By Theia

Ikariam Raiding Guide

Raiding

Raiding is the simple process of attacking another town in order to steal some of their resources.

The Basics

Building Units

In order to attack you must first have built some units in the early game these would be slingers, however as you advance through the military tech tree the units become more advanced and as a result far superior in combat.

In order to build some units you must first have a baracks these are available from the very beginning and don't require research. Costing only 35 wood it is an essential early game building required for defense and offense. Once the barrakes is built you can click on it to bring up the units menu you will only see a slinger. Slingers cost 40 wood each, as long as you have 40 wood you can create your first unit by typing 1 into the bar above the recruit tab. After this the slinger will start to be built and in 12 minutes the slinger will be ready.

Pre-attack Preperations

In order to carry the loot you will require a trade ship, to get these you need to build a trade port, this building is also available at the beginning of the game without needing research.

At the very beginning you will want to attack people without any units the easiest way to find out whether they have units or not is to check the highscores by selecting the tool bar and chooseing the Generals option you can see if they have any units or not. A 0 will indicate no units.

Also check whether you can afford to send your units to attack as the upkeep costs double when your units are in the field, in the beginning this is perhaps less important as the numbers of units being used is far less than later on in the game. Reaching 0 money will cause your military units and scientists to desert.

Attack Preperations

Slingers are very weak in order to use them and succesfully pillage your going to have to build at least 5 of them. This is because the town centre offers some defense whilst you won't see it on the combat report it's there. Now you need to select a target it is best right at the beginning to attack inactives on your own island, this is because you can use the resources to boost your own economy and they are unlikely to come back. As you progress through the game the number of inactives which are worth attacking drops so you'll have to pick your targets a bit more carefully.

The Attack

In order to attack you need to be in the island view. You can then click on a town, not your own, and a toolbar will appear to the left of the screen this will have an option to pillage the town. Select this and then a screen will come up telling you to select your troops. Select 5+ slingers and then press Pillage Town. On the same island it will take about 1 hour for the attack to reach the town, loot it and come home.

The Battle Report

The attacker only sees the last round of the battle, this makes the report a little confusing. Don't worry you are shown how mny units you lose, unless you lose all of them, where you get a blank report and you lose combat. Since you are using slingers at this point you can always expect to lose at least one. The important bit is knowing if you won and how many troops you lost.

Loot

The ammount of loot you get is decided by the number of trade ships you have available, but more importantly by the foreign towns trade port. The higher the trade port the more resources can be loaded in the 20 minute window you have.

• A town without a trade port can load 3 resources per minute.
• A town with a level 1 trade port can load 10 resources per minute
• A town with a level 2 trade port can load 30 resources per minute
• A town with a level 3 trade port can load 58 resources per minute
• etc

This is why you may only get 60 resources per an attack. You may get less if they have a large wharehouse and very few unprotected resources, but generally you can expect to get a minimum of 60 resources.

Advanced Techniques

As you progress through the game new units will appear, people will research how to build colonies and after the research of wealth the luxury resources are able to be collected. In addition to this, (after wealth) trade opens up, with the building of the trade post you can see who is selling there excess resources.After Wealth there is little point raiding inactives, your civilisation will require all 4 of the luxury resources you at the moment only have access to one. Wine and Sulphur are both essential for a raider:

• Wine allows your city to grow larger and as a result support more units.

• Sulphur allows for more advanced units such as the swordsman or phalanx, as well as this it is necessary for all war vessels.

New Units

Shortly after Wealth, you should have researched Professional Army (some will say Wine Press should be researched first but it's up to you). Professional Army will allow you to build Swordsmen and Phalanxes assumeing that the barraks is a high enough level. You should then use Phalanxes for defense and maybe attacking and swordsmen for attacking. 3 phalanxes can take an undefended city without loss 100% of the time with slingers you can always expect to lose 1.

Blockading

As trade opens up it becomes advisable to blockade ports before attacking. There are multiple reasons for this:

1. Emergence of fleets - With the emergence of fleets your units can't be sure of reaching the opponents town as the harbour may be guarded by war vessels which will turn your trade ships, carrying your troops, away. As well as this war vessels in the harbour can block your trade ships from reaching the town in order to carry the loot away.
2. Resource saving with trade ships - With trade now blooming, people will have trade ships of their own to carry resources with. Annoyingly these can be loaded up and sent off to another location to avoid the attack and then recalled. However if you blockade the harbour before the tradeships are sent, the trade ships can't get out of the city and the resources are trapped there as your ground troops come in to attack.

Blockades work in the same way as attacking simply choose the town and as long as you have some war ships you may blockade the enemies harbour. If the enemy has a fleet of it's own then the fleet may engage your own. If this happens you will get a sea battle, if you win you will then control your harbour and your trade ships can get through without a problem.

Blockades can be broken however by a foreign fleet wishing to aid the blockaded town, or even a fleet from the town itself. If the relieveing fleet is stronger than your own it will defeat and sink some, if not all, of your ships in the process of clearing the harbour. For this reason it is best to arrive with ground troops 5 minutes after the blockadeing fleet arrives. This will give you time to pull your fleet back if you don't win the sea battle but short enough to prevent your fleet from being attacked by a foreign fleet whilst your troops are still in the city.

Colonies

With the advance of expansion, colonies can and will be built. These colonies mean that it is much harder to judge whether there are troops in the city than before. This is because the colony owner will appear on the high scores as a single item and his armies could be spread between both towns or just in his main. Until the advance of espionage it becomes more important to attack with overwelming odds, just to be sure that you will break the defense of the city.

Espionage

With the advance of espionage you get the ability to plant spies these spies can:

• Show you the city view of the other players town - this includes the levels of all buildings including the trade port
• Find out how many resources are in the city
• Find out how many units, war machines, and war ships are in the city
• track fleet movement - also shows which units are on the ships
• Find out how much gold is in the treasury
• Find out what the last research was
• Monitor messages - allows you to see the subject, not content
• Find out if the player is online

Of the spies activities only a few are necessary for raiding, the others are useful and intresting but not need to know. Knowing the value of the baracks, shipyard, and trade port will tell you what type of units and ships you can expect to face as well as how much loot you can expect. How many units in the town will allow you to send adequate force to get it, as well as this you can take into account the defense bonus you can expect from the wall level. Finding out how many resources are in the city as well as the warehouse level will tell you how many resources are available for looting.

These aren't essential to attacking merely useful, and if your spy dies whilst attempting the mission don't worry too much. It is only a game so send as many troops as you think you need, the worst that can happen is that you have to rebuild.

Hope This Helps

Theia

This Raiding Guide has been written by Theia from the English board whom has given permission to publish it here at www.ikariamtips.com