Ikariam Defense Guide: How To Defend Your Towns
In Ikariam having a strong defense is vital if you dont want to become a farmed player. Even if you have just started playing Ikariam and you find yourself surrounded of old players with big armies, if you follow this Ikariam defense guide, perhaps you wont defeat them in an open battle, but you will get something more valuable: be no one objetive. The best way not to loose a battle is avoiding it! This guide will show you techniques to help you get in a position such that your enemy will use more resources attacking you than what he would loot back in return, thrus, rendering his attack counter productive. This defense technique is what you need to mimic in your cities to avoid beeing the focus of some big fish out there.
Town Wall Level
The town wall can bring you a juicy defense bonus, if keep properly. A wrongly mantained town wall will actually hurt you, since your enemy can use it against you! Remember that some units can break holes through your wall and get an attacking bonus. Basically, try to have you city wall level at least match that of your Town Hall. You can read more about how to optimice the town wall
Defensive Intelligent Espionage
This is truly a cornerstone of a good defense strategy. You must build and upgrade as much as posible a Hideout in all your cities. This building allows us to train spies, which are extremely useful when attacking, but they are even more so while defending!
To understand why, first you have to understand how works the mind of an aggresive player while in Ikariam. Once you have targeted a militar objetive, the second step of every attacker is espionage. They would simply slip 2 or 3 spies in your town and once inside they look mainly for 3 things: resources, trading port level and quantity and type of defending troops (if any!). From this one can easily deduce that the first step to avoid attacks is avoid beeing spied upon.
To avoid beeing spied upon, we have to build hideout and upgrade them to decent levels. Also, we have to train spies (with costs a little bit of gold and crystal) and have them working on counter-intelligence, detecting enemy spies before they can set foot on your colonies.
Once you have your spies on place, the sharks, the big players around you will have a tough time getting to know if you are attack worthy or not, since instead of having a risk of just 5% to slip a spy under your door, this risk can climb up to 75%-85% or even more for hideouts levels 14-16 in town hall levels 20-22. Simply, if your enemy can determine what resources you have, what trade port level (which is the factor that determines how much loot you get) and how many troops defend a given town, chances are they will drop you and go find someone easier to loot.
Remeber: In Ikariam, build hideouts in every town, upgrade them to 14-16 or even more, and get lots of spies working on the defense.
Trading Port Level
The total amount of loot you get is a factor of the trading port level. The higher, the more loot a successful attacker will get from you. As a rule of thumb, try to leave your trading port at level 1 at the beginning, and only when you have 4,5 or 6 colonies and your trading requirements have rise should you upgrade your trading ports to level 2 or 3. They can be upgraded more, but only if you are an experienced player with many towns, in need of moving large quantities or resources, and alaways with a good defense put in place.
Keep always in mind that aggressive players will attack you mainly for the loot of resources, so a low level trading port will keep the big fiches away from your hard saved resources. You can read more about trading port level and loot formulas and tables
Alliances
One of the main Alliance function is to provide its members some degree of protection against other players. Players without an alliance or inside a weak one are much more likely to get attacked and looted than members of big, top-rated alliances. So in order to avoid unwanted attention from the big fishes around you, try to get inside a top-rated alliance. You may not be able to do so right away, try to join a mid-rated alliance first, and then work your way up from there. Keep in mind that the strongest alliance in Ikariam wont be of any help if they are hours away from you. They troops and ships will suck piles of gold on their way to help you, rendering most members unwillling to go save you. Try to find a strong local player and ask him if you could get membership in his alliance, ask him if its ok to ask questions, and build a relationship with other players around you. Once you get inside an alliance remember to be very active on their forum, everyone likes a player whom they known, even if you are weak at the beginning.
Remember how to join an alliance.
Defending Troops
All your spies, your low trading port level, you high level town wall and your alliance wont be of any help if at the end of the day you have nobody holding a shield and sword in your town. You must have some troops defending, but not so much that their upkeeping cost will be a heavy load on your development.
At the beginning, Ikariam Phalanxs are a great defending unit. They are reasonable inexpensive and have great defense bonus, you get a lot for what they are worth. Try to have a few of them from as early as possible. The amount of defending troops will be a factor of two things: the amount of gold we can generate, and the value of the resources we want to defend. There is no point in having 200 phalanxs defending a level 10 colony producing wine and exporting 90% of it. You biggest defending concern will be during the times when you are saving up to upgrade your palace. Usually upgrading your palace to level 3 and higher requieres you to save resources for a number of days. The last thing you want to do is stock 130k of marble, 88k of wine/crystal and then see how a couple or three guys from a nearby island "discover" your honeypot and start looting you around the clock. Keep in mind that such an amount of resources cant be used of shipped in a hurry.
Dont let anyone steal all your resources, get +100 Phalanxs, +50 swordmans and other units before you start saving large quantities of resources.
Also dont let your Phalanxs defend alone, they will resist well, but they are poor damage dealer. Thats why you will need Archers, Gyrocopters, Gunsman and other units to build a strong diverse army.
Finally, remember to build a Workshop and research better gear for your army. At the top of your buying list you should have the defense upgrade for phalanxs, get them the best shields money can buy, and watch how they stop on its track any attacking army.
Ships and attack from abroad
In order to prepare a working defense you must first understand how the Ikariam battle systems works, I mean, how it really works, not how you have been told it does, which is quite different.
When another player attacks you from town A to town B and both are on the same island, the militar ships play no role whatsoever. They army "on foot" will get to your city and knock on your town wall to start a battle. If they defeat you, a number of cargo ships will leave town A, go to town B, loot you and then transport back the loot. No amount of ships at your bay will stop that.
On the other hand, if you are beeing attacked by a army from a town in a different island, you can repel that attack with just one ship. (that is, a militar one, not a cargo). The strongest army in Ikariam, composed of 800 swormands, 500 phalanx, 500 archers, 300 gunmans, 100 Gyrocopter and 50 Bombardier will turn 180 degrees and go back home if you have just one Ram-Ship defending, thats because they cannot land on the island!
To attack a town in another island, you must first send your ships, win the local battle agains your enemy's navy, block the port for a number of hours, and then send in your army. With the port under your control, they will be able to disembark and attack the town. There is one exception, if you or your anemy have no ships, then there is no need to block the port, you can simply send in your amy and the battle will take place.
It is obvuiously drawn from the above that you must have at least 1 ship at all your colonies from a very early stage. This will block countless attacks by newbies with no understanding of the Ikariam battle rules. (A surprisingly high number of them will think their armies returned because of some sort of bug). Finally, remember that while a port is beeing blocked, the town can not send or receive goods, since those will be intercepted by the blocking anavy owner.