What are the best strategies for winning wars? Include your thoughts on setup/positioning strategy, fighting tactics, and methods of getting wars. What are optimal number of thief mages vs pure attackers and how do these ratios affect the outcomes?
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What are the best strategies for winning wars? Include your thoughts on setup/positioning strategy, fighting tactics, and methods of getting wars. What are optimal number of thief mages vs pure attackers and how do these ratios affect the outcomes?
My position on this is not from a leader perspective but from being on the losing side of war.
In my opinion the best setup for war is based in the classic AMA and the modified AMA/CR war array comprised of economy top provinces that can attack, higher mid shelf consisting of success rate based t/ms and finally a durable core.
For war, I look at classic Freakstyle as the benchmark to break. We first have to understand the pincer and its remarkable strength. The strategy isn't to out pincer the pincer but to push the joints apart through mid nw/acre supremacy.
The main tactic is nw/acre zone control backed with selective chaining and ever shifting micro through intel and initiative.
So far...why?
Because, independently, in several long wars from top to bottom I've employed such tactics. In other words, embodying the AMA fundamental, by controlling the center has resulted in my perpetual sustain or victory. Of all the unknown wave bosses out there, a friend of mine executed these pragmatic strategies in a war a number of ages ago.
Mind you, I'm employing an attacker not a t/m as primary leverage at center. Conversely, at anytime I've been in war from an attacker top position, I've never surrendered top position from the opponent. Only by attacks from outside forces have I ever had a top attacker rendered to midrange. This is why I have confidence in the triangular echelon arrangement: I've done it myself in microcosm. I'm self regulating gains and I'm doing it without bots and no advanced com system. I point this out because if I'm not using a sim, bot, advanced com or deep math and facing kingdoms that do, it means you can do it to...and better.
I've got a lot more to say but it's 1am.
Quick Pointers:
Chaining is a tactic not a strategy & there's cross chaining.
Thieves are freaking important. SN is the least understood weapon.
Top feeder kingdom builds should be implemented in any kingdom that stinks at diplo.
Everybody needs to go to randoming school and take refreshers.
Dwarves are important because they build faster than most avian tacs unique.
Humans are important because the economy keeps giving you second chances.
Don't run a bunch of crapola economy provinces and choose crappy dragons.
Get'em is plan B because plan A never works. Trust 40 years of D&D experience.
Wackamole is Get'em and equivilent to fighting a thousand orcs in a doorway.
Several thoughts:
- How do you war depends on at what stage of the age you war. In our oop war we fought against a KD which started Expedient ritual but we decided to go with Godspeed. They sent us ruby dragon(after ~30h of war) we sent gold drake(after ~15h of war). We lost. They had much better economy and were able to train a lot specs and they got 9 attackers above 30k off where we had only 4. Latter age I don't think that will be possible with the same rituals/drake(early age specs are worth more than elites).
- Ratios of attackers/pure tms/hybrids depends a lot on: activity, age changes, personal abilities/preferences. After all it's a game - give people to play what they want :). Personally I prefer to play a pure t/m because it's much harder and you need a lot of patience to make a good one.
- I think the best way to find a war is to be a 23/24 provs KD. You can war almost anyone in the 22-25 range.
- Best strategy to win a war - secure UB, control enemy's peasants via ops/spells, deep chain high off attackers :).
- Fighting tactics - sacrificing attackers in the middle of the war to massacre open t/m. I had one war where the enemy was winning early and at some point their faery and elf attacked and open themselves for massacres. We did 5 masses on them and turn the war around. We lost in land by around 10k but we won in NW. Another thing is to consider when you are strong - early war(first 48-50h), mid war(50-96h) or late(longer than 96h). How long war can you fight with your activity and setup etc.
I'm sure there'll be lots of debate and great contributions from everyone regarding strategy and set ups, and there'll be great information there from some of the best minds in the game.
