Committing troops to a combat can be pretty nerve-wracking. Unless you’re fighting on your doorstep it could take hours or days to reach your target. The defender might receive reinforcements while you are on the march. You might even be attacking blind, without the luxury of waiting for a Scout report before sending troops. So, how do you know you aren’t sending your prized army into certain death?
You can’t know that. So, you need to reduce the risk. And that”s where Raid comes in.
If your settlement has researched Stratagem and then Raid, you can send off an army not on a regular Attack, but a Raid. (You’ll choose which order to issue when you give the order to the troops to set out.)
Raid gives your troops orders to engage in a limited manner only. Both they and their targets take only a percentage of the losses they would have taken in a full Attack. That means you cannot wipe out your opponent, but it also means that you won’t lose all your troops if he has called up tens of thousands of reinforcements.
This works best if you can hit a target with multiple waves of Raids.
So, the combat report below shows the report from my 3rd of three Raids on one occupying army: it was pretty scary when my first wave hit, but by the 3rd wave I’ve battered his troops and killed his Commanders, and so suffer very few casualties myself.
On the plus side:
- Raids reduce risk. If the enemy numbers are higher than you expect you still won’t be annihilated.
- Small players can still make a contribution to an Alliance’s military campaigns, as lots of small players can still chip away at a big player without endangering their full forces.
- And by using multiple waves from different cities, you can rebuild forces much faster: if I lose 4,000 troops from one city, that is a disaster, as it will take weeks to rebuild that army; but if I lose 1,000 each from 4 cities then, with all 4 producing troops, I’ll recover from the losses in one quarter of the time.
On the down side, however, Raids will never completely finish off an opponent. Someone still needs to send in an army with Attack orders to deal the killing blow.
Thanks for clarifying how raids work. I misunderstood it beforehand
btw do not forget to mention that raiding armies need a commander.
if you choose to specialize your commanders ( so not only T2 cav)
you can always send raid waves from different towns!