Strategy & Note to Neighbors

ws_7 wrote:
So, to throw this out there. Maybe this deserves its own topic but let's start the discussion here.

Since the benefits of a succesful attack vs unsuccesfull attack are WAY larger than successfull defense vs unsuccessful defense (a destroyed building), wouldn't it be best if the general consensus would be to NOT DEFEND YOUR BUILDINGS UNTIL IT IS DESTROYED. If everyone does this, the net gain would be much larger than when everyone would hurry to defend their buildings. However, it would require the large majority of players to do this for this to work.

How I would see it is as follows:

-Everyone can attack as many neighbours as they can with 1 nerd per attack. The neighbours let this one nerd succeed, resulting in bonuses for himself. Since we can now send just 1 nerd we can attack more buildings. Say I attack my neighbours 5 buildings with 1 nerd each. If he lets my attacks succeed he collects 5* 10 elixer and 5* 5 gold. By not defending he loses 10 elixer and 5 gold per building, so that would be a total of 50 elixer and 25 gold won out of a maximum of 100 elixer and 50 gold, therefore equating to a 'loss' of 50 elixer and 25 gold.

I myself however will gain 18 elixer and 8 gold from a successful attack. If my neighbour defends I only get 5 elixer and 1 gold. Therefore, by allowing my attacks to succeed my neighbours make sure I 'win' 65 elixer and 35 gold.

Ergo, by allowing the attacks to succeed the defender 'loses' less than the attacker 'wins' (a difference of 15 elixer and 10 gold per neighbour/attacker per day).

If everyone would do this it would benefit the community as a whole! It does however obviously require you to resist the urge of tapping your buildings under attack.

Am I missing something in this strategy?

For the nerds out there (pun intended), this is the prisoner's dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma)
If everyone cooperate (not defending attacks) we get a higher payout than if everyone defends. But since everyone only thinks about himself, we defend attacks because no matter what the other person is doing, our payout is better by defending the attacks.

Elwe344 wrote:

ws_7 wrote:
So, to throw this out there. Maybe this deserves its own topic but let's start the discussion here.

Since the benefits of a succesful attack vs unsuccesfull attack are WAY larger than successfull defense vs unsuccessful defense (a destroyed building), wouldn't it be best if the general consensus would be to NOT DEFEND YOUR BUILDINGS UNTIL IT IS DESTROYED. If everyone does this, the net gain would be much larger than when everyone would hurry to defend their buildings. However, it would require the large majority of players to do this for this to work.

How I would see it is as follows:

-Everyone can attack as many neighbours as they can with 1 nerd per attack. The neighbours let this one nerd succeed, resulting in bonuses for himself. Since we can now send just 1 nerd we can attack more buildings. Say I attack my neighbours 5 buildings with 1 nerd each. If he lets my attacks succeed he collects 5* 10 elixer and 5* 5 gold. By not defending he loses 10 elixer and 5 gold per building, so that would be a total of 50 elixer and 25 gold won out of a maximum of 100 elixer and 50 gold, therefore equating to a 'loss' of 50 elixer and 25 gold.

I myself however will gain 18 elixer and 8 gold from a successful attack. If my neighbour defends I only get 5 elixer and 1 gold. Therefore, by allowing my attacks to succeed my neighbours make sure I 'win' 65 elixer and 35 gold.

Ergo, by allowing the attacks to succeed the defender 'loses' less than the attacker 'wins' (a difference of 15 elixer and 10 gold per neighbour/attacker per day).

If everyone would do this it would benefit the community as a whole! It does however obviously require you to resist the urge of tapping your buildings under attack.

Am I missing something in this strategy?

For the nerds out there (pun intended), this is the prisoner's dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma)
If everyone cooperate (not defending attacks) we get a higher payout than if everyone defends. But since everyone only thinks about himself, we defend attacks because no matter what the other person is doing, our payout is better by defending the attacks.

The payoff isn't worth it. But... what comes after the $38,000 gold? Anything? Rumors? :wink:

This turned into a good lively discussion! I think it really illustrates how smart the game mechanics are this time, as there is no right/wrong approach, and many different ways to play. I should point out that I am def not ignoring my neighbors! I am just going to focus on a combined approach of attacking forum and real-life friends and random attacks. There are not enough nerds to hit every neighbor, which is the case for every event post last Halloween. To Sandwedgeking's point about "randos" 75% of my neighbors are randos that sent me blind friend requests...which BTW, I will be purging non-players soon (if you're on this forum PM me if you want to be TSTO BFFs). I will however, continue using only 1 nerd per town and spreading the love with that - It seems to work for me. Plus - It is fun to see who attacks you from your recognizable friends and return revenge!

I also suggest sticking to the red dice for random castle attacks. I love the idea about putting out some extra houses for the event. I have never house farmed - but I have a small plot of land where I could.

One note to everyone that thinks this event will be easy to complete. While that might be the case, I also anticipate 10 boards of complaints and calls for extensions towards the end. This event is going to get progressively harder...The dialogue alludes to that and its illustrated in the gold increase between each personal prize. I cant find the list, but I think Wizard Marge was 5,500 gold. At that point you've unlocked half the prizes - but the next prize is almost double at 9500. You'll also need elixir if youre going to have decent looking castles. Just something to think about.

So the big question becomes - is everyone having fun? That's what matters.

The gold requirement after the first several prizes does go up pretty steeply, which could slow the game down in the middle, but there are also going to be increases in the rates of production for gold and elixirs. As the castles get upgraded, you get more and more nerds to use, plus the new skins have tasks that produce gold and elixir. Guess we'll just have to wait a few more days and see how things progress.

