I'll go into great detail in this post, but try to be as concise as I can. I plan to outline the mechanics of attacking and defending, the why's and how's of what to do to take down your opponent or stop them from taking you down. But before that, I'll go through the way that Evony battle mechanics work. It is understanding the way troops fight that is the key to everything else.
Battle Mechanics:
The 2 major things that effect the outcome of a battle are range and speed. These are different for each type of troop, and can work for you or against you. A fantastic article detailing range can be found here: http://theevonywiki.com/Range There are alot of theories there, but the idea of range and its effects gives alot of insight.
Unfortunately it would seem Evony has blocked another site that combined range and speed and showed what happened during a fight round by round. While it was usually wrong, just as the exercise is almost always wrong, it still gave a clear representation of range and speed in an easy to follow way.
I'll explain some of the rules that battles follow:
1. A battle starts at the most ranged unit's range plus 200 yards (this is the general consensus, its either this or without the added 200 yards). Usually this is the range of traps and abatis which are set at 5,000 yards from the city, or defensive trebs which have a 5,000 yard range.
2. The troop with the highest movement speed present gets the first move. This is typically scouts, and is effected by researches like compass and HBR.
3. Each round, troops will target the type of troops with the highest cumulative attack. For example: If you send 10,000 cavs at a valley that has equal numbers of all troops present - say 10k of each warriors, pikemen, swordsman, and archers, your cavalry will target the pikemen first, since they have a total attack of 150x10,000. After the first round, even if there are some pikemen still left, the cavalry will attack the archers since they are the next highest attack.
4. Ranged units will target other ranged units first, always, provided they are in range. This applies to archers, ballistae, archer towers, and catapults. An odd thing about this rule is that it seems attacking archers will target archer towers first, even if there are only a few towers and 200k defending archers. They seem to bypass rule 3. I'm unsure if balls and pults will do the same.
5. All troops of a layer will stop and fight the opposing troops in a layer, no matter the size. For example, if 30,000 defending pikemen rushing out of a city encounter 10 phracts, they will all stop to fight, expending one movement round and allowing your archers to mow them down. The exception to this rule: mechanics such as balls, pults, trans, and rams. They will continue to move forward while attacking regardless of layers. Archers will stop and shoot until all troops in their range are dead before moving forward.
Here's a post by a fellow on the evony forums, dated 9-28-2009. Interesting info here. http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=9123 The important part is at the bottom:
He may not be the most eloquent, but has several good ideas in there. Now its time to put these things to work for us, I'll give some examples and explain why it worked or didn't work.
The first is a small cav attack, it of course failed because the defender healed a few troops. What's interesting is that it shows the speed and attack rules. The attacking cavs were moving into the city when they met the defending cavs and phracts. Since the defending phracts had a higher attack, the incoming cavs targeted them first.
Another small cav attack which could have killed at least something. The reason it did not was the the traps held them out at 5k yards, the defending archers took them out as they continued to march towards the city with no losses. 
In this small cav attack there were no traps, and since cavs have a higher movement speed than the archers have range, they were able to jump on top of the archers in the first round to start attacking. Archers get a penalty to their attack when in close range, the factor that I've read is that they only have 25% of their normal attack value against targets on top of them. The biggest item of note is what cavs can do to archers when not held back by traps, they killed more than twice their own number in one round...
So lets move on to the big waves. What did this wave do? Nothing but make the defender laugh a lot. The reason is: no rainbow. The attacking archers were wiped out by the defending archers as they marched in towards the city. If this person had at least sent a small rainbow they would have wiped out the defending pikes. 
The scout bomb. Effective at killing archers with low cost to you. Since scouts train so fast and cost so little, and getting 50% back after you spike your opponent's honor while reducing yours to zero, its an inexpensive way to reduce your losses on the final attack. Scout bombs have their place however. Once the defender's archers are reduced to a low amount, and they still have alot of towers up, the scouts will continue to attack the highest total attack. 18k towers have a higher attack than 50k archers, and the scouts will only kill 2-300 per wave. (ouch)
Here's my favorite counter to loads of archers. Wipe out the traps and abatis and send in the ponies. My best hit so far is 676k archers, 18k towers, and a few thousand ballistae and transporters in with one wave, although others have done better (YoBo). But can they kill more in one attack than just archers?
Yep. They take out the biggest percentage of archers first, then continue killing the rest. But how about if you add in cavs? 
Yep again, but it hurts alot more. I believe that the defending cavs hold up the attackers for a round and let them get shot at a distance. You can still win but.. ouch on the phracts. I haven't tried sending in a medium sized cav wave before the main wave, say 10k. It might do the trick. So how about if there are alot of defending cavs?
Nope. The next wave wiped out the rest, but this wave didn't do so well. There were 10k more cavs before this hit, and when I tried to scout bomb the city the scouts went after the cavs first, killing a mere 5k per wave. That was more scouts than I was willing to send, and archers would only have targeted the defending archers, so I bit the bullet and sent the ponies to die.
Next we add in pults to the equation.
Again, ouch. The pults extend the start of the fight further than archer range, and (I believe) further than the cavs can move in one round. They did well, better than what I expected, but still lost. At least I left him with a big chunk of honor after the next hit!Attacking
A question that I get alot is: How would you take this out? My first response is usually: How much do you have and how much are you willing to spend?
There are other factors as well, such as: is the person online? How far away are you? How many waves can you send at a time?
