Guide to Raiding

[Old Shendemiar]

Could someone lighten the basic rules behind raiding.

Scouting, Loading Troops, Raiding, Looting, Combat, Returning with the bounty stuff like that.

Is it wise ti pick a target in a midway from me to Freigeister, whats the benefit?

[Perun]

Scouting works in most cases even with one small warship. There is really small probablity of failure, although some sources say that level 20 watchtower has 35% probability of successfully spotting spies. It was not proven though.

[Perun]

Raiding uninhabited islands is safe with at least 3 small warships, 3 small mercant ships, 3 stonethrowers and 3 spearmen. Although one could raid with even 2 units of each, there is slight possibiliy of failure (for me it worked about 20:1, but maybe I was just lucky and chances are smaller).

From my (not so great) experience, it's better to have few smaller raiding parties for uninhabited islands than one big one. That's because there's big probability that those same islands are being harvested by other players, so it's not very encouraging to arive to an island and pick only few gold coins. Furthermore, uninhabited islands can hold only up to 1200 units of each good, so there's no need to go harvesting with more than few small merchant ships per raid. So far, convoys of 4-5 of each unit type proved to be most effective.

[SkulkrinBait]

If you pick a unnamed score 1 island with no owner, you can raid it with a fairly small force and no point in scouting.

Choose whichever island is nearest and bear in mind it will have 1k of all resources, unless someone else raided it.

If you raid an island and take everything, it takes around 5 days to regenerate to 1k resources, which is why a lot of us have raiding rotas.

The problem is as islands get taken over and also disappear, you need to raid farther afield and it can often take 24 hours for the round trip.

This is why it's good to choose a colony not too close to home.

[soiram]

Raiding an uninhabited island with an equal number of small warships and merchant ships yields the following results in each case:
- If warships are loaded with 2 stonethrowers each, you lose one stonethrower
- If warships are loaded with 1 ST and 1 spearman each, you lose nothing
- If warships are loaded with 2 spearmen each, you lose one spearman
- If warships are loaded with 1 ST and one arcer, you lose nothing .
- If warships are loaded with 1 spearman and 1 archer, you lose nothing

So keep your warrior ships fully loaded with mixed armies!

Hey, it seems that mixed armies are a good idea in this game!!!!

[Old Shendemiar]

soiram said:

Hey, it seems that mixed armies are a good idea in this game!!!!

Thats nice feature!

[SkulkrinBait]

Yep, as in real life, a balanced army with mixed troop types beats a unit of one troop type every time. Well almost!

[Perun]

But with just 2 SWS/2 SMSs/2STs/2SM you can lose everyone, so be careful!

[soiram]

Correct. Best to start with at least 3 sW/S and 3 sM/S.

Also, remember that all merchant ships should always be accompanied by an at least equal number of warships.

Also, a large W/S counts as 2 small ones, so if you raid with for example 2 lW/S and 3 sW/S then you can take a maximum of 7 small merchants with you to carry the goods.

[Freiegeister]

soiram said:

Also, a large W/S counts as 2 small ones, so if you raid with for example 2 lW/S and 3 sW/S then you can take a maximum of 7 small merchants with you to carry the goods.

Or send all you have against a target like this:

Attack report
from 16.08.2005 00:57
Offence Units Elenil (1:78:14)
Total Losses
Large Warship 12 0
Small Warship 22 0
Small Merchant Ship 27 0
Spearfighter 34 0
Archer 70 0
Defence Units Benito-land (1:88:15)
Total Losses
Plundered Resources
Gold 5400
Stone 0
Lumber 0

I'll hit him 5 more times today (5400 lumber then 5400 stone and then spilt my forces for 2000 of each), but I need more ships.

Chiavata! score 1 islands, hit the inactive score 400 ones!

[guinevere]

What are the politics of raiding. There's a lot of Firefox islands in my area. Am I in danger of pissing them off by raiding like you're all doing to Avinalaff. Rarely do I get full loads even with only 800 capacity so all these islands are being regularly raided.

[Natmus]

I think all unowned isles are fair game, and the Firefoxes can't see who else is raiding them, so you should be safe there.
As Frei has found out, the best target are not always the unowned isles, but inactive isles that was built up for some time before the owner dropped out. These can have scores up to 50 or even 100. The best way to keep track of these is to monitor their scores, seen on the map. If they don't rise for two or three days, you should at least scout them out and send a probing message to the owner. If the stores are full, and you get no reply to the message, assume it's free to raid.

[Freiegeister]

natmus said:

I think all unowned isles are fair game, and the Firefoxes can't see who else is raiding them, so you should be safe there.
As Frei has found out, the best target are not always the unowned isles, but inactive isles that was built up for some time before the owner dropped out. These can have scores up to 50 or even 100. The best way to keep track of these is to monitor their scores, seen on the map. If they don't rise for two or three days, you should at least scout them out and send a probing message to the owner. If the stores are full, and you get no reply to the message, assume it's free to raid.

And given a week (when their fleet messages expire), they would never know they were raided!

[Shendemiar]

What do i need if the island have no defenders whatsoever?

[SkulkrinBait]

How do you they're inactive though?