UD/mystic build

The Chain argument is about the ability to function. If you are over populated you cannot attack or do thief ops. Mystics can still cast spells while over populated, why feeding runes to an Undead Mystic at the bottom to LL your top size players works to this advantage. Like most top kingdom play, chained attackers become mages and are fed runes because the cost of their spells are greatly cheaper and its based upon WPA and not guilds.

If you are using your rogues to target my Undead Mystic instead of hitting the attackers in my kingdom or my pure mages, then I have done my job. It is a support role, its clear you have no idea how synergism works in a kingdom. 3rtpa seems a bit low even for a hybrid and most provinces still run WTs to reduce the damage of the ops.

Most good kingdoms target bocans or rogues in general during the hostile wave, reduce their defense. Hybrid undead either mystic or rogue are accessible to easy hits and if they became a problem could easily be massacred or just chained down to ineffectiveness.

As for science advantage, not sure if you have this problem or not. But I know being Undead with access to revelation has made me an unwanted target for abducts. Orc Clerics are ruling the age with over 80 nerds because they can get good gains and undead with poor science even more at a disadvantage losing all their science to easy hits and inability to create elites unless traditional marching.

Also, you stated an undead core. I am merely talking about 1-2 support roles not a whole kingdom. Most people would avoid a whole kingdom of undead and only a kingdom with high orc or avian might attempt such a task and just try to out gain you or out hit you. Once again, if you are over populated you cannot attack or do ops, so just normal chains til you are down and out like you would any other attacker.

Cannot imagine an undead core lasting very long in a long war due to attrition. In war build you don't make much money and a few bocan and a handful of decent WPA can greed and riot the whole kingdom. Plus add in sapphire dragons and rituals and you can negate your knack. Just my thoughts. Good luck in your age and the point of this thread was to help someone with their Undead Mystic not talk about Undead Rogues and NSing and unusual Undead Rogue Cores.

By UD Rogue core i dont mean all attackers are UD Rogues but enough to make them difficult to monitor. You are right about that you might want some addidional Avians and Orcs. The thing that you fail to understand is that UD Rogue is a strong attacker. You dont need high tpa to ns with that combo. Bringing out being chained is irrelevant. Every atacker can get chained. UD rogue can function like any other atacker after chain.

I'm playing undead rogue and can function just fine after being chained. Sure some leaves to overpop, but if you're smart and keep a healthy amount of acres incoming you can salvage plenty enough to continue AWing or NSing as needed.

I saw an 1500 nwpa chain on UD rogue yesterday. When his troops arrived home he was 20 tpa raw. He released to 5tpa raw and was able to attack. And yes you want incoming acres. Like any other attacker.
But my point was that even if you lose all thives or release them to keep troops - you continue as a strong lower tier attacker with not much difference compared to Undaed War hero that was chained etc.

If we are talking optimum, then we are talking Undead Tact, even over war hero.

on topic, both have their niche plays. Again, you can't really say one is better than the other, as there are a lot of variables when it comes to both combos.

With your undead mystic, 75% to channeling, 20% to spell damage, +1 mana per tick, with 4 or 5 of them as your mid tier chain gang(like 100 opa and 70rdpa) you cover both NM/FB wave potential and MS against pure attackers. You just freed up a lot of mana for your tms. Downside is needing rune support at least until day 3, day 2 if youre lucky. high towers on day 1 takes away from your war build, and youre weak to LS from a pure mage.

Undead rogues rely on the KD as much as mystics. Yes, with 4-5 of them in your mid chain gang, you have great NS, prop, or AW potential. Stealing horses, kidnaps, and GA are all great assets to have in specific plays. Downside? All attackers are running wts, a quick CS cast as a tact or from a friendly paladin and youre fighting uphill against basic rtpa, 45% catchrate and -30% gains per op. thieves are 500gc, not 250 and you have to train from your soldier pool, so choosing between ospecs and thieves stinks, your sci boost is only 50%, and having to run at least 10% TDs cuts into your TGs, GS, Rax etc, where mystic doesnt need to allot acres to their potential. Overpop disallows you use of stealth, and actual tm rogues will use you as prop bait to refill their thieves and eat your elites if you get landlocked.

