrows on just how powerful a strong defender can truly be.
It also shows that busting up a hammer is not that hard to do, and even if you lose everything in damaging it… your recovery rate is much faster.
If you kill 19,000 axes knowing you set them back half a month, and set yourself back about 3-4 days is very satisfying and thats assuming your loss was just as great as their own. Not even considering time, your cost and rebuild cost is far less.
If you think this style of play may be boring, I suggest you try baiting people. Convince a smaller player to attack someone too big for them to handle and speak in a disrespectful tone, get sit access to watch for the attack. When the time of reckoning comes, rein in and break them. They wont even know who did it and its very hard to fight a shadow. Using diplomacy and illusion to get someone to react in a predictable manner makes this a very fun style of play.
Far better than making alot of defenses and waiting for something bad to happen while you get jealous of all the “aggressive” players getting all the attention.
This guide is going to be written from a Gallic perspective, but is adaptable to the other tribes as well.
Now, you may have seen people say that defense is better than offense and it is for this reason that a good attacker uses fakes to hide his intended target. Defending is simply easier.
Defenders have the advantage of combining all defensive reins as 1 grouped army, where the attackers attack per village and 100 troops per wave for 2 waves is not equivalent to 200 attackers.
You see many references in the early game to how many troops someone has, but the real figures to know is how much attack power, or how much defensive power you can produce per hour. The other consideration is how much attack or defense you get per wheat consumed. This is what determines the real effectiveness of your military and wheat becomes a big limitation.
Now, to see the strength behind an anvil lets take a look at how a proper hammer is made.
Generally you have a 15c capital with a good wheat bonus. A village next to it, can be your hammer village. You do not make it in your capital because you cannot create a greater barracks or greater stable in a capital village, this would severely limit your troop production. You build up production infrastructure. Barracks to make Infantry, Greater Barracks to create them faster even at triple cost, Stables for Cavalry, Greater Stables to make them faster at an increased cost. Siege workshop to 20 always making cats and rams.
The math that you want to know in your hammer producing village is how much attack per hour is it producing when everything is running. To simplify I will use some created numbers and not consider all variables. Lets say your Teuton and can create 1 axe per 3 minutes 23sec in a 20 barracks. If you have a 20 Greater Barracks you can spend 3x more to match that productivity… so for total production you can make 2 troops per 3:23 but at 4x the cost of each unit. (1x for the Barracks plus 3x for the Greater). Also, I am only considering raw values, no hero bonus or armory/blacksmith upgrades.
3:23 is equal to 203 seconds
86,400 seconds in 24 hours.
86400 / 203 = 425 axes at 1x cost in a single barracks, double the troop for 3x additional cost is now 850 axes per 24 hours at 4x the total cost.
850 axes at 60 attack per is 51,000 attack power per day, divided by 24 is 2125 attack power created hourly.
490 total resources to create 1 axe…. X4 to keep a barracks and greater barracks going is 1960 per pair of axes.
For 850 axes x 980 resources per axe that’s 833,000 resources per day to keep it running for 24 hours.
So, 800k resources for 51,000 attack at the max daily. 200k if you only make 425 per day in a single barracks.
Now, lets look at the advantage of being an anvil…
The main advantage is you do not suffer the limitation of being required to produce in a single village. Also, a good cropper is not really required to be a good anvil player
Lets use the phalanx as our counter to the Teutons Axe.
A Phalanx creates in 2:56 in a 20 barracks. For an anvil we will shoot for efficiency and forgo the use of a greater barracks at all. If you had a ton of resources you certainly could, but I will do some math to show you why I never bothered.
Lets say as a Gaul you have 4 villages in which to produce troops in. (You could very very easily have far more, and every expansion can add to your production giving you a huge edge over a hammer)
2:56 is 176 seconds and is 490 phalanx per day in each village.
A phalanx is 40 infantry defense, 50 cavalry defense. For this example we will use the infantry defense only.
