Age 91 Virtual Kingdom

SPEARHEAD

Avian: warrior
Faery: mystic
Halfling: rogue
Orc: cleric
Undead: tactician

ASSAULT

Elf: sage
Dark Elf: heretic
Dwarf: artisan
Elf: sage
Human: war hero

HQ

Avian: war hero
Dark Elf: cleric
Dwarf: tactician
Faery: mystic
Halfling: rogue

ASSAULT

Dark Elf: heretic
Dwarf: artisan
Elf: heretic
Human: artisan
Human: sage

SPEARHEAD

Avian: warrior
Faery: mystic
Halfling: rogue
Orc: cleric
Undead: tactician

Hello guys. This is the same as the revised-2 strat I posted yesterday. I must say it was not easy because I’m mulling over the prospect of elf heretics casting guile and popping mystic vortex. I’ve run provinces in critical stations and nw gateways, and if it wasn’t for my activity I’d have been dust. I say that because mystic vortex became more and more prominent as the ages past.
I’d be running a cleric, for instance, holding a nw position to protect our top. The enemy would begin with mystic vortex and I’d be scrambling every aspects of my experience in gaming to maintain my range. Three or more news pages of flack in a tick... you understand.

Almost a Faery Cleric

When it was clear dark elf doesn’t cast self spells rune free, I considered shuffling cleric to faery since that was the build in which I thwarted several invasions. Like the above commentary, I’ve had the halfling rogue drilling through illuminate shadows, clear sight and at least 15% watch towers, orc smash and faery mystic bombardment to still be holding position despite crippling losses.

Clear sight is no longer available to faery so it’s best to think offense when the aforementioned trio still hold the same abilities.

Dark elf cleric is efficient in a resource management aspect. I considered halfling cleric as well since it would be rampaging fun, but again, high penetration sabotage is paramount so I kept them all rogue. Divisionally, I’ve kept mystics and clerics together for the combination of pitfalls and wrathful smite. Since we know we can use mystic vortex in a friendly way, I like to keep builds together who can recast unique spells unto themselves. If we can do it so can the enemy.

Divisions: assault, hq & spearhead

The divisions are representative survivors of 5 separate dissolved kingdoms (this is a virtual template based in real experience).
Ideally, each division represents our most popular regions in Greenwich Mean Time: 1) Australia, 2) America/Canada, 3) Western Europe, 4) Eastern Europe, 5) Asia.

Kingdoms dissolve all the time, but there’s usually a core of players who stick together and migrate together. My endeavor is to give them a home where they can operate with the same passive teamwork in their own enclave. I’m going with the likelihood that players that stick together share similar time zones. I want players with busy lives to be able to play in an active, relatively competitive kingdom where the prime activity is when they sign on with their own division.

Each division should be at prime activity every 4.8 hours. It occurs to me this is what organized ghetto means. We get away from full kingdom waving toward what I call the elliptical wave.

The assault divisions are formulated to exert broad damage against enemy kingdom cores and run interference for the spearhead. The spearhead divisions have high concentration race/personalities to break the hardest provinces at tpa, wpa & military defense. The hq division is both leadership and organized support. In the event a particular division is falling short of its objectives, the HQ division fingers the scale. Everybody loses once in a while but I try to consciously win by eliminating the common ghetto flaws.

The division system allows for more intimate communication resulting in superior micro. General objectives may be issued to the division, but it is up to the 5 individuals to use their experience together to achieve objectives. The mightier the achievements the more we can contribute to the kingdom as a whole. The division system also encourages healthy competition in kingdom so perhaps the fragment of an honor kingdom can bring out the best in a fragmented war kingdom.

Each division will have a representative in council who will oversee a certain kingdom quality, like economy strats out of war, intel by snatch news collecting, diplomacy, air traffic control for the elliptical wave, and Human Resources to throw people under the bus.

PS: The first kingdom I landed in to run experiments was apparently breaking up. In chat I read a player lamenting that every time he joins a kingdom he likes it breaks up within 2 ages. Others wishing each other well and saying goodbyes. This goes along with what I experienced as a journeyman, going kingdom to kingdom. The biggest threat to player enjoyment was merging kingdoms being unaccepting of the culture of the dissolved kingdom: Think Endurance War Specialists as one example.

This is not the only way, but this is my solution.

Many Hands Make Light Work ~ Delegate

In reference to council, like the elliptical wave manager, there will be times that player might be overwhelmed. At my work I see times our dispatcher has 100 things in the air, and I remind her she should consider delegating some of the peripheral. Just the act of delegating familiarizes the novice with the complexity of a job, or keeps the old guard from getting rusty.

So when I mention intel gathering and distilling snatch news in comprehensive bullet points I’m suggesting that task be shared. An enthusiastic introvert may just be waiting to dive into a pile of esoteric ghetto drama, but what’s revealed will show you where all the pipes go in the game. When you can survey the globe from the underside you’ll see who targets who and why. But you need to get these types of play down to simple steps so it won’t discourage the player at the helm on a bad day.

The same with diplomacy. Your arch diplomat might be keen in debate and word gymnastics, so don’t burden them with all the responsibility unless they enjoy it. See if you can get a couple players to be feelers that report back to the main diplomat. They might be players who casually cruise for recruits, gather intel for the intel advisor, or a socialite on discord. I’ve known a few born salesman and it’s amazing seeing them matching skills and selling crap. Blue eyes and gleaming smiles go further than I would’ve thought.

Waving

How we wave is as much pageantry as it is strategy. Most of this virtual kingdom blends equal parts. The elliptical wave is both an act of strategy and a characteristic of the way I build, or pageantry.

