Zaraf's War Whoring Guide
Back by popular demand:
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Zaraf was one of the most successful monarchs to every play the early game.
Countless generations of monarchs have followed his teachings, shaping
strategy into what it is now known today. Although much has changed since
Age 20, much has stayed the same.
This is like a bible to me. I have learned much from it and I encourage ALL
monarchs to read it at least once. If you have doubts or questions about how
to run your kingdom, in one way or another you will find it here
--------| Zaraf's War Whoring Guide |--------
Many people have asked me advice on what they should do and prepare for
because they want to make their kingdoms into war whore kingdoms. Well, to
answer all of their questions at the same time, I’ve decided to make up an
entire guide which will include almost everything you need to know about how
to become a successful war whore kingdom. Keep in mind that this is MY
guide, and MY way of doing things. These methods work for me, but they might
not necessarily work for you. Also, this isn’t the only way to become a good
war whore kingdom, nor is it the easiest way, it is simply “a” way to do it.
I will divide this guide up into separate sections.
1. What exactly is a war whore kingdom?
2. What are the requirements to become a good war whore kingdom?
3. What races/personalities should you have?
4. What kind of building strategies should you use?
5. Guide to picking good war targets and getting the war.
6. Strategies to increase your chances of winning a war.
7. Methods to get them to surrender.
8. Attacker guide for hostility/war.
9. Thief/mage guide for hostility/war.
10. Playing for yourself vs. Playing for the kingdom.
Section 1 - What exactly is a war whore kingdom?
A war whore kingdom is a kingdom that organizes itself to fight as many wars
as fast as possible, and most often winning those wars. Their priority is
usually wins, total number of wars, honor, or a combination of any of these.
Compared to the other styles of play, war whore kingdoms are fairly
difficult. They require players to be active, alert, good, and fast. Players
receive little time and luxury to explore or build up in peace, and rather,
have to rush their defences, and push themselves as fast as possible. This
style of play is not recommended for new players, nor is it for everyone. It
is meant for those who like to live on the edge and in the fast lane, and
those who want to test their limits. Personally, I think it’s the most
enjoyable way to play the game as it pushes you to the limits, and forces
you to play as a team member and not a loner.
Section 2 - What are the requirements to become a good war whore kingdom?
To make a good war whore kingdom, you need dedicated players who can
cooperate, coordinate, and listen to orders well. Even with the best
players, if they cannot be coordinated, then being a war whore kingdom is
difficult. Similarly, you could have average players, but if you can
coordinate them well, then they can be superior players. One of the most
important things you need is a dedicated monarch. A monarch who plays for
the sake of the kingdom and not for him/herself is required. All of the
players also need to focus on the good of the kingdom, and not their own
self interests. This prevents people from just honor raping and not doing
much damage, and also for following orders, because if the monarch gives you
an order to follow, you follow what is best for the kingdom, and the monarch
tells you to do what is best for the kingdom, you will do what the monarch
tells you to do. This system requires obedient players, and no corruption.
It is often difficult to first get going, but once you have it set, it flows
smoothly. The job of the monarch is much heavier in a war whore kingdom than
normal kingdoms, unless you appoint other players to share responsibility.
One person should be responsible for helping coordinate everyone’s attacks
and assaults to assure that you have proper coordination. Cooperation is
required from the members to make sure that orders are followed.
Section 3 - What races/personalities should you have?
The best races for war whore kingdoms are undead and faeries. This could
change according to any game changes at the beginning of the age, but
currently, these two races are the best. It is a good idea to try and have a
balanced number of each race. 12 undeads, 13 faeries, or vice versa would
work well. For personalities, the only attacker personalities you should
bother using for a war whore kingdom are Shepard, Sage, or War Hero.
Shepards are good for keeping honor, and are a good idea to pick if you are
going to be a dwarf. Sage are “ok” but are really not needed. The best war
whore personality is War Hero. You automatically get lots of honor from your
wars, and War Hero helps you to make optimal use of the honor that you get.