But, that said, I think this thread would be of great benefit to provinces and leaders just starting out or figuring out at a lower level, for which discussions on "controlling the middle" "breaking nw chains" and how the "optimal" t/m attacker split differs depending on setup opponent etc. might not be the most useful starting out.
Just for the first page, though, I'd like to offer the following: (BTW Bo To's general advice "secure UB, control enemy's peasants via ops/spells, deep chain high off attackers" is excellent and yes is the basic template.
On the ideal set up, I'd like to offer this as the bog-standard I think newer KDs trying to make a ghetto into a good KD should consider (for a 22 prov set up).
2-3 Mystics (Elf, DE, Faery), 3-4 Rogues (Bocans/Halfers), 13-15 Orcs. Mystics and Rogues to be always 25% bigger than all of the attackers.
This is not optimal or the best, and as I'm sure will be mentioned, this will be missing many key roles that get utilized in more advanced wars, and most of the most successful warring KDs won't actually run this.
But, it's the best starter build in my opinion, to make the jump from ghetto to warring tier and to improve upon.
This will give you access to magic ops, thief ops, and a solid but simple attacker core. So you can gain experience in using spells, using ops, chaining and surviving chains. Then, it's really just 1) use mystics to cast MS + fireball (rogues can fb too) for econ control, 2) Rogues to prop, GA, AW, NS to damage enemy mystics and/or tankier attackers, 3) Orcs to deep-chain enemy high off attackers, 4) Mystics/rogues to get and stay unbreakable and then keep everoyne else afloat with their economy.
Then you learn and improve from there: for example for KD set up
You'll also learn from kd set up, i.e. how many enemies you can cover with ms, how many fireballs you can do etc. with that 2-3 of mystics - how much damage you can do, and then you can use that experience to adjust up and down, same goes for rogues and attackers. Start with that template to learn what you can achieve, and then you can adjust - if you feel like you're comfortable completing chains with less attackers, but feel like you're missing econ control - add more mages. If you feel like you more than meet your magic requirements, but can't get needed ops out, add more rogues etc.
You'll also learn more, imo, from experiencing enemy counters to that basic set up than you will just from reading about it. I.e. the first time you get your rogues massacred, or your mystics AWed, or your chained orcs starved for land by turtling enemies. This standard set up is NOT a perfect do-it-all set up that counters every enemy set up, but what it does do is give you a little bit of everything in your arsenal so you can learn to use it - but just as importantly, also has a little bit of every weakness so you can see counters in action.
Once you get more comfortable, you can try swapping in some of those orcs for dwarves, and get experience using turtling attackers, or swap in some hybrids and learn about the relative tradeoffs.
But if anyone reading this is a newer monarch of a newer KD looking to improve their game, I recommend first getting your KD to conform to that base, then tweak as you gain experience =)
*I know, everyone will probably laugh at this at being so elementary, but I do still see ghettoes where half the KD are t/ms, or have a bunch or orc mystics and elf warriors or a solitary rogue, or only one mystic - and NOT by design, so I think it's still valuable for this boring old set up to be up here for everyone to see.
join carnage
I agree with Bo To and changeling. For most KDs, I wouldn't say what changeling said is basic in terms of actually pulling that off. There's no point having very complex plans if the basics aren't working.
We could probably usefully add something about target selection. Choosing the right people to chain / op etc makes a big difference.
I could probably ramble on for quite a bit, but this basically sums it up by BoTo:
Best strategy to win a war - secure UB, control enemy's peasants via ops/spells, deep chain high off attackers :).
--
When I used to play in the warring tier, I'd always try and have my TMs at like 110-120% of kingdom average, with 2-3 attackers the same size and then a bunch of attackers a bit smaller. Generally I ran very TM-heavy kingdoms, and I think this is where most kingdoms drop the ball. I've been in wars where we got out-chained by a lot (Ruthless) and in wars where my attackers just got stomped and destroyed by the enemy.
