Attacker - Growing Too Fat?

Would like some opinions from the more experienced players. What are some of the reasons when you know you are 'too big' and need to stop getting land. How do I know when to stop and plunder instead of traditional march or ask my kingdom mates to raze me a little bit.

Does it matter if I'm in a warring kingdom or non warring ghetto etc.? I understand one major aspect is to stay within your kingdoms size but what about the other factors like NW/Acre, science, DPA etc?

I read a lot in the strategy forums about people getting too fat and having their land razed but what is the benefit in doing this when you can be bigger and have a larger military economy etc?

Would appreciate some feedback.

I just wrote a pretty detailed response and it was lost becase I wasn't "logged in" which wasn't so, but I'll try and give u some pointers again.

Firstly, Go check out several other kingdoms and find other provinces @ your land size, how do you size up against them? Are they bigger NW then you, if so how much? Get some Spy on Thrones and check out there numbers, how do you size up against the offense/defese numbers they have... or if you are not an attacker, how does your def size up, can you stop them from breaking you? If not consider gettig more defense to prevent attackers your size from smacking you into oblivian.

After that, inroder to grow large in this game you do need land and lots of it, but if you can't protect it then it is poinltess in growing fat in hopes you will be overlooked, unless you are in a really good kingdom, trust me.. you won't be and will be hit a lot. If you have plenty of soldiers to train still or military to draft @ your current size there really isn't much point in trying to gain more acres, your better off pumping yourself up a bit and then looking for another land grab to continue your progress. Now if you are undead scratch that, even if you are fat keep hitting just for the sake of getting more leets and when you get hit back, who cares? You still are pumpign your offense up nicely. Generally this early in the game if you are anywhere from the 130-150's NW/A you are in a pretty decent range. In a good kingdom you can get away with less, in a not so good kingdom you won't be able to. It also depedns on how big you are, are you in the top 500 or so? If so you want to be closer to the 150 and up NW/A range to keep yourself safe, especially in a not so good kingdom. If you are just an average size province then you don't need to really pump that high.

But it also really depends on what you kingdom goals are. If you have a warring kigndom, you are better off pumping up higher on your current acers, then just growing fat with land, and having your NW inflated by that extra land not really giving you anyway to justify or backup those acres. You will end up looing them fast. A strong defense for an attacker is a strong offense, there is no such thing as being unbreakable, so there is no point in getting a MASSIVEly huge defense as an attacker. As a thief/mage sure.. go for a great defense, but make sure to get your other numbers WPA/TPA were they need to be. SCI is definately very important and good to keep boosting. As the game progresses so should you NW/A and it will naturally. Say for example, just as a rough idea
week 1 - 130 + NW/A
week 2 - 135 + NW/A
week 3- 140-145 + NW/A
week 4- 145-155 + NW/A
week 5 - 150-160 NW/A
week 6-10 160-170 NW/A
week 10 + really depends your kingdom and if you war or not, could go as high as 180-200 NW/A but running in the 160's would be fine if you want to keep a solid economy as well + or - NW/A depending your race, kd plans, etc.. Honestly these r just ruff numbers and you don't have to stick to them, obviously the higher your NW/A is the stronger your prov for your size, but getting to that point takes time and slows growth early on so if you want to grow maintaing a 150's is hard this early.

Thanks for the in-depth reply Purplehaze, and the others earlier (all those posts seemed to have been removed.)

Here's an update on my situation and some more questions I had:

I've been keeping a pretty high NW/Acre as Undead usually hovering been 145-155 and am pretty big. The issue I'm having is that I'm keeping ~7-Dspecs/acre (40-42.5DPA) at home while I send all my o-specs and elites out on attacks. I read Palem suggesting that even 25-30 DPA at this point is okay but I'm still being hammered by attacks. Today I got hit 4 x time since my last attack, mostly from those 5-6 million NW kingdoms who have 120NW/Acre. I lost so much land I'm up to 105 OPA because my last attack was on a gang bang protected target (our kingdom waved another kingdom trying to get a war started.) This leads me to another question, what is the easiest way to get a war. I've read in strategy forum that it's best to wave a kingdom and hope for retaliation but the past couple days we haven't had any bites. Is it easier to just ask another kingdom if they want war and everyone just random for best possible gains with no specific target?

Also as for those super kingdoms 2-3x your size, is it smart to retaliate them (usually the gains are super high) but I fear they gang bang raze in retaliation or something.