Not only does it make your attacks better, but your income, population, etc.
Some people say the General personality is also good, but the War Hero is
better than the General personality for the reasons: Don’t bother using
conquest. You don’t get honor for it, and the gains aren’t anything great
either. If you’re in a war, you will have access to conquest anyway if you
really need it. Second, once you are baron war hero, you have already made
up the offence bonus that you receive as a general, plus your bonuses affect
more than just attacks. War Hero also gives you +30% honor gains from
attacking! The ONLY real advantage that the general personality has is that
you can make a total of 5 attacks over 4 attacks. But that really isn’t
worth sacrificing war hero.
For t/ms, rogues are a must, and having a couple mystics is also good.
However, rogues take priority over mystics because of ops like assassinate
wizards (AW) and enhanced nightstrikes. T/ms should be either one of these
personalities, and nothing else. You do not want to have “attacker/thief” or
“attacker/mage” strats. Each player should be specific to his/her area of
strength. This is because you can’t be really good in all fields, thus you
have to pick one, either attacker or t/m. Also, you don’t want to be just a
thief, or just a mage. You want to utilize both your mana and stealth, thus
being a t/m. You can be better at one over the other, but you should be
capable in both. Attackers will also be required to have some magic and
thieving capabilities so that they can hurt those occasional people who have
no thief or magic defence.
Section 4 - What kind of building strategies should you use?
For attackers, your building strats should have max barracks (25%). You need
to be able to hit hard, and hit fast. If you are an attacker or any race
other than undead, you should also run hospitals, at least 15%. Combat
losses will pile up on you if you do not reduce them with hospitals, and the
hospitals also help with plague and restoring your population when you lose
some to fireballs and kidnapping. Barracks is the only main requirement, and
hospitals if you are not undead. The rest of your strat is whatever you want
it to be.
T/ms should also run a strong strat, but not the usual “defensive” t/m
strat. You want to have a very strong offence, and be able to hurt them
harder than they can hurt you and before they can hurt you. This means that
you should avoid running watchtowers (WT). Your tpa should be high enough
that you don’t need WT to protect you, plus, if you are faery, you have
Clear Sight. But in the case that you are being mass targeted by hard ops
like AW, then you might want to temporarily make WT just for added defence
if you find that you don’t have enough. But generally, WT are out of the
strat. Banks are also out of the strat. As a t/m, you want to max your
sciences as fast as possible, and then run a 40% schools strat and around
100% utilization. Your income will be high enough without needing banks, and
it’s unlikely to get stolen since you should have good thief defence. If you
are a rogue, you might also want to run some thieves dens to lower the thief
losses. T/m strats are pretty optional, but it’s best to run a strat to give
you more offensive power than defensive power.
Section 5 - Guide to picking good war targets and getting the war.
Especially after you win a few wars, you will find that people will avoid
wars with you. If you are going solely for wars and wins, then this wouldn't
exactly be a positive situation from you. Basically, what you want to do is
make sure you have a peace block so that they cannot peace you at all. Once
they peace you, there is NO way to start the war, even if they start
attacking you. For the kingdom that declared peace, their hostility meter
will no longer increase, thus, the war cannot start. If you threaten them
with "another kingdom will declare on you" they could take that as a threat
of gangbanging, and most likely will call in friends and alliances for
assistance. It is best to leave 1 on 1 wars at the 1 on 1 level, and not
start a huge world war.
Now, when they can't peace you, but they are still not willing to fight
back, then what you do is hammer on one of their big provinces...or do
something to get one of their dangerous provinces really pissed off. You
could mass AW or just drop them a ton of acres, etc. What you also want to
do is try to find those players who could be "newbies". Newbies are easier
to crack than veteran players, so you bash on the newbies for awhile, and
then you send them taunting messages. Not insulting, but taunting. Here are
some sample messages that I've sent before to taunt:
"Whoa, sucks to be you :P"
"Well, I just noticed you dropped quite a bit...too bad you can't do
anything about it. Hahaha"
"Haha, this is like walking through the front door, and robbing a house
clean...the home owners don't do anything."
