Break a Citadel, Keep Your Army
Level 30 citadels used to scare me off. That wall count alone. But once I worked out how the fight actually goes and scouted my own numbers, they turned into the easiest Dragon Keys I run. Nothing much dies. I just send it again.
Bring enough catapults to flatten the walls in one hit so they never swing back. Send griffins to survive the fight and clear the garrison. Revive the little you lose during Ruthless Slaughter. Then do it again, as many times as you like.
Every citadel is really two fights
Only catapults do real damage here. Everything else you bring just bounces off.
The monster squad behind the walls. This is what your actual army is for.
Level 30 is an Elven citadel, so every clear drops a Dragon Key for a level 30 epic crypt. (Cursed ones stop at 25 and hand out Master Coins instead.)
Find your catapult number
Don't trust anyone's chart for this, mine included. Your catapults hit way harder than a generic number expects, because Brann, your artifacts, your research and your siege gems all pile on top of the base. So the number has to come from your own fight. Take a real hit where the wall lived through round one, and read two things off it: how many catapults you brought, and how much wall they took down. Divide, and that's your true rate per catapult.
You can still scout with a single catapult and Brann for a quick first look. It reads high, though: one catapult on its own kills about double what one does in a full stack, so dividing lowballs the count. Use it as a floor and bring more.
- The walls have a set size. Mine came up 135,000.
- I once brought 655 catapults and they took down 85,759 before the wall swung back. That's about 131 a catapult.
- Divide the wall by that. 135,000 ÷ 131 is about 1,030 to clear, so I bring 1,200 and overkill it.
Then overshoot. Bringing a margin more breaks the wall in round one, before it can swing back.
Do it once and write the number down. It moves only when you upgrade siege research or gems, and every upgrade brings the count down: my first clean run took 2,400, and today the same wall wants about half that.
Overkill the walls so they never swing back
Flatten the walls on the first strike and they die before they ever get a turn. They never swing back, and that's what keeps the run clean. I sent 2,400 catapults. They did 4.05 billion damage and wiped all 135,000 walls in round one. The walls landed nothing on my army, so every troop I lost, I lost to the garrison instead.
Bring too few and the walls sit there for rounds, hitting you the whole time and doubling the damage on anything that isn't flying. Catapults are cheap and easy to bring back, so I overshoot on purpose.
It's all about the griffins
Here's the bonus that decides everything. Walls hit melee, mounted and ranged for double, and flying for nothing. A flying unit is the one thing they can't touch. My griffins proved it out: every other unit that died, died to a monster, but the griffins lost nobody and still killed two of the six defenders. They're my no-loss engine, so I bring every last one.
Read the garrison before you march
Tap each defender and check what it's strong against, then cut whatever it punishes. My level 30 had six, and two called the shots:
Ranged, and ranged eats infantry. It went straight for my melee and took 3,823 knights.
Strong against dragons. It would shred Wyverns, so I keep my flyers to griffins here.
The other three, an elder and a bear and a green dragon, went down without countering a thing.
From a Guardsman 7 account, heavy siege
Here's what I sent
Break the walls in round one. Light losses.
Kill the garrison and take nothing. No losses.
Bulk damage, soak the elf, heaviest losses.
Extra damage. Light losses.
Captains: Brann, Leonidas and Wu Zetian, carrying the siege, infantry and flying bonuses. They all lead the march together, and each bonus helps the troop type it's built for, so bring all three and nothing rides unbuffed. For a farm loop I drop the Valor captain. I'm after kills and survival, not points.
What I actually lost
Clean win, Dragon Key in hand. Here's where the cost landed:
to the elder
untouched
to the elf archer
to the Ent
So roughly nine in ten of my losses are melee soaking that one archer. I'm happy with that trade. The melee draws the archer's fire, and my griffins stay clean and do the tidy killing.
Reviving the dead
Barely losing a troop really means few deaths plus cheap revival. I've got the few deaths sorted. For the cheap part, I run the whole loop inside a revival event:
- Ruthless Slaughter lets me revive attack losses with silver instead of gold. This is my main window.
- Thirst for Battle cuts the cost of reviving attack losses.
- Sacred Rituals revives with Sacred Potions and refunds a chunk of them, more the more I spend.
- A higher Temple drops revival and potion costs across the board.
Run it during Ruthless Slaughter, bring the melee and catapults back with silver, and the round stays cheap.
A round can still run 6k to 8k gold to revive, so it isn't free. But look at what it hands back: a chest off the citadel, a Dragon Key into a level 30 epic crypt, and everything that crypt pays out. For all that, 6k to 8k gold is the right price.
The whole loop:
- Get your catapult number: read it off a real hit, or scout one catapult for a floor.
- Bring that many plus a little margin, all your griffins, all your melee, and your dragons and flying mercs.
- Captains: Brann, Leonidas, Wu Zetian.
- Win, grab the Dragon Key.
- Revive during Ruthless Slaughter.
- Send it again.
That's it! Not much dies,
and the keys keep coming.
Losing more griffins than you'd like? Punch Down: Citadel Edition is the tune-up: drop a level, starve the dragon, and keep almost your whole march.