How to defend your city and fight back (for low/mid levels)

This is a compilation of tips from veteran players regarding how to defend cities and fight back for low/mid levels (typically those level 5 - 20).

Original threads in forum as followed:
 * 1) How low-mid levels can fight back?
 * 2) How do I defend my city?

Defending your cities

 * 1) If you are not online, the best way to defend your city is obviously a shield. A shield can be "bestowed" to you by either a fellow player (with you willingly or unwillingly) or by purchasing it using gems (the green stones which you can buy with money).
 * 2) If you do not have shield, you just have to put your best troops and hope that it deters your would-be attacker. Even if your attacker is relentless, at least the troops can make him/her bleed.
 * 3) If you have nothing to defend, then do not bother putting troops. You may lose crowns, but crowns can be earned back. If you are able to amass 200 crowns, you should be able to do so after losing a few. By putting a defendless city, you can ensure your attacker will likely to give you a wipe out and activate the almighty 8 hours shield (that is 36 gems worth of shield, man).
 * 4) In the case where you have resources to protect, upgrading treasury is your best bet to protect your resources.
 * 5) If your attacker has castle level higher than you by more than 3, he/she will not be able to loot you. So it is best to remove your defence when you are up against such players.

Fighting back
So you are raided by a high level or someone more active, how do you fight back?


 * 1) You can train ur heros to mitigate the power differences between army camp. ie, a level 36 hero of army camp lvl 9 is of same power as a lvl 17 hero of army camp lvl 10. so if some high level player loot you, you definitely have a chance to loot him back. Also, at patch 1.8, hero levels and items play a great deal in combat now.
 * 2) The best way is to fight back together with your allies, or any player from the global chat. but you gotta be prepare for if they rage war back on you and all ur allies. As far as I know, low levels have nothing to lose when up against high level.
 * 3) Upgrade your peripheral buildings (i.e. blacksmith/archery range/cottages/academy/arcane sanctum) first. These buildings will help to supplement your defence (or internal income), allowing you to bounce back relatively faster. Since 1.8, the game does not reward those with higher camp that well without higher tier units. So do not despair. Slow and steady wins the race.
 * 4) Alternatively if time is an issue for you, there is always gems........

When all else fail....

 * If what you are up against is a player who has been playing for a long time and is likely to last a lot longer than you, then the tips above might not work. Although such players are normally high level and likely to loot very little or nothing from you, you can treat their attacks as bestowment of free shields. Nonetheless, on the long run it is not a good thing to be attacked constantly by players who just wanna torment you. At that point, it is better to talk to the player and ask for a truce. That is what the global chat is for and most high level players are pretty receptive to truce as long as you ask nicely. (Profanities are likely to cause more attacks from other players).
 * If diplomacy does not work for some reasons, the only way left is to become a "terrorist" and start hitting your oppressors' outposts. Not a very elegant method, the loss of outposts also equates to loss of crowns which some players hold very dearly to. Outposts also cost resources to upgrade, so the higher the level of outposts you wreck, the more it costs to replace them (especially when the higher level resource fields have very strong defence now). Such actions, after a long while, might cause the player to reconsider his/her options, unless you are up against a player with no outpost as well.  However, as a "terrorist", you might not wanna hold any outpost in case of retribution and you might wanna leave your city empty from then on.