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I've seen a few posts here and there about provinces that are impossible to chain. I'm just curious what is meant by this and how it's done, because it's not obvious to me how 20+ good and successful attacks on a single target in a short time is avoidable. What am I missing?
Harder to chain, not impossible.
Anyone can be chained, but the act itself may not be profitable.
Dwarf attacker with 30% GS, 15% hospitals, and high DPA with leets out = hard to chain. In the same time it takes to chain this dwarf down you could have chained 2 other provs down--high opportunity cost.
Not sure if they have the same roster as last age, but stoners/bob were by far the best war kingdom. Feint was impossible to chain. If that was you as free ice nutty, Feint.
That's a quote from Maximo ^.
So Gidoza, I don't know what Feint knows or what circumstances Maximo refers to, but this seems to indicate chain stalling.
To the credit of tiggis, he's correct. Many skeptics of any chain stalling or resistance I'd imagine run in strict environments. Chain stalling challenges the logic of the more common strategies. I've always gotten negative feedback about resisting chains and it's always in reference to quality of opposition.
I've already presented cases that I've stalled chains, but perhaps Feint and Godly offer the level of demonstration required. The formidable environment they operate in offers undeniable evidence to the idea of " Impossible To Chain ". I know how I do it, and I'm always willing to learn. I think it's naive for skeptics to assume I've never seen higher level tactics and execution. I have. Unlike those that just line up and declare NW and O, I took a look around while rolling like a robot.
Me, myself and I witnessed an online avian stall the prelude to waving. Scheduled waves can be blunted, especially when you begin to push RL schedules to the redline. It was here that I learned that activity isn't really activity. You might see 25 guys online and that looks impressive. Push it, stall it, encumber it and only then will you see the quality of a kingdom.
Basically what the wave giants are trying to sell you is that predictability is good. Predictability is a compromise. If everything you do is telegraphed be assured some take notice and will attempt to derail your intentions. The counter logic is that anyone on the other side of this musket volley mindset not lining up in wave form is diluting their wave. I'm not condemning all. We have some brilliant strategists in this game. I agree for getting a kingdom to the top 20 that wave form is probably the shortest path. When you get there you should advance your mindset to see things as chess, execute like blitzkrieg and befuddle like David Copperfield...or Bugs Bunny.
I think the meaning is that the chains are ineffective in causing desertions / forcing the province to release troops. And primarily is that the attacker keeps super-high offense. For example, last age I was chained to 150a and kept 160k offense. That's a failed chain.
Strato - we warred Stoners in an eoa conflict last age. I was in the group assigned to take out feint, a huge undead duke, with tons of offense threatening our tms. This included chain hits, and trying to snipe him as soon as his army got home. I had gotten pretty ok at this throughout the age, forcing high offs to release a bunch of elites to send out. The only problem was feint knew we were targeting him, and being warrior, was able to make 5 huge land grabs each time. Not all hits were ambushed, so he maintained huge off, capable of downing tms. He was not only smart with his hits, but like he said, sometimes kept a general home to immediately send out, when his main army got home. Probably the toughest chain I, in my utopia career have encountered. Maybe he can add his perspective?
^ Here's Maximos account vs Feint. And a Badass Award to GodsLittleCow.
At a much more getto level a sage has strong chain resistance because the more land it losses the higher it's pop sci gets. Everyone has this "defense", but sage has it more-so, and thus is more chain resistant.
Similarly sage helps "stall" a chain as it is bottoming out by having a very high mWPA to use for LL.
The result being the best chain I've ever suffered I "dealt with" fairly well sine I was sage and used what tricks my activity could support. That said... we had found a much better kingdom, so their 17 unique wave against our fiddly little straggle of hits meant a hopelessly lopsided war (we surrendered in less than min time!) Their first set took me from around 1700 to 550 => 800 acres (I had a big hit) and forced me to sack against dragon... but then they threw leftovers and had me down to 300 acres by 14 hours into the war.
I could have done plenty better... a bit more offense and less defense, fewer pes, running at least some gs. Staggered hits, AIAO with ambushes, etc. But most people taking that kind of focused heat would just fold completely - sage and stubbornness let me force them to spend more hits to truly take me out. If our kingdom had been close to theirs in skill we'd have had rune feeding and sol aiding for desertions and all that other stuff too... but it was just me alone against the 20 other people, so lasting more than one wave was all I could hope for.
Figure out how hard a kingdom you could reasonably fight can chain. Figure out what helps make that chain not crippling or forces it to take much more work for them. Now figure out (here is the money question)
... if you defend against the chain, did you just lower your offensive effectiveness so much they wouldn't bother with you anyway?
