To begin with, if you can't locate half a dozen players you're screwed. They don't all have to be high level, but three of you should be. Still, try keeping everyone above level 27.
So, how to proceed?
First of all you need to do some scouting in force. Try out a few areas and tear a gym down. How quickly does it get rebuilt, if at all?
Elimitate areas where the response is immediate.
Next step is to bubble a gym to 10 and place a really good defender inside. So one prestige pokemon and one maxed out blissey or snorlax.
Then a short checklist:
- Is the gym torn down quickly
- Does it keep being torn down if you keep at it for a week
- If not, do players from your team spontaneously assign pokemon to it
No matter if you see extra players from your team or not inside that gym, provided it stays up, you've just created a foothold.
This is when you go aggressive. Repeat the process with another two gyms, and have the players you're in contact with assign pokemon to them actively. If at all possible, make them team up with you and help tearing those two added gyms down.
You'll probably lose at least one of the three gyms immediately. Try expanding in the other direction, and stay at it for a week or two.
It could fail, and then it's up to you if you give up or not, but you could just as well end up with two stable gyms. If so, push for another two in order to gain a third. You always have to push at least one more gym than the ones you plan to hold.
Three stable gyms counts as territory.
Any gym that normally stays up for three days or more is stable.
This isn't mere theory crafting. This is experience. I've seen two attempts crash and burn, but three other areas where we previously had zero stable gyms by now sport two (ok, less than territory), six and eight stable gyms respectively.
The gym-pair is associated with one gym we push to 10 daily or every second day.
The six gym territory sees another three repeatedly pushed to 10, but those usually only last for a day or so.
The eight gym one might have become a ten gym one. We don't know, but the local raidgroup usually push another three. A punishment raid surprisingly resulted in three out of four pushed gyms staying up for three days thus far.
Creating territory has the added benefit of increasing morale in your team. In our case the eight gym territory gave birth to a relatively nearby seven gym one. I can only assume local players there thought: "If they can do it, why not we?"
Level 40 player here. I have never heard them called Punishment raids. I call them vindictive actions, but they are the same thing and do work. When we expand territory, there are usually one or two active players who take down new gyms. Take them back, they take them back that day. I search locally and take them out of one gym for each gym they took back. If they take it again, they come out of another gym. On the bottom, half-way up, or on top… they come out. I leave the others above them in the gym intact. Keep them busy worrying about collecting their 10 gyms and they will have less time to bother ours.
ReplyDeleteIf someone comes into my home territory, I just take the gym back, twice. Everyone is entitled to try and expand, I understand that. Do it a third time and they get the one-for-one. If they persist, they find themselves in NO gyms within a 30-minute drive of me. It takes a few days to do this, but I make it my mission. This has also been very effective and they find another area to expand in.
We are not aggressive about expansion! There are ~45 gyms in our territory and it is enough to keep our large local group in at least 10 a day. Being on the outskirts of a city, there are several hundred gyms and lots of different territories. As more folks start, or come back and play, more gyms are required. I also respect other team’s territories. There are certain areas bordering ours that they have claimed, and held onto, and I am fine with that. If someone tries to expand into a known, established territory, I stay out of the fights. I am not the aggressor in expansion. But, if I see other team players making a move in a disputed area… I do have the time, team and resources to be able to bully ANY gym. And I do call it bullying, not battling, because at our level in the game, that is what it really is.
Our competition, including aggressive spoofs, run at similar levels as ourselves, 35 - 40. So, well, battling rather than bullying in our case.
DeleteOur punishing, or punitive, raids follow a different pattern than the one you describe, but the 'educational' aspect is the same.