Some of the changes in Ikariam 0.3.2 that I’m trying to adjust to are the new features of the town wall. The introduction of Garrison Rights in 0.3.0 gave attackers too much of an advantage that breaching the walls were almost always certain. Attackers could also pool an unlimited number of troops in a town and attack from there preventing a player from having any chance of defending well if he didn’t have any friends to immediately back him up. The wall in my opinion has been strengthened once again, shifting the advantage to defenders with high level walls once more.
Why do I say this? One of the key changes in the Town Wall is the Garrison Limit. While I am still unsure if it is related to Ship Capacity in that weight of troops is considered, or simply the number of troops, the point is that there is now a limit to the number of troops that can be pooled in a town. Why is this an advantage to a defender with a high level wall? If attackers will use a mobile colony to infiltrate a defender’s territory, the attacker who planted the mobile colony will still have to develop his town walls so that massive number of troops can be stationed there and attack from there. This is an additional drawback to planting mobile colonies, aside from the limited AP of a small town and the slow process of moving goods and troops out of a low level trading port. I predict that instead of mobiles, players will rely more on garrison rights with highly developed towns in the same island as the target town.
I’ve also noticed that most aggressive attacking players have shifted majority of their entire military force into land units. But the Garrison Limit places some importance on a naval fleet once again. If planting a mobile will take too much setup time for attacking, perhaps blockading a town, then attacking it from an off-island highly developed beach head will be faster and more effective.
The town wall is also tougher to beat in terms of pillaging inactives, especially inactives with high level walls. I’m currently using 210 Phalanx (Hoplites – which I really can’t get used to), 49 Marksmen (Sulphur Carabeneers – really, don’t know why we need such complicated names), and 18 Mortars to pillage the same towns which I used to pillage with only 2 Steam Giants. And I still suffer occasional losses with that many troops when my 2 SGs used to come home safely after every pillage. Wall breaching units essential now in every attack on a town. I feel bad for new players who need such big investments just to pillage inactives – one of the keys to improving your level in the game. The walls are much more tougher even without troops behind them that I’d hate to see what would happen if I was attacking another high level player who knows how to defend well. Guess I’ll find out soon enough if my alliance gets into another war.
But for now, I actually feel safer with my high level walls ^_^
Correction: Seems that if the Garrison Limit is exceeded, the battle shifts to an open field and the defender actually loses the advantage of having walls. Once the number of defenders can fit inside the Garrison Limit, then the troops enter the town and are protected by the walls.
Then this means that mobiles are still pretty useful since you can still pool an unlimited number of troops and attack from there. I will really need more experience with the new battle system to understand it. For instance, what is the point of pooling more troops and losing the advantage of the walls when both attacker and defender have a fixed number of spaces to fill. If I were the defender, I will always fight below the Garrison Limit even if the attacker has an overwhelming number of troops since those that exceed the spaces end up being reserves. With the length of each battle round being 20 minutes, I might be able to outlast those reserves by building troops in my towns to replenish those dying and still keeping my troops under the Garrison Limit.