490 x 40 is 19600 defense or 817 defense per hour per village.
The cost per phalanx is 315 total resources.
315 x 490 is 154,350 resources per day to keep a Barracks going.
x4 to cover all villages the total comes to 617,400
So, in summary…
Hammer
Troops per Day = 850
Total Attack Power per Day = 51,000
Cost of Creation = 833,000
Anvil (4 villages)
Troops per day = 1960
Total Defense Power per Day (infantry only) = 78,400
Cost of Creation = 617,400
This does not even include the wall’s defensive bonuses.
The only real downside is that each village needs to have its barracks to 20, which most people should eventually do regardless of playstyle, and also you need to do armory upgrades in each village. Yet, this is a small price to pay and you can easily see the savings in the total cost of production can be spent here. It takes very little to match the production power of the mightiest hammers. On top of that, the defensive bonuses you can get outweigh what the attackers can get. Wall Bonuses can add huge value.
Now, lets say you get a bit further in the game…
12 villages…
5880 Phalanx per day
235,200 infantry defense per day.
Lets say you do this for a week…
That is over 41,000 phalanx.
The problem for a good anvil actually comes in the form of storage issues. 41,000 wheat per hour is not easy to come by.
Lets say your goal in life is to break hammers. You used the ideas above and you have created 20,000 troops over a few days but have run out of storage room. Life is boring, no one is currently attacking. You party in all villages and expand but you have excess resources and cant make more troops due to space.
Give troops away. (You could even take small donations for them, but overall your cost is not that high and you still have the ability to recall them if absolutely necessary)
I had a really bad cropper on s5 and got very low wheat. I would get on the forums and say… “I got lvl 20 phalanx free to a good home, I may have to recall them in defensive needs but as far as I am concerned they can be live in defenses”
I would get responses… “Hey, I can take 1000 at these coords”… 500 here, 250 there.
Thing is, over time its easily possible to own over 100,000 phalanx and only be paying for 15,000 or so.
An alliance needs good anvils, but it does not need to be a 1:1 ratio. A good anvil can supply a ton of defense and have even more standing by ready to be sent. It just takes a bit of planning and a good sense in getting others to take in your troops. There is also a sick satisfaction behind crushing an enormous hammer in a random non-allied village and the other person having no idea who did it.
The numbers can speak for themselves here. If you have a cluster of villages you will be very hard to damage, about the only way to truly hit is to send many fakes and hide the target. Nearby allies will love to have you close as its comforting to know that 20,000 troops are within an hour of you. Long range attacks with no fakes sent can be easily broken by you alone, but having many anvils means we should be very capable of breaking just about any true threat.
On S5 we had a couple of us using this same strategy within a couple of hours of each other.
Also, even if your going hammer… building defensive infrastructure in all your feeder villages will allow you to reverse into this same type of production in times of need. There is nothing to say a Gaul can’t have a few feeder villages and a huge hammer, and 12 other villages running this same strategy.
I hope this guide helps those less aware, or that the numbers raised some eyebrows on just how powerful a strong defender can truly be.
It also shows that busting up a hammer is not that hard to do, and even if you lose everything in damaging it… your recovery rate is much faster.
If you kill 19,000 axes knowing you set them back half a month, and set yourself back about 3-4 days is very satisfying and thats assuming your loss was just as great as their own. Not even considering time, your cost and rebuild cost is far less.
If you think this style of play may be boring, I suggest you try baiting people. Convince a smaller player to attack someone too big for them to handle and speak in a disrespectful tone, get sit access to watch for the attack. When the time of reckoning comes, rein in and break them. They wont even know who did it and its very hard to fight a shadow. Using diplomacy and illusion to get someone to react in a predictable manner makes this a very fun style of play.
Far better than making alot of defenses and waiting for something bad to happen while you get jealous of all the “aggressive” players getting all the attention.
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