High nwpa is bad?

Hey, Human/Sage here. I'm currently at about 870 acres, 250k nw, about 290 nwpa. My army is about 7.5k def specs, 9.7k elites. 2.5k thieves (3tpa), less than 1 wpa.

So I'm looking around for targets to hit, and I'm really out gunned when it comes to armies. I have maxxed housing science and 20% homes, so I expected to have a pretty damn scary army for my size, but to be honest I look around at my NW and a lot of people have bigger armies. I'm starting to think that having a high nwpa isn't such a good thing, because it means I have less acres than others at my NW. Even though I'm very efficient with every acre I have, other people just have more "stuff". I see people with 10k+ def specs and offense that is just as big as mine. WTF?

If I send out all my knights, my defense is pretty vulnerable. Is human/sage not so great? Am I just bad? Any advice much appreciated.

edit: 70% drafted currently

What is your build? And how does your science compare to others?

To me High NWPA equates more or less to reduced gains. You should pick targets around your acreage, rather than around your NW (because high relative NWPA means similar NW provs are generally larger, and therefore can have greater volume of troops than you).

As a result of having to hit targets around your acreage, you will inevitably be hitting people that are less NW than you, which will nerf gains to some extent.

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Originally Posted by RattleHead

(because high relative NWPA means similar NW provs are generally larger, and therefore can have greater volume of troops than you).

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hmm... if they have the same nw as each other, then all other things being equal they should have the same number of troops (or technically slightly less troops on the bigger person, as more land/peasants will add some nw to the larger person). Or am I misunderstanding what you mean?

The extreme comparison would be Bocan v Dryad I guess... Lets say Dryad NWPA is ~1.3x that of Bocan... something like ~300 on Dryad and ~230 on Bocan.

So a 1000 acre Dryad is 300,000 NW. While a 300,000 NW Bocan is ~1300 acres...Dryads rock about 300 opa, and a Bocan can muster probably a bit over 200 dpa? So the Dryad has 300,000 offence, to the Bocan's 260,000 offence. Still breakable but its much closer than you would think for a Bocan vs Dryad... and then add in that Humans are 3 points less offence, but about the same NW... Human is probably looking at more like 250 opa... and can't break.

I think what you are describing is more about nw efficiency rather than nw/acre per se. ie whether the higher nw that results in higher nw/acre is utilised effectively (either due to race constraints as you mentioned, or province set up - ie the build, science etc).

Ok, call it what you want, but the effect is the same. High NWPA on a province by province basis is not necessarily bad, it can be a good indication of readiness. But having higher NWPA relative to your opponent is not always good, as exampled above.

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Originally Posted by RattleHead

But having higher NWPA relative to your opponent is not always good, as exampled above.

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Yes, I agree with this, although the point I was making is that higher NW/acre compared to your opponent (whether individually or on a KD level) is not always bad either, and that the issue is more about the efficiency of that nw. I think what would help OP is to understand what return he/she is getting for that increased nw/acre.

Land contains NW. It isn't a big part of NW/A any more, but 'tis still there. Therefore, if two provs are equally well built and on the same NW, except one is higher NW/A... The one with low NW/A has more land, and therefore has less NW in army. (If they had more army and more land... they wouldn't be same NW!) From this point, we safely conclude land NW is just bad NW, and minimizing it is an objective.

Competing with this is how NW controls who is your size (partially - used to be totally), and so the lower you can get the NW/A while keeping your military, the better. Given current NW values though, most of the NW of a prov *is* their military, and there isn't going to be much to get around that. That's why wages and TGs are important though - NW free military strength is hard to come by but very powerful. (This consideration is mostly relevant in comparing races.)


What's missing from the above is *how important* (or unimportant) minimizing land and land NW is. (And how important increasing OME/DME mods.) Building 15% farms and 85% homes sure does make a nice NW/A, but the province is stupid and bad anyway because it passed up more important things (like MP, and hospitals, and rax, etc). In particular, it is often the case that pushing NW/A really high is happening at the expense of NW free OME, which means you end up with a lot of lower quality military. For example - those 20% homes might be better as 15% TGs (and 5% scattered around to make up the difference from lost BE). Although that depends a lot on how many TGs you have already.

