A CP run is a fight arranged rather than found: one side puts troops up to be attacked, and the other side collects the Conquest Points for attacking them.
Conquest Points are far harder to come by than Valor Points, and the research that spends them is long. A run is the only way most players get them in quantity.
Two jobs, and they want opposite things. The host hands over as much strength and health as they can stand to lose. The attacker tries to take the points home without paying for them.
It is done two ways, and they are different enough to be worth separating: a whole clan hitting one host from outside the clan, or two players running it between the two of them.
The host puts their highest flying guardsmen in the city, and that means Corax II if they have it. It looks arbitrary and it is not: four things push the same way.
Wu Zetian is worth having at a high level for her own sake — she is the one you take to citadels — so most players have her further along than the legendaries that increase the other troop types. The bonus she puts on Corax ends up being the bigger one, and in a CP city it also means more troops fit.
The Valkyrie Diadem goes the same way: most players have it above the artifacts that do the same job for the other types.
Against Royal Lion the Medallion of Unity settles it. The Lion is a beast and its base bonus can be slightly better, but there is no specialists' answer to a medallion that increases guardsmen's health, and that alone covers the gap almost every time.
And after a run you are left with more Corax than you need, because reviving is cheaper than training and the survivors pile up. A flying unit is the more useful thing to have piled up.
A CP city is one city kept for hosting runs, rather than whoever hosts emptying their own.
The host is a player from another clan, and the clan doing the run hits that one city together — a reinforced attack, one march with the members piling into it, not a queue of separate hits. The sizing is the whole problem: too few troops on the host and the attack takes everything, too many and the clan cannot clear it.
The limits on what each member sends do two jobs: they keep everyone on a similar stack, and they decide who takes the return hits.
The defence hits back, and it hits the fattest attacker. So one player — the shield — sends a little more than everyone else, takes the return, and the rest come away untouched. Everyone else is capped precisely so that they stay under him.
That makes the shield’s losses the only bill of the run, and it is why a clan picks a player who can carry them and rotates the job. It is also why the caps are a list and not a guideline: one member over his number and the return lands on the wrong player.
And more strength does not buy more pointsWhat you take home is set by the defending troops and by your Dustan, not by how hard you hit. Strength is rarely the problem — a clan march beats the host almost every time — and when it does, the battle ends there and a good part of the march never swings. That is fine; it just means the extra power was never what the points were coming from.
The attacker is paid for the strength and the health of what is defending, in equal halves.
Health alone is the common belief and it is wrong. An artifact worth 300 % strength to the defenders hands over more than one worth 200 % health, which is why a defender's kit sometimes has the Fan in it, or Cleopatra among the captains.
One big stack, not a spread. Every health and strength bonus you own for that one type, pointed at it.
Roughly a quarter of what you would field defending your own city through a portal: one player's figures were 160,000 Corax II at home against about 40,000 sent to the run.
A whole clan can run together, but only if the numbers are set so everyone comes away with a similar haul.
Two players arrange it between them: one defends and the other attacks. There is no ladder to work out and no share to settle, which is most of what makes a clan run complicated.
The attacker pays the host in Silver, at a price the two of them agree. It usually lands between 1M and 2M Silver for every 1B Conquest Points.
Whether the two of you are in the same clan family, which is what moves the price furthest.
The attacker's Dustan level.
The highest tier of flying troops the host can put up.
That is the whole arrangement. A clan run is the complicated one, and it needs the coordination that this does not.
All that matters in a conquest-point defender is health, since health is what the attacker is paid for.
Strength and health count in equal halves. Given a choice between an artifact worth 300 % strength to the defenders and one worth 200 % health, the strength one hands over more.
Mounted defenders hand the attackers more Conquest Points.
The points follow the strength and health on offer and nothing else — the defenders' own counters do not enter into it. What mounted defenders do is cost the attacker fewer troops, because more of an attacking army counters mounted than anything else, though in a run that is being managed properly the difference does not show. Guard 9 flying Corax are the usual pick over mounted, for reasons that belong elsewhere.