Abduct Mechanic in War?

Hi,
Just wanted to have your input on the Abduct Mechanic in War and maybe gives the developper some attention to this.

A bit of context: We are in a war and both side have a few chained provinces with only their acres as def.

I'm just wondering if this is considered ''normal'' (whatever normal means) ;-).

Province A - 500k NW and 2900 acres;
Province B - 50k NW and 200 acres with around 150 scientists (no university and around 40% guardstation (not sure if it applies) )

March 10 of YR8 Forces from PROVINCE A came through and ravaged our lands! They abducted three scientists: Professor Gad (Housing), Professor Thornapa (Crime) and Professor Lett'ren (Housing)! We lost 3 Zombies in this battle. We reawakened 2 of our dead troops into soldiers.
March 10 of YR8 Forces from PROVINCE A came through and ravaged our lands! They abducted three scientists: Professor Krula (Housing), Professor Krohu (Crime) and Professor Rorthor (Housing)! We lost 3 Zombies in this battle. We reawakened 2 of our dead troops into soldiers.

(...) many more similar abduct over time (...)

April 22 of YR8 Forces from PROVINCE A came through and ravaged our lands! They abducted two scientists: Novice Anri (Alchemy) and Professor Mognau (Housing)! We lost 2 Zombies in this battle. We reawakened 1 of our dead troops into soldiers.
April 22 of YR8 Forces from PROVINCE A came through and ravaged our lands! They abducted two scientists: Professor Timtafred (Housing) and Professor Nircaregar (Tools)! We lost 3 Zombies in this battle. We reawakened 2 of our dead troops into soldiers.
April 22 of YR8 Forces from PROVINCE A came through and ravaged our lands! They abducted two scientists: Professor Iglo (Alchemy) and Professor Lacric (Alchemy)! We lost 2 Zombies in this battle. We reawakened 1 of our dead troops into soldiers.
April 22 of YR8 Forces from PROVINCE A came through and ravaged our lands! They abducted two scientists: Professor Diribar (Housing) and Graduate Rethelm (Crime)! We lost 2 Zombies in this battle. We reawakened 1 of our dead troops into soldiers.

I'm not complaining because the options to do this is available to both kingdom, but I feel that the gain from abduct are too high compared to trad march?
Province B was trad marched by the same province for around 10 acres (+/- 5% land) while abducted for (1-2%) of its scientists on each attack.
While land can be acquired easily, science takes time which is why I'm wondering if these number are ''normal''.
It seems to me a province can be crippled alot by this (and for a long time after the war too)

Thanks for the input :)

My kingdom is too small for practical war so I haven't seen the mechanics.

The abduction numbers might seem overboard, but the chained province can attempt counter abduction. Most small kingdoms operate chained provinces in desperation, but they can offer significant advantage. Provided the chained province holds offense, they can take on just the amount of acreage they need.

If bottom feeding is yielding such great results on abduct then the mechanics should be favorable for top feed. Lots of kingdoms use the chained provinces to raze larger enemies with a spare general, like so:

1. I'm sure you're privy to the idea your kingdom should lower some enemy defenses so the chained provinces have incoming acres. The basis of which is to allow the chained province to use all 4 or 5 generals.

2. Essentially you can take acres with 3 generals from the enemy provinces that are either chained or lacking measurable resistant defense. This uses very few troops.

3. You then use the bulk of your troops to raze an enemy province that requires the amount of offense you have left. In our case he/she might consider mixing in abducts.

There are many variables including a bad reaction by the enemy, but they probably have bigger fish to fry. I like to do these things in concert to provide a level of safety for our unchained. For instance, you might hit an enemy that's in nw range of your critical chain alignment. Or break up the nw/acre alignment of the enemy chain. Look for a sparse enemy nw area since you won't be taking acres.

Really I'm just bumping your post, which probably belongs in the strategy forum. But don't worry about that.

Welcome to the forum, Babert.

you got rid of Novice Anri (Alchemy) :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Babert

Hi,
I'm just wondering if this is considered ''normal'' (whatever normal means) ;-).
......
I'm not complaining because the options to do this is available to both kingdom, but I feel that the gain from abduct are too high compared to trad march?
....
It seems to me a province can be crippled alot by this (and for a long time after the war too)

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its considered normal

yes it a bit high, oor abducts/learns were always pretty devestating.

you can be crushed because not only will u have to re-explore you have to regain science which can actually take longer than wpa....and 0 science v max science cant be "made up" v low wpa where u can just overtrain military/tpa.

