Draft targets and building efficiency?

Hi, I'm playing Undead Tactician and it's been a while since I've played. After viewing the forums I see a lot of people saying that this combo should run 0 homes and up to 70% draft target, with enough wpa to be a mage. I'm currently at 20% homes and 55% draft target, 1wpa, and barely making 100% building efficiency, so if I take out the homes, put draft at 70%, and get like 3 wpa, wouldn't I basically have no peasants, no economy, and with my efficiency dropping so much that the rest of my buildings become useless? How are the "pros" going about this? Can someone outline some rules of thumb for me, OOW, pre-war, and in war? Thanks!

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Originally Posted by Brilliance

Hi, I'm playing Undead Tactician and it's been a while since I've played. After viewing the forums I see a lot of people saying that this combo should run 0 homes and up to 70% draft target, with enough wpa to be a mage. I'm currently at 20% homes and 55% draft target, 1wpa, and barely making 100% building efficiency, so if I take out the homes, put draft at 70%, and get like 3 wpa, wouldn't I basically have no peasants, no economy, and with my efficiency dropping so much that the rest of my buildings become useless? How are the "pros" going about this? Can someone outline some rules of thumb for me, OOW, pre-war, and in war? Thanks!

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The pro's will handle it with science, which will help with economy issues to some degree.

With the wild land fluctuations and ops like FB and kidnap, the reality is that having more raw power is better than relying on mods and hence why the heavy drafting/pumping.

Going down to 75% Building Efficiency is acceptable. So even with no science you could go to 70% draft and still make it. Going for 3 wpa is not necessary if you are in a ghetto, just go to ~1.5 and train military according to your kd mates (off/def ratios).

Use eowcf and fortified stance for elite pumping. Stuck in a kingdom that won't use fort stance at the right time or mismanages eowcf? You'll have to slap some people around.

Also, when elite pumping, you will want to hold off drafting until the latest possible moment, and use Extreme+Patriotism (in eowcf) or Aggressive+Patriotism (in fortified stance). Train offense before defense, beyond the bare minimum defense needed to avoid too many easy hits (about 2-4dspa). Once you are close to a functional epa - at least 8 and preferably 9-10 or better - then you can look at training defense to whatever goal your kingdom sets or whatever is suitable (usually 6-8 dspa, rarely more). The way the game is, your province only needs especially high defense if expecting to fight a war.

Outside of fortfied stance and eow ceasefires, it is not necessary nor practical to be always-pumped. If you train offense first and lots of it, you should have no problem handling incoming acres outside of war as the most expensive training item is taken care of. Given that ghouls defend pretty well, you have town watch, plague, and an almost guaranteed ability to retal, few provinces will want to hit you. Town Watch is added insurance for fat provinces, so long as they have peasants.

Building Efficiency is nothing major to worry about... you will want the trained troops more than peasants and BE. During war (and with building rotation, during peacetime) BE can be manipulated, and if your peasants are left alone it will rise. Homes have their uses, but it's mostly for their capacity. Another tip - don't bother building Homes unless you are pumping or preparing for a pump. If you have Homes and grow, don't build any extras unless you know that you are going to return to a pump mode soon (and any growth acres are going to be filled with peasants, preferably).

Attackers typically do not have excellent wpa, at least in ghetto land. Too much wpa detracts from military strength for not much gain. 2 wpa is sufficient, maybe even overkill. Channeling science is more valuable for attacker vs. attacker casting.

Moar draft Moar powa. However, Moar draft less Prey.

One thing to keep in mind when running a high numbers of peasants / high BE as an attacker is that after a couple of fireballs you'll lose all the advantages you had and have a small army as well. 20k elites are much harder to take out than 20k peasants.

Awesome, thanks for the tips guys.

i often run <70% BE even with +10% tools science

So what draft rate do you guys recommend? I've only been back for a few weeks and I've forgotten a lot of the intricacies of the game. I've been using 70% draft rate. After reading this thread it looks like 70% might be too low.

Like the man said, more draft more powa. The higher the better.

For practical purposes, most provinces cannot sustain better than 70% draft after a pump ends, and 70-80% draft is a convenient benchmark for what most kingdoms should have coming out of a 96-hour eowcf or fort period.

Most players aim for a given raw or mod OPA value rather than a draft rate. (Raw offense is preferred for your benchmark, since your mods as an attacker can fade quickly during war, but mods should be considered when calculating what kind of defenses your province is able to hit.) The most important thing is to have a functional offense, and enough defense and t/m power to deter too many easy attacks from t/m or attacker races, respectively.
80 raw OPA is a pretty good benchmark for Undead, starting after their first war. 90-100 raw OPA is good for mid-late age. Offense mods, not counting generals, warrior, or momentary BE bumps, typically range between 130-135%, sometimes 140% for provinces with strong science and honor bonuses. With that in mind, you're looking at 120-140 mod OPA for Undeads, which is enough to tear through almost any target that would be remotely in an Undead's nw range; sometimes enough to hit both a defensive province and a low-defense province on the side.

Defense can be important in many situations, especially for big provinces; also, a exceptionally big undead might not have much use for 150 mod OPA or whatever, so they are likely going to be training extra defense or converting some of their elites to offspec for use as dragon fodder. Therefore you should take all of these estimated benchmarks with more than a grain of salt.

Thanks again :)