Overview: The way to win is Victory points, not amount of land owned, but WHICH land is owned and for how long to generate victory points is what matters. Battlegrounds is a team effort and everyone must pay attention to the announcements about goals and any allies for each season. Everything on the map that we have in progress should be considered a "pinned" sector, meaning it is holding at 190/200 on purpose, unless we're in a race or it was announced to "straight take" the sector.  When we lose pins on the map it can set our strategy back; this is very important! Everyone needs to check in on the Battlegrounds thread for targets and know who the allies and enemies are, make sure we don't lose our pins or take them too early.

The Basics of GBG

• We want sectors worth the most Victory points per hour (or with the most building slots for siege camps)

• We want to work our way to the center of the map (usually the highest value sectors - and with more slots for siege camps.)

• We want to conquer sectors as fast as possible when GBG starts.

• If you race another guild to the same sector and lose, your progress gets reset to half and you're locked out for 4 hours. If you go for a sector and lose the one adjacent that was giving you reach, your progress gets wiped out completely. So it's better to try to keep your land together or you have to keep advancing from where you are to avoid being sent back to your HQ to start again.

• After the initial burst to get to the center, we pin each sector first (take it up to 190/200 battles)

• We coordinate in the Battlegrounds thread what to pin and if/when to take sectors.  This may also include coordination between leaders on an Allied thread.

The wiki pages also have a good overview that, along with this guide, should help everyone understand how to play:
https://forgeofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Guild_Battlegrounds

Look at the map and find the sectors which are marked with the target symbol. These are priority sectors selected by one of the GBG leaders. Do not attack sectors that are marked with the 'stop' symbol (these are generally pinned and holding for later or could be sectors which were agreed to let another guild take or own.)  Also check the guild GBG thread for targets and info; we announce allies, swap maps and goals, as soon as they are known for each season.

Battlegrounds can sometimes be a little disorganized as to picking targets; the issue is the board changes and what looks like a good move at one time, a couple hours later if no fighters have shown up in the meantime, it may be too late or no longer a good move. We have to be able to react to the map as it changes - it's not static and the other guilds are also moving all the time!

To be successful, this will take everyone understanding strategy and being able to read the map because you have to react to what's there whenever you come online and "GBG leaders" can only do so much to direct it, as we can not be online 24/7 to see every move.  The more people who understand the map and strategy, the better we will play as a team.

Let me preface this with: taking any time is better than losing our map position/losing pinned sectors, so if you can't babysit or wait for the hour and no one is around, or its a race, or the sector is in danger of being stolen, OBVIOUSLY just take the sector whenever we need to in order to keep it!  But when we have a choice and are able, there is a way to time the sectors for maximum points.

The Battleground victory points are paid out to guilds based on the sectors they hold at the top of every hour. Protection lasts for 4 hours from the time you conquer a sector. TO MAXIMIZE POINTS, TAKE SECTORS AT 1-2 MINUTES BEFORE THE HOUR.  This guarantees us 5 collections of points on a 4 hour protection lock.  Read on for more details!

If you have a lot of sectors to take at the hour, give yourself enough time to select and build camps on all of them also before the hour!  I am starting to do it up to 2 minutes before the hour, in fact 2 minutes before is better if there's a lot of camps to select and build, because you need to get ALL that done and have the camps cooking before the hour so that they also are completing in sync with the hourly calcs.

You don't want to wait so long that our 3 hour camps are started after the hour and don't finish building until 1 minute after the calc that happens in 3 hours; that would mean the boost from the camps would be late by 1 or 2 minutes and not count until the 4th hourly calc, which negates the point of trying to time everything to coincide with hourly calcs!

Examples:

Taking a sector at 5:01 PM is the worst time, that means it unlocks right after the 4th calc since we took it, and they have 59 minutes to take it back before the 5th calc, which is all but guaranteed to happen.  We collect points only 4 times.

Taking a sector at 4:58 or 4:59 BEFORE the hourly calc (give yourself time to select and build camps before the hour also) means that we get credit for owning the sector right away in 1 minute at the next hourly calc, and that will happen 4 more times while under protection lock. Sector will unlock right before the 5th calc and enemies only have 1 minute to take it, which almost never happens.  That is how you guarantee 5 collections of points off a 4 hour sector lock.

The whole concept of this timing when to take the sectors is similar to double collecting when you level a Great Building, at least to me :) it's about the timing of when we collect points. The clock in the top left corner of the GBG map is a countdown to the end of the season, so it shows very clearly when you're down to the last 1-2 minutes of an hour.

