A golden proverb: "Live and learn"!
I've played online for so long, yet I didn't know something so elementary that it's almost embarrassing to talk about :(. Until recently, I could only distinguish maxed-out utopias from other utopias, but it turns out I didn't know so much—and basic things at that! Oh well. Defense definitely rules, IMHO! But that's not what I'm talking about. In Dragon Utopias, it's not just defense that rules, but also the positioning!!! I recently played a game with Oelm and took a level 3 utopia on week 3. My army consisted of 9 stacks of nags, 30 vivs, 3 angels, and an eater; I took the utopia with Nila lvl 15 and parameters 11-5. Having determined in advance that the defense parameters were low, I put the angels up for slaughter by attacking the greens with them, knowing they were doomed, but I saved the stacks of vivs and nags!! I lost all 3 angels and 1 viv. However, in a level 2 utopia!!! on the same game day, I lost 7 nags out of 9 with defense 18!!! The dragons simply started biting them immediately, ignoring the eater! I was very upset during that game, but didn't think much of it! Later, as it turned out, in the first level 3 utopia I put the nags in the 2nd stack, and in the second one in the 4th position! After the game, it was explained to me that the position of the striking stack is very important. After the game, I specifically checked by putting the nags in the 4th stack in a level 3 utopia. Lo and behold: the dragons started pecking at the nags first, ignoring the juicy eater in the form of 10+11 golems, although in the actual game the nags weren't touched once because they were in the 2nd stack!!! That is why I lost 7 nags out of 9 with defense 18 in a level 2 utopia, while in a level 3 one I didn't lose a single one with defense 4!!! I wrote this a bit clumsily, but I think my point is clear. It turns out the position of the striking stack in Dragon Utopias is also very important, regardless of parameters and defense!