Catapult Wave Splitting

What I'm about to discuss here is one of the hardest tricks in the game, and even when you do everything right, it's still possible to screw it up. The principle is similar to dodging, but much harder to execute.

This should be practiced by everyone that isn't familiar with the tactic until you feel comfortable enough that you can do everything right in an emergency. Optimally, you should use this on all supply villages and even when you're making a stand in case the hammer does happen to break through.

The principle of it.

When you're under catapult attack, people will launch several waves in an attempt hit several buildings as quickly as possible to limit future ability to defend while they dismantle your city in return trips.

Your goal using this tactic is to split the clear from the later waves and kill the catapults that come in the later waves, which are normally less well escorted, thereby limiting the damage inflicted and causing massive resource loss to your attacker.

The most important thing to keep in mind with wave splitting is that actions happen in the order they were done. So if your attacker launches 3 waves in the same second from the same city, and 2 in the next, the best you will be able to manage will only be spliting the next second waves from the first.

The mechanics of it.

For simplicity's sake, lets say your opponent is landing three catapult waves at 5:00:00, 5:00:03, 5:00:06.

Several minutes before the attack lands you will want to go into your rally point and set up a reinforcement to some nearby neighbor in a separate tab or window. Take note of how long it will take for your troops to get there because you will be using that. For now, lets assume it takes 10 minutes to get there.

You should also have a separate window of your rally point open to the overview section.

At 4:59:31 you would launch your reins to the other city. You would immediately tab over to the window/tab open to the Rally Point Overview section and refresh this. When your reinforcements have traveled 15 seconds, you will click the red X in the rally point and recall them.

Since your troops have traveled 15 seconds from your city, it will take them 15 seconds to return home. As they were launched at 4:59:31 this will put their return home landing time at 5:00:01, thereby avoiding the clear and catching the subsequent waves.

You can also rein from a separate city (such as your defensive hub to your hammer or cropper). As I mentioned earlier, actions happen in the order in which they occur, so to minimize your losses you should stack your micro in the same second as when you believe the clear will occur.

So, if you believe the clear is at 5:00:00, with waves following at 5:00:01, 5:00:02 you will want your reins to land at 5:00:00 in order to catch the waves at 5:00:01 & 5:00:02

What can go wrong:

There are so many things that can go wrong, which is why I said this should only be used in emergencies. An overwhelming hammer defense will always be preferable.

First off, lag: This can come from two sources, your connection and your browser.

As far as connection, there really isn't much people can do to improve that other than changing services/increasing bandwidth.

But for your browser, I will always recommend either Firefox or Opera over Internet Explorer. Every experience I've ever had with IE and attempting this (or something like this, such as launching cat waves) has ended poorly. Tabs don't switch fast enough, tabs don't render fast enough, pages seem to actually load slower, in both IE 6 and IE7 (IE8 seems to load a bit faster, but still not as fast as Firefox imo).

Second, Travian problems. I've done this before and run into a few issues, such as server lag. The server can crap and you can completely miss all the waves.

Third, a skilled opponent:

A skilled opponent won't give the much opportunity to split their waves. Expect to see multiple waves of catapults landing in the same second.

Another tactic are fake clears. In this tactic your attacker throws away a small number of cats to trick you into micro before the actual clear. Let's assume | is our clear and . are our cat waves. Your attacker might throw waves that look like this at you in order to avoid being split:

..|......

In this case you might try to land your split after the second wave, only to find your defenders hit by the actual clear.

Skilled attackers might also stick secondary clears in, so the trick to handling that is to micro with enough troops to cover a reasonable secondary clear (as many as 5k infantry/1-2k cav) or to drop in multiple micros.

I realize this was long, but hopefully it will help out those who take the time to read it.