Battle tactics

[DeletedUser]

fair enough, although i'd say it's not the anti-timer that ruins this tactic, it's more an online enemy that ruins this tactic. where it is successful if when you know that there will be 250LS (as an eg) rerning to city xyz between 14:00:00 and 14:01:00 so you send an attack to land shorty after in the hope that the opponent is either offline or not very smart at all

I have to disagree that this tactic would not be viable without anti-timer. Without the anti-timer, you're pretty much certain to catch the light ships as they return. If your attack takes less than three hours, I'd say that the chance the defender will have many biremes to defend in time is at most 25%. So, every forth time you manage to catch someone on a return attack, you run the risk of your light ships fighting other light ships and biremes, which isn't terrible as long as you're not hugely outnumbered. Meanwhile, the rest of the time you will get really cheap battle points. If you're hugely outnumbered, it's would become somewhat less cost-effective, but the other times where you succeed would make up for it.

 

[DeletedUser]

Another few tips - now sure if I would call them battle tactics:

Timing variations: Since it can be hard to hit the right timing on an attack, it's an advantage to have ships that go at different speeds. If you normally use fast transport ships, you can build a single normal transport ship to include in an attack wave in a conquest attack. If you fail the timing, you can always try again later without the transport ship. If you also have a trireme, which is slightly faster than a transport ship, you get three attempts.

Tripwire: If you know that an attack on an ally of yours is imminent, send a transport ship with a single unit to support his city. This way you will be able to react instantly if something happens, even if he is offline. If your units die, you can spy and see whether a siege is ongoing. If it is, you can try to break it. Otherwise, you can just send cautionary units in case the attack was a precursor to a siege attack.