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I have a question: From mid to late age, what draft rate should a pure attacker be running? Specifically, Orc Warrior or Orc Tactician. I've previously run at 70% draft and i hear numbers of 80% being mentioned so I wonder if I have been running low.
Orc should be running max draft all the time and feeding kd with free soldiers.
There are two draft modes:
On and off.
There is one draft speed:
Emergency.
There is one draft rate:
99%.
If you have experienced problems with carrying enough offense you might raise your draft, but all things depend on environment.
The comments above by Zauper and Neanderthal are based in kingdoms that have the activity to gobble up those soldiers. I'm assuming you asked because you're not in a top kingdom. These men are smarter than me, but suffer elitist focalism. No offense intended.
You can run as high a draft as your kingdom has peripheral active support. In a decent sub 50 chart kingdom you can run 75%. In kingdoms that are organized enough to gather intel for you and run waves with on-hand op/sabotage support you can run higher.
As an orc there are obstacles like science and high losses that can render your economy a bit blah. It's important to cofound a soldier aid system to maintain the health of your kingdom which in turn allows them to keep you deep in gold/food/runes.
I understand the idea of perpetual motion attacking oow but in a kingdom with only 9-10 guys driving the kingdom you get yourself in situations of uselessness in war by growing too much. That said, Zaupers kingdom made a living to the crown oow and would feed off your accessive acres which is actually a win-win. Add a little diplo to a high draft rate with accommodating oow gains and you may discover a good relationship.
Cerberus, realistically (since only certain kingdoms can follow Zauper's strategy :P) your attainable draft rate will probably be lower the later you get in the age. This is because your WPA will go up, and your % drafted is based on your total pop, not just your peasantry. So it is (normally) harder to get to, say, 75% draft late age than it would be in the early-mid age. (Right at the start of the age obviously you are quite low drafted)
(PS All of the above takes into account basic drafting procedures and ignores homepumps.)
Anyways I guess that doesn't really answer your question. Since you are a pure attacker, really you should just draft as high as you can before a war and smash face, assuming you can get aid to pay your wages.
Out of war? I dunno, 60-65% sounds intuitively like an okay number for growth and without being too fat, but you have to experiment yourself. Find a balance between having enough defense that you don't get hit by everyone, and having enough peasants that you can train your troops.
Zaup's advice is sound, especially on Orc, regardless of KD level. The only reason to not draft more is if it will restrict total military trainable or if it will make you too scary to bait war(more frequent reason for most kd's)
Draft for pure attacker (Orc, Undead, Avian) should be as high as possible, of course.
Train your offense before most of your defense and you can be ready on low draft rates, but the higher the draft rate the better off an attacker will be during war.
I jack up my DR has high as possible and run high offense and I play in total ghettos. Realistically the DR most provinces will reach is around 80-85% (including wizards). If your province grows oow, that draft rate is not sustainable, but it does not matter... if you have the right stuff trained for your situation, you can be effective whether at 60% or 99%. Being at higher draft is of course better, but being at those high draft rates implies that you will be using that offense to do something very soon.
Sorry I should probably explain my situation a bit better. We are top 20 honour kingdom this age and a very active warring kingdom. 6 wars in this age but no one will war us before EoA. I am totally aware about max draft and emergency rate for Orc. Was more curious about what level of active trained troops draft rate i should be looking at and continually aiding out extra soldiers. We have a solid aiding system and can be fed other resources in exchange for soldiers.
As said before - the higher the better.
It is more about training the right things though, like offense before defense. If you have 10-12 elites/acre, you have the core of what your province is supposed to do, even with only the bare minimum of dspa, tpa, wpa, etc. Having the same off:def ratio at 60% draft that you would have at 80% draft is a bad idea.
The tricky part may be figuring out what to do when a pumped province grows and loses only elites. Usually I would want to train more raw offense and tpa rather than defense, if I train anything at all. There may be exceptions where training defense is necessary, but generally training defense in hostile is a bad idea for a province that will be far from unbreakable and vulnerable to thieves.