Despite all that, it really comes down to the player, and the kd; both have ridiculous potential in certain plays, with one being more in line with the racial and the other being a sleeper. a good player can pull off both surrounded by a few other good players doing the same strat. Cannot really argue one is better than the other, it's situational.

-DM <3

Some good points indeed. But good old " it really comes down to the player" is not something you should use when comparing race and personality combos.
I´m not really sure you are aware what NS can do this age. Or you would not make it look comparable with a "sleeper" and FB guy.

if anything, the biggest variable is the player, no matter the race/persona comparison rofl. Waste of my time arguing that point though, an inexperienced player is going to fail in either role, an experienced player could excel in either. you cant rebut that lol

I read the changes and fought war this age, I know how powerful NS is, problem is there are hard counters to stealth ops(especially low rtpa undead rogues), more so than spell ops, an effing building type is enough evidence to that fact.

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Originally Posted by Suur

When his troops arrived home he was 20 tpa raw. He released to 5tpa raw and was able to attack. And yes you want incoming acres. Like any other attacker.

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That right there points in the direction of mystic imo. 15rtpa loss at 500gc a pop without even getting to use the stealth makes me cry. a mystic in the same boat (20rwpa) would get to blow his mana at that modifier before having to release to 5rwpa to attack; LL alone might save a few rWPA even . Again the counter argument would be "wizzies are harder to replace thieves" but im just using your numbers as an example. Id cry losing that many wizzies too lol.

My point was you could all day back n forth pointing out strengths and weaknesses to both combos, end of the day its irrelevant. This thread is about making an undead mystic build that works iirc.

-DM <3

Your success rate with NS on attackers is similar are you 5tpa or 20tpa. You can go all out AW while being chained if you have stealth at that moment of course. Very effective. You are way too emotional player then. Undead is easy to pump. This 500gc thieves to get 3-4 tpa is nothing. Considering you can steal. Its one of the easiest combos to pump after pure attacker UD possibly.

Emotional player? It's a joke lol Im done.

Just for fun though, 1k acres with 5rtpa 5k thieves, chained down to 250 acres; dropping down to 5rtpa @250 is 1250 thieves. 1250 thieves doing NS is a drastic drop from a rogue with 5k thieves even before we throw Wts, IS, and Barrier into that mix. The similar scenario on an Undead Mystic with wizzies and a fb is still an fb, nm is still an nm, ms, chastity, LL, so forth at a lower rune cost if you will ;D

-DM <3

I´m not sure we are at the same level of game knowledge. Your posts rise a lot of questions for sure. Lets improvise now a little: For NSing a target of your own size you need roughly 20-30% thieves for max gains depending on army size and army home or out but this is about average you need to send for max gains when you run 3-4 tpa. And you dont need to really max gain because sending 15% might give already pretty close to max gain. 20% of 5000 is 1K. You need to send about 1K thieves for max gain NS on guys at 1K acres. You need to time your incoming TD but its not like you care too much about the losses anymore at this point. I think you can NS just fine those 1K acre guys for a while at least. But you dont even need to do that because you can NS opponent chained provinces elites out and probably with much less thieves giving max gains. Doubt they have any WT left so should be very good success and decent gains too. You can destroy their offense.

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Originally Posted by Suur

I´m not sure we are at the same level of game knowledge. Your posts rise(sic) a lot of questions for sure.

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Ok then! Rofl. Why do i do this to myself? xD Anyway;

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Originally Posted by bdbcoyote

Undead Mystic,

Homes : 10
Training Grounds: 10
Rax: 10
GS: 10
Hospitals: 15
Guilds: 10
Towers: 15
WTs: 10
Stables: 7
Dungeons: 3 .