Np at all. Are you the only province your size capapable of attacking helping you retal? There is one thing big kingdoms hate... and that is getting retalled by much smaller kingdoms. It will most definately get you 3-4 retals, however if you are 1 of 5 your size you guys could put up a decent fight and a retaling will still result in getting hit back, but at least you will have some other helpful firepower behind you and not to mention yes.. the gains will be much better than what they get. That being said, if the kingdom only hits you a few times it's prolly best to leave em be.. if they keep feeding on you... do what you go to do or try to negotiate some sort of peace treaty if possible! GL

Id like to add that if your kd provinces are 800 acres and you are the only one at 1600 plus you should stop growing.

It be nice if you got 2 or 3 more guys at your size , once theres 3 persons of the same size , as purplehaze said , larger kds dont want to get retal, it slows them down, they might raze you to punish you, but remember big egos wont sacrifice their daily gains in order to deal with a smaller kd and much less will they war against you.

If you are standing alone up there, its only obvious that you will get fed on.

IF you cant decide if plunder or trad march , it seems like you are way too active for your current kd. Otherwise youd be hitting in war.
If you want to stay in your current kd, id just pump my nwpa and wait for the rest to be ready for war. Plunder and plunder until you have your province fully trained and then you can start doing some learn attacks for the kicks.
I think you need to change your kd or push your kd mates into being more active.

if you don't want to grow, suicide! That's what most of the undead are doing. That way they can keep attacking for land, but they aren't keeping it since they are getting hit back just as hard!

What constitutes a suiciding undead anyways? Shouldn't their elites be out all the time anyways or leave some home to cause the occasional bounced attack? I'm up to 5,800 Ghouls but I don't dare keep them home with their 3 defense, or maybe I'm doing it wrong.

What is the D-Spec range for an undead ranging from suicide to safe?

no point in letting them sit at home! they can die at home, not in the field (unless you're ambushed)


I'll let somebody else handle the d-spec range for undead. I'm not undead and I always just keep ~40 mod dpa at home with army out

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dragons Mate

no point in letting them sit at home! they can die at home, not in the field (unless you're ambushed)

---

Right, also just realized how powerful war spoils is because of preventing ambush. Is there any time that warrants not using war spoils? I read somewhere earlier that it all depends on if you can afford to build the land immediately - but in undeads case isn't protecting the elites from ambush a bigger priority?

Also I was wondering if you had a link to an Ambush calculator. I remember seeing one somewhere maybe from Utools or Angel but now that I need it can't find one.

If you're getting chained it's better to have the land coming in.

If the enemy set up two team on the chain target. Team 1 atk the chain target before the target army homes and team2 continue the chain after the target army out, warspoils is not that good.

For example, I like to wait my target to send his army out first so his gbp will decrease and I can get more land. So, if the target casting war spoils, I will gain more land.

i agree use of WS really depends on your land management. if your NW heavy(opposite of land fat, did i just make up a term?) you want to use it to keep your economy flowing. not so much on the opposite side of the spectrum, but ambush immunity is always good. it really shouldnt be used just to protect your elites. everyone seems to think undeads elites are like the most fragile thing in the universe, but this isnt true at all. you could honestly even leave them on defense from time to time and you would be no worse off in the long run. all depends on the situation, generally i would say you want to be attacking with them since your army is your greatest weapon(why not use it?)

You make good points kbone.

Right now my Peasants per acre are all messed up and my draft spiked up to 76% so I used war spoils again but in the future I think what you said is best.

Also on a side note, what is the trick to getting Building Efficiency spikes? It happened to me once so far but I forgot how and why. Basically I got hit but I had land coming in or something and my BE went up 5-7% in one tick.

similar thing happened to me too. WS is perfect in that situation. dont know too much about BE, i thought it changed more gradually over time than that. Perhaps you rebuilt some land? buildings under construction dont require workers

or maybe you were hit right before your land came in. so you had same number of peasants, but less workers needed

Suicide with 20 dpa home! dont use the leets for defense unless you are a cleric . All your defense should come from def specs for the most part. So 20 dpa should be perfect

when there are no more targets ... you stop growing ....

that's were dice comes in. If you don't have targets to hit and want to continue growing u can always dice for 75+ acres a day with a decent amount of towers, I'd say 17% and up should be enuff.

How many guilds do you need for a reliable success % on dicing?

Also when is a reasonable point to start releasing troops? It seems I can't keep up in land anymore as I lose more land than gain despite double tapping people my size keeping ~45DPA. My military draft is hovering around the mid 70's now.