Typically the best suggestion is to "ask them to stop". if they dont wave the 1@#$@!#$ beat them then wave the crap outa them post war and take x2 as much back as a kd. sure your own prov will be screwed but at least u'll feel better.

@StratOCastle
Thanks for the warm welcome. Well, i've put it in Utopia Talks because I wanted to discuss the philosophy behind it. The chained province had to use all 4 generals to regain acres because they were constantly put down to lower and lower acreage which would force them to release more offense if no acres were incoming. Also, the attacks were done by T\M and it was more of a bar fight between chained provinces so both kingdoms chained province were focusing on surviving with acres while they were getting abducted by huge T/M.

And while your suggestion for top feed is valid, it was impraticable that time because chained province offense had 50k offense at best. Most enemies had def way beyond that and only chained were in attack possibility.

But yeah there are so many variables...

@Over
Because most proffesors were gone. ;-)

@Persain
OK if its considered normal, but i hope the developers know it can be a deterent for warring faster because that province will be mostly useless for a few weeks (80% laboratories incoming!). Maybe there could be a protection of some sort like 1 max professor and the rest would be recruit or novice especially for this size difference. I really don't know.

Also, we are good sports and it is war so everything is allowed. I dont think both kingdoms have hard feeling against each others and we dont want to be asses about it. We could have asked to not abduct and we wouldnt neither though. However, in war you try to cripple and play in the enemies mind. Losing 80+ scientists is a sure way to do that, but it might be just overkill and prevent getting back in action at equals weapons faster.

But yeah both provinces in my kingdom and in the enemies found it not fun.

Thanks for the replies.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Babert

@StratOCastle
Thanks for the warm welcome. Well, i've put in Utopia Talks because I wanted to discuss the philosophy behind it. The chained province had to use all 4 generals to regain acres because they were put down to 110 acres which would force them to release more offense if no acres were incoming. Also, the attacks were done by T\M and it was more of a bar fight between chained provinces so both kingdoms province were focusing on surviving with acres while they were getting abducted.

And while your suggestion for top feed is valid, it was impraticable that time because chained province offense had 50k offense at best. Most enemies had def way beyond that and only chained were in attack possibility.

But yeah there are so many variables...

@Over
Because most proffesors were gone ��

@Persain
OK if its considered normal, but i hope the developers know it can be a deterent for warring faster because that province will be mostly useless for a few weeks (80% laboratories incoming!��). Maybe there could be a protection of some sort like 1 max professor and the rest would be recruit or novice.

Also, we are good sports and it is war so everything is allowed. We could have asked to not abduct and we wouldnt neither though. However, in war you try to cripple and play in the enemies mind. Losing 80+ scientists is a sure way to do that, but it might be just overkill and prevent getting back in action at equals weapons.

But yeah both provinces in my kingdom and in the enemies found it not fun.

Thanks for the replies.

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Just wanted to add one thing, 80% labs is overkill :)
There's a max cap on the benefit that labs provide. And since Labs are unaffected by BE, you could just keep the max % of labs required for max effects. Wiki says 95% is the max effect and base effect is 4% increase for every 1% of labs, so I guess 24% labs should be sufficient for you to boost your scientist spawn rate to the max possible.

Yeah i was exagerating. Im more at 30-40% but didnt thought of the cap. good things im currently exploring right now ;-)

War capability is essentially a flat numbers game so you see most war kingdoms go for attacker personalities & races.
The less than crown competitive kingdoms lose their way in their perception of where they stand. Activity, diplomacy, organizational prowess and correct player placement all play a role.

There are certain kingdoms that will butcher you when chained, and it's not always obvious which ones. Like you, Babert, I prefer the full onslaught of war. The cruelty is essential to the pragmatic measure of the sport.

So I get that people think sage is not a good personality, but my experiences have been in the worst extremes. As an attacker, going up against warriors, tacticians etc my experience allows me to stay in the fray. Provided I'm an attacker race I personally get more out of non-attacker personalities overall.

