NPC Raiding / Attacking Advice

Updated to provide tips / tactics

NPC Raiding is most effective with indians. The other classes may not want to focus on raiding until they have amassed an army of actual attack units (farms/ponchos dont seem to cut it)

Indian
If you are indian you want to amass a force of archers (5-6) as quick as possible and start raiding Mexican or Indian NPC villages. Many of the low scoring mexican/indian villages will not have ramparts and they almost definitely will not have units. This will minimize your casualties (near 0) for the most part. Slowly build up your raiding party until you are pulling in a decent amount of resources per raid. You will want to focus heavily on clay and wood as indians use a majority of these resources. Once you have around 20 archers going out, you will be pulling in about 1100 resources per raid. Avoid cowboy settlements. Note that night time protection does not apply to NPC villages.

Mexican
I do not play mexican but from what I have read, it appears that Ponchos are subpar at raiding, but not as bad as farmers. Amass 10-12 ponchos before raiding and focus on abandoned indian villages or low level mexican villages if at all possible. Your resource focus should be iron. You may want to hold off on raiding until you are built up a bit more. But considering how large of a resource income raiding produces i still think it would be wise to push for a raiding army.

Cowboy
It appears that farmers are terrible at raiding and it really isnt worth it to build a raiding party out of them. Focus on getting to soldiers before raiding.

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If anyone that is mexican/cowboy wants to write something up, feel free to do so and i will update this post.

Anything over 10 archers or so will be able to attack NPCs safely. Hell you can hit 31 point villages with only 10 archers too.

Difference between attacking and raiding:

Raids are used to collect resources and minimize loss of unit life.

Attacking will usually result in either all of your units or all of the defender's units being killed.

Either way you end up looting stuff with whatever units survive I believe.

Anything over 10 archers or so will be able to attack NPCs safely. Hell you can hit 31 point villages with only 10 archers too.

Difference between attacking and raiding:

Raids are used to collect resources and minimize loss of unit life.

Attacking will usually result in either all of your units or all of the defender's units being killed.

Either way you end up looting stuff with whatever units survive I believe.

so really there is no point in attacking npc villages at this point, just raiding resources

I don't think there's a difference either way for NPCs - attacking will still bring back whatever your troops find in the village. It becomes more of an issue when facing other players with actual defense in place.

and whats the general consensus on when to move on to a new target?

when you get less than 100 per resource from a village?

I've been hitting everything in my area hard - now that I have to spread out to further targets (35-40min each way) I find it isn't worth it to send my army out there to just collect less than at least 1/2 of my troops' max capacity of resources.

I'm currently swinging out to targets 45 min away to collect 500 of each resource and letting the targets closer to me rebuild their stockpiles a bit. Once you start using a bigger army you start emptying villages quickly - default storage is only like 1000/resource so 2, maybe 3 hits is all you need before the place is dried up.

You could split up the army and hit the diminished villages with smaller groups of troops but then you run the risk of loosing troops due to random bad luck.

I've been hitting everything in my area hard - now that I have to spread out to further targets (35-40min each way) I find it isn't worth it to send my army out there to just collect less than at least 1/2 of my troops' max capacity of resources.

I'm currently swinging out to targets 45 min away to collect 500 of each resource and letting the targets closer to me rebuild their stockpiles a bit. Once you start using a bigger army you start emptying villages quickly - default storage is only like 1000/resource so 2, maybe 3 hits is all you need before the place is dried up.

You could split up the army and hit the diminished villages with smaller groups of troops but then you run the risk of loosing troops due to random bad luck.

how are you determining which villages have resources? Both that I have hit have only resulted in 85/85/85/75 from each village (6 archer raids). Or is that the appropriate amount for 6 55kg carrying archers?

how are you determining which villages have resources? Both that I have hit have only resulted in 85/85/85/75 from each village (6 archer raids). Or is that the appropriate amount for 6 55kg carrying archers?

6 x 55kg capacity = 330 total resources.

330 resources / 4 types = ~82.5 of each resource so yea you're all but maxing out your guys.

How do you tell if it is nighttime or not when you attack?

0-7 am server time

what do the red flags on other villages mean?

That they are cowboys. =P

Just launched my first attack against a fairly active player (45 points, cowboy). I'm curious to see how my 40 archers will do against him.

Will post my battle report when it hits in 42 min.

Edit: Damnit - forgot to switch to attack. So my first hit will be a raid followed by a real attack.

That they are cowboys. =P

oh haha i am an idiot
didnt even notice it was only on the tents :P

I don't think anyone has any defense in this game.

45 point village just out of protection - Raid
40 Archers
0 losses, 524 W/C/I, 629 Food.

:/

I just lost 2 archers

One a 10 archer raid to a village that i had raided about 10 times with no losses

and one a 4 archer raid on a village i was just checking out to see what it had.

Oh btw - if my dudes dont max out their carrying capacity, does that give a pretty good indication that its not worth attacking again?

i just brought back 1 under the carrying capacity and dont want to bother hitting it again if i won't be getting any more resources.

I don't think anyone has any defense in this game.

45 point village just out of protection - Raid
40 Archers
0 losses, 524 W/C/I, 629 Food.

must be nice I have 5 archers

Yeah, I sent my first archer to an NPC and he died. I built 3 more and sent a couple of 3-archer raids out. After the third raid, one died. I built another and again, another one died. I can say that 3 isn't enough for the less then 10 points NPCs.
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I am going with 5 next time and see if that is enough for these little settlements.

Yeah, I sent my first archer to an NPC and he died. I built 3 more and sent a couple of 3-archer raids out. After the third raid, one died. I built another and again, another one died. I can say that 3 isn't enough for the less then 10 points NPCs.
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I am going with 5 next time and see if that is enough for these little settlements.

I hope we're screening who we allow in. This member is a prime candidate of someone who is a noob.

Hey, i am not a noob. I was simply testing what was actually needed to start raiding. Why would wait until I have 10 archers to start attacking empty cities with no defenses? When my next set of archers are finished I am sending out 6 unless anyone else here has tested how many archers you should use against NPC cities.