Their are many ways to take historical cities but here are 4 common and fairly easy ways.
I would suggest you get level 9 stars for your gear for all methods, to ensure that you reduce losses.
And ONLY attack HCs which have a cavs/pikes/rams defence. Scout until you see this.
Full details of how to go about capturing a leVel 12 HC are at the bottom (see METHOD 4) - WELL WORTH THE READ.
METHOD 1: with level 9 stars you should lose much fewer troops
WARRIOR / PIKEMEN / ARCHER / CAVALRY / RAMS CONFIG
The easiest method I have come across to take a HC 12 doesn't require a very high hero attack but only a good number of ballista.
You will only lose about 4,000 ballista on the breaker. The spam waves before will eliminate the traps causing them to miss your important troops.
Hero level and attack does not matter for loyalty and spam waves.
Wave 1 to 30 - 3,000 warriors (spam waves)
Wave 31 - 122,000 ballista with 1k rainbow layers, and level 100 hero with minimum attack of 300 (breaker wave)
Waves 32 and on - 10,000 archers / 20,000 warriors (loyalty waves)
Example of a successful breaker wave: http://ww.evonyurl.com/7v0t83
METHOD 2
WARRIOR / PIKEMEN OR SWORDSMEN / ARCHER / CAVALRY / RAMS CONFIG
If you don't have the ballista and need to use other troops, your losses will depend on your hero attack and star levels. Your going to use a mix of archer rainbows and pikemen.
With Hero attack 200
Launching from a Lvl10 city without war ensign
Wave 1 to 30 - 2,000 warriors / 2,000 scouts
Wave 31 - 33 - 100,000 pikemen
Waves 34 - 35 - 100,000 archers
Wave 36 - 42 (7 waves) - 1,000 workers / 1,000 warriors / 1,000 scouts / 1,000 swordsmen / 95,000 archers / 500 cataphracts / 500 cavalry
Waves 43 and on (loyalty waves) - 10,000 archers / 20,000 warriors
METHOD 3: this is expensive on troops
Starting off
First off, you need to scout the level 12 HC you want. After your scouting, you must see a Pike/Cav/Ram setup. If the scouting has this setup, the Historical City is ready!
1. Make sure you have a 300 - 400 Attacking hero with at least a star level 2 set.
2. Make sure you have your rally spot completely empty (No reinforcements, scoutings or attacks).
3. Many people and Guides recommend many level 100 heroes as a must to cap a HC, not necessary. In this guide, you only need 2 level 100 hero's, but a different combination may require more level 100 heroes.
The Attack
- Based on a Pike/Cav/Ram setup
- Send off 100K Ballistas, 2K Warriors/Scouts, 1K Pike/Sword/Phrax or Cav/Rams and 17K Archers.
- Send off and Archers Rainbow as the second wave | 1K Warriors, Scouts, Pike, Sword and 96K Archers.
After the first to waves hit:
- Ensure you've won either the first or second round then send off 60K Warriors as spam to the HC until you capture.
Based on a Sword/Cav/Ballista setup and a Star level 2 set
In this scenario, I went for the layering first, that's why I was successful.
METHOD 4: HOW TO GO ABOUT CAPTURING A LEVEL 12 HC
There are four types of Historic Cities: level 12, 14, 16 and one single 18.
An HC 12 can be found every 18 miles on the x,y axis. In layman terms, this means 1 level 12 HC is exactly 18 spaces to the left, right, above and below of another level 12 HC thereby creating a net of level 12 HCs all over the server. There are a total of 1936 level 12 HC per server starting from coordinates 9, 9.
Now in order to capture a level 12 HC, you should have already captured a level 10 NPC. This is not a prerequisite per se but you will not have a king/queen of your own otherwise making the entire process of taking a level 12 a royal pain.
We are assuming all your technologies have been researched to level 10 (excluding privateering).
An HC 12 will always have the following troop combinations:
- Warriors: 1,120,000
- Swordsmen/Pikemen: 162,666
- Archers: 42807
- Cavalry/Cataphract: 108,444
- Ballista/Catapult/Battering Ram: 14,640
- Rolling Log: 6,000
- Archer’s Tower: 6,666
- Defensive Trebuchet: 5,000
- Trap: 22,000
- Abatis: 11,000
Preferred Combination
Every 24 hours, when server maintenance happens, the troop combination will change. The Swordsmen switch with the Pikemen and vice-versa. The Cavalry with the Cataphract, and the Ballista, Catapult and Battering Ram amongst each other. The HC 12 will also have either a level 100 King or a level 100 Queen as the defending hero. Your goal is to find the most offensive combination when you attack. That is because the most offensive combination is also the weakest defence.
Now you cannot do anything with the Wall fortifications but in terms of troop combination, we want the pikemen, the cavalry and the battering ram. So, scout everyday and make your move the day you see this combination.
We are also assuming the city you are attacking from have a level 10 Rally Spot and Feasting Hall.
The Right Distance
The distance between your attacking city and the level 12 matter a lot. You should have them as close to each other as possible. If you are not a paying customer, then the wise choice would be to wait for a flat to grow to level 10 next to the level 12 and building a level 1 city on it. Abandon the city and you have a level 10 NPC straightaway. It is important you capture the level 10 quickly because that NPC 10 is manually created and will be deleted by the server when maintenance happens. To do this, you should have 2 vacant city slots. One for the NPC 10 and one for the HC 12. The reduced distance will let you concentrate on actual battle tactics rather than worrying about troop regeneration. If you didn’t know already, an NPC can regenerate its troops at the rate of 10% every 6 minutes. The repair rate of Wall fortifications is 18%. This is why I am stressing on the distance between your attack city and your HC 12 needs to be very small.
