Defense Guide for Ymir

In this guide i will proceed to explain how to make an efficient defense for your city. We will go through Structures, Units, Early, mid and late game plus a few tips.

By Kuki :D

Steps to follow

Here is a video tutorial for the steps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9qRB9lJOIo&feature=youtu.be

1. Hire army / militia
2. Build palisade or choose your defensive position
3. Open Strategic Tool and designate your chosen area. Done by selecting "Add new Defensive zone", then left clicking in the center and dragging until size is satisfactory.
4. Holding Ctrl(Command for IOS) select your squads.
5. Click on the terrain and drag to put them in position.
6. Order rules of engagement for the selected squads.
7. Click done.
8. Reopen Strategic Tool to revise if orders have been received. If not, reopen city and try again. If problem still persists, reopen the game.
9. Move the most important storages and buildings inside the zone. Restrict storage acceptability if necessary.

Early Game

Stone Age

Not defending at all

On the early game defending is not a priority, since your porcos are a lot more valuable than any resource you could have at this stage.

The first thing you should do is create a small defensive zone on a safe area of the map, so that, when you get one of the early, basic raids, the barbarians will just run to your stockpiles, take a few resources, and leave. You won't sustain any substantial damage, if any. It's recommended that you have a small army of 10 Warriors to keep Loyalty up, and to have a hunting party if needed. When at your city, remember to place these units on the defense zone you created.

Locate natural defenses

One of the main things that can turn a Decent starting region into a amazing one are it's natural defenses. They can vary from a hill with just one way in, a hill with multiple ways in, ocean or none at all. Using the flat map mode will lead you to a screen that shows terrain. Red lines are impassable terrain. Use it to detect useful natural defenses.

Once you've located a good natural defense, build some palisades. Palisades block enemy units from passing and also provides cover to troops deployed against it, protecting them against enemy ranged attacks. Use the natural defenses so that you have to make the less amount possible, to reduce the infrastructure upkeep. Later on it could become a problem if managed badly.

Here's a good example of what a multiple entrance hill should look like, and next to it a hill with only one entrance and a double palisade set up.

improving your defenses and for the unlucky ones

Your last task during the early game is, as seen on the image above, turn your simple palisade into a double walled fortress. On YMIR double palisades are mandatory to survive mid to late game raids, sacks and invasions.

If you weren't lucky and didn't get any good natural defenses on your region, not all is lost. You can still make a double wall box.
It's expensive, but it's the best you can have. If you have ocean or a river, use it.

The Units

For the early game you will only have rockthrowers and javelins.

Rock throwers are an option if you are not getting the javelin technology, but they are useless otherwise. Save some wood to set 15 + 5 javelins behind your walls. You can increase this number with time. If you feel unsafe you can always throw a few rock throwers into the mix. I've seen some players also add a few warriors inside the walls in case they break through, but personally i think that's unlikely to happen, and it's more usefull to, insted of having warriors, adding more javelins.

Mid Game

Copper/Early Bronze

Getting those towers up

Once you get the double palisades, it won't be long since you get the Guards knowledge, unlocking the primitive towers. This could be considered early game, since primitive doesn't sound like mid game, but getting towers is not mandatory, and you will do it when you have your basics set up, so it's most likely you will do this once you are in mid game, even though you may have had the towers for a while now.

If you can place the towers at stone age, do it.

You don't need to place a lot of towers, they are not the best at defending, but they will help. Also, if you get extremely unlucky, and the enemy gets trough your walls, it's possible they will attack the towers first.

The Units

By now, you should have Bowpigs. It's a no brainer. Just have between 20-60 military archers and 20-40 militia archers. If you don't have the resources to make that much archers, it's totally okay and valid to make as much Bowpigs as you can and fill the rest with Javelins. In case you don't have the bows yet, you should trade it ASAP, or manage to get it somehow.

If you mix Javs and Bowpigs, make sure to have the Archers in the army and the javelins in the militia. If you do otherwise, it's probable that the power of the militia will be higher that the army's power and you may have loyalty problems.

As said before, it's unlikely that the enemy will get trough the walls, so don't waste manpower into defensive snouts, or melee units overall. Invest fully on ranged.

If you have mounted archers, don't even consider it. They are trash, and even more at defending.

Late game and Late game+

Late bronze, Iron, steel

What to expect

Here's where things start going insane. Raids will keep happening, invasions and sacks too, but you should be able to defend your empire with what you have so far. Now, if you weren't attacked by players before, if it's going to happen it will be now. I don't support an aggressive and paranoid attitude, but it's always good to keep an eye looking for possible threats. It's extremely wise to be prepared for anything. And even if you never get attacked by another player, the barbarian's will probably come at you with Swordpigs, Warhogs, or worse, and they are still a force to be reckoned with.

Now it looks pretty

Now you can turn your simple wooden fort into a true medieval castle

The idea is the same as before, put as many obstacles between the attackers and your troops. Try to have double walls. Towers, and a lot of ranged units. If you are on a hill, sometimes the enemy units may not want to get through the gate but place a ladder on the cliff and climb. You can use this to your advantage, now that you have platforms, place them so that they surround you cliff, maybe leave a gate so in case they want to climb, the will still have to get trough yet another defense.

You can also set a small palisade perimeter around your gate to, again, adding another obstacle that the enemy will have to destroy, that translates to more time for your archers to kill them.

Place battlements, the best you can afford, and place your units under cover over the platforms.

The troops

Longbows are Bowpigs with more range, spam those. Try to place the best tower you can over platforms. If you have Crossbows they have less range but their damage is better. Personally, i prefer longbows.

Fort Planning

(By Appareson) It is important to decide on what the purpose of your defenses which can be realized in the design and contents of your fort.

Usage of Forts

Forts have the main purpose of defending your city from potential invaders and aggressors. However, a fort can also have secondary and perhaps equally important objectives to fulfill. These secondary roles are usually limited to:

1. Safeguarding (important) resources
2. Safeguarding (important) buildings

It is up to you how you build your fort, whether it be purely for defense but also contain a selected portion of your industry to ensure a raid does not cripple your economy.

Types of Forts

According to my understanding, there are 3 distinctive designs of forts that can be made

1. A Layered Fort

This is by far the most common type of fort used. It is easy to build and incorporate natural defenses into the fort. Usually, this is comprised of 3 or more layers with a large number of ranged troops in the very final layer.

1. "Defense in Depth" (Compartment) Fort

This is a rare type of fort that I have only seen once. It is usually not built because it requires defending troops to be spread out between the compartments. Instead of having many layers before actually engaging defending troops.

1. City Fort