A big part of GvG is holding land for GP, and holding land means you can be attacked, and if you don’t stop the attack… then you lose the land! It’s a big game of tug-o-war essentially, and land is always changing hands and moving around. That’s the fun of GvG, the unpredictability. However, just because this happens doesn’t mean you can’t try to stop it. This is why map checks are important, a quick sweep looking at the land your guild holds to check for any attacks (known as sieges) can save a sector!

While it’s always nice to help an ally out and check their sectors too, or to report on all activity on the maps, it really only necessary in a basic map check to look at your own land and make sure you haven’t become someone’s target. Other helpful details though include reporting if there is any activity nearby your land, just in case.

Doing a map check is very simple. You open up the GvG Continent Map, and check the lands in which your guild holds sectors to see if there are any signs of activity. You can readily tell from the main map where you hold land because, as shown in the screen grab, you’ll see green hexes on those maps. Once you’re in a land though, it’s faster to use the drop-down menu in the upper-right corner to navigate between eras, as you’ll always be centered on your guild’s HQ. If you don’t hold any land in a particular era, it will show a bunch of golden down arrows, which are for Landing Zones that you could take (but shouldn’t unless asked to do so by a GvG leader). Make sure you move around just a bit when checking your land holdings, in case it can’t all be seen at once on your screen. At this time Inno doesn’t have zoom-out features in GvG like they do for your city. You can zoom-out with your browser function if you know how to do that, though, if you choose.

You’re specifically looking in eras to see if there are any active sieges on your guild’s land, or if you’ve lost land to a guild while no one was on to catch it. Unfortunately, the latter is going to happen more than you think. No one can be on the maps 24/7 though, so try not to stress over it. Let your guild know and your GvG leaders and strategists will decide if it’s worth taking back.

     

A sector that is under siege will have an icon that is red with two crossed swords in it. If you hover over the sector, it will also tell you who is trying to take your sector. This is important information, so you’ll want to relay the following to your guild in either main chat or a dedicated thread:
• That you’re under siege
• What era
• By whom

If you’re able to fight in that era, you can also try to break the siege. This is done by entering the sector with “view sector” after you click on it, and selecting an army to fight with. The attacker has to get through all DAs placed in the sector they’re attacking, which is a maximum of 80 battles. You only have to defeat their siege army 10 times to break. They can re-siege though when you break, as your breaking the siege does not put the sector under protection.

Alternatively, if you see an icon that has green crossed swords, that is a sector your own team is working to attain. This doesn’t need to be reported, but feel free to join in the fun if you’re able. Just be sure to pop into the drop-down guild chat first, to make sure you aren’t disrupting something specific, and in case the GvG leader for that attack has specific instructions during the battle for the fighters. GvG is very much about teamwork, so this is essential! Naturally, these map checks are a big part of that teamwork, too.

 

     

Protected sectors, like the besieged sectors, have two states as well. The first, and better one, are green shields. A green shield means it’s a sector that your guild took sometime after calc ran, and is safe until the next calc is run (daily, at the same time every day). Calc will be at 8pm for the time-zone of the server, so know how you relate to that time to know when it is for you. If you see a red shield however, that is a sector that another guild potentially took from you, and it is now protected from you being able to take it back (if desired by your GvG leaders) until after calc.

Should you find a red shield for a sector you believe to be one of yours that was lost, you can see when it was taken with the event log. This is good information to have, so reporting back to your guild in the appropriate place with the era the sector or sectors were lost in, the guild that took them, and the time they were lost is appreciated. The event log can be accessed with the icon in the bottom-left that looks like a pad of paper and pencil. After opening it, click on the red shield icon below the yellow star to see enemy guild activity, and there you’ll see any hostile activity against you. Hovering over any of these events will give you the time stamp.

Information is good, but sometimes you’ll see none of this going on when you do a map check. That’s good too! If there is nothing happening on the maps, then you’ll want to post in your guild’s designated thread “Maps Quiet”, “All Clear”, “No Activity”, or similar. This lets the team know someone went through the maps, and bumps the thread back up to remind others to help with map checks.

Naturally, if the maps aren’t quiet, you’ll want to report any and all information you can.

This is a very easy way to be a team player, without taking a lot of time up. Basic map checks generally take less than five minutes (sometimes as quickly as 2 minutes or less!), and are crucial support for any team holding land. The more members doing map checks, the better. Like anything else with GvG, this is easier done from the PC since the only way to access it on mobile is through the Puffin app, but it can be done by anyone.

Save a sector, check the maps. ☺