Dedicated Ship for Grabbing Booty - Dagger

Arr pirates!! Let's talk about the new ship they be building at the Smuggler's Den - the Dagger! There be no pirate who wouldn't stand with his one eye wide open looking at the Dagger ship. It be boasting a massive raiding capacity of 750 so 67 Daggers can be hauling 50,000 booty. In addition to that, it be so fast that it can make 1 trip in the same time as our fastest ships would take 4 trips to accomplish. That be thanks to its fast sails giving it a whooping 90 mph speed.

However, on the downside, it be pretty naked and not capable of fighting nothing but a tiny defense force, so it be just a dedicated ship for grabbing booty from havens where ye know there be no defense whatsoever.

Then, of course, being a Smuggler's Den creation, it be not freely attainable. Ye be needing a good amount of Rubies for this fast Dagger. As a matter of fact, if we do a quick little calculation we can say that if ye send a full force of 50,000 resource stealing, fast as the wind, Daggers and ye happen to run into an ambush or lose them for whatever other reason then ye be looking at a loss of Rubies in the region of 15,000, which be a massive blow.

So there ye go, ye be seeing both strong benefits and risks and ye gotta make yer own pirate mind about it. So what ye think? Will ye be making an order of these to the Smuggler's Den?

Learn the Pattern of Yer Enemy

Arr pirates!! Ye got to work hard in thinking about the patterns of yer enemy! Yes, me know how hard this can be when y'arr down the bottom of a barrel of Rum but ye got to sober up sometimes fer the good of yer Haven and study and remember the patterns of attack of yer enemy!

What do I mean ye say? Well here I show ye an example of what strategy me be speaking of:

I had an enemy Haven captain sending me insults and threats and long story short it was clear we not gonna be drinking no Rum together so I started taking notes on me enemy and what I realized is:

1) He be sending a raid on me often being fake - with just 1 pirate.

2) He be treasuring his blockades a lot (so here I did a massive good job and liberating as many Havens as I saw he blockaded)

and last, but not at all the least ( 3 ) He be scouting me Haven with a large number of Flying Dutchmen (around 100) as well as the Dread Fleet unit called Airship which be giving a scouting boost of +400 fer 20 supporting Flying Dutchmen and the sort.

So regarding that last point I prepared my fleet of ~200 Flying Dutchmen and while his raid was coming to me Haven I put them out waiting fer his scouting army. I decided to wait even until the last moment until his raid arrives and then hide in the Harbor and, again, immediately after the raid, put them out again as me could not know when they be arriving, but based on his pattern they had to be coming at some point! And me observation of me enemy paid off in a fantastic way as ye can see on the picture below - obliteration of his entire scouting fleet as well as the Dread Unit Airship!

Army Caught Upon Returning Home

Arr pirates!! Sometimes we got to talk about sad things as well. Here me lost 1000+ of me dear army unfortunately and I be sharing with ye me grief but also giving ye tips!

Ye see THE most dangerous thing in Pirates Tides of Fortune is having yer army caught when ye be not online to manage things. This applies to both offense and defense. It even matters not how much ye got, if yer enemy organizes an attack and ye be not online then ye can't ask yer Brotherhood or Shipmates fer help because ye be not there!

This way ye can lose a lot, ye can lose yer offense, ye can lose yer defense. There be 2 ways to prevent this. 1 way be the easiest - hide yer army in the Harbor, but this way ye can say "bye bye" to yer 25% resource production from yer cannon and ye be not able to have lots of resources sitting outside. 2nd way is to be full force out in the open and aggressively punish anyone who looks at ye. This 2nd way is not fer all pirates - it be fer the most organized strong ones.

But even if we be pirates, we be humans and here ye see I was not online to hide this raid returning home and a random enemy got lucky in destroying them, which be very sad for me on that day. So have a look at the picture below and say in the comments if this happen to ye as well.

