Most failed CP runs come down to one misunderstanding about who is supposed to get hit. CP runs in Total Battle work like this: a host from another clan parks one durable troop type in a CP city; your clan's tank gathers everyone's reinforcements, attacks that city, and absorbs every counter-hit while everyone else's troops land strikes and earn conquest points. Runs fail because of who takes the damage, not how much, so health beats strength.
What are the roles in a CP run?
Five roles, two of them outside your clan. Nobody who hosts or participates needs to drop their Shield of Peace.
| Role | In your clan? | What they do |
|---|---|---|
| Host | No | High-might player who provides the defending army — normally one large, durable troop type (e.g. Crorax 2) built with their own silver and food |
| CP city | Same clan as the host | The battlefield. Receives the host's army as reinforcements, so it cannot have a Shield of Peace (you can't reinforce a shielded city). Empty of resources, walls ideally already damaged |
| Tank | Yes | Receives the participants' reinforcements, attacks the CP city, and absorbs every hit from the host's army. Loses troops on purpose and must stay active for the whole run |
| Participants | Yes | Send reinforcements to the tank, then earn CP as their troops strike the host's army |
| Silver bank | Yes | A clan city that collects the silver participants owe the host |
The host and the tank organise the run between them; participants follow their numbers.
Why do CP runs fail?
Because the wrong troops take the hits. The host's army counter-attacks after each strike, and if those counter-hits land on participants instead of the tank, the participants lose troops and the run falls apart.
A battle report from a successful run shows the rhythm. The host defended with just over 741,000 G9 troops of a single type. The tank's troops took the first hit and died — that is the point. Participants then struck the host; the host struck the tank again; the tank lost more troops; participants kept landing strikes. The pattern repeated until the final strike killed the host's army. The host earned little CP, while the attackers shared 388 billion CP between them.
The tank therefore needs enough stacks to survive every counter-hit until the host's army is dead. That makes tanking expensive, which is why timing runs during the Ruthless Slaughter tournament matters: the tank can revive the lost troops with silver — then must remember to rebuild to top up if another run follows straight after. The stacking formula is how those stacks are sized.
Who should be the tank?
The player with the most leadership, or the best understanding of the game. More leadership means a bigger army and bigger stacks, which lets participants send more troops and earn more from each run.
A lower-tier player can tank, with one hard condition: their lowest-tier stack must be more durable than the highest-tier stack of any participant. When your clan is just starting with CP runs, skip the edge case and use the biggest might with the highest leadership. The guide to Total Battle troop types explains how leadership caps what a march can carry.
Which captains and bonuses should participants use?
Activate your conquest points and experience bonuses before any troop leaves your city, bring Dustan, Amanator and your strongest fighting captain, and strip all equipment and artifacts. Specifically:
- Activate bonuses first. A bonus activated after the march has left does not count. Participants activate before sending reinforcements to the tank; the tank activates before marching on the CP city.
- Dustan — conquest points bonus from his level and star level, so he is worth levelling up fast before your first run.
- Amanator — health and strength of your army on group marches, in reinforcements, and in raids.
- A high-strength fighting captain — Cleopatra if you have her; otherwise whoever gives the most strength.
- Remove equipment and artifacts from every captain. Two reasons: a health spike on a participant can pull hits away from the tank, and equipment loses one durability per strike — a multi-strike CP run wears it down fast.
Your consulate is your own. The strength and health of reinforcements bonus comes from the consulate level in your city, not the tank's — 72% strength and 72% health at the level in this example. The buildings guide covers what else the consulate does and doesn't boost.
There is also a cap. Once you have made roughly 10 consecutive attacks on the same player, the CP from the next attack is reduced and keeps falling; the count resets at the daily reset. The exact threshold is not published — 10 is the working figure.
How does the host get paid?
With silver, at a rate the host sets — normally 1 to 2 million silver per billion CP earned per run. The host built the defending troops with their own silver and food, so participants are expected to cover it.
Rather than every participant sending caravans for the host to count, everyone sends their share to the silver bank city. The host then collects it one of two ways:
- Drop shields. The host and the silver bank both drop their Shield of Peace and the host attacks the bank.
- The citadel trick. The silver bank sends an army to a citadel at the same time the host marches on it. The bank arrives first, demolishes the citadel, and drops a portal in its place; the host's march continues into the portal, enters the bank's city, and leaves with the silver — no shield lost.
How do you calculate the tank's troop numbers?
Use a CP-runs calculator: enter your tier range, your minimum health bonus, the participants' tier range and maximum health bonus, and a base health cap, and it outputs how many of each troop the participants should send and how many you must field to keep taking the hits. The inputs, with one tank's real values:
| Input | Example value | How it was chosen |
|---|---|---|
| Tank max / lower tier | G6 / G5 | Two stacks; with guardsmen and specialists that is 16 troop types more durable than any participant's |
| Minimum tank health bonus | 1,000% | Lowest troop type's health bonus (battle griffin level 5: add up every stat line) plus personal and clan bonuses ≈ 1,100-something, rounded down for safety |
| Participant tier range | 4–6 | Nothing higher than the tank's own tier |
| Maximum participant health bonus | 1,300% | Own maximum ≈ 1,192%, plus 200 as a margin |
| Base health cap (millions) | 1 | Sets army size; raise it until the output matches your leadership |
| Significant digits | 1 or 2 | 1 rounds to thousands, 2 to hundreds (3,500 → 3,540 → 3,546 at 3 and 4); more only confuses participants |
Submit and the output lists melee/ranged, mounted, and flying columns for each tier, including monsters and mercenaries, plus the tank's own numbers. Adding up the tank's column gives the leadership the run uses; multiply the base health cap (×10, for instance) and every number scales with it. Test the numbers on yourself first, then send the participant figures out. Feeding the calculator honest bonus percentages is the whole game — the one-troop test attack is how to read your real health and strength before you plug them in.
Before your first run
Pick the tank for leadership, activate bonuses before a single troop moves, strip equipment, and agree the silver rate with the host up front. If you can say why the tank takes the hits, why participants leave their artifacts at home, and why Ruthless Slaughter is the time to do it, you understand CP runs.