State of Survival: SvS Settlement Prep and Defense Setup

To survive State vs State (SvS) warfare and bait enemy attackers into high-casualty mistakes, prepare your settlement before cross-state invaders arrive. Your immediate priorities are resetting Chief Talents to the War tree, activating long-duration settlement buffs, emptying hospital beds, and setting a reinforced wall garrison.

Activating Settlement Buffs and Shield Management

Activate combat buffs well in advance of cross-state attacks. March speeds and server latency make last-second activations unreliable once an enemy march locks onto your base. Open your Settlement Buffs menu and apply combat boosts that will last through your planned combat session:

Maintain shield discipline while preparing:

• Keep a Peace Flare active until your alliance is assembled and ready for battle.
• Recall all resource-gathering marches before the cross-state portal opens. Troops on wilderness resource tiles give invaders easy elimination points and fill your hospital before defensive combat starts.
• Watch your Battle Frenzy status. Scouting an enemy base, reinforcing an unshielded ally, or launching an offensive march triggers Battle Frenzy. This drops your Peace Flare and blocks reactivation until the frenzy cooldown timer expires.

Resetting Chief Talents for War

Economy talents provide zero defensive combat utility during SvS. Use a Talent Reset item to move all points out of Economy and invest down the War talent tree.

Allocate points using the following sequence:

1. Maximize Troop Health and Troop Defense nodes first to increase frontline survivability against solo hits and rallies.
2. Maximize Troop Lethality and Troop Attack nodes to ensure incoming enemy marches take heavy casualties.
3. Unlock critical active skills, including Massive March (to expand march sizes for alliance operations) and Emergency Dressing (to protect defending casualties).

Barricade Garrison and Troop Composition

Your wall defense determines whether your settlement holds or gets zeroed. Inspect your Barricade settings to assign your best defensive heroes rather than relying on automated presets.

• Hero Assignments: Place your strongest defensive infantry hero as the primary garrison commander. Look for skills that boost health or reduce incoming enemy damage. Pair them with secondary hunter and rider heroes to deal damage behind your frontline.
• Troop Composition: Defending settlements must have deep infantry reserves. If your infantry line breaks, enemy riders and hunters directly attack your fragile backline troops. Maintain a thick infantry wall to absorb incoming damage while your garrison heroes trigger defensive skills.

Hospital Capacity and Healing Preparation

Entering SvS with injured troops risks permanent account losses. Defending troops that exceed your total hospital capacity die permanently instead of going to the hospital.

Complete these medical preparations before dropping shields:

• Empty All Hospital Beds: Clear any minor casualties from gathering or PvE activities. Use free daily alliance help clicks to finish off small queues before fighting starts.
• Check the Enlistment Office: Verify your Enlistment Office is clear so it can collect its normal share of overflow casualties if an attack exceeds hospital capacity.
• Stockpile Speedups: Save healing speedups and biocaps for active defense sessions.
• Batch Heal Efficiently: During combat, do not heal your entire hospital in one massive batch. Heal wounded troops in small increments of 20 to 30 minutes. This allows alliance help clicks to immediately finish the timers, saving speedups for emergency situations.

Baiting Enemy Invaders

Baiting enemy invaders is an effective method to farm SvS elimination points when executed with alliance support:

1. Request Alliance Reinforcements: Have top alliance members reinforce your settlement with high-tier Infantry and Hunter units up to your reinforcement cap.
2. Present an Unshielded Target: Drop your Peace Flare while keeping your base profile looking isolated or underdefended. Hostile players frequently launch un-scouted solo attacks against unshielded bases.
3. Absorb the Hit: Your reinforced barricade and stacked combat buffs absorb the strike, sending the enemy march straight to their hospital or graveyard.
4. Heal and Reset: Immediately batch-heal wounded defenders using alliance helps. Re-shield or teleport away before the hostile state can organize a coordinated alliance rally against your coordinates.