Stronghold Stuffing Strategy

[Tsamu]

This topic is not for anyone who wants to complain about pay to win or sandbagging. Both are facts of life. If you don't like that, please don't comment.

I want to discuss how to optimize stronghold stuffing to minimize costs and maximize inconvenience to the opposition. I have seen and used a number of strategies:

• stuff bottom 10 bases, forcing opponent's middle to drop and leaving no cover to hit your top half
• stuff one of your top 3 bases, who also forms 3 defensive coalitions, causing your opponents to not even hit it and hope 195 stars is enough (it won't be bwahaha)
• stuff a few strong defensive bases around #10 in your lineup, causing one of your opponents top 3 to hit down, and disrupting their normal attack strategy
• stuff 10 to 20 seemingly random bases so your opponents are nervous about attacking any of your bases

Does anyone use other strategies? Do you have plans for when you fight an alliance who has stuffed strongholds?

 

[Tsamu]

I should mention that the first strategy, stuffing the bottom 10 bases, while effective, is one of the nastiest things an alliance can do. Your opponent's weakest players can't get any stars, so no loot for them, and you force middle order players (industrial, Enlightenment, Gunpowder) to hit 2 or even 3 ages down, so they get seriously reduced loot.

 

[No Angel]

Lol I love the last point, making opponents nervous. Having only 10 guys in wars that means I stuff everyone's bases

 

[Tsamu]

I didn't include stuffing every base because that is expensive when you are fighting a 30 or 40 war

 

[Mountainking]

Stuffing the bottom bases used to be a good strategy but now with 1AC per chest, it's becoming expensive. So just better allocate to 1-2 def bases and be done with it.

 

[yemen]

Each troop chest has always contained only one armored car card each. You get one each of the 6 cards, with a small chance at getting 2 of one of them instead of just one. So I don't think the cost has changed at all.

 

[Tsamu]

Armored cars are not the only effective army to put in low level strongholds, but I have to admit they are the best. Of the other troop chest armies, Impi are good because of their numbers and attack bonus, and pirates aren't bad because of their speed. If you are willing to use armies you paid for, elephant archers and flamethrower tanks are excellent. But as Mountainking says, it gets expensive.

 

[BeerMan]

We only fill Maori bases, if any at all. Our low level players are skilled enough to handle filled SH on the opposition, so we assume the same of our opponent and choose to conserve.

 

[sileepuppee]

It was only ever one per with a chance for 2. What changed for a while was the rubie cost of the chest. While I have gotten a decent amount of 2x troop cards, it's always the sepoys which I never really use.

 

[sileepuppee]

Because we have a mix of people that can't win without troop cards, we have a really low req for people to donate troop cards. We only require council and co leaders to donate sometimes like 1-2 so that we can keep costs down. And this has pretty much spawned our strategy. Of the 25 people in war, we nearly only use troop cards to potentially defend 4-5 bases but usually only 2. One other high lvl atomic and myself go full def with armored cars and if there's a event, maybe an earned ele archer, not a paid for one. We do this because we can also attack fairly well without offensive coals. That's really it and just by the score, it seems like we are barely winning. It will generally be 125-(110-122) but a win is a win. More importantly the time is different but 10-15 minutes. We will randomly sprinkle in some troops once in a while but for the most part, that above plan is what we stick to. Better to use troop cards to get a 5 star vic with a better time. It's really just about scanning the opponent and you can almost decide from there. We've fought a lot of wars with russian alliances and they stack ele archers from 1-25 so that can be discouraging but we still pull off the victory because our 2 bases with def holds.

 

[sileepuppee]

Armored cars are the best overall just because of the dmg, hp, and their speed. But going into the low lvl bases, probably flamers would be second. The other troops mentioned aren't bad either but they can be killed with barrage. Impis are much better used for offense. I think overall if it's not elephant archers going into the lowest bases (Not that I condone doing that being that I don't pay for stuff in game) you shouldn't use troop cards for them. Just my opinion and kind of sickens me to see flame tanks and ele archers in sand bags but I guess if they want to spend, spend.