I think building defense is just boring to most, I understand it. But, if you left 3-4 people per tower, 5-6 people per keep, and had them upgrading, escorting yaks, putting in siege, running supply, and holding down the supply camps that the keep/tower depends on, that server would have a huge advantage over other servers of the same population.
A very small handful of guilds actually know how to defend that well. Every keep/tower is different, you have to learn where to put siege, what positions can hit you with counter siege, what to upgrade first, etc…
EBG might be a bit different strategy, I havent’ spent enough time defending there to really comment.
All the maps are dependent on having the 10% of the population who defend, stategise, and know their towers/keep inside out online to do these things.
‘Most’ icon commanders do not think to repair walls, replace siege, act defensively instead of offensively. They don’t know ‘where’ to place defensive siege, or advanced offensive siege. But, this doesn’t matter when you outnumber an opponent, or you’re playing against opponents of a similar skill level.
What ‘most’ icon commanders do is lead around large groups of people to assault towers – often the ‘wrong’ towers, often at the expense of a swift and concise defensive response to any assault in one’s home territory.
EB is different to the BL’s in that it’s a map where ‘defense’ is what ‘wins’ the day. The faster you upgrade your 4 towers and keep, and the less you lose your camps, the larger advantage you have. It allows you to press for SM with relatively security. It allows you to make prolonged attempts at another server’s (ideally) weaker towers. You will never ‘keep’ what you take for more than an hour under normal circumstances – again, different to the BL’s. EB isn’t about take and hold. It’s ‘flip and keep them weak.’
Therefore, if your towers and camps never flip, you are infinitely stronger than your opponents.
Me, I hate losing towers. I hate it :p. I don’t even like losing camps >.> When I’m around, and I’m actually ‘needed’, we don’t lose many towers in EB. Even during weeks when our opposition fielded more even numbers, and stronger tactics, we still didn’t lose towers. We don’t even lose camps (holding Golanta for 5+ hours without loss has become rather standard in these match ups).
I remember holding off Kome, and EDSM, and EsF for over 90min with their prolonged sieges of Klovan at 6am in the morning. We had around 25 people on the map, but that doesn’t matter, because I know exactly how to counter everything you could possibly throw at Klovan. The times I dare to sleep? It’ll flip.
When the right people are in EB to perform the necessary tasks, and the right icon commanders (those being the ones that will listen, that watch the map, and that understand defense > offense), TC does not lose things >.>
This long at the top of tier 3 has led to the situation I described above. I fully expect us to lose a lot of towers in EB next week. Especially as I won’t be around for most of it, and there is arguably nobody more versed in defense on TC, in EB, than myself (though there are quite a few who do exactly what I do, day in, day out, and are the backbone of EB). I am by no means the foremost authority on ‘offense’, however.
Ideally, this will encourage a return to the philosophy I feel sets TC apart from FA and CD (in EB), and that is that taking ‘anything’ from us is a ridiculously daunting prospect. If we remain in tier 2 for more than a week, I’ll be putting forth as much effort as I can to teach folks, once again, how to defend, and communicate with icon commanders as to what they should be doing with their forces, once they’re willing to listen.
~Nyari Cil, Queen of EB, repeater of ‘use the cart in the lord room.’
