Alt City Trap

I'm familiar with farming, cropping, baiting and outright attacks. However, I encountered something today that I had not seen before and I'm wondering if this is common practice or not. I found a city at lvl 12 with max resources. The city stayed at max resources for many days, so it seemed safe to say that the player was inactive. I sent 8k cav to farm the city. Around 15 seconds into what would be a 30 second attack (city had no defenses), I got an alert that my city where the 8k cav had originated from was under attack. A player had warped in and attacked me with 110k cav plus archers. Of course, I was helpless to do anything, as my 8k cav immediately returned to their originating city as soon as the farming was done and got immediately destroyed by the attacking force.

Clearly the city I farmed is an alt that is being used as bait. When anyone attacks the alt, the primary player immediately knows the force, where it came from and when it will be home. It doesn't seem like there's any defense against this kind of attack.

So, is this common practice and any thoughts on detecting these kinds of traps?

To be clear, if you attack a city with no defenses your opponent has the time it takes for your attack to land+30 seconds. They need to warp their city and allow for their own troops travel time to hit your return. All this after they've either recieved a push note of the attack or noticed it on one of their alts action screens. The window for error here is very small on the enemies side because his timing must be perfect as to not alarm you and allow you time to hunt.

This means the enemies weakness is his timing. To overcome this type of ambush you need to throw off the enemies timing. There's many way to do this.

Primarily, you need to be aware at all times if someone has warped near your city. The enemy will do this long before they actually send the attack.

Second, withdraw early from your farm raid. It is likely he is sending his troops at a precise time and if you withdraw it will allow time to hunt your troops.

Third, if there actually are defenses in the city, simply wait your troops. They can be held for 10 minutes and at any time the battle could be 30 seconds from ending. Wait until the timer has almost run out to change the command from wait to forward so your enemy realizes the battle is ending a few moments to late.

The thing to remember here is this is a very precise maneuver. It doesn't take much for the enemy to screw it up, so long as the defender is aware the trap is set.

Thanks for the response. I always check my city map before heading out, so in this case the enemy had not warped before my farming party went out. However, the target city I was going to farm was 10 minutes away. That left plenty of time for the enemy to warp in. I guess the lesson from this is that it's not enough to check for warpers before I send out an attack, but I also need to check for warpers leading up to the attack.

Precisely. Look next to your city a few moments before your attack lands. Their city will need to be in place at least 5 seconds before the attack lands.

One additional wrinkle in this is that I also have defenses (lvl 10 turrets). i believe that enemy troops that immediately wait (and are at max tech) are out of range, which means the enemy also has flexibility in waiting for my troops to return. So really the enemy could attack within 10 minutes of expecting my return and I'd be stuck at that point. Or, are enemy troops immediately in range of lvl 10 turrets even at max tech (for both), which would then prevent the enemy from just waiting for me to return?

It doesnt work like that.

The enemy must wait for your troops to return before his troops arrive at your city. If the battle has already begun, and your troops arrive home, they won't be able to join his battle.

That's where his timing is so important.

To be honest, it's quite difficult for someone to pull off an ambush like this. Simply due to lag times it's usually not difficult to hunt before his attack lands, provided you know the attack is incoming.

Good luck

Hmmm. Interesting. My troops were just starting their attack at what I thought was an abandoned city when i got an phone alert that I was being attacked. I could have sworn that the action alert showed the attack as already being underway. I thought I'd be ok because I hoped that my troops would be stuck at the farm city until the enemy attack on me finished. The attack timer for my troops at the farm city ran well past 30 seconds, which made me think I was ok. But when it was all over, my troops were gone and I saw that they were killed in the war report.

In this and any situation the only thing that matters is if your troops are in your city when his attack timer reaches zero. At that point, his attack lands and any and all troops in your city will engage in defense. If you harvest a hunt, receive a dispatch or return from a mission after his attack timer reaches zero (which means after the battle has begun), those troops will not be present in that battle.

It doesn't matter where your troops are or what they're doing while his attack is en route to your city, or after the battle has begun. It only matters if they are in tht city when the timer runs out.

Also of note....your troops will return from a battle (farm raid, fort, oasis etc) immediately after the battle ends. It takes zero seconds for them to march home no matter how far away they are.

If you are being attacked while attacking elsewhere, be very conscious of those attack timers or you will get burnt.

This is common practice , however on the server I play people rarely attack anything even moderate risk without stacking their own city to prevent being hit back , making attacking people almost always pointless and has reduced activity to an all time low.

[Legit333]

To go along with what George and Taem said, another way to defend against this is to have someone be attacking your city in the event of an ambush. Have a friend or someone you know attack the city with your troops that is attacking send 1 cat to the city so that in an event such as yours, the ambusher would have to wait his attack + 10 minutes, allowing you plenty of time to hunt and gather your bearings if to attack back. Plus this means the person warped and wasted 20 coins (or 40 if he warps away again) for nothing