Improving your War Attacks

**Suggestions for war attacks with focus on Industrial Age through Atomic Age**

Below is an introduction into executing winning war attacks. The objective for this article is to provide an introduction. There are many additional advanced aspects and nuances that are not being discussed below. Ask us in chat about those and we will gladly answer your questions.

**A.     General Comments and Suggestions**

* Only one goal in war attacks, earn stars. It is different than typical multiplayer battles for looting and gaining or loosing medals.
* Your regular troop composition for multiplayer battles may not work well and may need a different troop composition for war.

* War attacks are always harder than looting attacks. The reasons are:
	+ Town Centers usually have alliance troop donations, some very strong such as bazookas, machine gunners, artillery, heavy tanks, etc.
	+ Strongholds may have alliance troop tactics.
	+ The opponent base may have special defensive buildings, such as a Bazooka Tower and Wonders.
	+ Strongest available Generals are always present in war.
	+ War Hall museum artifacts are typically different from Main Hall artifacts.

* In war attacks you ALWAYS plan for 5-star victories

* It is critically important to take time to analyze the opponent’s base design, find weaknesses, create an attack plan that provides the probability for quick victory without incurring too many losses, so that 100% destruction within maximum attack time is still likely.

* It is important to include main targets that need to be eliminated first, such as Forbidden City, Missile Silo, well protected anti-tank guns, air defenses.

**B.      Troop Composition**

* There are three main components that will make or break your war attack:
	+ Target selection and ability to read and analyze the opponent’s base
	+ Your troop composition (what kind of troops and how many you are bringing into the battle)
	+ Troop deployment (location, sequence and timing of deploying your troops)

* Other influencing factors are strength of your troops, number and level of coalitions, war tactics selection and timing of use, selection and strength of troop tactics.

* Type and quality of Alliance troop donations (you should request specific troops based on your attack style), some choices include:
	+ Heavy Tank
	+ Attack Helicopter
	+ Bazooka
	+ Machine Gunner

* Starting with Industrial Age you need to fill more and more troop spaces with factory troops. If you continue to mainly utilized barrack troops, you will lose more and more battles against bases that have similar level and Dominations age.

* Specifically, starting with Industrial Age, you must add Heavy Tanks and Machine Gunners to your troop composition (as a side note, this will also help you tremendously with looting in main battles).  Commandos, correctly used, will provide critical benefits as well.

* For barrack troops, you want to use Artillery (you should be used to having 4-5 cannons in your Enlightenment Age troop composition).  As you phase factory troops in, you can start to reduce the number of cannons.

* Other barrack troops that are important are healing cart/supply vehicle (1-2).
* You will also use fewer and fewer infantry and riflemen.

* If you add Commandos to your troop mix, you must have fighter air support.  Without air support, Commandos are not worth the 10 (8) spaces per Commando.

* **Two configurations of winning troop composition in industrial age for your consideration:**
	+ **2 Heavy Tanks, 2 Artillery, 2 Supply Vehicles, 2-3 Commandos, 4-5 infantry for cleanup, plus 3 fighter jets**.
	+ **1 Heavy Tanks, 7 Artillery, 5 Machine Gunners, 1 Supply Vehicle, 2 Commandos, 3 infantry for cleanup, plus 3 fighter jets**.

* Some players prefer bombers over fighters.  If you do, make sure that your troop mix is adjusted accordingly.  You also need to adjust your Library, University, and Museum strategy accordingly.

* You have probably noticed that above troop mix suggestions do not include Tanks, Riflemen, Field Mortars, Raiders, Wall Sappers, and Attack Helicopters.  **Here is why:**
	+ Machine Gunner replaces riflemen for more HP and its crowd control capability (suppression).
	+ Heavy Tank replaces Tank and Wall Sapper for its fire power, durability, and staying with the same battle group.
	+ Artillery is usually better than Field Mortars for their longer range and damage.
	+ Raiders have no business in wars! Why bring in the kind of troops in war for buildings don't shoot back at you?
	+ Attack Helicopters are great for global and earlier ages, not worth the space for atomic age for their damage to durability ratio.

**C.     Supplementary Troop Composition**

Your selection of complementary troops has a material impact on war attack success

* **Mercenaries:** Select strong mercenaries. Ideally you should use mercenaries that are better than your current age.  Through events and video rewards you will have access to Tank Destroyers, T-62 tanks, Jagdpanzer and Flammpanzer.  Add those to your mercenary camp and ONLY use your mercenaries in war.  Use your free retraining function only for war attacks and you can keep those mercenaries “forever” and until you have developed the capabilities to train them yourself (Cold War Age for T-62).

* **Tactics:**
	+ Demolition becomes less and less useful as you progress. Multiple demolitions often required to take out a defensive structure. Sabotage is usually a better alternative than demolition. Use Sabotage to disable several defense structures simultaneously with one Sabotage Tactics just before you are within their range.
	+ Same for barrage. Most strong units require multiple barrages. A preferred tactic in Industrial Age is Betrayal. Use it on strong units such as Heavy Tanks can turn their fire power and Hit Points absorption against your opponent. DO NOT use Betrayal on Generals. Generals cannot be turned but nearby unworthy units will.
	+ You might use Protection, especially for special commando operations such as missile silo destruction or assault on heavily defended spots, such as Town Center.
	+ First Aid is less useful, especially if you have practiced the use of Supply Vehicles.
	+ Decoys becomes more and more valuable to lure defenders to your kill zone. Use extra caution if use decoys near sabotages.
	+ Assault Rally is powerful for certain missions, such as attack of the Town Center.
	+ Another tactic is the always available “Rally”.  It does require knowledge of how and when to use it, so it does not have unintended negative effects on your attack.