Try Keep Rum Production Near Zero

Arr pirates!! As pirates I bet ye know all there is about Rum! Well ye don't! :)
Rum production is actually a very good indicator which shows ye if y'arr doing good or not. Ye see if yer Rum production is for example +3000 then this means ye got room for 3000 more pirates!! That's huge! What that tells ye is that y'arr not managing yer Haven well. The only time this is not yer fault (or maybe it is) is when the enemy attacks and destroys yer army then this is how ye see all those Havens with no gold or lumber and 50,000+ Rum. It means they don't have an army.

So back to what I want to teach ye and this is that ye got to try and keep yer Rum production near zero! Actually, if y'arr doing really good then ye probably have a little bit negative Rum production.

And by the way all of the above is while you are constantly building and upgrading yer Rum distilleries!!

So what's the logic ye say?

The logic or the purpose is to have yer Haven absolutely full of pirates / army up to the maximum limit. Have no barrel of Rum wasted at all! Otherwise ye be too fat for yer size. However, if ye keep on training troops and upgrading yer Rum distilleries and have a Rum production near to zero then ye be very strong for yer size and less people will want to fight with ye!

And don't be afraid to be having negative Rum production either. 100 negative means ye just gotta have 2,400 Rum extra to pay fer the day, which is super easy. Feel free to have 20,000+ Rum on ye and go all the negative ye want - Rum is the easiest resource to plunder and if ye be in a good Brotherhood people be giving ye Rum fer free as much as ye want.

Defense Misdirection Warning

Arr pirates!! Here I be warning ye to be careful of the new game changes where it be showing ye the attack and defense values of all the units. First of all I think the change is very nice and it looks good, but be warned! - have a look at the picture below of the Grenadier's defenses - ye see that the new interface or the patch update is showing the Grenadier with a defense of 170 which actually be his top defense rating versus Mercenaries and Fleet, but the Grenadier be having a defense rating of 130 points versus Pirates and Armada, so be careful with the 170 displayed value - it be seriously misleading information if ye not 100% wise about the game.

And here below me show ye as well the information on our dear Bonnie's Beauties and the Skirmisher - ye see the displayed defense values are 20 and 30 but actually against fleet and armada they be much lower especially for Skirmisher at 16 points which is half of the displayed 30.

So to conclude I think the new interface is very nice and maybe they should not change anything but ye must be careful not to psychologically fall into the trap of miscalculating the defense points as it might lead to a lot more then ye losing a couple of barrels of Rum!

Attacking Prizes More Effectively

Arr pirates!! Fer the crazy strategic pirates out there I want to share a strategy where you can be more efficient and taking down those pesky Prizes.

The strategy is based on the different types of troops, example: ARMADA or PIRATE types. And the Prizes contain different proportions of these, so if ye could get some info on those Prizes ye could send the most efficient troops to take down the Prize. The good news is ye can do that! Ye can send 1 bonnie to whatever Prize and, sure, she will die, but it's all for a good cause as ye will get to see exactly what type of army they got there.

So here ye see the example of me Bonnie scouting:

So ye see that in this specific case there are only PIRATE type of defenses on this Prize so it be making no sense whatsoever to send for example Turtle or Junk Ships to defend this because this be super inefficient. In this case ye better be sending Bonnies or Skirmishers or actually if ye have some Dragon Ladies who are very good at Pirate Defense then it be best to use em here since they be drinking too much Rum anyway.

Here below is another example with a level 30 Prize where ye can immediately see that the attacking forces are heavily skewed towards ARMADA which means this is the time where ye be wanting to use yer Junk Ships as they be most effective against the Armada troop type with their 120 defense against that specific troop type.

Lastly, if ye don't got no extra Junk or Dragon Ladies or such then the most efficient be the simple old Bonnies since they have an average of 19 defense (without upgrades) against all troop types.

