This guide will hopefully help improve your understanding on how to raid/rally/assembly effectively.
For the purpose of this guide, raid/rally/assembly all mean the same thing.
Acknowledgement: Special Thanks to Frostphire for helping with this guide.
Setting up the rally:
Rally Lead:
The main player who begins the rally is the Rally Lead.
The Rally Lead has the most important role in the rally and can often determine the outcome.
So choosing the right Rally Lead is important.
The Rally Leads statistics determine all the other participants.
For instance his 4 hero stats, war gear, research, gems, talents all give effect to the whole Rally so
other participants do not need to have their own war gear or war talents.
Bottom Line: Make sure the Rally Lead is someone who is strong and has good tech, gear, strength.
Brigades:
In this game, a brigade can be made of just heroes, heroes and troops, and just troops.
The troop brigades are Infantry, Cavalry and Archers.
Rally Lead: The Rally Lead must set the troop brigades to use (Infantry, Cavalry, Archers) and formations.
It is important the Rally Lead has a higher level battle hall so more brigades can be sent to the rally.
For example, a level 25 battle hall allows 24 brigades to join the rally.
Once the Rally Lead begins the rally, there will be a countdown period where others can join the raid (Timer
is set by the Rally lead depending on how long you want to wait for the rally to begin).
Hero Levels:
The level of your hero (Not the grade) affects how many troops you can send with it.
For Solo attacking, you can send the following amount of troops depending on your hero level.
Level 1 hero = 8.4k troops
Level 24 hero = 13.4k troops
Level 39 hero = 29.7k troops
Level 58 hero = 38k troops
Level 60 hero = 40k troops
During a rally:
Your heroes can send twice as many troops.
Level 1 hero = 16.8k troops
Level 24 hero = 26.8k troops
Level 39 hero = 59.4k troops
Level 58 hero = 76k troops
Level 60 hero = 80k troops.
Empty Brigades:
Please always avoid sending empty brigades.
An empty brigade is when you send the right heroes but dont have the amount of troops they can take.
For example, lets say you send 4 level 60 heroes which can take 320k troops with them. However,
you only have 260k troops. This means your first 3 heroes have troops with them and your 4th hero
has no troops and is an empty brigade.
So it is important to not send an empty brigade as it takes up valuable space in the rally which hurts
everyone.
Troop types to use:
To beat Cavalry - Use Range
To beat Range - Use Infantry
To beat Infantry - Use Cavalry
What this means is, when you scout your target, if it has more of one of these troop types then you
use what counters it.
Example: Say you scout your target and it has the troops and a lot of Cavalry brigades then you use
Range brigades in your rally to beat it.
When sending heroes to join the rally, its the same thing, you use the infantry, cavalry or range hero
depending on what is needed.
Your Rally Lead should be able to tell you which heroes to send.
Boosts:
You can use the Max Army Size boost to send more troops in each brigade by either 20% or 50%.
Example of a bad Rally
Lets say the Lead sets up a rally with 24 brigade spaces.
He uses 4 for heroes and 4 for brigades (Infantry, Cavalry, Range).
The remaining 16 need to be filled with HEROES ONLY.
If you send 4 heroes AND 4 brigades. Then you are taking up 8 of the
remaining 16 spaces which wastes the space as you only need to send 4 heroes.
Two methods for filling a Rally:
Assuming level 60 players for ease of calculation. This is the maximum numbers.
Method 1: Using Brigades AND Heroes
If there are 3 players taking part in the rally.
Each player sends 4 heroes AND 4 brigades.
This means the maximum total rally amount without buffs will be 1.44m Troops
Method 2: Using Heroes Only
If each player sends 4 heroes only then you can have 6 players sending 4 heroes each
which amounts to the 24 rally spaces (Assuming your using a Rally Lead with level 25 Battle Hall).
This means you end up with 1.92m Troops in total without buff and with buffs you can extend this
to either 2.3m (Using 20% Max Army Size) or 2.88m (Using 50% Max Army Size).
This shows you the importance of hero only brigades and how they can change the type of rally you use.
Summary:
To have a strong raid:
1 - Send only hero brigades, you choose your highest level heroes that are in the troop type that fit your raid leader.
2 - If you dont have 4 level 55+ cavalry or infantry heroes then send only 1 or 2 and let others find a spot for their brigades.
3 - Make sure you have enough troops to fill all the brigades you are sending, DO NOT SEND EMPTY BRIGADES.
4 - Do not send any troop brigades unless there aren't enough players helping in the rally to fill the raid with hero brigades,
or you have more T4 than can fit in your hero brigades. T4 are worth sending even if troop brigade.
5 - If after a min or two not enough hero brigades arrive, send some troop brigades to fill the gap until more players come help.
5- Don't pull out your troops if an attack is coming. You place your whole guild in danger, You could put your teammates at risk
if you pull out your troops as there may not be enough to defend or attack which will result in your team losing a lot more troops.