Last age we ran with 18 DE Mystics and 7 Faery Rogues (could be 19/6 or 17/8). Either way, we obviously aimed for very heavy TM-power. We werent able to effectively chain as we lacked the coordination for NM waves. We pretty much got stomped on the attacker-front, but we managed to secure like 6 faeries who were TM. As we managed to outgrow them (landlust) we could build economy + train offense on them. Our DEs all got massacred to bits (and I'm talking down to 0.2 raw wpa and stuff). In the end, because we had a long-term goal of building/outgrowing our Faeries and growing economy on those, we managed to secure the win.
In other ages, we've gone with like 20 pure attackers, and just overpowered enemy kingdoms. In another age, we ran a bunch of tacticians and this allowed us to outpace the enemy. Eventually this led to us lapping the enemy in attacks, meaning we could hit just after their wave, and return before their wave. This gave us a 'free' round of massacres on the enemy TMs.
To answer your question, there is no one strategy that beats them all. Generally, I'd say you want your TMs > their TMs. If your attackers get stomped, so be it. But by the time your attackers are down, the TMs should be out of range of enemy attackers. Once that happens, it's a very costly process to bring TMs down.
Dont under-estimate the power of economy. And offense. Economy wins wars. Offense wins wars.
The most important advise I can give you is to select something you want to be good at (short (48 hr), mid (48-96 hr) or long term (96hr+) warring, speed, economy, raw power, thievery, magic, difficult to chain, ..) and build a strategy around that. I've had a setup with 24/24 Halfling. I've had a setup built around orcs, around avians and tacticians. You are doomed to fail if you dont plan how to win. If you suck at TM-coordination, pick a bunch of races and personalities that are either very durable against enemy TMs, or able to quickly level the playing field by running a bunch of massacres at opening wave. If you hate doing NM-waves, dont build a setup that requires heavy chains to be effective, if you .....
Oh, and activity. Activity wins wars too. Leadership activity is the most important there is. Be online to ask people to burn their stealth/mana. Message them when troops are about to return. Send them gc pre-tick 'just in case'. An active/good leader can almost single handedly win a war. I'd rather have 21 sheep and a leader than 25 'pros' who dont talk.
I've also liked to war with less provinces against more provinces. This gives me a slightly bigger average province size vs less stealth/mana/attacks. It works really well to build your TMs out of enemy range. Numbers are definitely not always superior.
Regards,
NighT
Once you play this game long enough you realize there are 100 different ways to play and win. It's about execution and team Work most of the time. Some keys to winning, avoid scum bag kingdoms, build unbreakables and most importantly play as a team. One or two solo players can lose a war for you. Like I tell my guys a bad plan with everyone working together is better then a good plan with only 50% working together. ;)
One very simple strategy is to make sure every enemy province is breakable by means of wpa, tpa or marching. Often I'll find apparent enemy UBs ignored. The point is that an enemy broken by one means can be made breakable by all three.
I'm calling attackers that clear zones as "running interference". Your killers and t/m breakers are generally open to enemy attacks so I'm addressing the roving large economy provinces as interference types.
In The Virtual Kingdom I break the kingdom into divisions to simplify communication and cut down on wave drag. This is directed at less experienced kingdoms that don't understand the counter measures enemies may use to derail kingdom timed waves.
I'll emphasize that some tactics that kingdoms avoid are pure hearsay. For instance, NM is fine as an individual use barrage. You don't need to NM wave. You can use NM to achieve extra taps to place an enemy province in max gains for an attacker who might be ripe for chaining. As an individual elf cleric I would NM/NS an enemy and offer him up to one of our attackers while I attack another to compress a like nw enemy. This was done in Jerks so we were warring enemies of some reputable might. I learned this tactic from a ghetto mute who handled himself with barely any communication in kingdom. He was reportedly a grumpy old man and acted the part the few times he expressed himself in kingdom chat.