Don’t be afraid to scout raid far

Arr pirates!! Here be some education and motivation to tell yer lazy Rum drinking pirates to not be afraid to scout far with yer Flying Dutchmen. Here ye see on the picture an example of me sending a whole wave of Flying Dutchmen south (down) of me Haven and ye see an example of me sending a raid far away to the East (right side) where I be planning on getting 50,000 resources.

and here be another example picture of scouting older known targets and again sending a whole line of Flying Dutchmen to another group of new Havens looking fer possible raid targets:

Trick to go beyond maximum resource capacity

Arr pirates!! I be sharing with ye a trick that allows ye to have more resources than your capacity allows. Normally if your capacity is reached yer Haven will not produce any more of gold or lumber or rum depending which one is full, so it is not a good idea to be there, but there can be many reasons ye keeping high level of resources - maybe adding up to make a big building upgrade.

So if ye reach yer capacity, most often this happens with Rum, then one simple trick ye can use is to put yer Rum for sale either at a 1:2 ratio if ye actually wanna maybe sell it or at any other ratio which means most likely ye will never sell it and then this Rum gets taken out of yer Haven and yer capacity drops. Any time ye need that Rum ye just go and cancel yer offer and all the Rum comes right back to yer Haven and ye don't even have to wait for it.

Here the example how at this time I was keeping more than 10,000 Rum extra using this trick:

Catching the Offensive Troops of yer Enemy

Arr pirates!! There could be a case that you have an enemy who hides in his Harbor every time you attack and then comes out and starts irritating you again. This can be very annoying. One way to punish him is to put a blockade on him, but this could be dangerous because his Brotherhood can come and smash it or ye have to sacrifice some of yer defense which increases the risk of yer Haven getting raided.

This is especially difficult if the people who can raid ye are not so far - then there is not so much time fer yer Brotherhood to come and defend yer Haven.

And if ye put a small blockade then he can liberate himself and if ye put a big blockade then he can call for help, so, since I had this sort of a situation I be thinking on how I can get him to lose his troops and I came with a very good solution and here I explain ye the strategy.

First, some days, even 1 week, only blockade him with 1 Bonnie or 1 Dark Corsair. Whatever it is always keep it the same. The point here is to teach him that every time that ye blockade his Haven it is always and always going to be that 1 unit. So when he scouts first, he will see this. Maybe 1 or 2 times blockade him with a big blockade with a few Dutchmen, so when he scouts he fails. So now he is learning that if he fails scouting there be a big blockade so he hides and when he succeeds in scouting then there is always 1 unit.

After this is 2nd stage, it helps to be more active. Ye only blockade him with 1 unit. He liberates, ye again blockade with 1 unit. Ye teach him that from now on it is always gonna be 1 unit. And there be 1 unit many times per day. So he gets so sick of this 1 unit that he stops to scout. When ye see that he stops to scout keep going with the 1 unit, so now he knows 100% that there be 1 unit, so he no longer scouts.

Now stage 3, ye put a big blockade. He goes to liberate with 1 unit he fails. Strange, he thinks maybe there is a little bit more, so he sends more - he fails. Now he is committed, he thinks he got most of it and sends more. I got this guy to lose all he had left - have a look at the screenshots below:

Here you see he tried to liberate 4 times:

Note for the higher level players - yes these are small numbers/units, but the strategy could work for your high levels a

Failed Liberation #1 - the small hit

Failed Liberation #2 - sends a full on attack

Failed Liberation #3 - sends what is left

Failed Liberation #4 - has lost hope, is cursing, sends last troops to die

...and so he no longer bothers any of my blockades.

375 Rubies boost production for 25%

Arr pirates!! Here small Analysis on boosting resource production if ye got some Rubies. You can boost yer gold, lumber and Rum productions by 25% for 3 days for 375 Rubies either by clicking on top left arrow on the resources tab:

or in the Smuggler's Den ye can click on the Resources tab the options at the bottom:

So the question is, is it interesting to do this or rather is it better to buy the resources directly for 100 or 200 Rubies? Let's see:

100 Rubies buys you 5000 Rum or 200 Rubies buys you 5000 gold or lumber.
if you boost this to 200 or 400 Rubies you just get double the amount.

