Help, I can't defend to enough to upgrade barracks

[woolybugger]

Playing Japanese in the iron age and I have everything maxed out except for the barracks.
I have a mostly defensive layout with lvl 3 walls protecting mills, market, farms, defensive buildings and town center.

First, I keep getting raided by classical age attackers and lose substantial amount of loot.
They are just too strong, with horsemen, javeliners, and huge array of troops.
Even my catapult, lvl 3 garrison, lvl4 towers cannot defend.

So instead of farming, let's just raid and get everything I need right?
But both my barracks only get me 35 troop spaces, and mercenary camp gets javeliners.
After 1 attack, the mercenaries are gone, and 35 troop spaces, after a few horsemen, can only beat low-loot easy bases.
Keep losing troops, rebuilding, seems I need to string together 10+ victories in a row to get 150,000 food, too long ..... log out, raided ....

I can't farm my way to upgrade barracks, even if I'm patient enough to wait a couple days.
But I can't raid my way because I need better barracks.
Chicken and egg problem.

Can I progress without spending any money on crowns?

 

[dbukalski]

ive progressed to gunpowder age. i have spent $20 but that didnt get me there. probably got me there 4 days faster. so yes u can progress in this game without spending money. but ive raided a ton each day. if ur having trouble in iron age then ur strategy is weak

 

[dbukalski]

sorry for derail but ive been trying to gather this information for a week now and running out of time for gunpowder age upgrade..............does anyone know what % hp taj mahal gives to defense buildings? also what size AOE does taj mahal use? 2 barracks like angkor wat? 1.5 barracks like acropolis?.............last question. what size AOE does versailles use?........please post responses at this topic......thank you......... https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexon...-angkor-vs-taj

 

[twlabc123]

Iron age has very limited walls. You don't have to protect your town center and farms (as long as you collect them once a while). Put those buildings outside your walls. Using the walls only for markets, mills and catapult. Also make sure you divide them by putting them in different wall cells (Otherwise, breaking one walls means all your defense are gone).

Actually, I don't think you need to max iron age buildings. Upgrading to new age doesn't raise the cost of your buildings and you don't suffer loot penalty in this game like coc. Your opponent is matched by your medals, not your age. Just try to go to classical as soon as possible, you get one more barracks, which means stronger army and more loot. Then go back and upgrade the current barracks.

 

[woolybugger]

I had spent over an hour raiding/retraining just to get to 50,000 food. Pitiful return for all that time/effort.
Each base I attack returns only 3000-8000 food max.
And with only 35 troop spaces, can't attack very many of them.
There was no way I was going to log out and farm the rest - sure to lose them.

So I spent some crowns to cover the difference.
Now I'm able to upgrade both barracks and have a better chance of getting 100,000 food to push to classical.
Thanks for the advice.

 

[Lissanne]

You could always post a picture of your base here for advise on it's layout. Also, if you aren't in an alliance you should join one for the few extra defensive troops you can then request. If you have been raided and have a nice long peace treaty consider raiding barbarian cities instead of other players. This won't take you out of treaty and gives you time to let res accumulate. You also might consider losing raids on purpose to keep your medal count low -- I know this would pair you with smaller players with smaller res ammounts, but you can point your troops to take out only the defense and main res buildings then end the battle without worrying about destroying everything. You won't lose many troops if you are careful so they rebuild fast, plus those low players are less likely to clear you out if they decide to retaliate.