Peace never lasts forever, and when you play the Game of Thrones, it’s never long before you find yourself face to face with an opposing army. The true challenge is, when you do come under attack…what then?
When you get attacked
If you have notifications activated, you’ll receive a notification when you get scouted by another player, when an enemy march begins moving toward your Keep, and when an enemy march arrives at your Keep. Sometimes all three of those things can happen in rapid succession, so be sure to check your notifications promptly!
When an attacker arrives at your keep, there are three ways they can interfere with your city:
- Killing your troops. Sometimes an enemy will invade with the express goal of killing your troops, to try and make sure you don’t have an army strong enough to contest them.
- Stealing your resources. If the attacker defeats your army, they will steal resources from your Keep—including Food, Wood, Stone, and Iron. Resources contained within your Storehouse can never be stolen, so be sure to invest in keeping your Storehouse upgraded.
- Destroying your city wall. In extreme cases, an enemy may bring Siege weapons to destroy your walls. If your wall reaches zero health, then your Keep will be randomly teleported to a new location somewhere on the map, and a 24-hour Peace Shield will be activated.
The worst possible situation is being “zeroed”—that is, losing everything that you can lose, including all your troops and all your available resources. Recovering from being zeroed can represent a tremendous outlay of time and resources.
For more detailed information on being Zeroed, consult our I’ve been Zeroed — now what guide.
Minimizing the damage
If you know you’re likely to be attacked, there are a number of steps you can take to make sure the actual damage is minimal.
You can activate a Peace Shield
. This is the easiest and simplest way to defend yourself—as soon as a Peace Shield is activated, it becomes impossible for other players to attack you, even if an enemy march is en route to your Keep when you use it. The limitation, of course, is the fact that it’s not always possible to use a Peace Shield! Supply can be limited, and certain circumstances can prevent you from using them—for example, you can’t use a Peace Shield if your army is currently marching toward an enemy Keep! If you do have a march en route to an enemy and you need to use a Peace Shield in an emergency, you’ll need to have a March Recall on hand. You can find more information about this in our PvP guide.
You can teleport away. This is probably the most cost-effective way to protect yourself. If an enemy march is on its way to your Keep and you use a Random Teleport
, the enemy army will arrive to find that your Keep has simply vanished, and will return home empty-handed. Of course, this depends on having a Random Teleport available, and you can’t use a Random Teleport if you have marches out!
You can keep casualties to a minimum by investing in Medic Tents
. This is critical! It costs four times as much to train a new troop as it does to heal a wounded one, but you can only heal a wounded troop if you have enough Medic Tents to keep them in! Building and upgrading a large number of Medic Tents is one of the most important investments you can make. If you have a few speed-ups available, you can sometimes even upgrade a few Medic Tents before the enemy march arrives!
You can protect your troops by sending them away. Troops that are on a march of course won’t have the opportunity to defend your Keep, but if you expect to be attacked by a player much more powerful than yourself, defending your Keep may not actually be worth the cost in troop casualties. In cases like those, send your army on a long march to go gather resources. Your enemy can’t slay troops that aren’t there to be slain.
How to keep it from happening again
You’ve been attacked, you’ve probably suffered from damage, and now you need some time and resources to lick your wounds and recover. What do you do now?
Most of the time, the key to preventing attacks is to hide in plain sight—that is, make yourself an unappealing target. There are a few reasons why another player might want to attack you, and if you’re careful, you can minimize most or all of them.
The only benefits to attacking another player are:
- They can take your resources.
- They can destroy your army.
- They can force you to relocate.
In most cases, you can make other players think twice about attacking you—even ones who are significantly more powerful than you are—by minimizing these factors as much as possible. Here are a few good ways to do so:
- Don’t hoard resources. Resources that are contained in your Storehouse are always safe, and enemy players can’t steal resources that are still contained in resource boxes in your inventory. If you keep your Storehouse upgraded, use your resources regularly, and only ever open resource boxes when you need them, you can keep from presenting a tempting target.
- Keep your army on the march. As mentioned above, they can’t kill troops that aren’t actually in your Keep, so sending your army on a long resource-gathering trip can keep your troops safe and make you less appealing to attack.
- Be careful who you antagonize. It may sound silly, but if you’re frequently attacking other Keeps, you’re going to attract attention—and not just from the people you’re attacking but from their friends and allegiances as well. Going on long-distance marches, especially to attack another player, can also attract attention! Enemy players can follow the trail back to your Keep, and you can’t use a Peace Shield to protect yourself while you’re attacking another player.
- Join an allegiance. There’s no better defense than having powerful friends. Even just wearing the tag of a well-known Allegiance is sometimes enough to ward off any curious enemies. Additionally, good Allegiances will typically have alliances with other groups of players which is great for reducing the total number of possibly enemies.
Special Note: PvP Events
As a general rule, if you don’t give enemy players a reason to attack you, you can consider yourself to be reasonably safe…with one exception: PvP Events.
When a PvP Event comes up on the calendar, players will receive additional rewards for participating in attacks on other players’ Keeps, meaning a player who might otherwise have left you alone will now have a reason to attack you. Because of this, it’s extra important that you keep an eye on the events calendar! If you know in advance when the PvP Events will be, you can take extra steps to make sure your Keep is safe, and save your Peace Shields (bubbles) for PvP weekends! You can follow up with our Events Window guide for more information.
Equipped with this information, you should be able to weather the storm the first time you get attacked. Before long, you’ll have built that fledgling army up into a powerful force to be reckoned with…and then your enemies will be trying to defend themselves from you!