Checking enemy DLU and harbour

In order to spy an enemy, you also lose silver coins in your cave, meaning you have refill it again. But there are another ways you can spy, without losing coins, instead you're going to give some free BP to the enemy.  Checking can also say if the player is active or not. The checking consists in fake attacks and you need to reset your wall everytime:

1. Click in city wall in any of your cities;
2. Click in the "X"(delete the current record) and click in "save";
3. Send the fake attack;
4. Click in city wall. In the left superior side, you'll find out how many troops you defeated. Then you have many possibilities:

• If you killed DLU without militia, then he's probably not active;
• If you killed DLU with militia then he's probably online;
• If you killed OLU, then he's offline and the city is a OLU city;
• If you killed militia, then he's active and the city is probably not a DLU.
• When you kill DLU, you'll know the proportion of the units the player has. For example: the wall says 10 swordsmen, 1 archer, 2 hoplites. Then the worst attack is a slinger nuke, and horsemen and hoplites nuke will work better.

Naval and DLU Checking with OLU

You definitely don't want to lose all your OLU for a birs stacking. Then you send a fake land attack with as few units as possible to check the harbour and DLU of the enemy, so you'll know what he/she has. Checking can also say if the player is active or not.
Pros: You can quickly recover the units that you lost.
Cons: It works if you are or you have an ally in the same island of the enemy, because of the travel time. It won't work if  the enemy is active, he can send his naval units to another place and call them back, then you'll not know what he has.

Wall Checking

You should use this to know if the enemy is a heavy golder. For example, you attacked him with slingers + 30 cats, his wall was on lv25 and went down to 0. Then, you send a fake attack with a few light ships and find out that his wall is 25 again. In this case, you should have to replace your catapults. Don't trust in the number of birremes you killed, because even if you simulate, you'll still don't know how many birs the player has.
Pros: You can quickly recover the units that you lost.
Cons: None.

Naval and DLU Checking with Harpies

The best checking you can have, however you'll lost some favors on it. Train Harpies and send 3,4 as a fake attack. They will attack and you'll receive a report about his naval units and the DLU you have killed.
Why harpies and not manticores or griffins?
Harpies are the second fastest flyers only losing for pegasus. They are a bit slower than spies.
Pros: A fast checking and you can easily recover your flyers.
Cons: None.