Heavy Tank Attacks

Notice: I wrote this when I was Space Age, before Digital or Information Age even came out. It may be dated, and there are better strategies now. I'm leaving this page up, but I would no longer recommend investing resources in Heavy Tank attacks.
tl;dr: starting around Industrial Age, focus on Heavy Tanks and Fighters. Your tanks, generals, and mercs will grind your opponent to dust, while your other stuff keeps them alive.

What to upgrade

You will want to focus on building/upgrading:
In the Library, you'll want:
In the University, you'll want:
In the Museum, look for:
Any nation is okay, but German is best. Make sure Teutonic Fury is up before any important battle.

Coalitions: use American and Ethiopian in every war. You may want to not upgrade them all the way. It takes so many trade goods to purchase fully upgraded coalitions that you may not be able to keep up. I stopped upgrading mine at level 3.

Wow, that's a lot of stuff to upgrade. But don't worry, you don't need to max out all of this. I was 5-starring similar-level opponents as an Atomic British base, and my tanks were one upgrade behind, my planes were a few levels behind, and I only had about half the listed university bonuses. Just get kinda close, do a few test friendly challenge or multiplayer attacks, and see if you are close enough to be successful.

Of course, it doesn't hurt to do other upgrades too (defenses, etc.). And in some cases (like Library and University) you'll be required to do other things to unlock your priorities. Some items listed (ex. Microprocessor in the Library) are very high age, so you won't be able to do them until later. That's okay, just do what you can, as you are able.

There are some additional nice-to-have upgrades, like the University bonuses under various leaders that reduce Library cost or the Suleiman skill that reduces general upgrade cost. But they take so much time and resources to get that they're not worth pushing for. If you're already upgrading those leaders, great. If not, don't slow yourself down.

If you are a really active player and want to push as fast as possible, ignore the upgrades that boost oil production and get your oil from multiplayer attacks. But upgraded oil wells do produce quite a bit of oil, and there's not much else important that you need to do with gold.

You don't need any Barracks troops, except maybe a few fillers that don't matter much. After Atomic Age, upgrading Barracks does not increase troop capacity, so you can stop upgrading them to focus on other upgrades.

When requesting troops, it is best to get high health troops, preferably Heavy Tanks. But it is hard to be too picky about what people donate, and you can work with whatever you get.

Army Composition

Here's what I bring to an attack as a Space War Age base.
Vary this according to your age and troop capacity. The most important rule is: bring as many heavy tanks as possible. It is tempting to think something like "this army is okay, but if I toss in a few cannons it'll destroy stuff faster". Don't do that. Your squishy cannons are liabilities that you cannot protect.

How to do an attack

This is fairly straightforward. The overview is:
Next we weill look at each of these steps in more detail

Evaluate your opponent

Scan your opponent's entire base. Be sure to check the corners. Look for Forbidden Cities and event buildings. See where anti-tank guns are positioned. Notice open spaces that may contain traps. See if there are clusters of particular building types (defender-producing, anti-tank guns, etc.). Notice if the buildings/walls look fully upgraded, so you'll know which things might give you the most trouble during the battle.

Plan your attack

First, decide what to do about Quick Victory. You can:
  1. Destroy the town center. Do this if the town center is exposed or not heavily protected. Your tanks can take a lot of punishment, so it is okay if you don't think you can destroy all the defenses near the town center before taking out the town center itself. But try to make sure you'll be able to get there in time, and that you won't get hopelessly overwhelmed.
  2. Get 50% destruction. Do this if there are a lot of unprotected buildings. This works especially well if the opponent has put lots of effort into protecting their town center and neglected other things.
  3. Don't worry about Quick Victory and just go for 4 stars. Sometimes, especially against stronger opponents or ones with Forbidden Cities, there just isn't a good way to get Quick Victory. 4 stars is still good.
Next, look for a spot to deploy. Obviously, you'll want to deploy close to whatever you want to kill first. But be careful about deploying directly into anti-tank guns or a big cluster of defender-producing buildings. Sometimes that is still the best option, but know what you are getting into and be prepared for it.

Then, think about how the battle will progress, and what might go wrong. That way, if the battle goes badly, you'll recognize it sooner.

If this is a war attack, think about what troop tactics you might need and swap them out accordingly. Maybe there's an open spot that looks like a trap field - swap in a Spy to disarm them. Maybe there's a big cluster of resource buildings (farms, mills, markets, oil wells, etc.) - swap in pirates, armored cars, or motorcycle riders to take them out. Maybe there are lots of defender-producing buildings that you think will be a problem - swap in something like archers to help.

Notice I didn't say anything about the missile silo. Here's why: you are going to IGNORE IT. That's one of the beauties of this type of army. Everything in your army that you care about is high health and can soak up silo damage. If you are used to blowing up the silo early so it doesn't destroy your army full of barracks troops, this is a big change and may be hard for you to get used to. But really - just ignore the silo, and let your tanks destroy it whenever they happen to get to it.