Players locked into the notion of full kingdom waving every 12 ticks or so should enjoy the satisfying experience like watching the pneumatic press channel. It is effective macro and should be appreciated for the crushing blows it inflicts on enemies. The strategic weakness isn’t in the wave itself, but the perception of emptying all your barrels. This isn’t a mistake of experienced players, but more those who’ve witnessed full waves and wish to mimic the effects. What happens is it becomes culturally embedded and players who are great mechanics hone the wave, but fail to recognize the total objective. It becomes a kind of atrophy in that you’re doing it, your enemy is doing it, so no innovation other than mechanical streamlining takes place....until you encounter the “other”.

The elliptical wave is simply ghetto ragtagging sculpted into organized subgroups. It’s not my creation, as I’m sure some forms of alternative waving have always been around. I present my version as a muse; a way to shine light on the micro, and how great kingdoms sustain winning culture.

Most war kingdom waves are one massive spearhead and as such you can conceive the virtual kingdom as being 5 flanking operations. War kingdoms like Freeakstyle were great at micro. They themselves weren’t fanatics of micro, and freely admitted to me wars in which the enemy ran superior micro. They still won most of them. So what we’ve learned in one paragraph is that balance is key.

The divisions are marked spearhead or assault or hq as a rule of thumb and how they’re formulated. The fact is, any division can do the job of the other as opportunities arise. That is the essence of quality micro: opportunity.

For instance, the emphasis I put on dwarf artisan is their ability to have productive buildings in place well before the enemy waves at traditional wave sequences. The enemy can adjust and this action in itself depletes the full kingdom wave. So we act on opportunity, but we don’t just wait for opportunity to present itself; we take initiative. We dictate the pace or we counter what we expect based in the ‘ghost notes‘ of wave doctrine. I’ll admit this a finesse approach to utopian combat, but as a player in the situation I would act with rugged resolve.

Communication is huge and getting information that’s valuable is bafflingly overlooked. If one of our prime attackers has absorbed massive ops and sabotage damage we want to know “who” and we want to know ASAP. I can make them pay, and that’s not petty revenge. The opportunity to wreck a depleted t/m is a war shortening objective. If you get them down before they can replenish you’ve helped the guy after you. Sure, I’ve had players tell me “lots of names” but we want to know who did the vortex, the propaganda etc. Everybody can fireball a struggling fat attacker. This is why I’ve designated rovers and campers in the virtual kingdom. Again, a rover or camper is mostly in name only. The elliptical wave means we have a division on deck at least every 4.8 ticks. Remember, the spent enemy province just inhaled a lot of honor and hopefully wanted as much as possible. This is the hidden strength of the defensive graduation of having every race in kingdom. We can design the divisional wave to move that honor to the next most secure province on our roster. We can even set up our offense based in graduated honor acquisition, but that’s getting close to too much micro. It’s important that we know it exists so we can exploit as many flanks as the enemy fails to shield.

If you wanna join a fun relaxed kd just let me know ole buddy ole pal. Always got a slot open for ya. Miss you and your networth gap talks in the chat haha

Thank you, tras19. It’s suddenly been a while hasn’t it?

I can no longer play up to my own expectations. All the years I’ve worked in a freezer has taken a toll on my neck(feels like a stack of broken lollipops and sounds like it to), my commute is longer, and downtime is shorter. It’s tough going from utopia to cat videos, but nobody said aging is pretty.

If I was going to play I’d go straight to you, and I’d remind all those people to watch the damn gaps ;D!

Pop me a message here and there; I still live vicariously through hearing what’s going on.

Thief Squandering

Call it a tangent, but I was always perplexed by the willingness of most kingdoms to needlessly squander thief populations in their own kingdom in war.

There have been so many occasions I can’t count; where in kingdom we’d had 3 to 7 tacticians(when tacs had accurate intel) and none would touch intel. Even when asked they’d do SoT which is great if I’m a t/m and absolute garbage if I’m an attacker. So the monarch would ask me and others to grab intel as a warrior or cleric, what have you. This is an utter waste of kingdom assets that in simplest terms is the ghettoest act this side of fake war.

To be superior in the field of espionage and sabotage is one of the three mechanical means of winning.

Let’s look at faery this age, who happens to be able to grab accurate intel. Faery will always be targeted where their perceived weakness is, by flat statistical value, at thief defense. They’re elite is a 3/6 and their bonus is +30% wpa. Conversely, they have a muted birth rate. I know I’m being a square, but this is the build that gathers intel at its most efficient and preserves its precious tpa for defense. I’m not saying there aren’t alternative builds to mystic, but that 8% of the current utopian players chose faery mystics.

When you are doing something predictable because it’s efficient, you have to consider the remaining 8% of the faery mystics out there are in enemy kingdoms. You might get colorful with how you march or what you cast, but should resist the urge to ape what rogues do best. Unless you’ve got abundances to refuel or you’re in desperate straights, the long play is in keeping that tpa as sharp as possible.

Where it’ll go wrong is the faery t/m asking or expecting non-accurate provinces to gather intel. So now provinces start burning stealth and losing tpa, for a faery who imagined themselves a 3 headed monster. It can be done, sure. But what if my side isn’t squandering
troops in the form of thieves and instead lets that kingdom bang its head against a brick wall? Well, halflings can use credits for thieves, but everyone else has to pay for them. And most wont bother replacing the thieves they’ve lost because they have a trite view of economic utility.

We don’t always do what is efficient, but when we don’t we should do it with the intent of being effective. That works if you’re trying to be unpredictable, which is a fuzzy, shadowy world of efficiency. It’s called feel. There aren’t too many out there who’ve mastered feel.

Stick to what works when it’s your soft spot.