Cost analysis on the new GBG buildings introduced at the end of 2024:  The barracks (reddish buildings) are SLIGHTLY cheaper than anything else, but not enough to care much, only 100-200 goods less than the cost of field camps (greenish buildings.)

There are now 3 different types of "siege camps" that come in 3 sizes each, and this is how they compare in costs:

Field Camps -costs in goods for small (2900) medium (5200) and large (7000)

Guild Barracks -costs goods for small (2800) medium (5000) and large (6800)

(DIAMOND rush costs for Camps and Barracks: 50, 90, 125)

The castle-looking (or wooden fort) buildings cost twice as much, avoid them unless camps and barracks want low-age or low-stock goods:

Field Outpost -costs goods for small (5800) medium (10400) and large (14000)

(DIAMOND rush costs for Outposts: 75, 135, 185)

Building Selection factors:

1. The most important factor is which goods are required, Arctic-SASH is essentially free, avoid the ones asking for below FE whenever possible.

2. Must add to at least 80% boost, 1 large 60% and 1 small 20%, or 2 medium 40%.

3. Depending on the season, go ahead and fill a 3rd slot with whatever is a good deal on goods, or double up on 2 large but think about if you will need to rush any of them, the cost for large is also higher in diamonds to rush them.

Field Camps, Barracks or Outposts? What's our goal, do we need points or just attrition helpers?  See item 1 above, The most important factor is still which goods are required, but you can mix and match 1 small field camp and 1 large outpost, or 1 medium barracks and 1 medium field camp if that's what works for goods.

1. Best all around is Field Camps, modest costs, modest diamond rush, helps attrition and Victory Points.

2. Just need boost to farm? Barracks is the cheapest, helps attrition and still adds to fights required to take the sector from us, but no Victory Points.

3. Need extra Victory Points on the edge of the map?  Only way to turn low-value sectors into high-value is the Outposts, but goods & diamonds costs are much higher.

This only happens once at the start of the season; there are 2 options that come in 3 sizes each.  Only the Advanced/3rd option of each building gives us the 80% attrition benefit that we want, so only those Advanced options are relevant to discuss.  

Which of the 2 Advanced options you pick depends on if we know ahead of time this is a fighting round (competitive) or farming (Non-competitive.)  In season 3 and 6 where there are only 4 guilds and most of the time the outcome either doesn't matter or is pre-determined, it's likely to be a Non-competitive farm.

In a NON-competitive round, save us some goods!  The 3rd building in the list, Advanced Field Garrison is the right choice.

• Advanced Field Garrison (blue and gray) Costs   75,000 goods 80% attrition benefit and 100% extra Victory Points 

In a competitive fight where every Victory Point matters, i.e. we are facing other top guilds and need a win, go for the 6th building listed Advanced Guild Fortress.

• Advanced Guild Fortress (white and red) Costs 100,000 goods 80% attrition benefit,100% extra Victory Points, and 500** Victory Points per hour from HQ.

** the 500 VP per hour is a bit deceptive, it is really 1,000 VP per hour because this is doubled by the "100% extra Victory Points" which doubles the points on every sector you own, INCLUDING HQ.  We have watched many small guilds build only the 1,000 VP generator on their HQ and then take 1 or 2 sectors a day and still place 3rd or 4th, keeping them in Diamond league for almost no effort.

The goods that buildings in GBG need are only calculated at the start of the season, and based on the age of each member of the guild when it starts.   Goods are picked at random from among the ages of the members.  Aging up or new people joining does not affect the costs of buildings or the ages required.

Goods costs for buildings are only recalculated when someone who started the season with the guild leaves (or is kicked from) the guild.

Example scenario:  If you have 1 member in FE and 1 in Venus (only 2 members for example purposes to start the season)

• GBG will only need FE and Venus goods

• If the Venus person then ages up to Jupiter after the season starts, it will still only need FE and Venus goods

• If a 3rd person then joins the guild, it will still only need FE and Venus goods

• If the FE person leaves, then it will recalculate, and GBG will only need *Jupiter* goods

• If the 3rd person who joined after the start of the season leaves during the season, it will not recalculate.

This has been tested in Beta as a way for cycling goods so we are 100% sure.

Pinning a sector means leaving about 10 fights before conquering it (e.g., stop at 210/220).

