Not slaying dragons

During the course of a war, you might slay 3-4 dragons. If the other kingdom wants to, they can just keep sending another dragon. Is it really worth it if they're just going to keep sending more? So assume you don't slay any, it's a huge hit on income, dme/ome, and draft, but isn't it worse to lose 3 specs per acre only to have a fourth dragon hit you that gives you the same penalties in the end? How much dragon-free time is worth the cost of slaying it? In other words, if kingdom A immediately sends their specs to the dragon, how long until kingdom B (who tanked their dragon) has suffered the same amount?

Only if you can keep a dragon on your opponent does it work out for you in the end. It may make mathematical sense to keep the dragon on you, but if you have a dragon on you and the enemy doesn't, over a long period that is a lot of lost soldiers and cash, let alone the dragon's worse effects. If you're in the position where the enemy can slay dragon after dragon you send and you can't slay theirs, then your economy is really crappy, which is a problem in of itself.

It might make sense not to send a dragon under certain circumstances and train more army, and forget about slaying, but those situations are not common.

The reason I bring this up is because it took us 2 days to slay a dragon, and when we finally did they already had the next dragon funded. Seems like we could have tanked the first dragon and just been better off in that scenario.

it allows enemy KD to begin retraining/building acres/pumping up if you dont slay dragon. they can use gold instead of funding.
its also a morale thing if enemy sees you kill a dragon in a few hours, and it helps rally your own kd.

those may be unquantifiable but should still be considered. the answer to your particular question i don't know, but would be a good starting point to determine if kd's should slay dragons. most likely, however, the answer won't be hard and fast but situational.

Step one:
Make sure they can't fund new dragon

Step two:
Kill dragon

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Originally Posted by lastunicorn

The reason I bring this up is because it took us 2 days to slay a dragon, and when we finally did they already had the next dragon funded. Seems like we could have tanked the first dragon and just been better off in that scenario.

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In that case yes, it took u guys to long to kill the dragon and in that case i would just tank it. At MOST it should take your kd 12 hours to kill a dragon as every prov in the kd should log in every 12 hours in war, if you kd isnt capable of that i'd tank dragon 1 and hope that the kd you war funds dragon 2. If they do its wasted gold on their part and u guys never sent out specs to kill either dragon.

Last war took us forever to slay dragon 1, while opposing kingdom had slain ours fairly quickly. Put us 1k acres behind by the time we got rid of it. We hung on for a little while before slaying it, until they thought we were going to tank it, I guess the other kingdom stopped trying to fund dragon number 2. We finally slew it, and sent our number 2 shortly after, then had number 3 ready to go. They slew number 2 pretty quickly but couldn't afford to send dragon number 2 on us (blanket riots and greed). We sent dragon 3 within an hour of them slaying our 2nd one and launched a 4th one (which we didnt fund because we knew there was no way they could slay number 3). We were dragon free for the rest of the war while they couldn't slay our sapphire. It kept their T/Ms from hurting us and we were mostly MS free for those last 2 days. It destroyed their economy entirely which allowed us to rebuild. The dragons basically won the war for us (it was a close 6 day war, but that gave us the edge).

2 days to slay is horrible. You might as well have let it be.

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Originally Posted by Persain

In that case yes, it took u guys to long to kill the dragon and in that case i would just tank it. At MOST it should take your kd 12 hours to kill a dragon as every prov in the kd should log in every 12 hours in war, if you kd isnt capable of that i'd tank dragon 1 and hope that the kd you war funds dragon 2. If they do its wasted gold on their part and u guys never sent out specs to kill either dragon.

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This is what I'm getting at. You think that if it takes >12 hours to slay, tank it. What about the case where it takes 3 hours to slay, but they already have the second dragon funded and you can't slay the second one within 12 hours? What if you can slay the second one in 5 hours, but they hit you with a third one that you absolutely can't slay? Would it have been better to tank the first one? Obviously Palem's right, and if you can stop them from funding the next dragon, do it before slaying. There are however, times when this is easier said than done, especially if they are determined to put 80% of their income into the next dragon.