Holy crap. This is too complicated.

So far i understand to use the red dice on random castles. Everyone seems to agree on that.

So yesterday i sent all my nerds individually to neighbor's castles for maximum return on revenge.

Today i woke up to only my castle needing defense. No one attacked me all night? Aw. I had a lot of handshakes though.

So idk but my strategy seems not so good.

ws_7 wrote:
So, to throw this out there. Maybe this deserves its own topic but let's start the discussion here.

Since the benefits of a succesful attack vs unsuccesfull attack are WAY larger than successfull defense vs unsuccessful defense (a destroyed building), wouldn't it be best if the general consensus would be to NOT DEFEND YOUR BUILDINGS UNTIL IT IS DESTROYED. If everyone does this, the net gain would be much larger than when everyone would hurry to defend their buildings. However, it would require the large majority of players to do this for this to work.

How I would see it is as follows:

-Everyone can attack as many neighbours as they can with 1 nerd per attack. The neighbours let this one nerd succeed, resulting in bonuses for himself. Since we can now send just 1 nerd we can attack more buildings. Say I attack my neighbours 5 buildings with 1 nerd each. If he lets my attacks succeed he collects 5* 10 elixer and 5* 5 gold. By not defending he loses 10 elixer and 5 gold per building, so that would be a total of 50 elixer and 25 gold won out of a maximum of 100 elixer and 50 gold, therefore equating to a 'loss' of 50 elixer and 25 gold.

I myself however will gain 18 elixer and 8 gold from a successful attack. If my neighbour defends I only get 5 elixer and 1 gold. Therefore, by allowing my attacks to succeed my neighbours make sure I 'win' 65 elixer and 35 gold.

Ergo, by allowing the attacks to succeed the defender 'loses' less than the attacker 'wins' (a difference of 15 elixer and 10 gold per neighbour/attacker per day).

If everyone would do this it would benefit the community as a whole! It does however obviously require you to resist the urge of tapping your buildings under attack.

Am I missing something in this strategy?

I agree with you 100% on this, and hope we stumble onto each others towns (I am sure we would recognize the strategy) I usually leave one or two destroyed houses to illustrate that it can be done in my town, and because if nothing else it makes it more tempting for any random (good or bad) to attack me (free gold and elixir!). I built a bunch of houses for the event - I'll just sell them later.

The crazy part, and where I think the resistance comes in is that this strategy is almost 100% opposite of the strategy EA has made us use in this game since day one. I think the clues can be found in the dialogue mocking Friendship Points - The best strategy for the game under Homer Barbarian will be to do opposite of what normally works. I'll still visit neighbors when I can, but only because they are great neighbors and I'll want to see how they are doing / help them. Otherwise, I will let my buildings (castle excepted) be destroyed before I defend them. I will use the revenge button, and pay attention to the strategy I see in other towns as I look for other towns with the same strategy.

4junk3000 wrote:
Holy crap. This is too complicated.

So far i understand to use the red dice on random castles. Everyone seems to agree on that.

So yesterday i sent all my nerds individually to neighbor's castles for maximum return on revenge.

Today i woke up to only my castle needing defense. No one attacked me all night? Aw. I had a lot of handshakes though.

So idk but my strategy seems not so good.

Did you go to Krustyland first? You may have ... ... the glitch... ... .

Or your neighbors might not have seen your attacks yet.

4junk3000 wrote:
Holy crap. This is too complicated.

So far i understand to use the red dice on random castles. Everyone seems to agree on that.

So yesterday i sent all my nerds individually to neighbor's castles for maximum return on revenge.

Today i woke up to only my castle needing defense. No one attacked me all night? Aw. I had a lot of handshakes though.

I did this, as well, with the same result. However, I've been trying (and tracking) a new approach today.
Every neighbor I go to, at leave at least 2 nerds, attacking at least 2 buildings, preferably close together, for two reasons: 1, I assume that if they see my name twice in close succession, they're more likely to notice and therefore more likely to respond. 2, if I'm generous enough to attack more than one building, they're more likely to feel obligated to reciprocate, even if only a little (this second point is actually one of the textbook strategies in Prisoner's Dilemma games).

So far, the results have been good:
I have 77 neighbors; each neighbor has received at least 2 attacks from me, and in many cases more.
In 5 hours, 12 neighbors have responded (obviously a lot of people aren't sitting around on a Friday afternoon like me and collecting TSTO CoC data).
Of those 12, all but 3 revenged themselves on my town with one attack (rather than the 2+ I used).
Of the 3 who attacked more than one building, 2 attacked 5 buildings, the max (and I responded in kind, maxing out).

So far, not bad. Certainly much, much better than I did with randomly attacking towns. And I really do prefer to help neighbors, some of whom I've had since I started playing. Of course, maybe the number/location of attacks doesn't matter at all and it's all really just random, to a degree. Thankfully, I'm not an economist or statistician, 'cause this event would drive me nuts.

Sorry so long.

some random towns look pretty banged up...houses destroyed and not cleaned up yet, cletus's farm empty etc...i'd wager that those are very casual players and it's worthwhile attacking 5 houses if possible :D good chance that the attacks will succeed

i might make it a strategy to keep hitting the random town button to find these towns and only attack these towns

I have been using my nerds to attack my friends only, and the dice to attack random town's castles only.

Question: Do different castles have different payouts?

I have only attacked this first castle, the barbarian castle, I think. I have never attacked a recycled castle or whatever the 3rd level castle is called. Also, I have made my rounds through all of my friends, attacking as many with nerds as I could, but I have not received any free donuts from visiting neighbors since this event started. Has anyone else noticed this?