Usually runes and mana give you a lot of different options to handle a situation. If you want to do something that is not only beneficial but a very strong choice, you need to compare your action with a very good alternative. This is very hard to see as a single province. You might do a strong tactical decision by NM an attacker a few times, but on the other hand you might lose on the strategic front, where your king needed you for example to ET enemy thieves or fireball an enemy UB province. IMO these kind of tactics are not usually avoided because of hearsay, but because they are inefficient or dont fit very well into the long term strategy. Using these king of tactics often is an invitation for selfish people to act like a maverick instead of a teamplay.
Everybody makes mistakes, leadership does most mistakes, because there are people who actually need to make decisions all the time. In my experience its better for the kingdom and outcome of a war to follow a bad decision as a team than to make a lot of good decisions alone.
This has ups and downs. Maverick style players can inflict a lot of damage, achieve some very tactical things on their own. If you have 90% of the team following strategy, following orders, things like ET shouldn't be so lacking. Sometimes however your maverick has split armies hitting max gains while your chains are starving for land, and sitting at max mana. I think it's rare to need 100% to pull off your strategy, if you plan around it. You aren't fighting below 100%.
If you plan around it, that is true as a good leader in that situation would adopt an achievable strategy based on the resources they have (ie the people who will follow the strategy). However if you give that leader another 10% resources, they could adopt a better strategy. So I am firmly of the view that you are indeed fighting below 100%. Perhaps above 90% (if you have 10% maverick), but nonetheless below 100%.
As the KD on the other side of that war NightT talked about (Just checked our records, and to let you know she's not exagerrated, we did min 20 massacres, max 32 - average around 25 massacres on each one of 18 DE Ms =P That's a loooott of massacres, and had them all dropped to like 2k off specs in offense max. and this was in mid-age), I'd just like to second everything NighT says =P
Knowing your strengths, short, mid, long-term and having a plan for each, recognizing your enemy's strong point, and figuring out how to effectively counter or parlay your strengths to cover a weaker stage in the war is important.
One thing I want to stress from NighT's post, and NighT's T/M core was masterful, is the importance of having highly skilled and active T/Ms. T/Ms are really underrated in terms of difficulty and importance, probably because they have a low barrier of entry but high skill cap.
A bad inactive attacker will get destroyed of course, but past a minimum there's not that much more utility extra activity and experience can add to an attacker. An attacker has a higher minimum level of activity to be somewhat useful in a war, but gets capped out, where an attacker that can be online 20 hours a day and knows everything won't be that much more effective than someone who logs in just 3-4 times a day.
T/Ms may appear to be more forgiving on the low end, i.e. you're unbreakable so no need to worry about logging in late, you can skip a chain, just log in once a day to get MS out, or some ops - and you'll meet your minimum and contribute to the war effort and won't get your prov destroyed. However, for a T/M there is far more increasing value if you are able to be super active and have lot's of experience and know what you're doing. So, don't underestimate T/Ms and try to develop a solid core of experienced T/Ms who can be flexible and active.
Developing a solid attacker base that can follow orders, chain, and be chained, and that'll get you from ghetto to warring tier. After that though, it's developing a solid T/M base that'll move you further up.
Times Zones. All about the Time Zones.
/end thread xD jk
-DM <3
That's part of The Virtual Kingdom divisional array. I'm just not offering the breadth of information each age because I'm compartmentally lazy. It's part of the Eliptical Wave.
It was mentioned that individual techniques in war might not serve the greater good. This depends on the structure of the overall strategy. Observe the war between 7:19 and 6:12.
What you're seeing from the orc driven core of 6:12 is what I'm doing in micro. There are roughly 13 provinces occupying a nw area that all belong to 6:12. Follow because this how you achieve permanent and critical chaining.
The achievement of the nw zone through chaining itself is nearly impossible but is the manner in how most kingdoms war. That is, chaining doesn't achieve this. There's a window you work from that's a bit more complex than max gains, but hardly complicated. Your interest doesn't lie in going bonkers for acres, but in preservation of the overall functionality of the zone occupying force.