It also depends on what dragon they're sending. I mean if you have a ruby on you and they're sending a gold as the next one, you have to ask yourself, which can you afford to take the most. It clearly depends on the status of your provinces at the time. If you're in a good economical state and want to keep it that way, and you've decided that you're *definitely* going to tank one of the dragons, then tank the ruby.

If youre not killing their econ then dont bother killing your dragon.

And listen to Palem's two step advice, genius!

To answer ur further questions, if u think theyre going to be funding their dragons super quick, then dont kill dragon.

Palem's two step answer still applies.

Thanks for all the input

The only way you would know that they could fund it that quickly if you killed it within 5 hours is 1)if you see in the intel that they have very large stockpiles of gold, or 2) there are quite a few of them with very stron econs(humans, merchant, people with high peasents/banks, ect.), and they would all log in every tick and dump their GC in. Although even there 5 hours is fairly fast in a war at the level I am guessing you are warring.

In the case of 1, you should steal that gold, in the case of 2 you should incapacitate their econs. If there are so many in 2 that you cannot do that(like the whole KD), then you should still try slowly, or else long term you will have problems, although chances are you have other advantages.

Either way, if people are consistently getting 3-4 dragons on you, while it takes you 2 days to kill them, chances are you are having more general problems in your wars.

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Originally Posted by Topsy

Although even there 5 hours is fairly fast in a war at the level I am guessing you are warring.

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It was actually started and funded in the same tick, presumably by their monster of a monarch. We might need to start the ops on him soon.

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Originally Posted by lastunicorn

but isn't it worse to lose 3 specs per acre only to have a fourth dragon hit you that gives you the same penalties in the end?

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1 dragon is roughly 0.8 spec per acre per province btw, not 3 :)

actual formula is province acres x kingdom nwpa / 220

Fools gold?

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Originally Posted by grofdojka

1 dragon is roughly 0.8 spec per acre per province btw, not 3 :)

actual formula is province acres x kingdom nwpa / 220

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I wrote that as a rough formula for killing 3 dragons. And yes, it is closer to 0.8 if everyone logs on when the dragon arrives and sends that much. What often happens in my experience is that some people only log in twice a day or so, and miss the opportunity to send, while the other provs get impatient (especially if the dragon has been around a bit and almost dead) and send even more specs. For three dragon slayings I'd say I end up sending 3 specs per acre just to pick up the slack and finish it off.

how fast did you withdraw?

We won. http://forums.utopia-game.com/showth...iller-Machines

In a recent war, we killed three dragons and they withdrew before funding the fourth. Each dragon was killed within about 5 hours and we got maybe a days worth tops of dragon free warring between each. We sent one Emerald which stayed on them the entire time. Killing the dragons with quickness was a huge moral boost.

We all had plenty of gold since we didn't have any dragon funding and networths, while starting out pretty even, grew apart by almost 1 million. By the end of war ceasefire, we were able to generate plenty of soldiers and gold to leave war early even with phenomonal gains.

Sure there are other variables to account for but that's just my personal experience regarding dragons.

For the time from February 17 of YR5 till January 20 of YR6
-- Uniques: 79

Well , we usually make 110-120 unique attacks in 48 hours war , something is not right up there , how many provinces are in your kingdom?

EDIT:I've enjoyed reading the report from your war , it was something else really:

http://forums.utopia-game.com/showth...iller-Machines

please disregard my question , good luck to your kingdom , have fun:)

with us the incomming dragon is pretty much on the attackers. the tm/s though few keep ms 24/7 and eco spells, our thieves remove any pockets of gold and nightstrike.the tms pretty much do all the dragon funding like 70 + %. there are only 2 of us t/ms and about 2 hybrids. midway thru war my thief count will drop about 20% but im fat on tpa so when they die off my b.e gos back giving me a ton of incomming soldiers to suply the attackers but i still keep my strength.

sometimes its a waste though last war we just finished they never killed the first dragon and we funded the second to 1gc but they surrendered . so arround 5 mill down the drain.that was alot because there was no money or runes anywere durring that war