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This makes sense to me; my only argument would be the homes, for the sole reason of chaining. Losing 40 pop each acre taken from homes is a soldier hemorrhage at best; Id rather up my GS to 15, wts to 12, and my stables to 10 to make sure my ospecs and elites are covered in horses.

-DM <3

The homes are more for repopulation. 10% homes on 1k acres is about 1k peasants to increased population. But during war it does slowly go into gs with incoming acres or towers. But some homes are needed to fund the army, because you only make about 5kgc due to wages and you either have riots or greed on you most wars. As land comes in it does help with gaining population. Especially if you're saving runes for instant spells and not self spells. Just my thoughts and the homes haven't really hurt me because of the incoming and slowly phasing them out.

Also, I do remove homes entirely once I max pop science. Still too early in the age for me to do this yet.

Homes on an attacker are generally a liability in war. You should use them in pumping phase then shed them for war. If you're playing in a lower level kd where deep chains aren't as much of a concern they are fine i guess.

2nd war win woot!!

I ran with TG and slowly swapped homes for more TG
Runes as pointed out were an issue. But with aid and a higher tower %.. manged to keep mana 8%-30% that was much better compared to goin no les that 80% in the first war.

Took some hits but that was alright as it strengthened my WPA.
I could still do MS and duration spell with 3% guilds.
and rune costs were cheaper at a smaller size prov.

was first to get viscount then it was quickyl snuffed out as they muti tapped me down to lord but now am back to baron....
looking forward to apply some more tips from this thread.

note: U/M do not farewell OOW..... the abduction are ridiculous....

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Originally Posted by Agrath

2nd war win woot!!

I ran with TG and slowly swapped homes for more TG
Runes as pointed out were an issue. But with aid and a higher tower %.. manged to keep mana 8%-30% that was much better compared to goin no les that 80% in the first war.

Took some hits but that was alright as it strengthened my WPA.
I could still do MS and duration spell with 3% guilds.
and rune costs were cheaper at a smaller size prov.

was first to get viscount then it was quickyl snuffed out as they muti tapped me down to lord but now am back to baron....
looking forward to apply some more tips from this thread.

note: U/M do not farewell OOW..... the abduction are ridiculous....

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Gratulations for the win!

OOW I use min 15% unis and GS. This helps against abductions.

I don't know what y'all are thinking, but I have 27% towers and can't get under 80 mana. I played this thinking +1 mana was a bonus. I was wrong, it's useless. First time in a long time I played A/M, and it will be the last in a long time...lol.

i suppose the higher towers are alright but mostly its the rune aid i received from KD mates that pushed me below 8% mana for most part of the war untill even their reserves ran dry....

Wilmington - how's your production sci? I'm at +125% production and running 20% towers

Production was the first one we capped kd wide, including our rogues (to aid mystics in longer wars). Pretty much the only way to take advantage of all the available mana for offensive purposes early age for kd's who rely on spells a lot. And we don't even have undead, can only imagine the burden on an undead mystic core without all having maxed production.

30-40% guilds
10% wt
10% hosp
10% towers (maybe more depending on your spell casting.)
10% stables
15% banks

Are you guys really finding it worth while to build hospitals, with the elite conversions, reduced losses, and dead troops converting to skeletons I've taken the approach that I'd rather use those buildings on other buildings during war. Granted I'm not playing mystic, but I've really not had any issues keeping offense up... I'd much rather have those hospitals as more stables/TGs/GS/WTs

The hosps are almost assuredly intended to mitigate defensive losses. Especially if you get hit home for some reason.

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Originally Posted by DreidelFan

The hosps are almost assuredly intended to mitigate defensive losses. Especially if you get hit home for some reason.

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This. UD is glass canony enough as is. No hosps is making it too easy for the enemy.

Interesting. That has not at all been my experience while warring this age, but then I guess my kd hasn't done very well so maybe its just a function of warring in the ghetto versus nearer the top

No hospitals make it far too easy for an opponent to disable an undead.

