Badly performed revenge attacks are one of the most noticeable mistakes of a newbie. Before we go any further, we need to think about what a revenge attack does, and why you attack people.

A revenge attack allows you to attack someone who surrenders to you. Instead of surrendering, they fight you. That's it. Nothing else happens in a revenge attack. You can only revenge someone who has attacked you in the last 16 hours.

There are two reasons to attack people:
1) You want to steal their gold or resources.
2) You want to kill them

(Two additional reasons removed as no longer relevant - Worms)

Let's look at each of these in turn:

1) You want to steal their gold or resources.

If this is what you want to do, then you need to perform a raid (for resources) or a castle attack (for gold). You want to go in, get the goods, and get out again with minimal damage to yourself.

Now - does a revenge attack help you do this? No. You get no gold and no resources for a revenge attack. If you want to get gold and resources in order to upgrade your buildings, a revenge attack is a total waste of your time.

2) You want to kill them.

If you have found someone you don't like - maybe they have been stealing all your stuff, maybe they have killed your own troops, maybe you just don't like what their clan stands for, then go and kill them! You will still be using the same attacks as usual, but now the focus is on "How many troops have I killed", not on "How much gold did I get". For this, you need to have plenty of gold yourself so you can afford to buy back your mercenries on the black market afterwards.

In order to kill people, you have to fight them. If they surrender, you kill no-one, so you want them to fight, not surrender. If you're not sure whether they will surrender, go and read this guide to surrendering.

You have three types of attack to use:
Raid
Castle attack
Revenge (if they attacked you recently)

- If you do a raid, all your attack hits the defender's troops, so you do a lot of damage.
- If you do a castle attack, some of your attack is absorbed by the defender's walls, so you do less damage (see post below). You can improve your chances with siege weapons. Siege knocks down the defender's walls so that your troops do more damage.
- If you do a revenge attack, remember this is exactly the same as a castle attack execpt you get no gold. So again, if the defender has a strong castle wall, you will not do much damage unless you have strong siege weapons.

A revenge is always the FINAL attack you do on someone. The only good thing about a revenge attack is that no matter how dead your enemy is, no matter how tired his troops are, his HAS to fight. He can't ever surrender to a revenge attack.

So the first main rule is that if you can do a raid or a castle attack, and they don't surrender, then always do these instead - after all, you get a bit of extra resources or gold and the damage is the same. Only revenge when you enemy surrenders to all your other attacks.

Now there are some other things to bear in mind. Sometimes these might mean you don't want to do a revenge at all, sometimes they might just mean that it will cost you a lot more than it costs them so you have to be rich!
- If you don't have much siege, you do the most damage from doing a raid. If you only have enough gold/turns to do one attack, do a raid, not a castle attack and not a revenge.
- If you have lots of siege, you may do most damage from a castle attack instead. So if you are a heavy siege player, you may want to do castle attacks first.
- If you want to do an effective revenge, it helps if their walls are destroyed. There are two ways to do this - either buy some siege weapons and destroy their walls yourself by doing castle attacks first, or find a friend who has siege weapons and ask them to attack for you first. Then revenge after their walls are broken and they are surrendering.
- If their walls are still strong or they have good defensive siege, you will often lose more troops than they do! This might be ok if you want to harm them at whatever cost, but if you revenge on someone with a strong castle, don't be surprised if they lose 10 troops but you lose 28!
- When you revenge on someone, they always fight at a minimum of 50 percent stamina. So if you have 100 troops and they have 400 troops, then even if they are completely tired and surrender to your castle attacks, remember that as soon as you use a revenge attack, they will defend with 50 percent stamina, so will in effect have 200 troops of strength to attack back with. So again if you just want to harm them at whatever cost, then go for it, but don't be surprised if again you lose loads more troops than they do!
- You are revenging to do damage. Make sure before you revenge that you have bought back all your mercs on the black market, that your troops are on 100 percent stamina, and that you use a full ten-turn attacks. You only get one chance to do a revenge so don't cock it up!

Hopefully that will help you to use a revenge attack well when you want to kill someone, and will help you to ignore the revenge option if it doesn't help your cause.

So, before you revenge, think:
- Do I want to kill troops? Answer must be Yes.
- Is killing this person more important than stealing their gold? Answer must be Yes.
- Do we both have plenty of troops - so that I am actually going to kill some of their troops? Answer must be Yes.
- Have I already tried raids and castle attacks until they surrender to me? Answer must be Yes.
- Have I or my clan knocked down their walls with siege first? Answer must be Yes unless you want to lose more troops than they do.
- Are they a similar size or smaller than me? Answer must be Yes unless you want to lose more troops than they do.
- Is my stamina on 100 percent? Answer must be Yes
- Have I bought all my mercs from the black market? Answer must be Yes.
- Have I got enough money to buy my mercs back after I do this attack? Answer must be Yes unless you want to leave yourself vulnerable to a counter attack.
- Am I going to use ten turns? Answer must be Yes.
- Have I got enough food for ten turns? Answer must be Yes.

- Am I going to have a big grin on my face once I perform a truely successful revenge attack and destroy my opponent? Answer should definitely be Yes!

psymann

Defences and the effect they have on your attack.

The formula for defences hasn't changed since v.1 - one of the few things to have survived since the early days!

The key formula is:

The attacker attacks at [100/(1+(WALLLEVEL*0.2))]% strength.

So if the person you are attacking has a walled fort with moat (level 5 defence) then your troops will attack with 100/1+(5*0.2) = 100/1+1 = 100/2 = 50% strength.

So if your troops do 124000 damage in a raid, they will do just 62000 damage in a castle attack against a fully-repaired walled fort with moat.

The full list for those of you unable to reach for a calculator, or unable to do this in your head, is below. Tent is level 0.

So if you have 1000 troops and you do a revenge attack one someone with 800 troops and a full citadel, you will attack with the equivalent of 250 troops; they will defend with the equivalent of 400 troops. It may not be the enjoyable bloodbath you anticipate... ;)

psymann

Hey psy, one comment: if you find somebody whom you can (and want to) slave raid, and we're in the troop-killing stage of the game, go ahead and revenge first. Remember, for each one, or maximally two troops you kill, you'll get an extra slave.

Other than that, great post, as usual. Will you at least keep some information hidden? :P

Yeah some of it - this is all basic stuff though that all the people at the top have known for ages. I'm not exactly giving away trade secrets here... there are a LOT more tactics that are less well-known and not so relevant to newbies... and I am happy to leave those for people to work out for themselves :D

The defense formula was posted by Bhaal in about May 2005 - I think it's only fair for newcomers to benefit from that knowledge as well as those of us around back then.

And it always makes me sad to see some of the pitiful revenge attempts on the lower pages... I feel I have to do something!!

And you are right that revenges before slave raids can allow you to get a few more slaves if you can kill troops. Thanks.

psymann

How does this formula take into account the wall damages?


Thanks for a great post psyman!

Wall damage is added in afterwards. So if your wall is 30% damaged, it only works with 70% of the strength.


So say you have a half-demolished keep.

The attacker should do 45.5% damage. Instead they do 45.5 + (1/2 * (100-45.5)) = 72.75% damage

Or to look at it from the other angle, a keep should reduce an attack by 54.5%. Instead it reduces it by half this, by just 27.25%. So the the remaining 72.75% of the attacker's strength gets through.


As far as I'm aware, that's how it works. Bhaal will correct if not.

psymann