Looted Resource Refund

Update: since originally writing this, I am now capped at 85% Looted Resource Refund via my Museum, am Information Age, and it is all still working beautifuly.

You hate getting attacked and having oil stolen, right? You've spent hours on base design, posted dozens of friendly challenges for advice, and you're still getting steamrolled. Fortunately, the museum provides the solution: Looted Resource Refund. Using this actually lets you make more oil than you lose in attacks. Yes, that's right. You can get attacked, have lots of oil stolen, and MAKE oil. (And yes, it works for food and gold too.)

First off: I did not invent this technique. I stole these ideas from:

Read those pages for more info, or in case the way they explain things makes more sense to you than the way I do. They also go into deeper techniques, such as swapping out artifacts for various situations. Herein, I stick to the simple version.

Looted Resource Refund is a Museum bonus that appears on Jewelry, as well as some Legendary Artifacts. You can also increase it via a few other things, like the Storage Blessing or being Korean. But don't feel like you have to change nations. Looted Resource Refund is capped at 85%, and reaching that cap is very possible with any nation.

I'm currently at 73% in my museum, via two Jewelry artifacts and one Legendary. (I'll be at 75% once I finish upgrading my most recent artifact.) With the Storage Blessing, I easily exceed the 85% cap. The main reason I'm continuing to increase my museum bonus is so I can quit messing with the Storage Blessing.

Here's an example where I was attacked twice, had 15,770 oil stolen, and GAINED 3,056 oil. I did not have Storage Blessing active (bad me!) for these attacks, so the math will use only the Looted Resource Refund bonus of 73% that I get from my museum.

Starting oil: 195,941

First attack:

Second Attack: Final oil: 198,997

To be clear: I did not collect any oil from my oil well, oil seeps, raiding, or anything else in the middle. I checked how much oil I had right before I logged out, then checked again right after logging in and collecting my refunds.

Let's look at the math. We'll examine the second attack first, because it is easier:

I lost a bit of oil on this attack (749 oil). But that is WAY better than if I'd lost all 2,767. So even on ordinary, small attacks you can see that Looted Resource Refund is a big help. But wait, it gets better.

Now, let's look at the first attack. If we do the same math, we get this:

According to this math, I lost over four thousand oil between the two attacks. So how did I MAKE oil?

Here's where the magic happens. There are two parts:

  1. Dominations has a hard limit on how much oil an attacker can take from you in a single attack. It appears to vary by age. I've read that Digital Age bases cap at 8,000 oil, and my math says that Space Age bases cap at 6,233 oil. (I don't know the caps for the other ages.) This cap limits how much oil you lose, but it does not limit how much oil your attacker gains. So when I had 13,752 oil stolen, the attacker actually got 13,752 oil. But I only lost 6,233 oil. In other words, the attacker gained a lot more oil than I lost.
  2. Looted Resource Refund is calculated on the amount the attacker gains. So the amount I was refunded was 73% of 13,752, not 73% of 6,233. The amount the attacker gains includes all the attacker's bonuses, like All Resource Looted and Loot Blessing. So you gain an even larger refund if your attacker has big bonuses.
Putting those together, big attacks that steal a lot of loot are your friend. Your opponent gains lots of oil, and you therefore gain a large refund. But you don't actually lose that much oil, because of the cap. So the refund is larger than the amount you actually lost, and you gain oil. Don't look for the amount you actually lost to show up anywhere in the game. It doesn't. You have to do the math yourself. But it is real. Watch the amount of oil you actually have, and notice that (after collecting your refund from your defense log) it goes up, not down.

I lost oil (for real) on the second attack, because the attacker did not reach the cap or have huge bonuses. I would have preferred if they had stolen more oil, because then I would have made oil. I know that sounds backwards and may take some getting used to, but it really does work. Also, keep in mind that the refund only kicks in if an attacker destroys at least 10% of your base's HP. So you can't just put all your oil wells and refinery in a corner, let people blow it up, and make oil.

Notice that you don't need strong defense to make use of this technique. You can happily focus on your offense, make lots of resources from raiding other bases, and STILL make money by being attacked. So if you're a completionist who feels guilty for rushing ages by neglecting defense, you now have a legitimate excuse to rush.

Also notice that the refunded resources go into your defense log, where they cannot be stolen and do not count toward your refinery/mill/market storage.. I frequently let my defense log stack up with refunds until I need the oil for something. It'll hold something like 40 attacks worth, so just be sure to not let refunds roll off the bottom.

Last thing: the same math works for food and gold, but the caps are different. I only worked out the numbers for oil, because that's mostly what I care about. But you'll make food and gold from being attacked too.