Before we get into all of those, I'll tell you what my strategy would be. I would send series of cleaner waves - small archer rainbows that will clear away his rainbow and make my cav/phract hit take less losses. Since he has both traps and abatis there, archer waves will do fairly well with his rainbow. I send in 10-20k archers (depending on the size of layer needing to be killed) with 100 of each, warr, sword, pike, scout, cav, and phract. The reason I don't send just one of each is I believe the single layer dies when it hits a trap or abatis, rendering it ineffective in stopping the defending layers (untested, but I know the 100 of each does well). I'll send wave after wave of these until all the layers are gone and only archers, transporters, balls, rams, pults and towers remain. Each cleaner wave will normally only hit one layer at a time, and bigger isn't always better. A 99k wave will still only kill one (maybe 2) layer before it dies, when faced with many more than its own number in defending archers.
After the rainbow is dead, next comes the wall cleaners. Small waves of cavs and scouts, 100-200 of each, and lessening as the traps and abatis drop into the 20's. The reason for sending in multiple waves? The machinery tech. This is most noticeable when capping an npc, you killed more in the second attack than what "should" have been left after the first attack. Npc's have machinery too. At lvl 10, machinery makes the repairable rate of traps, abatis, defensive trebs, and rolling logs 30% (3% is the base, increased by 100% for each lvl of research). What that means is - you killed 100 traps on that attack, 30 of them will instantly respawn when the attack is over, in your way again on the next attack.
Once the traps, abatis, logs and trebs are gone... BOOM. Alternatively you can skip the archer waves, go straight for the cav/scout cleaners, get the wall defenses gone and then hit it 3 or 4 cav/scout/phract waves in a row. But make sure you continue to send cleaners timed just before the big hit. If even one trap or abatis is there, the fight will start at 5k yards and the whole wave will die.
Defending
Basically everything that we've covered here in reverse. Here are some easy ways to make you a great defender that we may or may not have went over.
Get your ponies out - They'll mess with the incoming rainbow and make you loose more than you should, even in small numbers. Greater numbers will do nothing more than die as the rush out of the city. Big losses for not much gain.
Make traps - Even one will stop an entire wave in its tracks. Whether archer or cav, they will march towards your city and kill almost nothing.
Fix your rainbow - One of each layer is enough to stop an entire archer wave, as long as you have traps. A 99k rainbowed archer wave will stop to fight one pikeman and get torn to bits.
Send scouts away - Make yourself a target, hide your scouts in a valley or send them to another city until you need them. Scouts are quick and cheap to make, and lots of people keep them in stock. I only keep scouts in a defending city if I need to hide that there aren't many troops in it, or I need a break.
Make it look good - Pile a bunch of resources in the city to make it look like a target worth hitting. They will, and you can laugh.
Take the hit - Close the gates on a scout bomb, or any hit that will take you out if you're unpreparred. They won't get much, and even ATs, while they take a long time to build, aren't worth loosing your whole army over. If you have alot of ATs, scouts will get splattered without doing much damage to them.
Tips and Tricks
Here are some things that I have picked up along the way that don't directly help in a fight, but are a great deal of use.
1. Catch them offline if you can, and when you notice that they are, give them the works. No city can be taken while a person is online (at least not if they don't want you to). It only takes gold equal to the maximum population to pray. Easy to do if you have another city to send from by scout.
1. Catch them offline if you can, and when you notice that they are, give them the works. No city can be taken while a person is online (at least not if they don't want you to). It only takes gold equal to the maximum population to pray. Easy to do if you have another city to send from by scout.
2. Get closer. Cap a low lvl npc right beside your target city to send clearing or loyalty dropping waves from. The reduced distance can save you tons of time in prepping for the major strike, cleaning out the city, and getting to that dreaded under 15>
3. The last 15 loyalty is the most grueling. Here's how it works: When an attack drops a city's loyalty below 15, every attack from then on won't do a thing to the loyalty itself. Instead, each attack will add one to the public grievance. You need as many attacks as what the loyalty was on the attack that made it go below 15 to get the grievance to 100. (For instance, if an attack says -4 loyalty, +4 public grievance, the loyalty of this city is 13, you need 13 more attacks to get the grievance to 100.) Once below 15, the loyalty will drop one point every 6 minutes (based on public grievance, get it to 100), regardless of how many times you attack it.
4. A lvl 10 npc has all the comforts of home - 10 rally spot, walls, feasting hall, beacon tower, academy. But how about capping one at 200 miles away? Time waves from multiple cities to hit within 1-2 minutes of the first attack. The npc starts with 91 loyalty, 10k cav waves will drop it an average of 4, 10k archer waves an average of 2. I send an archer spearhead, a 100k cav spearhead, and then 26 10k cav waves to hit right after. A little bit of lag and poof new attack city. You can also send attacks from multiple accounts, just be careful of which account gets the hit that takes the city to zero loyalty. You can pack the waves close to the first wave of the helper account, then finish with attacks from the account you want. Also, the arrival time on the bottom is the time on your computer. If sent from a different computer it will be different, the attacks will land anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes different than what you had intended.
5. Dumb attack? Its letting your enemy, and his whole alliance, know that you only have 66878 archers. Any defense fight that goes more than one round will give a report.
Or is it? What if you sent an attack like this, had 30k ish scouts in your city, let them see that you didn't have squat for troops or defenses, just to make them attack. You could have the rest of your troops stashed in a valley right beside the city, and just before the attack lands pull them home. No matter how many troops you send to a valley, when you recall them they all come home at once. All done here.
I hope that you have learned something, or at least can look at what you know differently. No city is untouchable, anyone can be taken out with some coordinated strikes, online or offline. Knowledge is power, and with the right knowledge we can be the most powerful family on the server.
I hope that you have learned something, or at least can look at what you know differently. No city is untouchable, anyone can be taken out with some coordinated strikes, online or offline. Knowledge is power, and with the right knowledge we can be the most powerful family on the server.