I think hosps are good for a certain kind of undead play, but not necessarily all. I personally like a high dspec undead, with forts + hosps, it's sturdy, can still run a high opa, is a ***** to take down. The alternative I see often, is pure glass cannon. Max out that OPA, rely on TGs, GS, Rax, and WT/CS. The hosps don't matter if you are never getting hit at home, and aren't getting ambushed. True an ambush against no hosps can kill 10% offense or whatever, but it's certainly possible to make that unrealistic during war. ANY type of attacker gets ruined caught armies home early in war, later in war undead and orcs have it rough, when avians/humans can certainly use elites as def a-ok.

It seems to me that both builds would ideally be incorporated into the overall strategy. The larger undeads, who are most exposed to the risk of being NSed/chained, would want higher defense, hospitals, WTs, forts, etc while the smaller undeads, who really aren't at risk, would be more focused on optimizing their offensive capacity. Additionally, your larger provinces could retain slightly higher percentages of rax to ensure the top end of the wave is complete before the lower nw provinces come online to finish.

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Originally Posted by Bananamancer2000

The hosps don't matter if you are never getting hit at home, and aren't getting ambushed.

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You aren't in controll of what your opponents are doing. Using no hospitals gives opponents the option to camp your top offense undead to kill off offense fast. Usually not a great idea to give your opponent access to tactics that are hard to recover from.

Isn't a good chunk of UD offence immune to @home hits? what kind of OS:Elite ratio do you guys have?

I haven't played UD in a few Ages, but people I am seeing this Age seem heavy on the OS, I am in the bottom half of the KD ranks so maybe its just a bit of fear to continue hitting for acres once you reach a certain size.

100% elite is the goal. It definitely requires thoughtful prep though so most people just use ospecs.

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Originally Posted by DreidelFan

100% elite is the goal. It definitely requires thoughtful prep though so most people just use ospecs.

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Depends on the Persona; for an attacker most times best to be full elite if possible, our Mystics with 70% Opsecs can enjoy the NW decrease and do most of the offense growth in war once the chains begin.

-DM <3

Ya i understand you want 100% Elites... please show me an SoT of an Undead with fully drafted, 100% Elite offence, that didn't have some sort of land drop and/or acre trading deal.

I'm not sure I have the stealth to sift through that much garbage in hopes of finding the paradigm. If you're artificially restricting your options there are ways to go about it without directly setting up a land drop. The most common is to just train pure ospecs while oow and obtain the target epa before releasing and converting them to dspecs/thieves for conflict. This way has the added benefit of collecting buttons which you could presumably capitalize on by opping while training up. Another route is to rely on intra propaganda operations (assuming rogue) on your own kingdoms' elite-training races (bocans would be nice if they were better). You just need enough time before your next conflict to remedy the resultant reallocation of wizards. A slight variation on that would be to initiate a "hostile" with a friendly kingdom and prop eachothers' elite-training races, but what's the point? Unless intra prop doesn't work anymore....

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Originally Posted by RattleHead

Isn't a good chunk of UD offence immune to @home hits? what kind of OS:Elite ratio do you guys have?

I haven't played UD in a few Ages, but people I am seeing this Age seem heavy on the OS, I am in the bottom half of the KD ranks so maybe its just a bit of fear to continue hitting for acres once you reach a certain size.

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I'm running pretty consistently around 2:1 offspec:elite, with no hospitals, and during war I've not gotten hit once with armies home. This just seems to naturally be around where it always ends up (2:1 ratio I mean). Though I am playing sage so i've been abducting a lot oow. Granted, my armies are usually home for <5 minutes unless a wave time changed or something. Though maybe if i was in the top, they would take advantage of this 5 minute window... I just haven't seen the necessity for hospitals yet, and we have 10 undeads doing the same thing I am.

Ya from my recollection if you can get to 3/4 of your offence as Elite through converts, you are doing pretty good... but that's as a heavy attacker, like you say an UD/Mystic might have abduct priorities over acres/Elite conversion.