Essentially all your doing is creating a zone of monitoring, a nw/acre sweep or firing arc. Intuition is your friend because the t/ms will come after you once they see the machine in action. Once the zone is established your responsibilities are compressing the enemy chained to both reduce their gains potential and their economic ratio. You're in a position to chain enemies above you in land/nw. Obviously the more friends that occupy the zone the more concentrated the chain effect will be. You now have positioned yourself not unlike a D&D fighter in a hallway vs the enemy horde. Where did I get that from? 40 years of gaming teaches you mechanical Pig Latin.
The initial 8 race 8 persona alignment of Utopia was very similar to the double row alignment of chess. The back row is your non-core role-players. The devs have deviated from that fundamental principal but I find it an interesting advancement.
We have many kingdoms who run their waves as if there was no such thing as a flank. Observing the top war between 6:12 and 7:19 I'm endeavoring to show the uninitiated that flanks do exist in Utopia. If you can see the flank then you know there's a spearhead, you know there's an assault, and in the interest of my individual efforts, urban warfare(house to house, room to room).
I freely admit that when i read your posts, I have to read them twice to absorb everything xD To this day I'm still never quite sure if it's all acid-induced free flow or the tangent of pure genius lol. Either way, I totally get what your'e saying this time despite the metaphors, makes perfect sense, and I'm somewhat spooked ;D
-DM <3
It was anticipated.
So The Virtual Kingdom operates with each division having objectives that they pursue "in house". This means each division makes its own plan to achieve its objective. The theory here is that micro will be more efficient and timely, serving the macro.
There are 5 divisions, each division includes 5 provinces.
There are 5 council members, each division has one representative.
The division array is comprised of 2 spearhead, 2 assault and 1 support.
They operate on a wave ellipse incorporating a possible 5 and minimum 3 GMT frames.
The division system is based in prime wave times from all 3 major time zones and 2 tertiary.
There are cultural foundations that bring order to The Virtual Kingdom. The theory is to bring 5 players each from 5 different kingdoms together. These can be from failed kingdoms or kingdoms during an age off. The point in this merge is to preserve the inherent teamwork that keep these players together. Thus, we want these divisions to operate independently AND be part of the whole. ~ The influence was big city Burroughs with their Chinatown and Little Italy. ~
Additionally, there will be the expected healthy competition between divisions. The hope is that one division learn from the other.
In summary this is my version of controlled chaos. The Virtual Kingdom looks like a ghetto, appears to wave like a ghetto and to be fragmented in its objectives like a ghetto. The wave ellipse brings a mutating adaptation based in my experience running uniques. There is a real time capital in being close to the action tick by tick.
We might start discussing diplomacy, pump and prime declaration. These are the winning directives of the higher tiers. Mechanical brilliance is expected at that level. I've gone through a few top pump whoring cycles but I'd prefer a top player advise in this area.
Threads been up long enough i figure i got some free time to comment :D
This.... I might tweak the wording to Secure safe provs, control enemy econ, remove enemy offense as a more general wording. Nights wordings is more in line with the classsic freakstyle setup that doesnt take as much skill to run, just ALOT of skill to determine racial makeup/mix compared to normal kds. To that end
are a TON of different setups able to do this, but every war comes down to ---safe provs, better econ, enemy lossing offense compared to your def.
Getting back to this
i'll summarize my thoughts.
i personally cant really judge these types of questions beyond the t/m v pure attacker #'s because they all boil down to which setup is able to "Secure safe provs, control enemy econ, remove enemy offense" better. Oftentimes science/honor/size alone can determine this better than anything else :|
As for the attacker v t/m #'s what it boils down to me is either
1.you use a few t/m setup (typically more hybrid focused) where you can simply overwhelm the enemy with your attackers and out econ quick (keeping your own safe)
-here you simply ignor the enemy t/m's because you know u can outpump the damage they do and start massacring them if they have more than you can deal with in nw range before "winning"
-The number of t/m's and hybrids you run is 100% based on how many you need to "Speed up" chaining/training via say nm/ns/prop.....and how "Safe" your acres/econ are once you grow
2.You run a heavy t/m setup where u grind out a win.
