AGE 88 - Yr0 Stories - THE KINGDOM OF Unnamed kingdom

I wandered through the dark and found myself caught in the midst of a great battle. In the pitch black they fought and I was unable to see. Great magic had blinded all in sight of the battle and when it was over voices spoke to me but I knew not from where and before I knew it they were gone and I was left alone surrounded by their victems.

1) What is your kingdom and your position?
We are 5:7 and I’m the Monarch.

2) How did you find your last war? (arranged or wave)
We got waved by several kingdoms, we weren’t going to go to war with one inactive vs a 24 player kingdom. As it turned out they too had an inactive. So we decided to go for war and figure that at worst case scenario we’d end up in an EOWCF to recover.

3) Who was your opponent and why did you pick them?
We fought the Tomatoes of 4:7.

4) When you run your wars, is it micro managed waves or do you have a preset plan?
We try and make a kick-ass opening wave, after that it’s just a free for all. As in, the monarch msg has peeps we should chain, and generally includes something like “heretic, if you’re one of the first to hit you’re free to do NM on chain. If not, go fb targets posted”. Our leadership (me) just doesn’t want to be as active as I used to be. For opening wave we try and get most our people here, but getting 15/22 people here is generally good enough to declare with.

5) How did you feel about your attacker choices?
We opted for Human Artisans, figuring that the higher BE and build protection would provide more benefit than the straight up punch from a Human Warrior. Which were our only two options. We mixed it with a few Undead Clerics because we needed a cleric for intra casting and figured that plague was nice if we try and chain. That -15% defense is sweet as we generally don’t have the activity to do NM or focused chains. So dealing with that initial defense is a lot easier this way. Orcs were out due to the stupid +20% tm losses and dwarves, while being a strong contender, just lacked the flexibility a human offers. Avian is just suicide.

6) Did your TM choices compliment the attackers well this age?
Well, it’s a bit early, only done the opening war. We do feel confident that our thief/magic people are up for the task. I think we’ve got like 4 elf mystics and 5 elf heretics and 2 fae rogues.

7) What was the biggest issue your attackers faced?
Errr, opening wave attack times are too long. That, and the obvious rain of fire and thieves in the night. We fought 10 rogues on our opening wave. That’s a lot of thief power. They were all dwarf rogues too, so their rune production was through the roof. Fortunately they lacked mystics and heretics (and elves) so they couldn’t get a ritual up and lacked the wizards to keep our econ in check.

8) What was the biggest issue your TMs faced?
Well, runes. And a crapload of rogues. They had some people we could NS and our mage people could do some fireballs and ET with the runes we did have. They ran 50/50 off/def so they could attack out. Pre-war we got waved by multiple kingdoms so our econ/BE were down the crapper. That hurt our TMs most probably.

9) What approach did you use on your waves? did it work?
We opened the war with a full massacre wave. All provinces did 100% offense masses on their rogues. They waved us and gave hostile, so our masses evened the return times a bit. Giving us (mostly) a just faster return than them. The fact that we got hit a lot pre-war did mean our economy suffered for the first 24 hours of the war but in disabling a lot of their thief power we made sure the propa/GA/AW/NS didn’t completely tear us a new one.

10) How did you seal the deal?
Back to back Ruby, Emerald and Topaz kinda did it. That, and they lost most their thief power (those we didn’t mass, we chained) and had no magic power to compensate. So while they weren’t really behind on acres, any prolonged war would have eventually swung into our favor.

11) Any honorable mentions to your kingdom mates who went above and beyond?
Nope, we all did really well.

12) Is there anything you would change about the 'WAR' experience in Utopia?
I’d rather the base attack time is 14.4 but no in war speed bonus. Especially early age the rune formula could use tweaking (that +680 in the formula is too high, the .68 multiplier too low). The other side lost someone due to no peasants left. Even though both kingdoms were aware of the situation, just couldn’t get the player online. Potentially anyone dropping to 0 peons should have his province size reduced to 100 acres, but with all other stats online (or at least, have it as an option). This was early age, but especially late age dying is too painful.

Thank you and enjoy Age 88!