Capture a Historical City NPC Level 12 Using Only Regular Heroes

There's only hints (screenshots) I have seen on capturing a NPC 12 using regular heroes.  Most postings show the use of Historical Heroes leading the charge.  Well what about the rest of us who don't have historical heroes?  Here's my first attempt on capturing a 12 using regular heroes - I hope this helps you get yours too.

Summary:

Troops Used: 1M archers, 300K warriors, 8,750 pikemen and 8,750 swords
City Used: 4 Cities for Warrior Bombs, 1 City for Spearheads/Loyalty Waves
Heroes Used: 38 (29 for Warrior Bombs, 9 for Spearheads/Loyalty Waves)
Breakdown on 9 Heroes: 5 Level 100 (290 to 320 attack) and 4 Level 85+ (275 to 290 attack)
Technology: All at Level 10
Total Time: 32 min (First Wave Landed: 15:16:10, Last Wave Landed: 15:48:25)
Total Waves: 82 - 30 Warrior Bombs (no layers), 7 Suicide Spearheads, 45 Loyalty Waves

Troop Composition inside Historical City NPC 12:

Warrior / Pikemen / Cavalry / Archers / Battering Ram
- commonly referred to as pike-cav-ram combination
- changes after server maintenance (although I have researched that some say every 12 hours - I waited for days to get this composition), multiple scouting only switches King to Queen or vice versa
- Just FYI - I would also use the exact same attack troop composition  if I got a sword-cav-ram combination. All other troop combination in a 12 I would avoid, since I do not wish to use other troop types (more expensive and time-consuming to recruit) and I only have regular heroes.

Preparations:

Scout Report (Prior to hit @ 12:42:27 Server Time)

Scout Report (Prior to hit @ 12:42:27 server time)

- Got the 6-minute periods for October 1st using Tax Rate. (Please look at a "Preparation" section of Capturing an NPC Level 10... posting for complete explanation of how and why I did this.)

  xx:04, xx:10, xx:16, xx:22, xx:28, xx:34, xx:40, xx:46, xx:52, xx:58

- Loaded War Horn, Penicillin and Corselet

- Planned to use War Ensign (increasing troop dispatches to 125K) for all spearheads

- Reviewed my overall strategy:
     1. Clear the cavalry.
     2. Clear the pikemen.
     3. Clear the archers. Trade fire with defensive archers.
     4. Clear the warriors and battering rams.

Battle Reports with Commentary:

Waves 1 to 27:  15:16:10 to 15:17:00
3K Warrior Bombs (no layers) - Purpose is to carve out as much T/A/Ds (Traps / Abatis / Defensive Trebuchets) before the suicide spearheads land.

Wave 1 Battle Report Screenshot:  15:16:10
Expect to see these types of reports for ALL the warrior bombs

Waves 28, 29 and 30: 15:17:06, 15:17:12, 15:25:12
2-30K Warrior Bombs and 1-100K Warrior Bomb - See What Went Wrong section why I did this. In hindsight, maybe all warrior bombing efforts are probably unnecessary.  I will update this comment when I proven myself right or wrong.

Wave 28 Battle Report Screenshot:  15:17:06

Scout Report Screenshot:  15:22:33

I compared this with scout report at the start of the attack.  I wanted to see more T/A/Ds gone - so I sent another 100K warrior bomb.

Wave 30 Battle Report Screenshot: 15:25:12
Only indication that this is a much bigger wave was the amount of experience points gained.

Waves 31 to 37:  15:26:54 to 15:28:00
Main spearheads. Originally planned for 6 - all war ensigned; but archer tradefire did not happen.  So I sent another spearhead wave - 7th wave achieved it.  This is very crucial event in conquering a historical city - you must be able to take out all the defending archers.

Unlike conquering an NPC 8 or 10 where we have a cookie cutter 1-shot formula for conquering them, the new historical cities will require review (or overcompensate by sending more spearheads) before sending any loyalty waves.  Follow through with the planned strategy and make sure you achieve each goal before sending any loyalty waves.

Wave 31 Battle Report Screenshot: Clearing the cavalry.

Wave 32 Battle Report Screenshot: Clearing the pikemen.  I did another scout before this attack landed - so the King switched to a Queen.

Wave 33 Battle Report Screenshot: Clearing the warriors.  Battering rams were cleared once other troops got cleared.

Wave 34 Battle Report Screenshot: Clearing the warriors.  Battering rams were cleared once other troops got cleared.

Wave 35 Battle Report Screenshot: Clearing the warriors.  Battering rams were cleared once other troops got cleared.

Wave 36 Battle Report Screenshot: Clearing the warriors.  Battering rams were cleared once other troops got cleared.

Wave 37 Battle Report Screenshot: Clearing the archers by achieving tradefire between attacking archers and defending archers.

Waves 38 to 42:  15:30:46 to 15:31:11
1st to 5th Loyalty Waves. Using 40K archers with 40K warriors troops in clearing re-spawns.

Wave 38 Battle Report Screenshot: 1st Loyalty Wave

Wave 42 Battle Report Screenshot: 5th Loyalty Wave

Wave 43 to 82:  15:32:36 to 15:48:25
6th Loyalty Wave to 45th Capture Wave. Changed to a thinner troop layer since I was seeing ~10 rounds in the reports.  In hindsight - t'was a bad idea - I forgot about the 6-minute period uptick which gave me 3 wipeouts (See 3 screenshots below).

Wave 43 Battle Report Screenshot: 6th Loyalty Wave with thinner troop layers

Wave 47 Battle Report Screenshot:  15:35:39

First wipeout following the 6-minute period uptick xx:34 

Wave 65 Battle Report Screenshot:  15:43:54

Second wipeout following the 6-minute period uptick xx:40

Wave 74 Battle Report Screenshot:  15:47:52

Third wipeout following the 6-minute period uptick xx:46

Wave 82 Battle Report Screenshot: 15:48:25

Capture successful!

What Went Wrong:

MISTAKE #1:  I botched the camp-time of my warrior bombs.  I have 6 cities all in all - but for one reason or another, I forgot to ungear mount all heroes on 5th and main assault cities which resulted all 8 warrior bombs waves arriving right before the 6-minute period and worst, 6 spearheads arriving in the middle of the warrior bombing.  I had to manually abort all 14 waves, and let 27 waves to arrive, perfectly camp-timed but ineffective.  The needed time for return trip of my spearheads meant they can not come back within the original 6-minute period as planned.

So I decided to go to Plan B - brute force attack and do some guesstimate shortcuts 

Result: 81K warriors wasted (?), Wasted 6 war ensigns when I aborted the spearheads

The damage effect of the 27 waves could not be measured for certain due to the lapse time.  My objective was to make sure that the warrior bombs and suicide spearheads be as so close as possible time-wise. My shortcuts - I sent 2-30K warrior bombs, scouted to see their effect, then sent 1-100K warrior bomb, followed quickly by the 6 suicide spearheads. 

MISTAKE #2: Sending spearheads and loyalty waves from 1 city.  My original plan was to camp-time the loyalty waves across all cities; that idea went on the wayside being focused on the brute force attack.  Completely spaced out :)

Result: 52 waves (not counting the 30 warrior bombs).  I probably could've shaved off 5 to 10 waves if the loyalty waves went as originally planned.

MISTAKE #3: I should've stayed with the bigger ratio loyalty waves.  Keeping with the first ratio of 40K archers and 40K warriors would probably save me extra waves, and lessen the kill rate of my archers and warriors.

Result: Less loyalty waves, and avoided 3 wipeouts

Your thoughts?