-here you need to be able to deal with the enemy t/m's using your own t/m's via ops AND be able to completely remove the enemy attackers as a threat
-Here its more important remove ALL enemy econ than to build your own additional econ. over time low training and high military losses add up and u start pulling ahead.
On this I agree with Persain just said in that it's really hard to be more specific than what has been said. There are tons of ways to win and different set ups to suit each of those ways. Ultimately it comes down to working out what you would like your plan to be and then building a set up around that. Part of what is optimal for whatever your strategy is depends on the game mechanics / dynamics - the comparison between t/ms vs attackers vs hybrids changes each/most age.
I would say that for a less experienced KD, it is easier to create a plan and stick to the plan if you have mostly pure attackers and a few hybrids / t/ms, because you have fewer parts of the strategy to pull together and are less dependent on KD members to follow the plan (ie with attackers, you need them to successfully attack the right target, which is hopefully a relatively low hurdle. With a hybrid set up you need that plus people to do the right ops and have their provs set up well enough at the start that they can succeed with the ops etc).
I'm amused that the strategy mod, presumably chosen for his game knowledge and experience, has posted this thread and then abandoned it.
Doesn't seem to be contributing anything as a mod?
Probably scrapping war strats from kds so that emeriti can have a successful oop one of these days.
I'd also like to stress the importance of building strategy in a war. And especially, hospitals, GS, and WTs.
Those are the buildings that let you keep what you have in the long run. If you're jumping into war without appropriate levels of those key buildings, it doesn't matter (to a degree) how much more offense/defense you have than the other side, a KD with proper building set up can outlast you in the long-run.
Communication - Organisation - Strategy - Build - Setup
Spies - Informers - Moles - Operatives - Sleepers
Aquaseafoam simply posed a question, and simply answering that question is moot. We all know we need oxygen, and to improve on that you exercise, eat right and get plenty of sleep.
The real question is what gets you there. The answer to that is deeper. Oh I get that "simplicity is the best way" but simple how? In practice I'd venture most aren't prepared to share because they're too worried about winning. Let me explain:
Sometimes when asked about which kingdom we should war I've told my many monarchs I'll fight anyone. What I really mean is I want the unwinnable wars. I want the wars against the best competition regardless of my kingdoms condition and that's why I tell my monarchs that my opinion isn't important.
Winning is irrelevant to me in that I've no interest in warring a kingdom that will most probably lose. It would be easy for me to obtain a leadership role and look for ill equipped kingdoms to stuff my ego full of empty victories. I have to express this because I've been in maybe 100 kingdoms from top 5 to the last. I've seen all their weaknesses and know their limits in war.
It's that some feel winning is hard and it's not. Most of what keeps kingdoms from winning is unwillingness to adapt and be truthful to their potential. You can be in a semi-active winning kingdom if you know that the leverage of winning is based in the principals we all seem to be answering with "exercise, eat right and get plenty of sleep". Of coarse of coarse, securing UB.
Ok, so how do you secure UB? The mistake most kingdoms make is chaining as their first strategic idiom. This "works"(? It really doesn't) within the lower tier framework because they all subscribe to this. What I'm saying is chaining highest offense is a culture like cargo cults. Nobody really knows why they're doing this except that it looks mechanically like a good idea. But since both sides are doing it you end up having an activity contest.
It's like the defensive balance is forgotten and the relationship that these things are one. Persain knows this because I'm privy to his fundamental kingdom design. I'm not aware of his strategic methods, which is good, but I'm aware of the cards he prefers to play.
My methods are as much pageantry as strategy. There's a glorification and a straightening of lines when I'm in my element. I don't pretend to be a kingdom overlord. I've never joined a kingdom to experience winning. I've joined winners to see what they do to win, but I find the environment uncomfortable because it often requires you to embrace advantages over challenges.