Your City and Troops
- Your attack city should have 11 heroes including the King/Queen. Out of these 11 heroes, 5 heroes should be level 100 attack heroes. Maybe a Historic Hero if you have any of those. Move your Mayor to another city, you want 11 attack heroes here, no wise men or politicians required. The minimum attack for your lead heroes (the 5 level 100 ones) is 300+.
- Plenty of Gold for healing. Disable auto-heal from the Rally Spot. It is expensive, almost 4-5 times manual heal.
- Consider the possibility of the below calculations to be incorrect and have more troops than what I am outlining. The last thing you want is to fail or to be able to barely take the 12 but not have the troops to defend it. (Oh yes, people will attack you from every direction once you have the 12)
- Make sure the combination in the NPC 12 is Pikemen, Cavalry and Rams.
- Enable Penicillin and Warhorn. Highly recommended, you want that extra 3% wounded and that extra 20% attack. If you have any, use the “Excalibur” on each of your level 100 heroes, especially the King/Queen. Extra firepower never hurts. You ultimate goal is to have the five main heroes running 300+ attack.
Troops Required:
- Archers: 1,500,000
- Warriors: 400,000
- Pikemen: 220,000
- Worker: 10,000
- Scouts: 10,000
- Swordsmen: 10,000
Now I mentioned earlier that timing your attack is very important in Age 2. Do not try to ice this one down and hope everything works out the way you want it to be.
Layer out the Defence
Before you try to bounce your troops off the NPC, lets try and strategize the attacks. The abatis are safe as long as you don’t try to throw cavalry at the 12. The Rolling Logs and Defensive Trebuchets are one time use only. They will splatter your troops but are not renewable like the Archers Towers. The Traps too are one time use only but their high numbers (22,000) will require special attention.
You want to place your attack in such a way that you target the Traps first, then the Cavalry, the Pikemen next, then the Archers (plus ATs) and last the Rams. Each wave that you send needs to be designed specifically for one type of defence at a time. Again, do not try a one-size-fits-all, all you’ll get is a sore thumb from all that clicking and no level 12.
Waves of Attacks
- Firstly, you need to send 30 waves of 3,000 warriors each. Add another 5 waves if your heroes are weaker. These waves are designed to take down the traps. They will ALL die. Scout after you have plastered your warriors all over the HC. You should have about 500 traps left in the HC. You want to make sure that your precious Archers are killing troops not traps.
- Now send two waves of 90,000 pikemen and 10,000 warriors to the HC. Make sure your top heroes are leading these attacks because these are just two attacks and want the best bang-for-the-buck. These two waves will take out the Cavalry. Of course, scout again.
- Next, send a single wave with your best hero of 80,000 Archers, 10,000 Pikemen, 1000 each of workers, warriors, swordsmen to take out the Pikemen in the HC. Follow this up with three waves of 95,000 archers and the rest with your healed troops left over (I am assuming you are doing a manual heal between attacks). These three waves are to take out the Archers. Scout again.
- Lastly, send out multiple waves of 95,000 archers and 1000 each of workers, warriors, scouts, swordsmen and pikemen to kill the warriors. I am not putting a number to these waves because our aim is to kill the healed troops with these attacks so use as many as required.
By this time you have most of the troops and wall defences (except abatis) destroyed and your HC 12 is ready for loyalty waves.
Your loyalty waves should consist of 50,000 archers and 50,000 warriors. You are using the warriors as meat shield since they are most likely to be killed by spawned wall fortifications and troops. The archers being range units will go for the ATs and HC archers.
As you move ahead, you can reduce your loyalty waves to 20,000 each of archers and warriors.
REMEMBERS to keep scouting between attacks all the time & keep manually healing between attacks.
DO NOT include cavalry or cataphract in this mix. These are mount units and will cause the HC cavalry to charge and ruin the entire planning.
If you have been playing this game for long, you will know by now that the Evony game engine plays out attacks by rounds and each type of unit has inbuilt entry point for a battle. We have used this when we planned the attack strategy. Traps first, then Cavalry, next Pikes, followed by Archers then Warriors and lastly Rams.
Introducing Archers in the early waves will also ruin the battle tactics since the game engine rule matches a range with range (Archers and ATs) just like Mount with Mount. Introducing Cavalry or Archers too early will cause the NPC troops to “jump” the queue and the entire calculation will fall on it head.
Also, like we mentioned before, we don’t claim to be 100% right all the time. Overkill may happen. Have more troops than what has been outlined above. Not only to cover any mistakes etc. in this guide but also to have enough troops to defend you 12 once you have won it.
Each and Every Historic City (12, 14, 16, 18) goes into auto truce for 24 hours when it is captured. This is designed to give you enough time to recover and mount a defense. However, remember that the manual truce if declared never covers a historic city ever. In an event you are attacked after the 24 hour cool down is over, your only hope is defence by troops. Historic Cities cannot be teleported either.
The calculations in this guide have been provided by Lord Joker of server NA21 who is the vice host of alliance PURE and ranks 24 on the server. We have been using these calculations every time we take a historic city and so far they have been proven to be correct.