We are always pinning sectors, with about 10 fights left to go. The point of pinning is that no other guild can attack a sector that has been pinned, or they risk losing all their battles because we can finish it off at any time and they would lose their progress. It also allows you to protect your ally while they get to keep making points off the sector, and all the sectors behind it are protected too since the other guilds cannot pass (it's like building a dam on a river, stops enemy flow).

Please don't just go on the GBG map and finish things that look like they need a couple fights, always check GBG thread for what is current target to "pin" or "take" and assume you should NOT finish something that is not under any threat from another guild racing to take it too. Don’t break pins and conquer sectors without reading our guild's GBG thread, any current allied thread or if there is no other good reason (like an enemy about to take it or one next to it). When we leave a sector at 210/220 it is on purpose and you should assume NOT to finish it when you enter the map and see sectors like that which have been pinned down.

Map marks: Pay attention to the ‘stop’ signals on the map (circle with a line through it) – do not attack sectors that are marked with ‘stop’. Pay attention to the target signals – these are priority sectors to be pinned up.

Don’t take the pins too high: one wrong click is all it takes if the pin is at 219/220. We should only top up that close when danger approaches and the time to pull the pin/conquer the sector is coming soon.

Pinning is a fantastic strategy but it creates a "map watch" where we need to check in on our pins as often as possible and warn our guild or our allies on the GBG message threads that a pin is in danger. If you are out of attrition for the day, you can still check the map when you are online and shout out if you see danger. Enemy progress over half if it's moving fast means it is time to take the sector/pull the pin!

Auto vs. manual fighting

If there is no rush, fight manually at higher attrition levels instead of using autobattle.  The AI is exceedingly stupid and should only be used when there is a time rush or battle outcome is certain enough that even the computer can not mess it up -- Autobattle will often still find a way to take injuries you would not otherwise sustain if you fought manually.

If attrition level of enemy units gets too high, wait until attrition resets (at midnight server time.)

Don’t be too keen with fights; if you see that you will use lots of units, retreat and live to fight another day.

For those who have not done much manual fighting

When starting a battle, choose the enemy troop that you will hit first carefully. First hit the ones that are reachable; otherwise it may happen that you will have a troop with a turn to attack and not be able to reach any enemy with it.

While fighting, try to move your units (before you use them) outside of the enemy hit range. That is useful especially when fighting with artillery (they have long range to hit) against heavy units (shorter range.) You can evade enemies for a second turn sometimes by moving to the corners of the map while still being able to hit them.

Flying units are great against artillery, since artillery units can not hit them; Attack with flying units and kill other units first, leaving the artillery (which can not hit you) for last.

Use terrain to your advantage. Some units have attack/defense bonus on plains, some in bushes, some on hills or rocks, etc., moving units to advantageous terrain (as long as they can reach from there) can make the difference in a close battle.

Taking advantage of Arctic Orangery's Critical hit, Kraken's First strike, Space Age units "Keen Eye" Double Damage ability

At the beginning of the battle, shoot on different units first, not all hits on one unit. This way you can see if critical hits will help you. It sucks if you get the critical hit on the second hit that would have killed the enemy troop anyway. If AO and/or Keen Eye does not trigger with first few hits; retreat and restart the battle.

If you have AO in your city and don't get critical hits in your first full turn of attack, retreat and restart the fight; critical hits can be the difference between winning and losing in a tough battle.

Also Kraken "first strike" can be helpful on hard fights - but you must time your Kraken collection for when you are at high attrition to take advantage of this. If Kraken does not trigger on a fight, you may need to retreat and try again (same as with AO critical hits)

"Keen Eye" ability of Space Age units – really useful feature that can make a huge difference. If critical hit/double damage does not help much in a battle (not triggering,) retreat and start the fight again. If these are triggering, you can quite easily win a battle; without that help you can lose a battle. When I fight, I retreat a lot until critical hit, first strike, etc. are triggering during the battle.

Taking advantage of camps: Field Camps, Barracks, or Outposts all help with attrition.

GBG leaders have permission to build on battleground sectors. They cost treasury goods, and there are other buildings which have different functions, but the use of traps and decoys is generally frowned on: the ones that help with attrition are the most useful. 

Negotiations

Try 5 different things in the first round to narrow as many options as possible. Try anything you haven't tried yet on the second round, plus anything accepted in the first round on different people. The key is narrowing the options as much as possible, and the rest is luck.