As you can see, none of these messages aren't insulting, but they are
taunting, and that is the effect you want to develop. You want them to get
pissed off enough so that they attack you in blind rage. Hopefully that
would start the war.
Of course, you have to be prepared for outside interference. With you
basically "feeding" on them, they might call in assistance, especially if
you declare on someone smaller than yourself.
But the best way to get a war is to declare on someone bigger, and more
powerful than you. It is less likely that they will peace with you unless
they are really scared of you, in which case, you use the above tactics.
Section 6 - Strategies to increase your chances of winning a war.
Now, one strategy that many people overlook is that of gaining acres during
hostility. If you wish to win a war, it is best NOT to gain acres during
hostility. What you do is let your opponent take your acres during the
hostility, and you take it back during the war. Why should you get landfat
off of acres that do not count towards the war meter? You get less honor,
and also just lose your troops from combat losses. Instead, attackers should
use only plunders, massacres and learn attacks. Don’t even raze them during
the hostility because that just makes them less landfat, and you want them
to be as landfat as possible when the war starts. This enables your kingdom
to get some big hits right off the start, which will throw the war meter in
your favour. Even if the war is even from there on, you will have the
advantage because of that initial surge of acres. Not only that, but they
will lose tons of honor. Not only because it is now a war, but also because
they are bigger than you. But only do this if you know that your hostility
is going to go to war. If they are not fighting back, and your hostility
will most likely not go to war, then it is better to just take what you can
during the hostility, but be careful to leave after, because if they start
the war, they could turn the situation around in your face.
Another strategy is the nightmare/nightstrike combo. Get one or more of your
t/ms to mass nightmare one of their big guys, especially after he’s
attacked, and then let your attackers walk through his/her lands. If you had
that target AWed earlier, that will make the spells much easier. If you get
two or 3 t/ms to spend all of their mana nightmaring, and all of their
stealth nightstriking a guy, he will lose a lot of defence, and will be very
easy to bring down. Bringing down big players can also have a psychological
effect on the opponents as well. Some people will succumb to despair if they
see one of their prime players fall into the dust so easily, or it could
have the opposite effect, and they could make rash decisions in their blind
rage. So either way, it could turn to your advantage. Winning wars isn’t
just about the physical aspect, but the psychological one too :)
Keep in mind that it is important to hit hard and fast, so that means that
you want to get your attackers to be able to attack again the moment their
armies come back. And t/ms should keep on track with screwing over their
kingdom.
Section 7 - Methods to get them to surrender.
There always comes the dilemma of "How do I get them to surrender!?" Well,
you could be lucky, and war with a monarch who genuinely cares about the
rest of his kingdom, and seeing them losing, will allow himself a loss to
save his kingdom. But more likely, you're gonna get a stubborn monarch who
is more concerned about a number on a record than he is about saving his
kingdom. What do you do in these circumstances? Here are a few methods that
I have used this age, and found to be very successful.
1) Intimidation
This is the first method you should use, but it is also the least likely to
work. But you should still give it a shot. With this, basically you tell
their monarch the situation of the war, and the end results. Here is a
sample message that I usually send.
"Well, as you can see, we are clearly winning, so as I outlined in my
original message to you, I would like you to surrender. Please do not think
that I will simply walk away when we are winning, because I won't, so if you
refuse to surrender, it will only hurt you and your kingdom. In the end, you
WILL surrender, it's just a matter of how much of your kingdom will be left
when you do, and that is only something that YOU can control.
Choose wisely. Good day!"
Of course, intimidation becomes easier as the more wins you get, especially
if you have a perfect record, because then you can just point to your record
and say "Well, that's what everyone else said, but they surrendered in the
end." etc.