Boost on 1000 production

Now, if we look at the 25% boost, say ye are making 1000 of each of the 3 resources per hour. This means that ye be getting 1250 per hour. If we take 24 hours in the day ye get 250 x 24 hours = 6000 extra resources per day and for 3 days ye get 18,000 - and this is all for 376 Rubies.

For Gold and Lumber

If ye were to buy directly (5000 / 200 per piece), then ye be getting 376 x 25 = 9,400 Resources immediately, so actually it comes out that it is better that ye buy the boost since you can produce then approximately double the amount of gold, lumber and Rum per day.

For Rum

If ye were to buy directly (5000 / 100 per piece), then ye be getting 376 x 50 = 18,800 Resources immediately, so actually it comes out that it is better that ye buy directly if ye be earning 1000 of Rum per day.

Break Even Point

So the break even point is 1045 production per hour for Rum and 522 production per hour for gold and lumber. If ye are above this than it is better to buy the boost and if ye are below this buy direct.

What to do if too much Rum?

Arr pirates!! We be dreaming maybe but there is actually such a thing as too much Rum. Yes I know ye want to be drinking it and ye never want to give your Rum, but you got to :) it is fair economy after all.

So if ye got too much rum there are 3 things you can do:

1) Ye look to see if ye can research some technology which is costing much more Rum than gold and lumber.

2) Ye can ask in yer Brotherhood chat and see if someone needs it and help them - this better than giving to the enemy for sure and better than having Rum on Limit.

3) Ye can Extend Offer in the Market's Trade Resources Tab and offer Rum for either gold or lumber at a rate of 2:1.

If ye think there is something else that can be done with Rum just put it below in the comments and if ye like my advice please share with other pirates.

Dangers of Leaving Army in the Open

Arr pirates!! Super important lesson or reminder to all ye pirates never, and I say again - never, leave your army out in the open on yer Haven and log out, leave the house or go to sleep. Ye be taking a big huge risk of someone smashing your hard earned army to little pieces and ye be waking up to a nightmare scenario.

Especially do not leave yer army outside of yer Harbor when you have serious enemies who be checking and scouting yer Haven regularly.

Here below I show ye my big enemy made this huge mistake and left his army out sitting in his Haven and, as I regularly scout him, I sent a bunch of scouts and 7 died. Normally this is bad news as I hate losing my Flying Dutchmen, but I got really happy because if 7 of mine died then he must have 20+ Dutchmen there, so I immediately sent my fleet to smash them and I found his whole army, both defense and offense, sitting there and so I smashed them all ARRRR!!!

and, on top of that, not only I got a really nice relic as you see there, but I saw that not all of them died, so I immediately sent my army again to finish of the remaining enemy pirates!!!

so again, big lesson to everyone - do not leave yer army sitting in yer Haven or ye be risking a complete destruction!!

Offensive vs. Defensive Strategies

Arr pirates!! I be telling ye 'bout offense or defense strategies in Pirates Tides of Fortune. Ye see once ye got the ROYAL Cannon built ye have a choice and that is to play nice and go more into defense and level up yer Royal Cannon to level 6 and get +25% to yer gold and lumber production or ye can go into offense and raid enemy Havens and make enemies in which case most probably someone will raid ye and break yer Cannon.

On the defensive strategy in 5 days ye can get yer Royal cannon giving ye the 25% boost to yer gold and lumber production. Sometimes ye will still be raided and lose the cannon, but most of the time if ye got strong defense and Flying Dutchmen blocking scouting only stupid pirates will attack ye without scouting.

On the offense strategy ye can't hold the Royal Cannon most likely since ye will  p i s s  someone off but then ye better be making real good raids which will give ye at least the same benefit as a 25% boost from the Cannon.