Well I run a bit different and I know what you mean about no online aid. I do relay tap, but under a chain if you're under immediate duress you have to deploy. Every situation is different, but it's this capacity to adapt and have experience doing it that matters.
As undead cleric: A classic chain stall I've done is trad march enemies from directly below and ambush hits from higher nw.( For you critics, one of those was the chain target.) the ambush acres get to you faster and you can recycle those for the blunted hits from lower nw. All this is doing is cementing your zone. Establish this and now they may have to draw a t/m to dig you out.
I've also been subject to a massive camper but chose to hold troops to reduce taps on my decent. In this instance I was dwarf cleric. While I had to release dspecs it was not a portion of my army that effected my formidable side. If I had deployed my defense would've opened me for multi-taps. We telegraphed our chain targets so the camper surmised my deployment. I needed to see his reaction and his attack was the opener of a chain.
I doubt I'm unique in how I visualize exchanges, but I recommend looking at them militarily. In the first instance as undead cleric I envisioned reports of Russian pockets of resistance in Operation Barbarossa. I read reports from German officers about this nuisances cropping up after their massive blitzkrieg sweeps. Also, T-34 for enthusiasts should ring a bell.
In the second instance I envisioned a controlled retreat. Losses were inevitable, but remarkably marginal. I deployed once I hit the salient of the enemy held nw zone.
"hard to chain" really only applies to defensive provinces - usually restricted to t/m, but sometimes human (at least in prior ages) and dwarf too. if you can't force desertions in one wave, chains become problematic because whoever you target will get a unique where they can maxgain, even if you continue dropping them on the second wave they are likely in enough acres to retain significant army. for higher defenses it might be a matter that you simply can't force the chain deep enough, and in the process you've exposed attackers with too few incoming acres to prevent overpopulation.
there are no personalities that are particularly resilient against chains, though generally the attacker personalities (on appropriate races) are the ones you'd prefer to eat a chain over non-attackers (mystic, rogue, sage). definitely don't pick sage for chain resilience unless you are prepared to build schools in war, or you lose your personality bonus basically forever by mid-late age. if you picked sage core it is inevitable that sages will eat chains and it is brutal unless you can win quick. even without learn attacks, most sage sciences aren't that good after your defense is gone and acres are shaky, and sage doesn't have the intrinsic boosts other personalities (especially attacker personalities) have at all times.
merchant lies somewhere in between, because it sucks to lose peasants but their extra credits allow them to at least sustain with support.
cleric is not particularly resilient against being chained, because you're more worried about overpopulation and ops (once your thieves release, are massacred, or simply decay over time against opponents who replace thieves faster) than combat losses; additionally, the sustained troops do count towards future overpopulation, so it's really bad to pick cleric on a race that can't turtle with their elites. still, you probably pick cleric if you like having defense on your core without needing to micromanage your buildings, and you're fighting an opponent that chains and ops inefficiently.
war heroes get double-penalized by chains by losing most of their honor, but they're a noob trap anyway.
Hard to Chain is when you NS a target and no one attacks them, setting up huge acres for the person who gets chained. You also setup a AW target and feed the chained province runes to Lust back acres. Yes, Sage are the best at this especially with Libraries.
it is also not just a matter of having a province type that is "hard to chain" but using tactics that make enemy landchains problematic. that's what maximo was talking about in the quoted section, a player in another kingdom used some skills to assure that he lost very little to overpopulation and kept firing a huge offense.
an example i cited before was chain disruption, by removing the ability of a key link in a chain to attack a target. it works best if you can disrupt a chain in progress by making it impossible for a link in the chain to clean-break, because it means all of the initial hits in that chain are essentially wasted; but you can also disrupt links in a chain before hits start, which forces kingdoms to pick weaker targets even when they can (technically) break a defense, or forces kingdoms to switch to maxgaining. (you really would prefer not to maxgain on t/ms unless you can assure that your attacker core can follow up those hits later...)
another example is what the above post mentioned, having an LL target opened so chain victims have a source of new acres.
lol @ asking Godly. If he were to get hit twice he'd need to be sat.
I doubt dwarf attacker with such stats is more harder to chain than other races.Quote:
Originally Posted by shadoweminence
I was undead, with 20% GS, 15% hospitals, and high DPA with elites out. And I was chained two days ago, during one hour lost 5k+ acres, more than 20 attacks and long list of Ops. It was most efficient chaining I have ever seen :)
So protection from chaining is proper setup of kingdom and activity in kingdom. One province can be protected from chaining only in noob wars, not in top wars.
Every race is chainable. It is an honor for ownself if you get into opponent's chain list. And from this point, you can make a difference if your kingdom can win the war. Because the longer you took to be chained down, the higher chance your kingdom can win. Hope i Dont have to elaborate further. If you lasted less than a wave, you are a gone case.