Let me say that I'm not appealing to entire attacker cores but to elements of the core. When a kingdom goes full warrior and faces tac they are probably going to lose the core battle and expend extraordinary stealth/lose thieves. With a thoughtful blend you can cross up the pattern of being dismantled.

Thus, I've long been of the opinion that less than fully organized kingdoms hold a myriad of offensive and defensive capabilities. One thing is that, subconsciously, organized kingdom tend to war each other more above board than they war so called ghettos. This is because parity in the crown race can turn quickly and memories are long. They fake tag a lot so a truly bad sport can be hunted for transgressions.

So called ghettos don't have the stability to harness the long view. This is where pre-age build strat comes in. Players are just as intelligent in every tier, but many feel the draw of their position as a dictate to how they should react. Lack of forethought can permeate a group of players use to taking a beating.

The secret is to build for the meter rather than war. What a kingdom may lack in war they can make up for in preparedness. Let's go back to sage. I prefer undead sage because it presents what I call an "ugly target". Sage gives you depth of build. You are now a bad target for t/ms in war because you can plague and it's a tougher road to abduction. Out of war the same goes when kingdoms are randoming. You have extra mana and can amnesia fat targets. You have durable offense. This doesn't mean it's better than an attacker personality, but that because your destiny is to be chained you have intimidating resources to present a threat at any size.

By addressing the meter you can react to situations as they progress. Ergo, the builds tend to offer resurgent properties in war. When a less than organized kingdom builds to optimize that optimization should be looked at in its realities. Often the best t/ms are in organized kingdoms and are generally the best players. In less than organized kingdoms the t/m culture is much more casual and vulnerable. This means the core has to be somewhat versatile and should be looking at two stage builds. That's not necessarily being hybrid, but mutating into a different kind of threat when nw/acres change.

Regardless, I'm not implying you're in a disorganized kingdom. I'm saying that the alternative to being worn out by chaining and bottom fed does have alternatives. You can create strategies to blunt the effect of bottom feed, but they depend on the strength of the kingdoms conceptual phalanx. I'm offering a playeresque solution wherein the solution is teamwork and not dependent on kingdom wide idealism.

Just would like to note guard stations do affect all resource losses including scientists. I asked and it was confirmed in another thread. Just can't remember which.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Babert

Also, we are good sports and it is war so everything is allowed. I dont think both kingdoms have hard feeling against each others and we dont want to be asses about it. We could have asked to not abduct and we wouldnt neither though. However, in war you try to cripple and play in the enemies mind. Losing 80+ scientists is a sure way to do that, but it might be just overkill and prevent getting back in action at equals weapons faster.

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crippling can be done faster with massacre, you also recover wpa faster than science. i know i had one war back when it was books. we had 5 people go from 3 million books to <100k. you couldn't re-spec science back then so not only would it take >1 week to recover science but it'd take 2-3 weeks to respec the science how we wanted it. My issue was we'd won, it was just a matter of time but they held on for 2 days learnining then withdrew right after we did ONE massacre into their t/m's. "everything is allowed" is fine, but piss of a kd that beats u an expect them to recoup losses......after that war we'd always 'threaten' look learns in war are devestating long term, massacres do more damage if u continue to learn and we win there will be retals. only had to retal 1 kd ever.

@StratOCastle
Problem is that I don't want to be the ugly target because it takes away pressure from me and gives pressure to other people. Our kingdom is relatively good organized and we are running a strategy where 75% of us are on board with it. The problem I have is getting attacked by huge provinces with their left over offense for more than 80+ scientists for the whole war. :P

I could make myself an ugly target, but the problem stays there if it is done on others. I've used to play this game when I was young and recently came back after 3 ages. I can't say I'm the best or a veteran but I know how to handle a chain and how to handle getting beaten up badly. My morale is good and I'd rather be the one chained than our new one in the kingdom where they get dismoralized or have never been chained and are not sure how to react. And I was crippled not by T/M ops, I was crippled by armies of T/Ms with 500 offense taking away my scientists. However, knowing you worked so hard to get these 180 scientists and seeing you are now only left at 90, you know it will take a long time before getting back on its feet.