Time for an example. Say ye be producing 1000 gold and 1000 lumber. If ye get the cannon to level 6 then ye be making 1250 gold and lumber which means extra 6000 gold and extra 6000 lumber per day just from the cannon and that means that if you are on the offense strategy then ye better be bringing home minimum that much extra otherwise it be better going in a more peaceful way.

The "Peaceful" pirate will be raiding say 10 times 1000 x 3 resources, so that's roughly 10,000 gold, lumber and rum + the 1250 gold/lumber production.

So the "Offensive" pirate must raid for minimum 16,000 gold/lumber and 10,000 rum to be equal to the "Peace" pirate.

For newer pirates I be recommending to go and grow the peaceful way.

Strategy to Grow and Profit Smartly

(Posted/Edited by LAVASH; Thanks to KDH)

Keeping Track of the Enemy

It is a good idea to "set sail" to the "potential enemy" Haven so ye can view it from the inside. Record the captain's level and current experience points in yer logbook. After 3-7 days start goin' back and checkin' on them. Those that do not move in experience points are usually inactive and safe to raid without retaliation.

Noting down the Harbor Level

The other part once ye found it then send a Flyin' Dutchman to scout it right before your raid hits. Take the booty and subtract it from the totals - this will tell ye the harbor protection value. Make a note of this amount so in the future a scout will tell ye how profitable the raid will be. Also keep a scout or a blockade in/on the Haven which can let ye know if others have raided it and when so ye can track their patterns and get there first.

Identifying Yer Regular Targets and Inactive Pirates vs. Active Pirates

There are many inactive Havens level 17-25 that will give ye 3k lumber and 3k gold. I even found a level 9 that nets 2.5k of each and less than 1k of rum. Me find the lower level ones to be less competition from other captains for the resource and ye can raid them all week rather than gettin' say 10k of resource and 40k of rum then waitin' a week fightin' off other cap'ns to keep it.

I prefer inactives to actives...there be more profit. You don't have to worry about them hittin' yer ransom 'cades, lighthouse targets, or returnin' the favor in ye sleep. I have not lost troops raidin' dead havens either. I know some cap'ns see the experience points as a win but I can raid inactive low levels all day long to gain experience without losin' a man.

Good luck findin' the profit sometimes ye have to travel a bit as well.

Understanding Underway Raids

Arrr pirates!! As ye play ye will be raided so it's good to know for that to understand the UNDERWAY RAIDS and use it as much as possible.

When ye be raided ye be getting a small red box on the bottom left of yer game showing that in so much time (see picture example 1 hour and 40 minutes) ye will be hit. Now there are 2 types of these: RAID and BLOCKADE.

During a RAID they be coming, smashing, grabbing stuff and leaving.
During a BLOCKADE they be coming and staying!! (and giving you a chance to smash them and liberate yer Haven)

Now the UNDERWAY tab can help you not only with the time. Unfortunately there is no way of seeing what kind of army is attacking, but here it be showing the army SPEED. In the picture you can see that the speed of the raid that is coming to me Haven is 6.2 mph and this is telling me 2 things:

1) For sure this army be coming with MARAUDERS because they are slow with that kinda speed.

2a) It could be just 1 Marauder.

2b) But since this guy also sent me an angry message saying he is going to destroy me then it is telling me that he sent his entire offense because nobody likes to send the slow Marauders except when you are doing an all out full force attack.

With this information I can choose to stand and defend or just hide away in my Harbor :)




Otherwise, if ye see speed of say 18 mph then ye know this be fast things like fast ships - this one ye should be more careful with. If this be coming from a higher level pirate then he might just want to slap you with a portion of his army - just the fast units - for a quick slap and back home. But ye know this is not all his ships because a lot of ships also have speed of 12 mph.

If this info was useful for ye then please click Google + to say thanks and/or leave comments. Thanks mate!

