On the subjective, non technical side, I'd add a few remarks :

- A challenge does not necessary means total war, nor strong dislikes. It's more of a fair-play competition.

You can agree on not using political units, not attacking low level players, not attacking opponents colonies, etc.

It's a sport-like challenge, you can agree on rules and the fact you're competing for the challenge doens't mean you're ennemies at all.

- A state of war will occur between real ennemies. While no hatred should be involved among civilized people playing an online multiplayers game, chances are people at war are all but friends for each another... :p

Any action will probably be allowed, and you'll really try crush each other to death. You're not opponents there, but mortal ennemies...

Try to stay courteous if possible, but there certainly will be blood, at least on a simulated and astract point of view (or at least we all hope it would be the case) ! LOL

All of you forgot to mention the most important part. Both of those are terribly imbalanced when it comes to points. Defender will always be victorious, given that no Greek Assassins were used.

So Leonidas your tip to "Attack first" is already sending coalitions to certain failiure, you should suggest to Defend first. 

That's true.  The best way to win a challenge is to stay calm behind your walls, drinking a beer while the troops of your enemy smash against your defense. Even if he manages to win the battle and raid you, you will get much more defense points than the offense points that he will get. If you've got good walls, the difference is even higher.

If both challenging coalitions know this, then the challenge is pretty boring... nobody moves. If one coa knows the mechanics and the other don't, then the first one will win for sure. So the best way to win a challenge is to defy a coa that has never participated in one of this events.

This is an interesting read. My coa is currently at war with another and despite having a much higher units destroyed figure (more than double) we are behind on points albeit not by many. We have had very successful raids destroying large numbers of units but cannot close the gap. 

I'm thinking about the comment from uncle junior "Defender will always be victorious, given that no Greek Assassins were used". Our situation is that the coa we are at war with just rely on and love to use assassins. One of our players had assassins land in excess of 1/hour average within a 24 hour period (33 to be exact). The difficulty is trying to gauge where the balance changes ie how many assassins will mean that the "Defender will always be victorious" equation will no longer be so.

I'm sure there is no clear answer .. I'm just thinking out loud and wishing that Greek Assassins were not part of the game. Okay, so it can often be more of a drachma fight than anything else - but 33 assassins in 24 hours just takes this to a silly level. Of course, Plarium are smiling !!

In every battle, attacker gets points for the defensive units he kills, and defender gets points for offensive units killed. But it seems that there is some  bonus for the  defender. There are several possible explanations for that, one of them is the use of walls; a 50% defense bonus for a 5000 points in city fortifications means that your defenders will kill  50% more attackers, thus gaining more points than in a regular fight without walls. That bias the point share a lot.  There also may be some penalty for attacking a foe city with much lower level than you (there was an old post from a moderator suggesting that). 

Assassins produce defending casualties without offensive loses, thus generating a net point gain. 

The use of walls is only supposed to enhance defenders' power.

The number of killed troops on both sides is what it is.

That's why the ranking is strange. It should follow the number of casualties done, but it doesn't.

On the other hand, we're been experiencing an even stranger phenomenon during the last tournament : almost none of the casualties we have sustained during pantheons attacks gave us any points, except when a large number of our defenders were killed.

This in turn is very unfair, considering how many units were killed in the end, for nothing in exchange.

I don't know if attackers get points : they should logically get some when they manage to kill troops inside the pantheon, but most of the time, they just smash their offense for no result. I'm wondering if commitiing those massive suicides is worth any points, but if it's the case, then it's a strange concept of a war game, really, when you get nothing for successfully defending, and get points for blindlessly dumping troops...

cool

Tel said:

This is an interesting read. My coa is currently at war with another and despite having a much higher units destroyed figure (more than double) we are behind on points albeit not by many. We have had very successful raids destroying large numbers of units but cannot close the gap. 

I'm thinking about the comment from uncle junior "Defender will always be victorious, given that no Greek Assassins were used". Our situation is that the coa we are at war with just rely on and love to use assassins. One of our players had assassins land in excess of 1/hour average within a 24 hour period (33 to be exact). The difficulty is trying to gauge where the balance changes ie how many assassins will mean that the "Defender will always be victorious" equation will no longer be so.

I'm sure there is no clear answer .. I'm just thinking out loud and wishing that Greek Assassins were not part of the game. Okay, so it can often be more of a drachma fight than anything else - but 33 assassins in 24 hours just takes this to a silly level. Of course, Plarium are smiling !!

Theory is this, cheap units killing expensive units should give the most points and defender, for some reason, has an advantage, that applies to production units. Assassin makes the most pointing difference, assassin will die anyway therefore the opponent didn't kill anything.

Ensuring your victory would be using defensive troops  to defend your own cities and opponents cities that you sieged, and using greek assassins as offensive unit.

Most top coalitions are opposed to the concept that defenders score most points and hate greek assassins, so war's are not as common as they should be.

What is the criteria for completing charon's chosen achievement, I find it strange when I see DEATH INC. coalition has achieved level 2 of Athena's Elect coalition achievement and nothing in the charon's chosen achievement,  Does the achievement we have unlocked in charon's chosen gets erased when we lose a challenge? 

Its a query, please can somebody answer

Sometimes challenges can be not that glorious, so Coalition doesn't earn a lot of points.