In the end... if you are finding same NW opponents to have more military, adding land won't help. You need to figure out how to make your province better, not just fatter. It is quite rare these days to have pushed NW/A "too high" to the point where you gave up more than you got from it (homes really the only common case) - so if you are high NW/A and still short on military, the short answer is "get better". (I think it could be the race's fault too. Sage makes very nice power late age though, even though NW/A gets really high.)

Harsh as that sounds ("just get better dur"), this is the advanced part of building a province, most people don't really know it. All those little judgements do add up to a small but real difference, but figuring out the right call for your specific situation is tricky, and requires experience and "feel" as much as anything. Try things, keep listening to theory and then trying to put it into practice, and see what works best for you. I know I've run provs that people would've sworn were junk, and they've played just great for me (faery attacker for a number of ages, for example) - you'll have to find your style in the end to really hit your best play.


I will quickly note, you are an "attacker", not a "defender" - conform to your kingdom norms, but a lot of places run their pure attackers at 2:1 or higher off:def. Safe isn't stoping hits... safe is making you (and your kingdom) dangerous enough people don't want to hit you.

focus on ME is one way of doing it, max science, go forts and tg's and make sure to pay 200% none of wich will add to your nw. To high draft rate can hurt you more than it benifits since you need homes to get a decent BE, and that means fewer buildings you can allocate towards other buildings. I run a low nw/acre dryad and win out on my defensive build on most engagements, 20% GS + 15% hospitals is just something that is not possible for most if they want to rely on 50% homes, without homes you get stuck on 70% BE or less unless you run a Dwarf.

I always considder high homes provinces as containers of big military, it might seem impressive, but once you get there it is hard to sustain if you get hit a few times, low nw/acre and sustainability build is much more effective when facing of 1 vs 1 and the high nw/acre build has its value mainly in wars, if your kingdom frequently wars then you are building yourself strongly for that, if you spend a lot of time outside war then you might want to lower your nw/acre some.

My military science is definitely a weak point, I'm pumping it right now with Labs (+ revelation when I can get it). I'm not sure that it will completely bridge the gap though between my perceived power level and my opponents.

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Originally Posted by Maeldun

My military science is definitely a weak point, I'm pumping it right now with Labs (+ revelation when I can get it). I'm not sure that it will completely bridge the gap though between my perceived power level and my opponents.

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Yes, particularly as they will not be sitting still whilst you pump. If you would like to post your build / science I am happy to give input. I imagine you could improve your build. It would also help to know if you are trying to set your prov up for warring or not (for example, I am wondering why you have 3 raw tpa).

indeed it will be for warring, im an attacker. orders from monarch for next war is 3 tpa, 1 wpa, 7.5-8.5 dpa, ~11 epa. (so a bit above 70% draft for me).

my current build is 20% homes, 20% labs, 7% farms (dropping this as I can, could probably do 6% now), 10% hospitals, 10% banks, 12% guilds (wish this was higher but not going to try pumping wpa and sci at the same time). The rest is towers/stables/dungeons (about 14%). I have hospitals because I'm reasonably pumped right now and don't want too many losses while I do abduct attacks. Banks are for maintaining slow growth (I need 100-200 more acres for next war).

For war I'd immediately drop the labs, maybe shave some % from elsewhere (like guilds), and put it into hospitals, WTs, GSs (if im a likely target) or TGs (if I'm not a target yet).

As you can see I'm trying to pump sci, I'm a little behind as I joined this KD a couple weeks ago. If for example I wasn't pumping sci and has 20% in TGs/Forts, maybe I would feel stronger compared to other provinces, but still the numbers I've seen some put out is pretty impressive.

ok. Tpa sounds good then as it is for war. Outside war, you just have to accept that it inflates your nw a bit without any benefit to your military and that is probably a small part of why you are finding others' military more pumped.

Personally, I would drop the homes and run TGs instead. That would be more nw efficient. Your BE would drop a bit, so if necessary you can add a few % of other buildings, but a good chunk of your current buildings are not affected by BE anyway. Generally by this point in the age I probably wouldn't be running labs because abducts are a lot more effective now. If you are able to fit the labs whilst still doing abducts, then that's fine as it's a bonus to your science, but if the labs are compromising your ability to find abducts (ie because you could have other military buildings or more banks to support a higher draft) then I'd plan my build so that I am able to find decent abducts.