I also like to "bluff" sometimes to cause them to surrender. I send their
monarch a message like this:
"Don't you DARE surrender! My kingdom is having way too much fun ripping
your kingdom to shreds, and we're reaping a lot of acres and honor. Besides,
I don't particularly like not having control of when the war ends."
This can have some funny results :)
2) Player Killing (PKing)
This is the easiest method, and most widely used. Now the reason I find
player killing acceptable in this circumstance, and not for what happened
with Autobot City is that the opponent is able to STOP the PKing at any
time! They can just surrender, and it's over! But with the situation I was
in, we couldn't escape them, thus, we couldn't stop their PKing. That I find
unacceptable. You should only PK when the opponent has the ability to stop
it, should they choose to. At least, this is how I view it.
Most people think PKing the monarch is the way to go, but honestly, only a
newbie monarch would surrender as soon as they started to take the heat. Any
other monarch wouldn't really care that much about what is happening to
him/her. So who do you hit? Well, the best choices are to pick those
provinces who look to be "the best" in the kingdom at something. Whether
it's the best attacker, best t/m, highest acres, highest honor, etc. Choose
someone like that, and start hammering them. You don't even have to kill
them, just drop them a ton. Yo can do several provinces at the same time
doing it this way.
3) Spies
You can get spies in the opponent kingdom, and this is usually easiest to
get if you are bashing on a newbie who can't take the heat. I've
occassionally had newbies message me saying "Please stop hurting me! I'll be
a spy for you if you stop hurting me please!" While you have to judge the
situation to see if you can trust the spy or not, you can work it to your
choice. Use the spy to find out what's in the forums, and what the kingdom
is talking about. You might find a weak point or something like that to help
you get your surrender.
4) Civil War
This is my personal favorite method. Starting a civil war. This age, I
started 5 civil wars to get the wins that I needed from them :) After you've
bashed people around a bit, and again, the newbies are the most easily
swayed in this method, you send everyone except the monarch a message
similiar to this:
"Well, it appears that your monarch does not care for your kingdom. He is
willing to sacrifice his kingdom for the sake of his pride. Instead of
surrendering to us and ending this peacefully, he chooses to resist the
surrender, and thus put your kingdom in further danger. I hope your next
monarch is one who cares for his kingdom, and not just for himself.
Good day to you."
For those people who don't know what's going on, this lets them know about
the situation. Veteran players who support the monarch will either start to
question their loyalty, or will just continue to blindly support the
monarch. Newbies are most likely to just go along with the dissension and
start disrupting the kingdom. Provinces will most likely start voting for a
surrender, especially those who are taking the hardest hits. If you have a
spy from the above methods, you can find out those people who are crying the
most for a surrender, and you can send them messages like this:
"Well, I have found out that you wish for your monarch to surrender. If you
support the surrender, I can have my kingdom stop assaults on you, but I
would like you to help get the surrender, and I can tell you what sorts of
things you might need to do to get that surrender. Keep in touch with me.
Good day to you!"
This gets them on your side, and adds to the allies that you have, thus, you
now have planted the seeds of a civil war, now all you have to do is spark
the flame. Get your kingdom to weaken their monarch, and tell your spies to
start attacking their own monarch. Those provinces who support the monarch
and those who are just indifferent will become confused at the chaos going
on, and if they succeed in killing off the monarch, they can elect a new
one, and surrender. Quite devastating, but effective. Just remember that it
was their monarch's fault for not surrendering when he should have, and he
got what was coming to him :) That's how I justify my cruel actions :)
hehehe Another thing is that since their monarch takes a few intra-kingdom
hits, if he dies, he won't be able to restart back in his kingdom because of
those intra-kingdom hits :) hahaha
One thing to note is that the civil war strategy is not very effective
against organized kingdoms since they are more trusting of each other, and
thus, it is difficult to create doubt and resetment.
Section 8 - Attacker guide for hostility/war.
