1) The most important buildings to protect are the Construction Yard and Defense Facility. These should be placed in a corner with other buildings placed in front of them for protection. 2) An effective defense consists of units from all three ground unit types: infantry, structures, and vehicles, arranged in multiple layers to withstand sequential waves of attack. 3) Proper placement and grouping of defensive units like turrets, artillery, and anti-vehicle weapons can create layered defenses that efficiently counter different offensive unit compositions.

1. Basic Rules
Before you think about building your defense you should know which buildings
you have to protect:
1. Construction Yard: You can repair your base with it. You lose your base
if you lose this building. The repairtime of your base depends on the level
of the CY (keep on leveling it way past 25)
2. Defense Facility (NOT Defense HQ): It automatically repairs your
defenses after each attack. The level of this buildings has to be at the
level of your defenses, otherwise it doesnt repair properly. If you lose
this building then your defenses arent repaired anymore.
3. Factory, Barracks, Airfield: If you lose those buildings then you
cannot repair your offense anymore. If they are damaged then you can
only repair a part of your offense.
4. Support Artillery: Defends a base by removing a fixed amount of hp of
every appropriate unit of every wave of the attacker. It has to be
close/at the level of the attacker's offense to be effective.
5. Silo: If you lose this building then the enemy gets the resources that the
silo saved
6. Command Center: If this building is damaged then you cannot attack
anymore.
Of all those buildings is the Construction Yard the most important building. The
defense facility is the 2nd most important building.
Therefore you have to make sure that those 2 buildings are best protected.
The first rule of every defense is therefore:
#1 place the Construction in the bottom left or right corner. Place the
Defense Facility left or right of it.
or
Defense guide by Sh0ckwave

2. The reason is simple. If your CY is in the corner then the enemy can only
attack the lines towards the CY with max 2 units / wave instead of 3 units if it
was in the middle for example. The reason why you put the df beside it is
simple that you can focus your defense on few lines instead of having to
defend your whole base.
Simply choose the left or right side by looking at the lines that lead towards
those buildings. If there are already many buildings in front of it then its a
good side. If those lines have also less obstacles like water and oil at the
defense side then pick this side.
#2 Put as many buildings in front of those 2 buildings as you can.
It doesnt matter if your base produces less credits or energy. It is only
important during a war that your base stays alive as long as possible. The
more buildings the enemy has to destroy the more attacks he needs and the
more cp/rt he has to to waste for your base. Take a screenshot of your bases
before the war so that you can easily undo the changes after the war. You can
also use the TA Opt Script and save the link for the layout of your bases
Bad
Defense guide by Sh0ckwave

3. Good
#3 Dont forget the other buildings of the former list. Protect your
factory, silo, command center, support artillery, etc. too.
Simply place all those buildings in front of the CY/DF and fill the gaps between
them with normal buildings. Again the resource production doesnt matter
during a war. I place my silo for example always beside the CY/DF.
As you know there are 3 ground unit types in TA:
Infantry (MG Nest, all Infantry)
Structures (Guardian Cannon, Flak, Anti Tank Traps, Barbwire)
Vehicles (Predator,Guardian,all Artilleries, …)
Every offense unit can only properly attack one of those types. The unit either
barely damages the other types or doesnt attack them at all.
Therefore the next rule:
#4 Have a defense that consists of all 3 unit types
It is bad to have a defense that consists of lots of guardian cannon and flak
although they are good against vehicle and air. The few structure buster of
every army are enough to destroy your whole defense in this case and the
attacker maybe breaks through your defense with the first attack already. Also
defenses made of mostly vehicles are bad too, because then the vehicle buster
like mammoth or paladin easily take your defense down.
Defense guide by Sh0ckwave

4. However there are few defense units that you should never use:
Missile Squad: Their range is too bad and pitbull/flak are always better. Air
simply flys past the Missile Squad without taking much damage.
Barbwire: People dont have enough infantry in their armies, therefore you
dont need this defense unit
Watchtower: Same here there isnt enough infantry in the armies. Also the
damage is lower than of one sniper/mg nest.
How to build a proper defense
Defense Turret Block
Every Defense should have at least one turret block. It has one row of
Flak/Guardian Cannon/Flak/Guardian Cannon. Behind the Flak are Pitbull, that
help with defending the Turrets against Firehawk. The MG Nest can easily kill
Infantry, because Infantry has to get very close to the turrets (Commandos). If
you can only place one unit behind a guardian cannon then use always a
sniper, because they have a higher range. The Turrets still have one weakness
and this is Structure Buster like Juggernaut and Kodiak. You can use Artillery
to destroy those Structure Busters. Place them 2 rows behind the turrets in
middle as you see on the picture. This is the perfect place, then Structure
Buster are in Firerange for the Artillery when they hit the Turrets. One field left
or right works too if the middle has obstacles.
Defense guide by Sh0ckwave

5. Perfect Defense:
The perfect defense has 2 rows of turrets. At least of them is the Defense
Block as described before.
It has 4 layers of defense.
1st layer:
The first layer has usually anti tank traps to force the enemy to send structure
buster with the first wave. Anti-Tank traps are also good because they are
cheap but still do lots of damage to vehicle.Then the enemy cannot hit that
hard your turrets with structure buster. Vehicles and a sniper easily destroy the
structure buster or other units. If you dont have many points left but still space
then just use zone tropper.
2nd layer:
Then the first turret row with the defense block.
3rd layer:
The artillery is surrounded by vehicles and another sniper. This layer again
destroys structure buster easily
4st layer: your last layer is another turret row. All structure buster should be
gone by now and the turrets destroy the rest.
Defense guide by Sh0ckwave

6. This def is the best defense, because you have 4 layers. The enemy has 4
waves. And it does not matter what the enemy send, one wave can only
destroy 1 layer. The next layer always destroys this wave. This is why it is a
very effective defense.
But:
You can only build in few bases, because of the obstacles. However every def
should have at least 3 layers:
1st layer:
Anti tank traps and vehicles/sniper/zone tropper
2st layer : defense block with turrets/artiers,mg nest, pitbull
3rd layer:
vehicles/zone tropper/sniper
3 layers mean that your enemy gets easier through the defense, you need a
higher level then for an effect defense. It also helps if you build more than 4
turrets even if you have a bad layout with obstacles:
Defense guide by Sh0ckwave

7. you see again the first 2 layers. And behind the turrets the vehicle layer. But it
also has 2 turrets just thrown in the vehicle layer. This means that you have
actually 3.5 layers and the def is a bit stronger against different waves.
Luring:
Luring means that you send a unit to the right or left side but you attack with
your other units the other side. Then the vehicles moves to the luring unit and
attack unit. Your other units can then destroy the remaining def.
Some bases can be easily destroyed because of this. I used to recommend to
use mg nest,anti tank traps and other units that dont move to block the
vehicles. But this is not really necessary. Because of example a predator only
moves if the enemy send for example a mammoth. The predator does not
move if the enemy send an orca or a riflemen. Therefore you can make sure
that the units block each other by simply placing them like a cross:
Defense guide by Sh0ckwave