Many have complained, nothing has been changed. Personally, I'd love facing tougher defenses, if it was compensated with better loot. My own defenses are sufficient without any changes, though.
Defense in FoE consists of many things. You choose your own combination of methods. There's no universal advice, but here are some suggestions:
- Collect on time.
- Notice when he/she attacks and when he/she loots. Move your completion times so you can collect before those times.
- Have a residential or small production building on a short cycle, and leave uncollected.
- Forego buildings that can be plundered.
- Use city shield.
- Build defensive GBs.
- Put up watchtowers, ritual flames and other def buildings.
- Work the questlines, and get reward troops from the future, use them in defense.
- Strike back, as a deterrent, and to win back losses.
- Increase your production to compensate for losses.
- Aid your attacker. If he/she aids from history, he/se may (deliberately or accidentally) aid in return, which prevents attack for 24 hours.
- Don't be at the bottom half of the neighborhood; people will assume you're inactive or a bad player.
- Be in a good guild, where you'll get advice and encouragement.
On the defensive army specifically:
- Never use more than two rogues.
- Your defensive troops will probably have better def boost than att boost. That means you choose high def troops for your standard defense.
- Your attacker probably has a favorite attack set-up. Adapt your set-up once in a while, to give a surprise.
- If the time of attack is predictable, use a defense boost that covers the timeframe.
- An all artillery defense will probably not win, but will usually inflict some losses. Some attackers are averse to losses. With max luck, you may take out a future unit, forcing him/her to spend diamonds.
- Having two artillery or ranged can be useful for converting rogues without taking damage.
Remember:
- The neighborhood lasts only 14 days, which is nothing in this game.
- If there's only one or two who plunder you, the losses should be minimal, if any. There's no reason to panic.
- If there's more than one or two, you're doing something very wrong. Learn from it!
- Take it as a challenge. It'll enrich the game experience, if you allow it to.
I have an active defense, myself, and every plunderable building my heart desires. A strong defensive army thwarts 99% of attackers. These days, I grin, even if I find a successful attack in Event History. I enjoy seeing how my defenses are beaten, and I love a good neighborhood feud. It (almost) never happens, though; when they fight, they always loose, and they almost always retreat, anyway. Damn the cowards! Anyway, the point is this: defense is very much possible.