Ikariam: How To Optimize The Town Wall
The Town Wall can give you a very useful defense bonus is properly mantain. However, it can also give your enemies an attacking bonus. To prevent the later and improve the first, you need to understand its inner working. Basically you need to compare your Town Wall level with your Town Hall level and keep them in sync. You can also use your enemies walls against themselves taking advantage of ram units. Lets start by looking at the Ikariam town wall formulas:
If you want to learn how to properly build an integrated Ikariam defense, you can read: Ikariam: How To Defend Your Towns Guide
Update: The Ikariam Town Wall formulas have been recently changed. This site is showing updated information here. In short, the changes have nullified the big defense bonus one could obtain when underdeveloping the town hall on purpouse, thus, creating a mini-fortress and reaching huge defense bonus of over 1000%. Now the bonus is more lineal, as the formulas show:
Town Hall > Wall : % Def = (10 * WallLvl^2) / HallLvl
Wall > Town Hall : % Def = 10 * WallLvl^2
Where:
- Def is the Defense bonus, in % over the defending forces.
- HallLvl is the Town Hall level.
- WallLvl is the Town Wall level.
From the formula one can easily see that overupgrading your Town Hall while leaving the wall at low level will put the town in a very vulnerable state. The wall should be always at least level paired with the Town Hall, for maximum defense, go and overupgrade it.
It may seems like a waste of resources and time (it takes long to upgrade the wall) when in peace time. However, you will soon miss it if you start beeing attacked. Try to think of the Town Wall as an investment. You pay for its upgrade once but you enjoy its benefits indefinitely. Think about this scenario: You have 100 phalanx, you have to pay them everyday to defend your town, even if they dont actually engage into battle. Your town is level 20 and has no wall, so you get no bonus. Upgrading your Wall to level 20 will surely take you many days and resources, but once you have done the investment, you will have a nice 200% defense bonus. Now instead of having to mantain 100 phalanxes you can just be fine with 33! Remember that a 200% bonus doesnt double your defense, (100% does) it triples it! allowing you to cut from 100 to just 33 phalanx. Imagine how much money you will save in a week, a month or 3 months. Or, you can stick to 100 phalanx, knowing that they will defense as fiercely as 300 would.
I call that empowering your troops. Check this chart:
(h = hall lvl and w = wall lvl)
| Town Hall lvl / Wall lvl yields Def % bonus | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # | 1h | 2h | 3h | 4h | 5h | 6h | 7h | 8h | 9h | 10h |
| 1w | 10% | 5% | 3% | 2% | 2% | 1% | 1% | 1% | 1% | 1% |
| 2w | 20% | 20% | 13% | 10% | 8% | 6% | 5% | 5% | 4% | 4% |
| 3w | 30% | 30% | 30% | 22% | 18% | 15% | 12% | 11% | 10% | 9% |
| 4w | 40% | 40% | 40% | 40% | 32% | 26% | 22% | 29% | 17% | 16% |
| 5w | 50% | 50% | 50% | 50% | 50% | 41% | 35% | 31% | 27% | 25% |
| 6w | 60% | 60% | 60% | 60% | 60% | 60% | 51% | 45% | 40% | 36% |
| 7w | 70% | 70% | 70% | 70% | 70% | 70% | 70% | 61% | 54% | 49% |
| 8w | 80% | 80% | 80% | 80% | 80% | 80% | 80% | 80% | 71% | 64% |
| 9w | 90% | 90% | 90% | 90% | 90% | 90% | 90% | 90% | 90% | 81% |
| 10w | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
Holes
Town Walls have a posible maximum number of holes equals to its level. A level 5 wall can have a maximum of 5 holes, and a level 19 will have 19 holes at max. The attacking army can break holes in your wall using units with the ram skill. Each hole will yield a 10% attack bonus for the attacking army. The units with ram skill are:
- Ram
- Catapult
- Mortar
Keep in mind that if your wall lvl is lower than your town hall level, your enemy can get a bigger bonus from the wall than you, thus, using your own wall against you!
Example:
Your Town hall is level 10 and your wall only 2. The Wall gives you only a 4% defense bonus. At the same time, a level 2 wall can have two holes. Your enemy attacks you using rams and sucesfully breaks two holes. Each gives a 10% bonus so he gets a total of 20% attacking bonus while you are only getting 4% defense bonus from your wall.
He is using your wall, that took you time and resources to build against you! From this you can see that it's better to have no wall at all than have a low level one.
If you want to learn how to properly build an integrated Ikariam defense, you can read: Ikariam: How To Defend Your Towns Guide