A useful resources to call upon if Tyrant/[-S-] attacks back and we find ourselves defending. It's pretty self explanatory and many people disagree with it but its a starter.
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This guide was written during my experiences with cervotoc.
Whilst alot of it may seem common sense there are always people who might not have thought of this.
An important point to note is that the strategies herein should only be applied to isles under attack, preferably ones with a sizeable defending army and fleet. Small isles (no lws) with only stoners cannot be helped too much.
Firstly, you need to see into future. Sounds stupid huh? Well it's not quite, the most important structure for defending is the watchtower, without one of these on a high level (this is one of the first buildings I get up high on a new isle) you are screwed. With a level 20 watchtower you can see spies (sws) up to 5 hours out, LWS fleets 8hours out and colonisation fleets 11hours out.
To differentiate between the types of attacking fleets just click on the watchtower and look at the speeds theyre moving at. Colo fleets will be moving at 2 knots and LWS fleets at 5 knots.
If you are hugely outnumbered (isles wise) you'll probably see multiple fleets at a time coming to clear your isle, this is a double edged sword though. The more isles they have the harder it is, and more effort it requires, to organise timed fleets.
First of all wait to see what the size of fleet attacking you is, if its small you can probably just take it. If its too big, or there are too many, it would be best to save your fleets and as much defence as possible. Move stoners off the isle to another colony not under attack nearby, and attack a nearby low scoring isle with all your LWS and spears. These must be saved to crash the colonisation fleets that will be sent against you.
Timing on your part is even more crucial than on theirs, your saved fleet must survive all following waves, regardless of the damage theyre doing to your isle. Chances are if they want to take the isle no other building than the Mainhouse and maybe Stonewall will be leveled.
Choose a low scoring isle at the right distance for your attack to return just after their LWS fleets hit. Another way to keep fleets out is to just send them out a minute before the attack and then recall them. This requires for you to remember to be online at the time though, something which I have been known to forget to do. Keep an eye on new fleets appearing in the watchtower at all times.
Also remember that whilst a colo fleet might appear to be 11 hours out you don't yet know if a clearing fleet is proceeding it by a couple of hours or even several seconds.
Only send stoner reinforcement at the last second!! If they have an extra isle nearby they might send a clearing fleet from that one just ahead of the colo attempt that you were so sure you'd be able to crush for the last 8 hours.
If you have isles closer to theirs, then try like hell to fleet steal it, this is handy if you know the attacking fleet won't hit anything (isle been cleared already) and that it will then have to return after attacking you. This can give you at least 16 hours of spotting a fleet to take the isle, providing that its 36 nautical miles away... chances are its probably more.
Another note is that whilst reinforcing an isle with stoners against a colo attack makes sense it is also an ineffective method, stoners are weak yet very costly and time consuming to produce.
As you can see almost 3k stoners didnt even defend from a 150 LWS fleet. It would have been much much more efficient to just send a colonisation back at the isle soon after it was taken. This does give them a chance to reinforce, but if your closer (I tend to only colonise isles in groups) then you could even send it out before the isle is taken and recall it if their attempt is unsuccesful.
Gold of stoners lost ~150k gold and ~1000 hours of barracks time. This gold would have been better spent on spears and an extra colo ship or two. Stoners however are a MUST for new colonies.
Having fleets tied up defending isles can be a Puttana! especially if outnumbered (in terms of isles) but then again they'll lose more fleet giving you time to attack back. A general rule of war is to make them waste their fleets on your spears and LWS leaving you to only take out spears with pretty much all your LWS.
I advise that you time clearing fleets and colo fleets to the nearest second, even just 10 seconds would give them enough time to organise reinforcing an isle, oh and even though stoners aren't very efficient they are not to be underestimated.
Hope this helps some of you
By arual
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Good explanation for beginners
No, seriously. Good to see someone who doesn't underestimate the importance of timing! Well done.
Just two random notes (I may add more later):
> Before the first fleet hits your island, make a screenshot of your watchtower display. Or copy & paste it into a word document.
Some people bomb the watchtower first, so you won't see further attacks. It's good to know at least of those attacks that were visible before the watchtower went down.
> (For advanced timers) The fleet which started first hits first.
For example, if you send your stonethrowers to arrive in the same second as the colo attempt, they will arrive
after the colo fleet because the colo started first.
By da_gonth
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Good read, well done.
I haven't really been on the defending side, but I helped McPete during the R|M war and I did quite a few attacks so I have seen quite a few different strategies.
I think that stonies, if used properly, can be devastating. Granted, they are more expensive than spears and take longer to build, but once you have a large pool of them you can defend your isles very effectively. As colo fleets are usually relatively small, you can often sink them at a relatively low cost.
Don't forget that you need a lot of stonies. 2.5 stonies = 1 spear, so 3000 stonies isn't much. I would typically put 5k+ stonies to defend an isle. If you have 10% stonies compared to your spears, don't expect anything extroardinary. If you have 10s of thousands of stonies, it starts to make a difference.
Something Arual didn't write about is catapults in defence - short answer is don't do that. It's way too expensive.
He said that you can often let your opponent take the isle and then re-take it. Although true, it also means that you are then fighting on your own isle, and remain on the defensive. Also, the fleets of your opponents will have to be sunk eventually.
By bulbizar
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That last point is quite true, you'll remain on the defensive but that is the unfortunate outcome of this situation.
Two other things to bear in mind; if two isles of exactly the same strength battle it out the one to send the first full fleet will lose. The defender always wins, just short of fleet catching or some other tactic being used. The second point is that Bulbizar is right with another point, stoners out-strip spears in terms of efficiency when you have a large number of isles in a small area.
The number of isles required is around 40+, this number will still allow for some spears to be built for use in ships and yet for defensive purposes the stoners will be very effective. The main draw back is the inability to defend more than one isle at a time whilst minimising losses. Very good activity is also required to make this approach work.
By arual
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