Basically, attackers want to try and coordinate with t/ms. T/ms weaken the
target, attackers move in for the acres. During hostility, if you know that
it will go to war, avoid taking acres, and instead, do massacre, plunder or
learn attacks. Massacre is really good because it kills off a lot of
defence, along with peasants, wizards and thieves. Plunder is good if the
target has a lot of stockpiled resources, and learn is only good in the
beginning of the age when your science levels are low, and a few thousand
points make a big difference.
During the war, avoid using conquest. Low acre gain and no honor. Not worth
it unless you have no other targets to break. Wars are won by the amount of
acres you nail. So make sure that you fight hard and fast to gain the upper
hand.
Section 9 - Thief/mage guide for hostility/war.
Now, I will talk about what t/ms should do:
FOR HOSTILITY!!
In the start of hostility, t/ms, your PRIORITY should be to get information
(CBs, SoM) on everyone! If you have this information, you can better plan
who to target and such.
Second, using the information you've gotten, find those people with lots of
runes, and steal them! Quickly deprive them of their runes, so they cannot
retaliate with spells right away, and it gives YOU the opportunity to cast
spells on THEM! Now, although you will do this first, you must constantly
check your opponents throughout the hostility and war for runes, and take
them before they can use them!
Third, go to the attackers and starve them! Try to do the following ops and
spells on EACH attacker:
Steal as much food as you can.
Cast Vermin
Cast drought
Cast explosions (to lower aid sent and received)
Torch farms (especially if you have a LOT of thieves)
Fourth, hinder the t/ms with ops and spells like "sabotage wizards" and
"expose thieves". If you are a rogue, you can also assassinate wizards.
Fifth, stealing gold during hostility/war is never VERY beneficial, as there
are many other much more preferable ops to be done, however, if you or the
kingdom really does need gold, then you are permitted to do some gold
stealing, but only if the target has a lot of gold. And only if you are able
to steal a lot of gold per op.
More preferable to stealing gold is to cast Fool's Gold on those people who
have stockpiled money. This will prevent money from being sent as aid to
others who need it, and also prevent them from using it for themselves.
Also, greed and riots are good to add on too if you want to hinder their
income.
Now, this is all you should need to do during the hostility. If you do this
correctly, you should NOT need to starve them heavily during the war, and
instead can concentrate now on lowering their utilization. When you lower
their utilization, it will make their farms less effective as well, so it
will promote their starving.
FOR WAR!!!
First, you should drop their utilization by using spells and ops like:
(Although this worked last age, not sure how it will work with regards to
happiness.)
Fireball
Kidnapping
Meteor Shower
This will basically screw them over. If they are starving right now (which
they should be) then this will practically take most people out of the war,
if not make them almost useless. But keep in mind...ALMOST useless :)
Second, destroy their military. Do this by using ops and spells like:
Nightstrike (especially rogues and especially if they have stockpiled
soldiers)
Nightmares
Now, with regards to nightmares, if you are going to do them, or are asked
to, make sure that you do LOTS of them! At LEAST +5 nightmares. Otherwise,
they aren't very effective if only a few are done. If you can team up with
an attacker or a few attackers who will hit the target after one or more
t/ms have nightmared him/her, then it will be even more effective.
Third, if any of their t/ms are hurting us, you have to kill them. Kill them
by doing ops like assassinate wizards, bribe thieves, sabotage wizards and
expose thieves. Remember to always keep stealing runes whenever you can! And
if your magic is not strong enough to be effective casting, then send the
runes to someone who is!
Now, this is basically everything that needs to be done. Other things that
you can do, I will outline certain circumstances in which they are
effective:
Propaganda - Only use this if you can send a LOT of thieves. And I mean like
+10k thieves. So none of you should be doing propaganda anytime soon. Yes, I
know it helps you, but it's more or less a "playing for myself" op until you
can send a lot of thieves. Then when you start converting like 200 elites in
a single op, THAT is when this becomes powerful :)
Tornadoes - On BIG provinces, when their building costs are high, doing MASS
tornadoes can be very effective. But since this spell is expensive, it's
more preferable to make sure you've cut their utilization first before you
bother with tornadoes. This spell can also work well with screwing their
income.
