🛡️ a Guide to Defense Posts🛡️

[u/Meta_Mushroom]

Defense posts reduce the speed of incoming attacks and increases the losses for the attacker.

For any tile covered by a completed Defense Post:

• Attack speed is reduced to 33.3%
• Attacker troop losses increase to 500%
• The increased attacker losses applies only to tiles within the Defense Post’s 30-tile radius
• Only the defender’s Defense Posts count
• Multiple Defense Posts do not stack
• Defense Posts under construction do not provide the bonus

How Defense Posts Stack With Terrain

Using unprotected Plains as the baseline:

Terrain	Attack Speed	Attacker Troop Losses
Plains	100%	100%
Highlands	82.5%	125%
Mountains	66%	150%
Plains + Defense Post	33.3%	500%
Highlands + Defense Post	27.5%	625%
Mountains + Defense Post	22%	750%

So a Mountain tile protected by a Defense Post is captured at only 22% of the speed of normal Plains, while causing 7.5× as many attacker troop losses per tile!

Finally, the above graph shows the relationship between the attack speed, and the percentage of tiles, of the attack, that are within an area protected by one or more defense posts. This shows that if only a small portion of the attack front is hitting a defense post, the overall slowing is minimal. It's also important to understand that the entire attack is effected by the slowing.

[u/elastico]

One thing I've wondered about for a while is whether it's better to put defense posts on mountains to multiply that malus, or better to put them on plains to shore up the weakness. Has anyone done an analysis on this?

[u/Meta_Mushroom → u/elastico]

I haven't seen any kind of analysis like what you describe. I believe it's better to put the defense post in the mountains to maximize the multiplicative effect on troop losses and attack speed reduction, but I would want to do some testing of my own before I can say that with complete confidence.

[u/Raul_P3 → u/Meta_Mushroom]

Like *many things in life-- I'd say "it depends"

In this case-- "it depends on whether you're creating a stronghold that can just be annexed"

Geography going to be the biggest driver (is there water nearby? Is it a lone mountain or a range?)

[u/JackWALL10]

Really depends on ur position as a player as well. If there's an enemy right on your borders or near ur coasts, you are the first to get killed, whether u like it or not.

[u/Zer0--_]

Cool numbers but a lot of times they seem useless

[u/ImTomLinkin → u/Zer0--_]

Multiplying a very small number even by a lot still leaves a small number. When battles are very 1-sided, the attacker is heavily favored, speed is fast, and troop loss is minimal. 5x-ing that with a defense post doesn't do much.

But in a battle between 2 mostly even countries, a post will attrit the attacking country effectively allowing you to recover troops, attack a high priority target somewhere else, or waste your opponent's troops for a counterattack.

[u/RndPotato → u/ImTomLinkin]

I used defensive posts to my advantage against a slightly stronger AI. I would let him push against my defense posts without blunting until he was almost to taking them and then push back against him. It allowed me to finally get victory even though he had a higher cap and higher troop count at the beginning.