So the team we faced today looked pretty strong but their strategy was to put several one star heroes in their defensive line up Which would give us few points with victories. Then their attack teams would be much stronger and gain them extra points. Has anyone ever seen this strategy and what are your thoughts and opinions. I just fight the best I can and realize it’s a game but many of my wonderful alliance members are calling them cowards LOL. I just don’t know myself what to think. Is this cowardly or a highly intelligent strategy ?
Are you sure that’s the War Defense team you are facing or the raid defense team for the members?
The game would not have been able to allow any players with less than 5 heroes readied to participate in the war. If it did, then it is a bug and should be reported.
But if you saw them in their Raid Defense Team, probably cup droppers.
It is actually a bad strategy. They have 1500 points to spread around their team. If they make their teams weaker then they still have the same 1500 points spread around their teams, but they are weaker. It’s better for your team.
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Saw it used against us a couple times. First time we drubbed them. Right now we’re about equal midway through this war. I won’t get into matching as it seems off…topic for snother thread!
We tried it once…a couple of us higher players. Failed miserably as we were flipped multiple times. Basically you’re handing the team points by not fielding a good defense.
That’s my take/experience…
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I would agree that it would be a bad strategy in general. Our players with lower teams would know it’s their responsibility to clear those weak opponents and our mid to strong teams would simply coordinate on those stronger opponents.
Of course we could get unlucky boards, but I’m still convinced we would have a good showing against an alliance trying this as a strategy.
Isn’t it also a point of honour to show off your strongest teams? Who wants to show any weakness to an opponent - I’d rather we use our best and strongest. If we lose fair and square, we can walk off the battlefield proudly!
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Yep yep this right here 
Now the one way it could POTENTIALLY be of benefit. Say you had a member who could only field like, a 2* defense… maybe in a small alliance that 2* team is worth like, 150 points.
If he cuts down to 1* team, which is relatively similarly killable, then his team is worth like 60 points. (And those other 90 points get distributed to “stronger” teams).
So in that sort of situation MAYBE it would be a good strategy. But I can’t see it being a good move outside of such corner case scenarios. And even then it’s questionable, really. (Most people who reach level 12 should have a mixed 2/3 team AT LEAST… and if you’re in such a small alliance then I would think that the other team would have a hard time eliminating a 2/3* defense 3+ times… )
What I’m saying is. I think it’s technically possible to be a good strategy for 1-2 people to do. But not sure if that could even realistically occur
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It used to be tried a lot in the good old days. SG made some changes that turned it into a really bad strategy.
To expand on this a little, there are 500 points spread out equally between all defense teams, and then 1000 points apportioned based on the total health of each defense team.
Weak teams have almost no health compared to strong teams, so most of their available points come from those 500 equally-distributed points. But they’re basically giving these points to you for free.
You can use your weakest heroes to kill them. Normally, you have to spend some of your strong heroes on every fight you’re in. But against these teams, you can save your strongest heroes for the harder fights, making it much easier to guarantee that you kill opposing tanks or one-shot opposing teams when it really matters.
TL;DR: they’re doing you a big favor.
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Could be easily suppressed by gaining an additional flag for a clean sweep…
But at last it’s a dumb strategy at all due to the easy points for the opponent.
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I’ve seen this in multiple places:
“there are 500 points spread out equally between all defense teams, and then 1000 points apportioned based on the total health of each defense team”
But the way I interpret this is: 1000 points divided based on health, 500 points divided evenly (meaning if there’s 20 people, it’s 25 per team regardless of the health of the team) - and this simply is not true. It’s allocated basically on 50% of the points from the 1000, so if a team is worth 20, it’s bonus is 10, 30, 15, etc. with one point variances due to rounding. I just checked our war and this is the case (i.e. the bonus varies with the health and is not an evenly spread out fixed amount).
I only mention it here because this is the 3rd time I’ve seen this language and at best, it’s unclear, and at worst, it’s actually incorrect.
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Conservative of War points
Nope.
War points can not be created or destroyed, just moved around.
That just means each 1 hp damage I do to the stronger teams is worth more war points.
Jaded Devs
People, just field your best team, the Devs have seen it all at this point.
Devs fixed many problems with minimum number of defenders ( 5 ), minimum number of points ( 20 ? ) reducing the team kill bonus, and changing matching algorithm not because they were good strategies, but because they were boring when the other side won by a landslide ( except for exploiting the matching algorithm’s weighing of non-linear defense stat but that loophole was fixed )
Examples of outdated strategies
Loophole fixed
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I think sometimes alliances try to get too clever and end up hurting themselves, morale-wise.
We faced a well-matched alliance and watched them literally fall apart. They obviously decided a perfect strategy was to save all their flags until closer to the end and then just re-set us. We used our regular strategy of using their timers and coordinating attacks. We re-set them early and gained a very large lead.
Their player’s lights would come on and off, and they were very good about obeying the instructions to not fight - we talked about how frustrating it must be for them. Their banner was in a non- English language with the instructions but our international members speaks 7 - 8 so we were able to translate easily.
By the time they were “allowed” to fight, it was way too late. After the war (which we won), they lost three members.
Just put out your best and strongest, use a GOOD strategy and have some trust and faith in your members so you don’t have to micro-manage them, and let them enjoy their war!
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I’ll cite my source:
I haven’t really paid much attention to it, to be honest. I usually just care about total point value.
@Kerridoc, can you shed some light?
As sort of an apology to the OP @AncientPirate1, with the slew of discussions here responding the usages of the 1 hero defense. Does that mean the system actually allow less than 5 heroes defense to take to the field again?
I don’t do wars so I usually don’t pay attention to the war topics in the forum. So my alliance war knowledge might be a bit outdated. I thought the system forces you to do a 5 hero team during war prep that anything less will disqualify that player’s team from taking to the field.
Even though I don’t do wars, I do glance at opponent team composition and haven’t noticed anything less than 5 on opposing teams at the start of the wars.
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Just put out your best and strongest, use a GOOD strategy and have some trust and faith in your members so you don’t have to micro-manage them, and let them enjoy their war! Thanks for your input I just noticed one of our opponents left the alliance We have all been together and have very low attrition But by fate we have never seen their strategy so I was just curious. And all of us enjoy war A great deal but unfortunately many of our alliance don’t use this forum. I wish I would have joined this forum Way sooner than I did. Everybody has been so helpful and I have learned a great deal without condescension 
Thanks For your input
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I’m reading the OP as saying multiple teams fielded teams with five heroes but some of those heroes were 1 star, making their teams very weak.
Yes it was 5 one star heroes. So far it looks like it is backfiring but we will just keep to our game plan which has served us pretty well. I really appreciate everybody’s input 
That’s what I said. The 150 team is now worth 60, with the other 90 points go to the rest of the team. [so 60+90=150 still]
Apologies if my wording was unclear.
I will be darned, I had to re-read and it was indeed my fault for reading it wrong.
Yeah, if you do a quick check in your current war you will see that the bonus amount is ~50% of the target value (i.e. HP based) amount.
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That certainly looks correct. That’s kind of a bone-headed decision.