Deploy troops

Your army needs as much time as possible to destroy things, so it is important to deploy quickly. If you are used to an army that requires you to "soften up" the enemy defenses before deploying, I have good news: you don't have to worry about that anymore. If there is an anti-tank gun very close to your deploy point, send in your fighters to blow it up before you deploy. Otherwise, your army can handle a lot of damage, so just toss your tanks, generals, and mercs out there as quickly as possible. I like to spread them out slightly so they don't all blow up the same building then spend a few precious seconds driving to the next one. But I don't normally spread them out too much, or they can each get bogged down fighting defenders individually.

If you have high-health donated troops, deploy them with your tanks. If you have filler troops or lower-health donated troops, hold on to them a little while. The silo will be targeting your deploy point, and will quickly kill cannons, archers, etc.

Monitor the battle

Once the battle is going, you have a few priorities:
  1. keep your army alive
  2. make sure you get Quick Victory (if you are going for it)
  3. pick off any stray buildings that your army is leaving behind
This is why we bring Fighters instead of Bombers, Paratroopers, etc: Fighters are great at destroying both enemy tanks and anti-tank guns. Remember when you noticed where the enemy anti-tank guns were? Here's when it pays off. As your army starts approaching an anti-tank gun, send your Fighters to destroy it. If it undefended, you can do this at any time. But often, there will be towers, redoubts, air defenses, etc. in the way. Let your army kill off a few of those things, and your Fighters will live longer. But it is better to lose a Fighter than a tank, and anti-tank guns will quickly kill your tanks. So sacrifice your Fighters if you have to. Also watch for forest defenders, tanks from bunkers, and tanks from destroyed factories. Kill those quickly with your Fighters. Your heavy tanks could handle them, but it takes precious time.

Watch health bars and use a heal when any tank gets around 50%. Try to target the heal so that your tank will spend the maximum amount of time if the green circle.If there's an anti-tank gun you can't otherwise take out, you may want to preemptively drop a Heal right as your heavy tank gets within range of the anti-tank gun, to keep it alive while it destroys the gun.

If you have Decoy or Sabotage, you can use that to control enemy defenses or defenders.

Heavy tanks are bad about leaving a few buildings along the edge of the battle. You probably have a few filler troops (I use bazookas and infantry, but you do you). Deploy them to kill leftover buildings. Try to keep your heavy tanks from driving all the way to a corner just to blow up a house or something - it is a waste of time. If you are in war, coalition troops are also good for this. If you have low-health donated troops, they can do a good job of this too.

I often use an Assault Rally early in the battle, both to give my tanks an extra early boost, and to get them all moving in the way I want them to go. Sometimes you will deploy your tanks and they'll all start spreading out in the wrong directions. Assault Rally helps them get back on track.

If you have the Colosseum, use its ability to give your tanks an extra boost when you can target a bunch of them at once.

Avoid the Rally button during the middle of the battle. It is sometimes useful, but usually it makes some of your (really slow) tanks spend a lot of time driving across the opponent's base without shooting anything. This is time wasted.

Quick Victory via Town center

In this case, I usually use two Assault Rallies and one Decoy. First, I deploy my troops as above, and quickly use an Assault Rally to start moving them toward the Town Center. When they get close enough for the town center troops to pop, I put down a Decoy to distract the town center troops, then immediately use the second Assault Rally to make my tanks blow up the town center. If it all goes well, my tranks will have enough bonus left from the Assault Rally to also kill the town center troops while they are still distracted. If I think I'll need it, I sometimes preemptively drop a Heal in the area to keep my tanks alive during this heavy fighting.

This is a risky part of the battle and if it goes poorly, you can easily lose your army. If you are getting close to the town center and you can tell things aren't going well - maybe you are too low on time or maybe your tanks are too spread out - just give up on Quick Victory. It is better to get 4 stars and save your army than to get 2 stars and lose your army.

Quick Victory via 50%

In this case, I often spread out my tanks farther on initial deploy so they can each kill more without lots of driving around. I also am more likely to use filler troops or even a troop card early to help blow stuff up. If you are running out of Quick Victory time and you aren't very close, you may have to just give up on it. There's no good way to suddenly destroy 20% of your enemy's base.

Finish the battle

As you get into the last minute or so of the battle, evaluate how things are going. If it has gone well, you'll have mostly destroyed your enemy's base, but there are probably some leftovers. Use filler troops, your Fighters (if they are still alive), or even troop cards to polish off the leftovers. The Rally button can be really useful if there is a cluster of leftover buildings far away from your tanks. Even if your tanks are driving the right direction, Rally makes them drive faster. Scroll around the enemy base to make sure you didn't miss anything in a corner. Often your real enemy at this point is the clock. Don't waste troop cards needlessly. If you have 15 seconds left and you're only at 80% destruction, settle for the stars you already have. You aren't going to get to 100% by wasting troop cards. But if you are fairly close to getting an additional star, it may be worth it.

Conclusion

If you have been doing attacks differently, what I just described may sound crazy and will probably feel completely wrong at first. It will probably take a few battles to get your timing down. But it really does work, and it is easier and more reliable than any other high-end strategy that I've tried. There are many people using a variation of this strategy, and you will probably be attacked by some. So watch replays, see what other people are doing, and steal their ideas.