Build a defendable position
Keep troops outside your attacks as a reserve against a second front, betrayal, or reverse push. The attack percentage is adjustable, but no single percentage is always correct.
Use terrain to raise the attacker’s cost. The constants are Plains at mag 80 and speed 16.5, Highland at 100 and 20, and Mountain at 120 and 25; higher mag increases attacker losses and higher speed slows territorial advance in the formula, so Mountain is costlier to attack than Plains.
A defender-owned Defense Post covers tiles within 30 tiles and multiplies mag by 5 and speed by 3. Only one qualifying post is used by the current check, so overlapping posts do not stack that multiplier.
Prefer a manageable frontier: a wide border creates many possible contact tiles and can expose several counterattacks, while a narrow neck concentrates the fight and increases the value of a correctly placed Defense Post.
Recovering after pressure or overextension
- How do I recover after sending too many troops?
- Lower the attack slider, wait for troop growth, and leave a reserve on home tiles. This prevents a captured Bot or other expansion from leaving your troop bar dangerously low.
- Which attack should I stop first?
- Stop a push when it has reached the intended line, entered expensive terrain without a matching objective, exposed a second border, or lost the force advantage that justified it.
- Where should the first Defense Post go?
- Place it where its 30-tile range covers a route the opponent must actually use. Favor a short frontier, important structure, or junction instead of a visually central point without useful contact.
- When is a defensive counterattack safe?
- Counterattack when one-for-one cancellation meaningfully reduces the incoming threat and still leaves you with a defendable troop reserve.