* **War tactics mix for your consideration:**
	+ **Industrial: 3 Sabotage, 2 Betrayals.**
	+ **Global: 4 Betrayals, 2 Decoys, 1 Sabotage.**
	+ **Atomic: 7 Decoys.**

**D.     Deployment Strategy, Placement, and Timing**

Deployment strategy, timing, and placement are both, science, and art.  It is complex and requires a lot of components to be analyzed and considered.  Every

base you are going to attack is different.  We cannot address all those issues in this article.  I wish we had video conference capabilities to hold a workshop.

However, there are certain component that are generally true for most situations. Following, you find a list of those general approaches and considerations

* Most importantly, you MUST study base design, make notes of your attacks with focus on what worked and what did not work, watch replays of successful war attacks from your team members and from your opponents.  At the end of the attack, study the screen that shows you the troop composition of the attacker.  If you have the desire to be a successful attacker, this is the single most important activity you should spend your time on for improving your attacks.

* Study the opponent's base and formulate an attack plan that gives you a high probability of a 5-star victory.  Specifically, analyze the size of the base, placement of critical buildings, Town Center, Forbidden City, Missile Silo.

* Observe the upgrade level of defensive buildings, such as towers, garrisons, sniper towers, bunkers, anti-tank guns, air defenses.

* Make a note of your opponent's nation and understand their specifics, such as riflemen come from Command Post when you attack the British, Chinese and Korean, Riflemen shoot from TC when you attack the Japanese. Both situations may be devastating for your Attack Helicopters.

* Observe if there are high Hitpoints buildings in “hidden corners”, such as Oil Refinery.
* Observe the defensive coalition used by your opponent for increase Town Center health, increased defensive building and defender damage.

* Once you have an attack plan, you MUST match your troop composition to match the plan. For example, if you cannot get with commandos to destroy the missile silo on time and as you are using commandos you most likely don’t have bombers.  Therefore, one of your troop tactics should be a bomber.  Another example is that you have predominantly factory troops and mercenaries as described above.  That is great for Hitpoints and DPS, but your troops move very slowly.  Therefore, if you are attacking a base that has a lot of land area, you MUST add faster moving troop through troop tactics to your mix or you will likely run out of time and will miss the 5th (100% destruction) star.

* If the base you attack has two specific areas that are heavily defended such as the Town Center on one part of the map and the Forbidden City on a further-away part of the map, you may want to aim for the 50% destruction quick victory option.

* **Deployment Timing and deployment sequence are most critical and will make or break your attack success!**

* The first 20 second of the attack are most important.  You snooze you lose!

* I see it all the time that attackers use Demolition, then wait until Demolition has done their job.  If you do that, you already have lost at least one of the 5 stars.  Place your Demolition, then go to the next deployment step. If you want to see the fireworks, use the replay.

* The same accounts for EVERY troop deployment step. Troop deployment speed is extremely important to build up the maximum firepower quickly.

* If you cannot deploy your main troops within the first 20 seconds, you have a problem. After the first minute of the attack, your fate is decided.  You might be able to fine-tune a little bit, but that is the extend of it.  After one minute, it is mostly time to watch.

* Decide your deployment strategy and run it through your mind repeatedly before your attack. You do not have time to make major adjustments during the first 20 seconds. You need to execute.  For example to take out base with missile silo with
	+ 1. Deploy Blitzkrieg (if you have it) to delay spawning time, deploy commandos to destroy the missile silo.
	+ 2. Hit the rally button with the target being the missile silo.
	+ 3. Deploy Mercenaries with high Hitpoints in case the missile silo is not destroyed, as they can absorb the hits.
	+ 4. Deploy the main attack force away from the Mercenaries, so that they are not hit by the missile silo and last longer.
	+ 5. Deploy the fighters with destination Forbidden City so that the SAMs attack the fighters.
	+ 6. Deploy the bomber to follow the fighters with destination FC, so that the bomber can destroy it.  All of this should not take longer than 20 seconds.

* During the battle, after the first 20 seconds, concentrate on Town Center destruction.  Do you need to deploy Rally, Assault Rally, Sabotage, Decoys, or are HTs spawned from Bunkers and you need to use Betrayal on them?  Are your ground troops attacked by Defenders and they need air support?  Do you need to complement troops to destroy areas further away from the main action by deploying troop tactics?  These are the decisions you need to make for the next 40 seconds.  After that, the battle is pretty much done and will run its course.

Becoming a master attacker requires a lot of practice, but it is fun when you can easily get 4 and 5 stars from opponent at your level and possibly a little bit higher.  It is worth it.

Do not hesitate to ask us for additional help, clarification, feedback using chat.  Please add your experience and knowledge to improve this article.   Tell your fellow team members what works particularly well for you and what does not work so well.  We are all constantly, learning, improving, and adjusting.

*Your Alliance Team Members*