Stupid Raid Decisions

Arr pirates!! Today I had a very unfortunate, stupid, a few levels higher, pirate who scouted my New Tortuga skin Haven with full ground defenses (="look it's a heavy casher") with 28 Flying Dutchmen and failed miserably:

... and if that was not enough clue for him that there is a large defense force sitting there he decided to launch a blind attack anyways... "look at me, I gotz no brainz"...

so as you can see on the below picture he raided my Haven with a much stronger force but since i had very good defense for my level + the fact that I am a strong casher Haven he lost tons of his offensive power. Sure, he completely destroyed my defense (which by the way i immediately bought back with rubies) but what a stupid decision to blindly raid a heavily defended and super active casher gaining just a couple of thousand of resources and losing a massive amount of yer army.

So the lesson here is - always scout and do intelligent attacks whereby you can gain more than you lose, so that you can grow.

By the way I was online during this attack and i hit away my Flying Dutchmen and my offense but I left my defense there on purpose (could have easily hid it) to smash down his army since i have tons of rubies and i just buy them all back. But this really annoyed me because it was just a waste of rubies, even if i have a lot of them.

Understanding Defense Values in Pirates

Arrr pirates!! As with me some of ye are probably wondering what are all those defense values in the statistics of the different units. I picked here the example of the TURTLE SHIP from our beloved Pirates Tides of Fortune because you can see it has 40 defense on all stats except Fleet Defense it has 120.

So how does this defense work? 

For example, if you have on defense only 100 x Turtle Ships and someone attacks you only with 100 x Marauders then the battle calculation is going to use the "Pirate Defense: 40" for the battle result so you will have 100 x 40 = 4000 defense and he will have 100 x 60 = 6000 attack so both sides will lose units but he will be more of the winner.

Now, on the other hand, imagine you have the same defense but he is attacking you with 10 x Frigates then your defense calculation will use the "Fleet Defense: 120" and so instead of 4000 defense you will have 100 x 120 = 12000 defense which is 3 times more!! and so against his 10 Frigates (900 x 10 = 9000) you will be the on the top side!

So I hope that was clear to you. You can actually use that in your advantage when you scout other pirates and see maybe a defense of a certain type of a unit much more than other types then maybe you can use specific offense units to get an advantage.

Note: when things are mixed up this still works, but the game will make a complex calculation of what is defending against what and I don't know the formula, but the logic is working.

Economy Overview and Importance in Pirates Tides of Fortune

Arr pirates!! In this here post I be wanting to highlight the importance of your economy. I know, I know, we be pirates and we mostly be thinking of killing and murdering and raiding and, most of all, of drinking lots and lots of Rum, BUT......

...pay extra special attention to yer Economy. The higher your hourly production of Gold, Lumber and Rum the faster you can grow, the faster you can train or re-train new pirates and the more useful ye can be fer ye Brotherhood and Shipmates.

Rum Distilleries 

Ye got more Rum Distilleries than other ones (ye got up to 6), so you can generate A LOT more Rum than Gold or Lumber, but this is because your army be drinking most of the Rum and so actually if ye be playing correctly you will have less Rum production than Gold and Lumber.

Gold Mines

Then ye got the Gold Mines. There be allowed 4 Gold Mines for some Havens and 5 Gold Mines for others. Fer defensive units like Bonnie's Beauties gold production is the most important thing.

Lumber Yards

Ye got up to maximum 4 Lumber Yards on some Havens and 5 on others. For attacking units like Marauders or Buccaneers the lumber production is far more important than anything else.

4/5 and 5/4

So if yer Haven is one of those with 5 Gold and 4 Lumber then ye know yer weakest is the Lumber and you have a natural advantage fer defensive units or can trade and buy lumber. And if yer Haven started with 5 Lumber and 4 Gold slots then its the exact opposite. (Thanks to Captain Chris for the info)

LAVASH Diary Level 37 and Tips

Arrr pirates!! I gonna post here my Diary fer the record and sharing and also gonna give a few tips that might be beneficial for ye all, which I learned so far.