Hospitals on UD is not only about being hit army home in war - but also about defensive troop losses and hit army home in hostile. No hosps on UD cripples your kingdoms versatility in hostile, and prolongs recovery periods being waved OOW. For low end kingdoms no hospitals on UD is fine of course. In the low end any race/pers/build is frankly quite ok.

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Originally Posted by Tadpole

No hosps on UD cripples your kingdoms versatility in hostile, and prolongs recovery periods being waved OOW.

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Debatable. GBP, you may take 2 hits to your prov in a wave, 50% of those casualties are now soldiers, easily retrained. If the wave looks like it could lead to war, I won't even retrain the defense and save the creds, I'm most dangerous the closer I am to land defense ;D. Personally I'd rather have those acres set aside for more TGs and GS, and Unis if OOW. I guess Hospitals come down to personal preference and playstyle more so than optimal efficiency.

-DM <3

Efficiency doesn't allow us the luxury of having preferences.

It's still strategy.

To be fair, when I ran undead cleric I use to run hospitals and I got loads of criticism. Tadpole is quite a smart fellow and the top played a different way; more uniform in its excellence. As morbidly sustainable as an undead cleric can be, it was the troops at home I was thinking about.

As a guy who's run individual strats in big picture war I still think a myriad of strats are viable. Somebody here referred to camping and that can be more than an opportunity tactic. You can expect certain builds to be admirable campers and more so, particular players.

When I ran undead cleric, in most cases, I was running a relay offense which is also a source of criticism. But this because most of our warring is the result of brainwashing players into thinking that waves are everything. Waves are not everything.

Waves are the equivalent of spearhead formations in battle. That's cool, but as a war gamer for the past 40 years I came to a appreciate my flanks. I'm sure there are brilliant strategists who simply aren't sharing their knowledge or can't execute better because of activity or player savvy. My stand, strategically, has always been you wave within a variable of efficient gain.

Let's say your assessing a homogenous enemy of say undead tacs with a couple paladins, rogues and mystics. The first concern I have is in stealth expenditure for intel. To overcome this logistical truth you have to modify your offensive approach. I'm into t/m crushing to get to the promised land the fastest, but a full spearhead pattern will get you torn to pieces.

So what I use to do was mock avian style and play to nw zones, as an individual. Sadly, it's hard to convey to a brainwashed(jokingly) majority that you're helping them in their overall quest for victory. While I've garnered criticism for relay tactics and zone defense, I've experimented with this at top levels: vs FS, Green, Sparta. What I'm doing is attacking campers, curbing acreage which affects gains and isolating dangerous chain feeding opponents. You don't want or need a full squad, just enough guys to control the obvious strength of undead tac.

The gaps will generally present themselves because waving and chaining is so prevalent, but you can create gaps through selective countering. The most fundamental relay tactic I've used is to trad march 2 enemy provinces below me and ambush 2 provinces above my acre/nw. This can result in chain stalling. Chain stalling is not a myth.

In top(ish) war the question is identifiable threat. This is something we don't talk about. A top guy will say I'm presenting no threat by relay tactics, spreading my offense everywhere. This is true to the perception of the enemy, but a tactical opportunity for my kingdom. Presumption by your enemy is the catalyst of initiative: a new approach.

When every attacker is basically running till they're dry you're playing into the flat logistics that cause so many kingdoms to lose before they even begin. In many wars I've found myself occupying a mid shelf controlling enemy attackers of every build type. I'm not a good builder but I know leverage. I've withstood late war NM and combined tactics to reestablish myself in that zone within hours. An ugly build can actually be good cardio.

In the end my humble goals in war were kind of odd. My goal was to sustain the most attacks and still be in positive acres. I've been in wars where I was the 3rd highest land gainer and the 3rd most hit with only the trash defense chain victims below me. Once the enemy realizes what you're doing they desperately attempt to break you off, but this is often after the smoke has cleared. - Remember when I talked about undead sage? Well this is when I tell you about the rogue I was slow dripping amnesia on during the war.