Raid Defense

An inherent part of any MMO war strategy game is raiding other players. At any point during your dungeon-empire development, you may find yourself under attack by players much larger than you. Don't give up yet, because there may be strategies to protect your dungeons and keep your game alive.

Firstly, determine why they are attacking your dungeon. If this is a player you have done nothing bad to, and have no communication with, then chances are they are only after resources in order to grow their own dungeons. This is a good scenario to be in, because if you can make it not-worthwhile for them to attack you, they will leave you alone. If, on the other hand, you have attacked them first, or destroyed their army, or done anything bad to them, they may be after revenge / retaliation. Convincing them to leave you alone will be much harder. That being said, you probably don't want to harm a player when you know they're much larger than you.

Next, you must secure your resources. For resource-seeking attackers, there is a lot of risk involved in raiding. If raiding another player is more profitable than raiding you, they are going to attack the other player first. If their attacks yield no resources at all, especially on a regular basis, then they will loose reasons to attack you all-together.

Dungeon overlord offers many ways to protect your resources, with various furniture to help you. Firstly, ensure that your resource levels are always under your safe-storage amounts. The attackers can only steal what they can reach. If you can keep them from stealing any resources, then they will be more likely to leave you alone.

Secondly, increase your safe-storage levels by building the appropriate furniture. If you have a dungeon which isn't under attack, you can always craft your furniture there, and transport it to your sieged dungeon.

Thirdly, consume the resources you have a lot of. For example, if you always have too much crystal, and the attacker is taking that, they will know you are a good source for crystal, and attack you whenever they need some. If you can use that crystal up, for anything you might need, then they will loose interest in attacking. If you can't find effective ways to consume your resources, consider selling them on the market. If your trying to sell fast, make it cheaper than anyone else's price.

Fourthly, send your extra resources to another dungeon of yours. This is especially effective when you know of a pending attack. Dungeon Overlord also allows you to send more resources than your receiving dungeon can store, at which point your goblins will return the rest - no loss to you.

The next step is to make it resource-costly to attack you. This involves creating defenses, both through traps and through creatures. If you can cost the attacker some of their troops, or all their troops, then they are in fact loosing resources in their attempts to raid you (since they have to re-train their units). Although they may have larger armies to use to attack you the next time, the may, instead, determine that attacking you isn't worth the risks of loosing more troops.

If you have the capacity to construct traps, do that first, and as much as you can. Traps cannot be destroyed by standard raids (can they be destroyed by pillaging? I don't know), [edit by NecroDee: No, traps cannot be pillaged or destroyed in any way] and so will last longer than creatures.

Creature training can be difficult if you are in constant attack. However, Dungeon Overlord allows you to tell your creatures to not defend the dungeon if attacked (I know this works for settlement attacks, what about dungeon raids?). ''[edit by NecroDee: Setting your creatures on hide will hide them from all incoming attack. Be it settlement reprisals or player attacks]'' On your dungeon screen there is a shield in the bottom right corner, to toggle this mode. Doing this will allow you to train your creatures to a high enough level to defend against the attacks.

Both of these general methods (loss prevention, defense) are effective at discouraging raiders, but aren't guaranteed to work. Remember, each dungeon is controlled by human players. If the above methods are ineffective, you can always try negotiating with them. Be polite with them, and try to find a solution. Perhaps they are under attack themselves by even larger players, and desperate for just one resource you have. If that's the case, helping them out will surely stop the attacks. If they are unwilling to negotiate, you might try finding other larger players, and see if there's anything they can do to help.