Landlust - If you need acres, ONLY do this on BIG provinces! Otherwise, you
get like 4 acres per spell...it's even worse then paradise then! If you use
this spell on BIG provinces, then you can get +20 acres per spell, and THEN
this spell is effective in also helping shift the war meter in our favor.
Section 10 - Playing for yourself vs. Playing for the kingdom.
This excerpt is from a post I made to my kingdom with regards to playing for
themselves. I didn’t have time to type this all out again, so I will just
re-post what I told them.
Now, I want to briefly discuss "playing for yourself"...and this is
information everyone can benefit from.
In this kingdom, I expect everyone to "play for the team" and NOT to "play
for themselves". Sure, it's OK to choose to hit one guy over another because
you'll get more acres, or more honor, or things like that, but when instead
of razing a dangerous person like you are told to, you make a landgrab for
meaningless acres, and when it would have been MORE beneficial to the
kingdom for you to have made that raze, THAT is when you are playing for
yourself.
Basically, when you do an action, and you know that your actions will hurt
or hinder the rest of the kingdom, that is playing for yourself. Do not do
this, friends. It's not good for you, and it is not good for the whole
kingdom.
Take my example from last age. Although I didn't entirely "play for myself"
I didn't stay small either and regardless of everyone else's size, I just
grew quickly. Can you all recall what happened to me in the last few weeks
of the age? I got gangbanged hard. In the end, that is the result of playing
for yourself. Sure, you might become huge or big or powerful, but in the
end, you will stick out, and be a target for everyone.
It's very easy to understand how playing for yourself works with attacking,
but is it so easy to see with t/ms? Not as easy to see, and that is why it
happens often.
Playing for yourself as a t/m means when you do meaningless ops that do not
hurt your opponent and are only meant for you to gain honor. Such ops are
like propaganda with 500 thieves, or assassinate wizards on an attacker who
has barely any wizards, etc.
Yes I know, ops like stealing food, stealing runes, kidnaping, etc don't
provide much honor, but think of it this way. It is better to gain honor
slowly and steadily than it is to gain it in a big jump, and then lose it
all just as quickly. "Easy come, easy go."
How do you lose it quickly? Well, your meaningless ops don't hinder the
opponent, and then they attack you and you lose all of the honor that you
had gained, and your opponents are still not hurt. Only YOU are! So not only
does playing for yourself hurt you in the long run, it hurts the rest of the
kingdom. This is a team game and we need to work together to become
powerful! Especially since almost all of you are newbies.
There is an exception to this rule, but a very slight exception, and even
though it's an exception, it really shouldn't be. Experienced players can
"play for themselves" and get away with a lot for quite awhile, but again,
usually in the end, they "get theirs". The only provinces in this kingdom
that I could expect to "play for themselves" and do well would be myself,
and Ohayou Urusai. Both of us have been playing Utopia since the beta, and
know this game like the back of our hands. However, I still refuse to play
for myself, and I promote team playing. Why? Mainly because I set an
example, and I want you all to follow my example.
During our hostility, instead of making a landgrab, I went for a plunder,
and then used that money towards the dragon. THAT is an example of playing
for the team! Did my actions directly help my province? No. But
"indirectly", it helped not only MY province, but EVERYONE else in the
kingdom! That is what team play is all about!
I will always be a team player, and I hope the rest of you will follow in my
example.
Well, that’s it for my war whore guide. Keep in mind that these strategies
are according to age 16, and with the drastic changes in age 17, these
strategies may have to be altered. Please send me your questions, comments,
and such. I hope you enjoy it and find it helpful. Feel free to post any of
this information in your kingdom forums, but I ask that you give me proper
credit for it :) Thanks. Good luck to you all this age!
