[Trophy Strategies] Hold, Bait, 2nd, Crop, Max, & Bacon or strategies for attempting to influence your trophies

[Gryphonknight]

Subject
[Trophy Strategies] Hold, Bait, 2nd, Crop, Max, & Bacon or strategies for attempting to influence your trophies

Following are known strategies for attempting to influence your Elo rating (trophies) in Empires and Puzzles. Trophies are your public Elo rating, many MMO have a hidden Match Making Rating also. More than two Elo ratings is possible in a game, but leads to diminishing returns due to random chance.

Thank you for many interesting discussions about this my alliance fellows, friendly alliances and my wife.

Posted from my smartphone.

Edit:
“Hold defense” (Thanks Revelate)
Place your single highest power hero on your defense team. I once lost to a single max tier, max level Boldtusk when I had a full five hero 2*/ 3* team.

@Revelate

The one defense hero are people are either maintaining cups (hardly anyone will attack as a less than 5 hero win is effectively a loss when it comes to filling the raid chest) or don’t understand the game mechanics.

Note: according to alliance fellows, does not work for trophy ratings of 1000 and under. Not sure at what level it does start to be effective.

“Bait defense”
On your defense team, place your 5 weakest heroes with common villages troops (+0% attack, defense, health).

If your three teams are full, select your weakest team.

Leave this as your defense team while you sleep.

Some people spend food to select raid opponents. If you have only 1-4 heroes on your defense team, they will skip you for a player with a 5 hero team when trying to complete Wanted Heroes mission.

Since you will be attacked while you sleep, many of your attackers will be asleep when you are awake allowing you to use the revenge button in your watchtower.

Since this is such a weak defense, your best team will have an easier time with revenge.

“2nd defense”

If you lose too many trophies when you sleep, set your second strongest team as your defense team.

“Crop defense”

If the “2nd defense” strategy still loses you too many trophies, “Crop defense” uses your best team by replacing your two best heroes with other heroes.

Edit:
“Maxed Out defense”

Use your best defensive heroes on your defense team.

“Bitty Bacon”
Raise your watchtower until you have a decent 2* team.

By not raising your watchtower after you have a decent 2* team, you can concentrate your food on common training (recruit training level 1 or RT1), low cost training (RT4), extra low cost training (RT11) and elite training (RT13 if you don’t have a decent 3* team by then).

“Tower of Bacon”
Once you are running 1 training camp at legendary training (recruit training level 20 or RT20) and 1, or more, camps at extra low cost training (RT11), raise your Watchtower to level 20.

You are generating the most XP per day for leveling heroes (RT11) and have the best chance at 4* heroes (RT20 according to Devs & forum) so you can now generate food from your Watchtower.

A) The level 20 Watchtower generates food if you are not attacked.

B) Some people spend food to select raid opponents, this means they have extra food. By having lots of food in your watchtower, you tempt them to attack you. This lets you revenge against players with extra food or high food generation (base, raids farming, etc.).

Note: When you unlock RT20, if you have a good 4* team, only run RT20 once/ week for a teeny tiny chance at a 5* hero. Loot (Epic Hero Tokens) and Event summons (once per month using gems) will give you a better chance at 5* heroes and a bonus roll for the 5* Hero of the Month.

[Edit:] Some good advice on the above from Revelate

@Revelate

The one defense hero are people are either maintaining cups (hardly anyone will attack as a less than 5 hero win is effectively a loss when it comes to filling the raid chest) or don’t understand the game mechanics.

The weak defense (5 heroes) is used to drop cups and there’s more food to be gained from raiding at some cup values than others: in my experience 2400-2600 or so is exceptionally bad for example. Also if you are further down the ladder than you “should” be, you can fill raid chests more quickly to try to push special chest generation.

Finally the vicious defenses you mentioned: if you either care about having the highest cups, or if you’re on a cup push (sometimes I like to see how far I can get, accidentally tried the other day and slipped into the top 100 before I ran into a strong defense and an absolutely awful board, ah well haha) then you put up a strong defense.

Edited by Revelate

See also

( [Trophy Tactics] "Waffle, "Drop", "Slow Climb" and "Hover" or tactics for deliberately changing trophies )

[loorts]

If i may, a critical note (edit: some info is factually wrong, so I tried to explain that):

Some people spend food to select raid opponents, this means they have extra food. By having lots of food in your watchtower, you tempt them to attack you. This lets you revenge against players with extra food or high food generation (base, raids farming, etc.).

