War is coming to the Southern Islands. There is little we can do to stop it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t prepare for it. Ask any of the older clans how best to build up your defenses, and you’ll get a simple answer of “Just build 30’ stone walls with max stone towers and all these other awesome defensive structures”.
However, this requires several research topics and countless resources that newer clans just don’t have. So instead, I am here to offer some very basic advice on how you can prepare for the coming war by being sure your villages are properly protected.
First, let’s cover the defensive options available to new clans. Below is a table detailing each of the basic defensive options available, the requirements/resources to build them, and the benefits they provide.
Table Footnotes:
- There are many implements available to improve the effectiveness of your workers. However, for the sake of simplicity, those have not been taken into account. For more information on these, please refer to the Mandate or ask someone for help.
- Benefits for Palisades and Stone Walls are shown as X% / Y% / Z%. The first is the reduced casualties with no ditch or moat, the second is with a ditch, and the third is with a moat.
- May be built with Palisades or Stone Walls. To achieve the full benefit, 1 Wooden Tower is required for every 20 yards of Palisades/Stone Walls. A pro-rata factor is applied for fewer Towers.
- You may directly build a 15’ or 20’ Stone Wall skipping the shorter walls. However, the cost to build does not change. Therefore, to directly build a 15’ Stone Wall it would require 75 stones and 7.5 people per yard as you are effectively building a 10’ and 15’ Stone Wall at the same time.
- May only be built with Stone Walls. To achieve the full benefit, 1 Stone Tower is required for every 20 yards of Stone Walls. A pro-rata factor is applied for fewer Towers.
- You may upgrade an existing Ditch to a Moat at 1 person/yard instead of the standard 2.
Now I know what you’re thinking, “Stop right there chief! I thought you said this was for beginners, and that is a whole lot of confusing numbers!” Don’t worry, we will cover a couple simple examples on the next page that will bring this full circle and hopefully clear up any lingering confusion.
¶ Example 1
Bare Minimum: If a player wants the bare minimum defense, they can choose to simply dig a ditch. This will only require 1 person per yard and will reduce any final casualties by 10%. So, if you want a 200 yard moat, you only need to have 200 people dig the Moat, and you have the full benefit of reducing final casualties by 10%. The people used to dig the Moat will quickly become worth it if you are ever attacked, and you will thank me for this advice.
¶ Example 2
Budget Defenses: Now let’s say you find yourself in an area that you think is a bit riskier. You decide you want to build the best defenses you can on a budget. My recommendation is a Moat with a Palisade. If you feel like splurging, you can add in Wooden Towers as well. To build 200 yards of both Moat and Palisade would require the following:
- Moat: 400 people
- Palisade: 200 people and 600 logs
- Wooden Towers (10): 1,000 people and 2,000 logs
In total, without the Wooden Towers, we are looking at 600 people and 600 logs to reduce final casualties by 40%. If we add in the Wooden Towers, this jumps up to 1,600 people and 2,600 logs to reduce final casualties by 45%. These resources are a small price to pay for the solid protection
gained.
¶ Example 3
Best of the Best: While both of the above are great options, if you truly want to protect yourself as best you can (without diving into Research), this will require a Moat, 20’ Stone Walls, and Stone Towers. Let’s look at what it would cost to build all of this to cover 200 yards.
- Moat: 400 people
- 20’ Stone Wall: 2,700 people and 27,000 stones
- Stone Towers (10): 6,000 people and 30,000 stones
Now, you are living it large! In total, the Moat, 20’ Stone Walls, and Stone Towers will combine to reduce final casualties by a whopping 70%. The price may be high both in terms of people and resources requiring a total of 9,100 people and 57,000 stones, but this is a great way to make sure your units don’t get annihilated while sleeping in their beds.
¶ Tribe manager spreadsheet
“Wow! This is great stuff” you say. And yes, it truly is. However, there is one small thing we have not yet covered. How do you determine the length you need for a Ditch/ Moat/Palisade/Wall? Well, there is some math here, and I was going to try and explain it all, but a great tool already exists that does it for you, so why bother? Instead, I will point you to this tool, and you can play around with it as much as you like.
If you go to either the TribeNet home page (just google TribeNet) or the TribeNet wiki (tribenet.wiki), you can find the Tribe Manager under the Resources tab of either. Within this beautiful spreadsheet, there is a tab titled “Village Defense”. Simply enter your target village size including people and animals, and it will do the math for you. Below is a screenshot as a quick example. Based on this, I would need 371’ of Palisade/Stone Walls and up to 18 Towers to get
maximum protection for 1,000 people, 150 slaves, 100 cattle, 700 goats, 500 horses, and 150 elephants.
As a final note, there are a lot of intricacies when it comes to defending yourself in TribeNet. I have boiled it down to the basics here to try and help prevent you from being boiled down by the VVV. However, to get a full understanding of everything, I highly recommend reading through section 11.3 of the Mandate. Almost all of the above information is pulled directly from there, and there is a lot of other great information included there as well. Until then, stay alive my friends!
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(additional key words - defences)