Basic Attack Strategy by Vishal Verma

Note this is 100% copy pasted all credits go to https://plus.google.com/102718993287759207479/posts and Bhutnath

The screens are from an old version of tzhe pc version of goodgame empire but the guide can still be applied to today's version

In this guide I would refer to Towers as follows:

RBC: Robber Baron Castle
Barbarian Tower: BT
Desert Tower: DT
Cultists Tower: CT
All of above: ALLRBC

First of all, try to keep 2-3 ALLRBCs at the same exact level near by to your castles.

For example: Check this screen shot. All the DT are Level 42, 3 victories to Level 43.

 The benefit of keeping them at the exact same level is that if you spy 1 of them, the other 2 will have the exact same arrangement of soldiers and tools. So instead of spying 3 DT, I spy 1 of them and launch an attack on all 3 at the same time. For this you will need a huge army, so focus on plundering food, that ways you can maintain your army food supplies. Take a look at this example: I spied on only 1 DT, but I know that the rest of the 2 would have same arrangement and number of tools and soldiers. [2] This is the espionage report: [3]  Now comes the part, how I should attack this DT. Here is what I would do. Since there are no defenses on Left and right flank and there are only 1 unique tool in the center flank, I will send 1 martyr wave.  Martyr wave is when you send 1 or 2 waves of 1 cheapest soldier that you have to take out the defense tools of the defender. PS: As left and right flanks are empty, you can put your main soldiers in the wave 1, I did not do it as number of defenders in the Courtyard is None, so I dont need a very big attack to defeat the defenders. See below: [4]  Now Wave 2 and onwards I will add as much attack power as I can. Now let us focus on wave 2, as this is where all the action would be. Wave 3 and 4 will most probably have no action, as Wave 2 should be the decider. The center flank has 24 Ranged and 16 Melee defenders. Another thing to keep in mind is the weakness of defense soldiers. For example: Greenland soldiers, most of them have weakness against opposite attackers. Bowman's description says "Good in defense, Ideal against ranged attackers", which means if you attack bowman with Melee, it is better. BUT, the story changes Iceland and above. Iceland, Desert and Fire peaks they all have versatile soldiers,i.e. Good in defense against melee and ranged. So Iceland and above, you can just pick the greater number of soldiers and send opposite attack soldier. Now in our case, as the number of ranged defenders is greater, so I will send all Melee attackers to counter them. How to use tools: Even though our Martyr wave will take out all the tools, yet it is better to send some tools to gain the extra benefit on the wall. Since my soldiers will fight on the wall only on the center flank, so I will load my tools only there. [5] You need to check the wall defense, gate protection and defense of ranged soldiers to decide how many tools to us. Please do not forget to check Troop and Tools Stats  In Wave 2, I have sent 130 KG soldiers to attack 40 DT soldiers. It should be enough and Wave 3 and 4 should only be a formality, so if you want you can load wave 3 with Loot sacks (and Glory banners, if you are attacking a human castle rather than ALLRBC.) Anyways, here are the screenshots of Wave 3 and 4 respectively: [6]

[7] Another school of thought is why not send a mix of melee and defense soldiers when defenders are mixed. The explanation I was given by Bhutnath is that the game calculates the total power, irrespective of which soldiers you attack with. I experimented with it on few occasions and did not find any discrepancy to the logic given by him. But you are free to experiment and update us all. This is the attack on the way. [8]

  Here are the Combat reports: 34 soldiers lost total [9] This is the attack overview: [10]
 Wave 1: As you can see below, the Martyr took out both the tools at the wall.
[11]

Wave 2: As I told you earlier, wave 2 is the deciding force, I had lesser tools so I sent lesser tools, if you send more tools you can save more of your soldiers. Observe that the defender has no tools and all the defenders are killed here.
[12]

Wave 3 and 4 are only to strengthen your attack and to take over defenders at the courtyard.

[13]

[14]

 You need to focus on the same exact strategy everywhere. By that I mean, keep 3-4 RBC at the same level, nearest to your castle. 3-4 BT, DT and CT at the same level, Even if you attack them 2-3 times in a day, you r army wont die of starvation, plus you will get tons of resources. That ways you can have 3 shining Food OP in Greenland and maintain high army counts. I used the same composition of attack on the 2nd DT at similar level. [15]  The only Difference being that this time I attacked with mixed soldiers. 80 Melee and 50 ranged. I had to use ruby tools as I was out of normal tools, but I leveled them out. Infact the tools are -5% in Ruby attack as compared to previous non ruby tools attack.  [16]

You can check the screenshot above, it clearly says No espionage carried out. Yet it would be exactly the same as the previous one.  Few things to remember:  \*At times the soldiers change their formation symmetrically  so you need to ensure that you attack them as soon as possible, before they get smart and change their formation.

* It is best if you attack all 2-3 of them at the same time, thus you can avoid the problem mentioned above.
* If you plan to attack them 1 by 1, then make sure you take a screenshot of the espionage report and save it, otherwise, as soon as you attack the 1st castle that you spied on, the espionage report will become unavailable.

 Here is the combat report, not a significant difference though: 30 soldiers killed as compared to 34 in previous attack. [17]
 Attack Overview: [18]

Wave 1:
[19]

Wave 2:
[20] So maybe sending a mix of soldiers does help?? Leave your comments in the comments section when you experiment the same.  This is attack on the 3rd DT at the exact same level: [21]  In this attack, I used more tools to experiment if it saves more soldiers. Also please note that in each and every attack the total number of soldiers are decreasing.  [22] Here are the results of the 3rd attack: Total 20 soldiers lost [23] This is the overview [24]

Wave 2 report:
[25]

Now here you need to ask yourself how many tools you want to sacrifice to save your soldiers. Remember: If you send 20 mantlets with 1 ranged soldier, you can beat 100 ranged soldiers. {If your enemy has 100 longbowmen on one flank, you could actually send one bowman, who is a very poor offensive unit to attack them with 20 normal mantlets (each reducing effectiveness by 5%) and he would kill all of them.
An example of this absolute attacker advantage is shown through these screenshots when one longbowman with 20 mantlets takes down 50 scouts of the kingsguard (ranged defenders) on the left flank

http://prntscr.com/khld3
http://prntscr.com/khlfg
http://prntscr.com/khlg5
http://prntscr.com/khlhf }
  Another important thing is Public Order (PO)  We all know that Decorative Items (DO) increase PO, whereas, Population decreases (PO). If you follow the above strategy and launch 2-3 attacks in every world everyday, you wont need any population to collect taxes as you get enough coins and rubies starting from BT and above. So, you can infact demolish all your Dwellings (If you have town houses dont demolish them, as they have lesser negative affect on PO as compared to Dwellings.) and survive on the coins collected by these daily attacks. This is a risky business, if you are not a regular player, then you can end up losing a lot of your army because of shortage of food. Now once you demolish the Dwellings, you can build park in the castle and OPs which will increase the PO dramatically and thus increasing production of all the resources in that castle or OP.