Mech/Ballista Defense

Common names or variations:


Evony Ballista Mech Defense
■ Ballista Defense
■ Catapult Defense
■ Ultimate Defense
■ Mech D

Mech defense is a very strong defense as long as your attacker doesn’t know about it or know you’re in it. This is a defense that requires you be in ranged. The concept here is simple. You load up on ballistas and or catapults so you can outrange your opponents troops. This means that while your attacker advances you shoot them without them shooting you. This works because as a defender you get a range bonus enabling you to shoot farther then them.

Example of what Mech Defense looks like:




Defending with Mech Defense


You want to always layer when possible however it is typically not always needed unless someone is sending fast waves such as cav/phrax waves at you or waves with huge life such as rams. You must always stay in ranged or this defense will fail. You must protect your ballistas from being scout bombed by using scouts, this will also prevent the attacker from knowing what you are using as well. If an attacker is sending a typical mech wave at you then you will need one third of whatever mechs they are sending. A rule of thumb in the case of varying attacks has always been 40k ballistas or 10k pults with a 400 attack hero. It is wise to have both. Because you are defending with so few units your attack hero matters big time! The stronger the attack hero you have the fewer ballistas/pults you can have.

Advice / Warning-

■ Scout bombs, make sure you have enough scouts so that bombs are absorbed by your scouts.
■ Aggressive scouting against you, if you are facing someone with a large hero or multiple people wearing your scouts down you will want to consider closing gates unless actual attacks are coming. If you are going to close your gates I would suggest deceiving your defense. If they don’t know what you have it may take them awhile to figure it out.
■ Watch out for waves loaded with scouts as battle mechanics works like this. The attackers scouts wait where the battle began and once all the attackers units have been killed the scouts then attack the first unit in their path. Since the battle has progressed and the defenders ranged units have now marched forward it is likely your ballistas are not the first unit in their path. I will address this more below.
■ Fast moving waves such as cav and or phrax. It is important to layer when possible to prevent these getting to you. Most often this isn’t an issue but if you are running around recommended defense or more it could be. Make sure to use a calculator to know how you will do against these waves. The stronger the hero the better.
■ Ram waves with an intel hero. These are slow moving waves but with a ton of life. Layer against these and get the strongest hero possible reinforced.
■ Abatis bombs or range spamming, if someone can convert you into compact you will take massive damage. Avoid this by queuing abatis in groups just before larger waves land or getting a trap out last second. Close gates if you cannot manage this against major waves.
■ Relying on rams, having large sums of rams can be useful at times however they will not last long if your attacker is sending mech waves.
■ Finally never risk more then is needed, if you have 200k balls in your base not only must you cover that with scouts but if you make an error you could lose them all in one round. Always have troops available for back up.

Countering Loaded Mechs (smech)

This is a mech loaded with scouts, the reason that 10k pults was also suggested above was for this reason. You can defeat these by going “1″ ballista and pure pults. The attackers mechs will kill all units before the ballistas and the remaining scouts will scout bomb the single ballista. Make sure you replace this ballista between waves. However in the case where you are facing multiple of these waves you may try to time “1″ ballista between each wave. Another option is converting to CD if you still have walls to protect your mechs or ultimately closing gates.

Toggle Defense

Use this with caution as you must really know what you are doing. There was another article about the rate that abatis break down, knowing this information you can time when your defense will convert to compact. An example of how to use this would be like this. Assume attacks are mechs first then cav bombs.

Mech Defense (Range, 6 abatis)

5 Mechs (no scouts) – Stay in ballista defense

Convert to CD

5 Cav bombs, (250 cav, 99750 scouts)

Using the abatis chart we would purposely only have “6″ abatis in our city. As the mech waves/layers hit we would have no range by the time the cav bombs arrived.

Attacking Someone in Mech Defense

There first thing you need to know is are they in mech defense. Often times the easiest way to detect this is send multiple well timed ranged attacks at them and look at the experience your hero is getting in reports. I would suggest sending an exchange/tradefire wave immediately following an archer bow as you will usually always get some experience from that. The person is either really good at layering or they are in mech defense. Once you know how they are defending the battle is half over.

If they are not using a strong hero or dont have enough ballistas these are ways you can typically get through. If they are using a very strong hero some of these attacks may be completely ineffective. Look at report experience to gauge this. Important to note you want these waves to follow a wave that clears layers so that only mechs remain.
■ Unlayered ram wave with balls or pults only. You are sending the ranged units with you to prevent them layering.
■ Exchange/Tradefire – 99750 arch, 250 cav
■ Iron Wave – 99500 arch, 250 swords, 250 cataphrax
■ Cav bomb – 250 cav, 99750 scouts
■ Full phrax or cav wave – 100000 or 125000 waves
■ Loaded Mechs – Typical layered mech but with as many scouts as possible.

Other Methods around ballista defense

■Coordinated mass scouting, do this with several strong heroes or as an alliance do this just before you were to scout bomb someone. When removing the scout wall make sure you scout instead of attack as it kills the same amount of scouts anyways minus the risk of losing a hero.
■Abatis bombs or abatis spamming to convert someone to compact defense.

Summary

The most important thing when sending or facing these attacks is know the exceptions to the rules and what attacks can get you. Close gates on attacks you aren’t positive you will win. Change your tactics and time your attacks/defense well and you will be successful. The chart above will help you gauge how many scouts you will have to protect yourself against scout bombs.