So you see how to pump. It's not hard if you do diplomacy. You do diplomacy based directly to your potential in whoring not warring. Warring kingdoms might exchange diplomacy but it's your relationship with top predators that dictates what is virtually UB. Do your taxes and pretend to be a badass.
Pumping: I've retained a top pump strat formula that I can't read because I'm terrible at math. But I did go through pump cycles and eyeballed the equations. Funny thing is I came out a little fat just like I do anywhere else but my resource yield was well in excess of my contemporaries. So in my first pump I end up sending gold to other attacker provinces that underperformed, sent 3 mil to the dragon and had the rest of my excess held by UBs. Let me remind you that a province with a great tb is easier to dig out.
In war my orc cleric would end up going it alone. As one war went on and our advantageous position faded I was promised aid that never arrived. My acres were razed to over 80% unbuilt and I never requested aid for the entirety of that war and all wars I spent in top kingdoms.
What My Top Kingdom Did Right: diplomacy.
The top I was in had basic rules of engagement. If the random you attacked retaliates you tell leadership and they will instruct from there. This is very good. Even though I'm experienced and know how to random in relative safety, I appreciate this level of infrastructure. Generally they were trying to secure CF from the retaliating entity. I was never randomed in a top kingdom just so you might understand the pump potential associated with good diplomacy.
What My Top Kingdom Did Wrong: war micro.
It became evident to me quickly that my war leaders weren't war savvy. They knew a great deal about mechanics but didn't understand the struggle in the many facets that I've faced. What might those be?
Singlehandedly derailing waves and countering derailing attempts.
Recognizing the true heart of the enemy kingdom.
Overbearing control over experienced players.
Telegraphing their every move because they micro'd too intensely.
Unfamiliar with setting pace, taking initiative and killer instinct.
Spies - Lies - Informers - Moles - Operatives - Sleepers - Farms
I know, really. But I digress.
The World Needs Gyros
One dimension that flies in the face of the discipline crowd is the influence of great players in the right place. Some of the most memorable moments I've had in Utopia was witnessing great t/m play, both for and against my side.
Against my side I recall a halfer who in essence carried her kingdom on her back with the havoc she created in a losing cause. She had no quit in her and I remember messaging her to explain that she was the last one standing as her kingdom was shattered. We triangulated her, tried to shut her down but she was so resourceful it really came down to everyone in her kingdom being a shambles.
On my side was a t/m who like many had some activity issues, but not the no-show type, just a busy fellow. When he logged on it was like a surge hit the kingdom. He'd go hunting and aid us through our enemies, strike them where we needed a break and lay down bombardment on enemy trouble spots. His situational grasp was immediate and he just had a knack for getting the most mileage from his resources.
It's in these moments when I see the flaws in wave culture. There's an aspect of OCD that runs deep in the type of player attracted to Utopia; it's a mathematical game. But many times these mechanical truisms aren't accommodated by innovation. Most only work within the frame of their chosen understanding and then hone it to razor sharp. This is all well if the strategy is sound to near perfect. Often it isn't, it simply works because the prevailing culture is chain wave. Basically I'm saying that the kingdom that has higher activity at wave time and exercises it in trite yet flawless execution tends to win.
This has rarely been a teaching virtue, it's just a neat looking time value practice. If we think about it the wave was probably devised with overall efficiency in mind, but not optimal efficiency. It's just nobody spends time to regard origins. Well that's what I'm doing. So when I'm looking at derailing waves it can be as simple as delaying the spearhead or prelude to the march. If I'm so cruel that I should delay the initiation of the first MV, that I'm screwing people at work or people that are up at 3am....even I have mercy.
So what I've seen are mercurial players, unbridled and executing with abandon. I love this. I love the morale of people with hero fixation. In the world of t/ms I do enjoy an artillery battery but the masters will always be the ones who take the game to a new level through insight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s1Jsz1lj1Y
Another type of t/m we had many ages ago was a young lady who went by the name Little Red Ridinghood. She was euro and could only log on for brief moments. She always greeted us with "hi" and 5 minutes later "bye;)". She played a faery and started this tradition of spending all her mana and all her stealth on one hapless enemy. When she was done they'd be a smoking heap of ruin. It was the funniest thing seeing some healthy enemy completely mangled by her tornado like fury.
