How to Properly Attack Players (PvP)
My first attacks on players looked exactly like they shouldn't have: I threw everything I had in my castle at the target and waited for a miracle. The miracle didn't come — only a loss report did. It took me a good while to realize that PvP in Empire is built on sectors — the gate, the left wing, and the right wing — and that in each one, melee units fight melee defense separately, and ranged units fight ranged defense separately. Once you understand this and learn to split your army and commanders into the right sectors, you'll start taking down castles that look unbreakable from a distance. I've written down everything important here, so you don't burn expensive troops blindly like I once did.
The attack runs by sectors — this is the core of all PvP
The battle isn't calculated as one big pile against another. You split your army into the gate, the left wing, and the right wing, and combat is resolved separately in each sector. Inside a sector, a simple rule applies: your melee units fight the melee defense, your ranged units fight the defending ranged troops. If you send only one type into a sector, the other half of the defense in that sector will massacre you, because you have nothing to answer it with.
Nobody told me this for a long time, and I only figured it out after a few attacks where an entire wing got wiped out even though I had superiority on paper. Into every sector you're occupying, you put both types together — melee attackers and ranged troops. It's not about having both in your army as a whole and letting the game sort it out somewhere; it's about having both in every sector you're actually attacking through.
On top of that, the wings and the gate differ in what siege equipment you need (more on that below). If you don't plan your sectors out, half your force pushes into nothing and the other half bleeds out. Get a feel for this before you send your first expensive wave.
What scouting actually shows you (and what it doesn't)
A lot of people expect a spy report to reveal the enemy army's exact composition. It won't. What you reliably get from scouting is the resources in the castle, the defensive tools placed on the walls and towers, and often which defending commander your opponent has assigned. From that you read the strength of the defense, not the exact number of ranged troops versus melee units.
So you decide based on the fortification tools and the commander. Are heavy defensive tools hanging on the walls along with a strong commander? Expect a tough nut to crack, and bring more waves and more siege equipment. Is the castle empty of resources and poorly equipped? Usually one decently put-together attack is enough.
Don't plan around a number that scouting simply won't give you. When I started, I tried to somehow deduce that defense ratio, and it was pointless — it works much better to have both melee and ranged in your army and send strength based on how heavily equipped the target looks.
An army built from both melee and ranged, never just one type
The basics are two types: melee attackers, who break the melee defense and push inside, and ranged troops, who take care of the enemy's ranged troops on the walls and towers. A purely single-type army is a mistake, because in every sector you'll run into both, and you'll have no answer for one half of it.
When you don't know how tough the defense is set up, run roughly a fifty-fifty split in the sector. I personally do this for every unknown target — it's not the most economical, but one badly guessed wave won't ruin you. Once you've run the first attack on the target and see where you're losing the most, you can fine-tune the ratio in the following waves.
And don't skimp on quality. A handful of strong elite units get more done than a crowd of rookies — a weak soldier still takes up a spot in the wave and eats food, only to get wiped out by the defense anyway. Send units that match the target's level; throwing basic units at a heavily built-up castle just feeds the defenders.
Siege equipment, rams for the gate and towers with mantlets for the walls
This is where I made the most mistakes myself. I had a decent army, but I kept finishing the siege equipment at the last minute, and by the time it was ready, either I'd lost my nerve or the target had refilled in the meantime. Without siege equipment, an attack breaks uselessly against the fortifications. Keep the two roles separate: rams go against the gate, while siege towers and mantlets help your units over the walls on the wings. If you send melee units against high walls without wall equipment, you're wasting them.
Equipment belongs in the right sector — rams where you're pushing through the gate, towers and mantlets on the wings against the walls. And keep a stockpile built up in advance, don't wait to produce it until the moment you want to attack. Otherwise, waiting on production will drain both your momentum and your motivation, exactly like it did mine.
For heavily fortified castles, expect the equipment to be consumable and the first wave to eat up a lot of it. So bring plenty and spread it across several waves. In my experience, weak siege equipment is the most common reason an otherwise decent army never makes it inside.
How to take apart a tough defense cheaply with waves
Waves are your strongest tool against a solid defense. Instead of one mega attack, send several waves in a row. Think of the first wave as an opener — it thins out the defense, uses up the defensive tools on the walls, and takes out part of the defenders. The second and third waves then finish off a weakened castle far more cheaply than if you tried to break through with one giant army.
Move in quick succession. When you attack wave after wave without big pauses, your opponent usually doesn't have time to restock the defense between hits. I'm not 100% sure how fast someone can actually manage it if they happen to be online right then, but so far, with a tight sequence, nobody's managed it against me. On the other hand, if you leave long gaps between waves, you're giving them time to reinforce the walls and bring in new defenders — and you're starting from scratch practically.
How many waves you need, you estimate from the defense equipment shown by scouting, and above all from what the first wave reveals. For a weaker target, one well put-together wave is often enough; for a heavily fortified castle with a strong commander, count on three or more. You sacrifice the first wave deliberately, not blindly.
Match your commander to the sector
A commander gives your army an attack bonus, and often also a bonus for a specific type of attack — against the gate, or against the walls and wings. An attack without a commander still works, but you're leaving that advantage on the table.
Pick your commander based on where you're attacking. One suits pushing through the gate with rams, another suits climbing the wings over the walls with towers and mantlets. Look at his attack values and bonuses and place him in the wave whose focus matches what he's good at.
Protect and upgrade your good commanders. A strong commander turns an average army into a hit that gets through. And don't send your best commander into a hopeless attack just to try it out — I did that exactly once, and that was enough for me. If your army falls with him in it, you lose that bonus for your next moves and you're back to waiting for him again.
A question I get a lot
"Is it enough to have both in the army, or do I really have to watch it in every sector?" You do. Sectors are calculated separately, so if you only have ranged troops on the left wing and nothing but melee on the right, the defending ranged troops will shoot your right wing to pieces, and the left wing won't help with that at all. You don't have to attack all three sectors at once — but every sector you're actually pushing through needs melee and ranged together. This is the one thing I wish someone had told me when I was starting out.
Robber Barons as a training ground
Before you go after real players, fine-tune your composition, sectors, and waves on Robber Barons. They have predictable defense, they don't send a counterattack back to your castle, and they're a great way to learn how much melee and how many ranged troops to put in a sector and how to divide everything up.
Robber Barons are also where you actually test siege equipment and commanders. You'll see how many rams a gate of a given level eats up, how many waves the defense soaks up before it gives way, and which commander suits you. You can then carry those numbers over to real players with a much lower risk of burning through an expensive army just because of a bad guess. This is how I tried out practically every new unit type before I ever sent it against a real person.
And the loot from Barons funds production of new units and equipment, so you have something to attack players with without bleeding out economically. Attacks on players and on Barons end up feeding each other.
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