The best way to overcome attrition traps or decoys, or simply not having any camps for support, is to negotiate.  When you negotiate you get 2 advances for each attrition spent instead of just the 1 by fighting.  It would only take 100 negotiations to get to 200 and take a sector (100 chances of attrition increasing) instead of 200 fights and 200 chances doing it 1 at a time.

Getting a different army to fight or a new negotiation

If you notice, the army or negotiation you face is different on every sector you check on the map; you can move between a few and find an easier one to fight or negotiate; this is especially useful when attrition % gets high for fighting, or if you don’t have many previous age goods you can look for a sector that offers a negotiation in current age goods.

If you get a battle with unpleasant units on one province, doing one battle on some other province will change the enemy army on the other province. Every time you complete a battle or negotiation, all of the sectors offer new options for both. Be careful with this as we try not to start too many sieges on different sectors at the same time, but often we have a backup one (or two) started that can be used for this, back and forth between 2 provinces resets the enemy army and can get you a few more winnable fights or negotiations.

Going on strike for a season is the nuclear option - Mutually Assured Destruction. If you find yourselves pinned down by one of the big guilds, then you use this move. They lose all rewards too.  A guild can only take the whole board once and then sit and stare at it.  So let them stare at it; the only way to get the message across is if we bring the battleground to a stand still.  This needs other guilds on the map to agree to the strike, in order to really shutdown the whole board.  

When a strike happens, guilds should swap among themselves on 4th row sectors only; don't spend any goods on buildings, refuse to move to the center, keep to the edges of the map only, and don't give the "bully" guild opportunities to farm rewards.

If someone puts you in a no-win situation, change the game.

If you find yourself in a slow season, you want to leave the other guilds some sectors where they have camp support, but keep them separated so that they're forced to fight and take your sectors, instead of taking sectors from each other.  If you give them too many options, they'll just fight each other for the Center and not take your sectors.  You don't want them wasting fights on each other, when they could each be taking something you own so that you can swap it back.

If you're not going to try to have a shared thread and coordinate everything, or more like you'd be telling all the other guilds how to play, then you must shepherd them like in the example below, to get them to take sectors where they should in order to swap with you.

If not for the pandemic giving people more time to play during quarantines, the backlash over Battlegrounds (BG or GBG) should have started sooner. The MMR (Match Making Rating) is setup in a way to max everyone out in Diamond league, the places at the end for each guild have similar rewards making it next to meaningless who wins, and the non-stop nature of it (3 days off is not a long enough break) requires constant attention from leaders to keep everything moving and coordinate, both in our own guild and other/allied guilds.

Farming and siege camp greed has been allowed to destroy many relationships in the game, between individuals on the same team (!) and even allied guilds.  The only thing GBG is good for is a farm, sadly (and it's been this way since at least May 2020.)  Battlegrounds began mid-November 2019; the competition and learning curve lasted about 6 months, since then it's been nothing but a big farm and greed fest.  No one is proving anything in Battlegrounds except how much time they can devote and how much they're willing to spend in goods and diamonds to farm.  I would have preferred a game to play as a team that makes sense, and a fun competition, but screw the developers until they give us one.  We really have to view Battlegrounds as players versus Innogames, it's not guild versus guild the way it has been implemented.

Cross-server GBG and longer pauses/shorter seasons has been suggested for a long time. Also to Fix the MMR and leagues.  Please visit the Forums or Discord, giving feedback on these forums is the ONLY method we have to reach the developers and gain attention to issues that need to be fixed in the game. I don't think we have a minority opinion - it's just the developers see nothing but $$$ when they look at the game.  Please contribute to the discussion but also don't forget to vote with your (closed) wallet.

• September 5, 2020 - Original post comparing GBG issues to PvP Arena failure

• September 6, 2020 - People opting out of game due to all the time demands, which GBG made worse

• September 9, 2020 - GBG problems and easiest solutions

• September 11, 2020 - Dealing with Trolls, and is anyone listening?

• September 22, 2020 - Summary Post of Battlegrounds issues to be fixed

• September 29, 2020 - Worse than GvG farming ever was

• October 5, 2020 - Runaway inflation in the game, exploits and abuse

• October 7, 2020 - More people need to comment on the forum rather than complaining within guilds or submitting support tickets.

Other leader posts about Battlegrounds issues to be fixed:

• Manuel Laboria post about GBG negative effect on the game

• Lord Grok post about GBG issues, +1 burned out leader

• KronikPillow post about GBG and seasons too frequent

• Timtamttime post about GBG burn out, time demands on leaders