I spied on my intended target's ally but I couldn't since he was on vacation. Since that country cannot interact with other countries while on vacation, I assumed that he was not helping out my intended target as a defense ally.

Apparently def alliance with a country on vacation still works since my attack with 111% of target' defense (assuming no def ally) failed. This sucks, I cant even spy on that country in vacation so i wont know how many turrets it has.

Annoying part is I could have assumed double the defense for my target to make up for not knowing his ally's defense. I had lots of extra jets to send. Sigh.

You can estimate the country's defense by using the NW formuia, and assuming some things about how their country make up is, by looking at the country's attack patterns (or if it has even made an attack before).

Also, sending 111% of the target's defense is a sure way to fail attacks on players with defensive allies, because you need to oversend by 10% in the first place (that is, sending 110% of the amount calculated) to get a 99% chance of attack success. The in game tutorial tips/hints on the WAR ROOM page even states this.

Xin, I'm assuming the guy Akira spied had 1 D ally, a guy who was on vacation. Thinking a D ally on vacation doesn't help out, Akira calculated the break based on 0 allies and then oversent by 11%.

Yah Akira obviously knows about the 10% thing, that's why he sent 111%.

Question. If you can't get the op, do you guys actually use the calculation to see what his max defense could be?

It's been so long since I've used it I can't even think what it is right now. All I remember is it used to always be around the country NW if he had some tech and spies so I just ended up skipping that calc and just taking his net and quartering it.

I think i did this only for primary though since nobody stocks on limited D. Check your saved ops and see if you have anyone with more units than their NW.

Alliance you'd probably have to do the (NW-(land*81.3???))/0.6

I looked in my notes. Lol

If I have to estimate, and have no previous ops to go on I simply do

[NW-(land*82)] /0.6

This gives the maxmum number of turrets that country can have based on no spies, all turret def, fully built, no tech.

Then just factor it in to the normal break calculation.

I only ever assume double-def if I can't get an ally op on my target at all.

LATC and blid, yup the guy had 2 D allies but one was still pending (so i was sure that one's not helping out) and the other one was on vacation. i couldn't spy on the ally on vacation so i assumed it also wasn't helping out on D (boy, how wrong I was).

I assumed the target was functionally un-allied so I tried to send a ps based only on target's defense (I even sent extra 11% instead of the usual 10% - just to make sure I could break and prove/disprove whether ally was helping or not, didn't want to send just 10% for a country with no allies and get that veeery rare chance of a dh).

well, ally was helping out after all. i should have asked the question on the forums before grabbing but hey it was a juicy target with only 1.2M jet break (or so i thought) haha

Im amazed that you guys can estimate a targets defense without ops. I never try to do that, I really hate risking a dh. and if i oversend by that much i lose a lot since i never buy/research medical tech.

the only time i estimate is in doubling the targets defense when i cant spy on their allies.

I HATE DH! The worst was when I looked up a juicy target on EEStats, saw someone around the same NW as him had grabbed him.. spied that other guy and went to hit him, but ended using the country # of the first guy. Double whammy, can't hit the juicy guy again and lost out on a grab that day.

Yeah dh is the worst thing that could happen haha. Now I have 2 dh in primary, that should have been an extra 600 acres.

I remember I once attacked the targets def ally instead of the target itself. And one time I put number 189 instead of 179 (or something like that) and bounced.

At least I learned a lesson regarding allies on vacation.

I still don't know the answer to this for dead allies.

I do what you do. If I see the target has been dealing bounces then I increase it.

They don't contribute

Dead allies don't count towards D help.. I've tried on multiple targets the last few sets.

Well, just remember that the only allies that don't work are dead allies. :P

Thanks Xin!