@Persain
I've been crippled with massacre and abduct. I went from 5 raw wpa at 1800 acres (9000 wizards) to 3 raw wpa at 200 acres (600 wizards). But you know what? This is alright because even at 200 acres, I know I was a pain in the butt to the enemy and I was getting massacred especially for that. Though Wizards can be gained back ''easily'' relatively to scientists, I can get really high in acres (let's say 3000), putting 60% ++ guild, getting attacked a few times to be back around our kingdom average and I will be back in maybe 1-2 weeks at the point where I was when the war started wpa speaking.

For sciences, I don't think I can recover from it until next age where I start all over again unless I spend all my attacks abducting other province and running high amount of lab and university and hoping I don't get abducted back. I think the problem lies there. No matter what I will do, I will be running a far from optimal province because I'll be low in sciences for quite a while compared to our kingdom and other kingdoms average scientist at this point in the age.

And also, I can switch my strategy and be adaptive for being massacred to the oblivions to keep warring. I can concentrate more on Offense/Defense or Thieves instead of having high WPA. Though for science, there is no counterplay or counter strategy. You just need science for your province to keep up with other. This makes me think that in war, it shouldn't be high rewards / low risk for a big province to attack a smaller province for abduct at least.

I don't mind if the enemy chained small province abduct me and get 6-7 scientists because he did a trade-off between acres survival to keep his offense and getting my scientists.

However, for the big province, for a full swing of 4 x 1 attack:
- If he keep chaining me down with acres, it's low risk, low rewards (3000 acres province gaining around 30 acres from me = 1% relative gain for him).
- Though with abduct, it's low risk, high rewards (8-12 scientists taken from me when he had 150 = 5-8% relative gain for him).
- With massacre, he gains nothing directly and it goes into the spirit of the war : ''I'm still fighting with all I can, then I deserve these hits to make sure I stop fighting'' and the ''direct'' enemy gains is null, it just causes destruction (and also serves their best interest indirectly by making me stop).

And this is why I'm wondering about the rewards of abducting a chained province down when you are 10x his size. Because I think it's ''unfair'' or not ''normal''. However I just don't have any solution to offer :P

Thanks for the inputs guys.

Withdrawal from war is always two ticks away.

At low acreage it's super easy to gain back sci this late in the age. Don't run labs, run high offense and high uni, look for double taps, keep armies in/out. You'll gain sci faster than any wiz pump you could do.

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Originally Posted by Bananamancer2000

At low acreage it's super easy to gain back sci this late in the age. Don't run labs, run high offense and high uni, look for double taps, keep armies in/out. You'll gain sci faster than any wiz pump you could do.

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This^^ my great sci pump this age was started eowcf i stayed around 400 acres; armies in/out i maxed my proficiencies and shored up channeling, crime and production to a healthy point in less than a week.

-DM <3

In my experience, non-land attacks (abduct, massacres and raze) are extremely effective against smaller provinces and make defensive compensation extremely difficult. I'm assuming if t/m's with 500 offense are breaking you, your defense is at or close to zero (or land defense) with armies out. Unfortunately, there's not much that can be done to fully mitigate the attacks, as raze will destroy the buildings designed to protect land/scientists/etc.

The best advice I can give is to focus on attacking/inflicting damage. I find toprazing the largest province possible to be extremely satisfying, so if that's an option I'd do that (raze destroys a percentage of land regardless of size or size difference). I don't believe massacres or abducts have the same advantages when hitting that far up.

Ultimately though, if you have little defense, unless you withdraw (or win) there isn't very much you can do. Focus on maintaining GS (stagger building them if possible) and attack often. Abducts are an effective way to demoralise a province, so while it hurts, it's meant to make you want to get out of the war. That there's no easy way to immediately recover wizards and scientists is exactly why they're targeted.

Lastly, I understand the desire to "take one for the team" and protect your kingdommates who maybe can't take a chain like you can. That's very admirable. The only thing I'd say to that is that if your defense is that low, you're not going to be able to shield your kingdommates effectively. With little to no defense you're just something to send spare offense at for attackers and t/m's.

Which is not a criticism of you. It's an unfortunate side-effect of being chained so deeply.

Good luck in your war.