1.    Don't be intimidated by threats from "big pirates" or "big Brotherhoods". They usually be talking loud, but they be limited in what they can do to you. Also they can't fight the whole world, so they think and pick which battles are more important for them to pay attention to and harassing small and new pirates is not on top of that list.

2.    A little connected to (1), it be very important to upgrade your Harbor. It is what allows you safety and growth even if attacked by hundreds of pirates.

3.    For most people who do not pay cash to play the game be very careful how ye spend your rubies. It be very attractive to revive your dead army, but your rubies are limited so probably a better idea is to save them and keep for something that you can't buy with resources (army you can always train again).

4.    You see below in my Diary I have a bunch of medals. Check the requirements for getting these and accomplish them to be rewarded with lots of things.

The Way to Survive in Pirates Tides of Fortune

Hey guys, sometimes in Pirates Tides of Fortune you find yourself in the situation of being constantly attacked and smashed and you don't know what to do. Well I found this post by tennischamp5 which is super useful in this situation and I want to share it with you so that you can also enjoy the game better:

"Quick general tips.

1.) Always Always Always Upgrade your harbor. I can't stress enough how many new players don't and leave their assets free for the taking. At a level 12 Harbor, you're protecting something like 13000 of each resource. Regardless of your level, that's enough to protect anything you have from attacks as long as you check back a few times a day. You shouldn't ever lose resources. Ever.

2.) Never ever ever leave your troops outside your harbor. The only excuse to have troops out in the open is if you're planning on raiding in the next 5 seconds or less. Any longer and you risk someone coming by and killing them. There's a reason there's a secure button on the harbor.

3.) Scout your targets before attacking them. Make sure they don't have anything guarding and you won't lose any troops.

4.) Build your offense/defense up slowly every day and little by little, they'll grow. I've been playing for a month and a half now and my offense is strong enough to take an unclaimed presidio alone (although with heavy losses).

5.) Never do prize battles. Any battle where you lose even one fleet/armada unit is a loss. I don't care if you gain 32k rum and 40 juggernaughts from it. You've lost. Because inevitably, you will attack 40 more times... and lose all 40 juggernaughts, one at a time. The only time to do a prize battle is when you can win without taking ANY losses. It requires commitment and self-restraint, but by following steps 1-3... your offense will get large enough that you don't need to worry about losses against prizes. From then on, you'll fly up in levels. (I can currently take out lv. 14 prizes without losing anything. Patience is a virtue in this game.)

6.) Remember... even if the top five guilds in the game all simultaneously come after you... they can't do a thing to you as long as your harbor is upgraded and your ships are hidden. They'll waste their time, ships, and raids getting nothing time after time.

Too many people see an incoming attack, freak out, and put their defenses out. Then they lose them. Just leave them in, upgrade your harbor or USE the resources before the attack. Enemy gets nothing. Enemy doesn't come back.

When I scout a player and they have a defensive army waiting, I make it a point to slaughter it to the man. I don't care if they have no resources. My offense is large enough that I don't care if you have 20 subs and 50 bonnies.... every last one is going to die without me taking significant losses... except that i'll gain a ton of free experience... and now you're set back a month+ of building.

Same with offense. Your offense gets exponentially more powerful the more troops you have. Why should I fight a prize and take 50% casualties, spend a week rebuilding and repeat? I'd much rather build for a couple weeks, and then start fighting prizes for 0% casualties.

Hope this helps."

So here is a Quick Summary:

1) Focus to upgrade your Harbor not to lose resources to raids.
2) Hide your troops inside your Harbor so they don't die from raids.
3) Scout before attacking.
4)+5) Grow slow, don't take risks.
6) Even if whole world attacks you there is only so much they can do if you did (1).