I spend food on rerolling people, but i reroll to find those with a high watch tower. I’ll then take all their food. If they revenge me they won’t get their food back - as they can only steal what is produced in my watchtower, which is at a very low level. Whatever food I generate from farms or get from raids is for me alone and they can’t take it away.

When you unlock RT20, if you have a good 4* team, only run RT20 once/ week for a teeny tiny chance at a 5* hero. Loot (Epic Hero Tokens) and Event summons (once per month using gems) will give you a better chance at 5* heroes and a bonus roll for the 5* Hero of the Month.

Devs actually confirmed that the chance of a 5* hero is higher from TC20 than from summons/tokens. This is because they feel like the people who grinded their way all the way up there should deserve a reward for having done so. If you don’t have a team of 5s yet I’d therefore recommend to run as many camps at lvl 20 simultaneously to try and increase your chances of getting a 5* hero. The chances are about 5% to get one (looking at data on the forum of about 400 trainings) and it’s free. You just don’t have an opportunity to get the HOTM via the training camp.

[Talisax]

Tc 20 gives better chances at a 5* than any summons, although 0% chance at hotm
@loorts oorts beat me to it. I also agree with running tc 20 (I’m about to start running 3) and free is almost always better

[Dante2377]

I would change the title from “Raid Strategy” to “Cup Dropping/revenging Strategy”

“Raid strategy” implies you’re trying to win raids and is sort of misleading.

[Revelate]

Lost me at Revenge TBH.

Revenge is a waste of a flag if we’re talking income efficiency from raids; you want people that are idle for extended periods, not ones that are actively raiding. Maybe if you’re stuck around 2400 where the pickings are seriously thin for ham, then checking for revenge can sometimes find acceptable targets cheaper than rerolling, but if you’re really cup dropping and floating 1k (or lower) to 2k, well, it’s bad math.

[Kerridoc]

@Revelate i understood the OP to be proposing this strategy as a way to more easily complete Hero’s Wanted boxes, which it is.

Dropping cups like this way affects your alliance’s ranking. Most may not care about this, but in a top-20 team, dropping 1,000 trophies will get noticed.

[Dante2377]

Yes, but if you’re doing it to drop cups so you have an easier time filling your raid chest, you don’t want to revenge the person who was in your range BEFORE losing a bunch of cups, you want to reroll new players in the new, lower range.

[Gryphonknight]

Food loss from a deliberately weak defense

@DrakenKin

If i set my defense to weak, how much food do i lose from attacks?

Is it dependant on my stored food? What if i keep my food empty before lowering my defense team?

I am mostly interested in this technique to farm more food from raids, since that’s the bottleneck for me right now. Having weak defense seems the most efficient, since i don’t have to spend raid energy (!) to lower my crowns, and it can be done faster since it’s passive, just wait for people to attack me. The only detail to figure out is how to lower the loss of food / iron.

Anywhere from zero to 100%.

This problem is actually mathematically unsolvable.

Daily losses

If this is the path you want to follow, the only way to find out is to record your Watchtower log each day.

If you are losing too much food from your Watchtower production, increase your defense team.

If you are gaining too many trophies, decrease your defense team.

Daily gains

But this will also impact food won from each raid battle and the Wanted Hero Mission Chest ( Tip: maximize your food storage. see notes ).

The only way to find out is to record your raid food gains and Wanted Hero Mission Chest food.

If you are gaining too little food, increase your defense.

Notes

Click for notes

Food Storage, Iron Storage, and Chests

@Revelate

Yeah, to firm this up I did eventually get my alt to level 20 storages and then suddenly both of my accounts were getting functionally identical ham values from raid chests and all other rolls incidentally (titans, monster chests, etc. though I didn’t track this as zealously).

Moral of the story, eat your Wheaties aka level your storages… especially these days.

FIN

[Otto0000]

A Looong time ago Cup dropping was really a thing. There really is an art to it. Yes, if you are going to cup drop, empty your Watchtower just before you log off and right away when you log in.

The best way to figure out where you want your cups to be for best results is to find the Team power range where it appears to be the most lucrative for you to farm raids. Set your Defensive team for a team power About 300 below that number. It will automatically keep you around that range and you can raid your way up into it or just start there pretty much all of the time.

Other than religiously emptying your Watchtower just prior to logging off and immediately upon login int, do not worry about the food/ham lost from your Watchtower . You should gain more than you lost with your raids and honestly, there is nothing else you can really do about it.