We didn't want to control her; her freedom was more effective.
As a corollary to Strat0castle's point above, I'd like to mention a Rumsfeld quote I'm fond of. "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have."
Know your KD, and it's people and their capabilities and constraints.
There's no point learning about say the perfect NM wave and alternating hits and setting up a perfect networth chain if you know that half your DEs and your middle networth attackers have only a 50% chance of making it to a wave, or planning on a coordinated rogue GA/Prop wave needing precise timing and coordination if u know one of your t/ms only logs on for 5 mins. Work with what you have, plan your strategy around winning with a realistic expectation of your kingdom's capabilities, and make sure you slot your provinces into your plan in the position that will maximize their impact based on their actual abiltiies, not on what you wish their abilities were. To do otherwise just causes unneeded stress.
For example, if you know you're going to war with StratOcastles's T/M, there's no point designing a strategy based on, for example coordinating with your other 2-3 rogues to MV and GA a Faery Mystics WTs and burn up saved stealth within a short time period. Keeping her in that rigid strategy might well be a waste, since she'll log on and CS + Wts will be back up, and you won't have time to communicate and check surveys and coordinate a better action within those 5 minutes. Knowing her limitations, just use her, for example, to NS an attacker with no WT, or to FB an enemy rogue - basically a position that maximizes her damage without the need for finessed timing and that fits with the player.
That said, and I'd be happy to debate this Strat0castle, there's a difference between recognizing and facilitating creative thinking, and not exercising control when needed.
As to your example about the highly effective halfling, freedom and flexibility isn't an inherently bad thing, it can let provinces seize time-sensitive opportunities that may be missed if waiting for a top-down order. That said, for that to work, I think you need to 1) have sufficient communication to ensure that the province to whom you are entrusting with independence and freedom actually understands the strategy in the war, both long-term and short, and both the objective and why that objective.
I think, a real-world military example would be, for example:
You want your infantry to surround enemy tanks on a hill, because you have your tank destroyers en route, and want to make sure they're trapped there long enough for you to destroy them.
If you go with limited communication, micro-managed orders, you might instruct your infantry to make a precise 360 degree circle, 3000 yards from enemy tanks, dig trenches, and remain in position until 06:00 without telling them why. They'll suffer catastrophic losses, but they'll get the job done, and delay the tanks until your tank destroyers arrive and objective achieved. However, by not giving information or the opportunity to take the initiative, that means your infantry commanders might not be able to take advantage of the fact that they notice, when they arrive, that there's a nice easy bridge that's the only way off the hill, and they could just blow it up and trap the tanks without suffering huge losses.
However, at the same time, if you don't communicate the strategy effectively, or the infantry commander does not fully comprehend the full implications, you might, for example have just told him "Surround the enemy tanks on the hill, we want to get rid of them, you are ordered to surround them at X yards, but you have freedom to act differently." That plucky infantry commander might decide he sees an opportunity to get closer and launch a full on charge against the tanks, drive them off the hill, and then emerge victorious announcing that they had managed to capture the hill all by themselves! However, what he was missing is you never wanted the hill in the first place, you wanted to destroy the tanks - and that "victory" cost you the bigger the victory of taking out tanks, and you would have been better with the tightly restricted orders.
So it's important to recognize, if you want a province to take initiative whether you sufficiently communicated and the player sufficiently understands the broader goals.
A simple Utopia example, would be, for example, you're deep chaining an attacker to remove offense. Simple easy-to-follow order, would be, all attackers, trad X as soon as your army is back until I say stop. It's a blunt hammer, but it works. However, if you further explain, goal is to reduce his offense by X and explain all the various ways to do that, you might miss a smart attacker for example, noticing noone's armies are back same tick as him, and if he waited 30 minutes he can catch X with army home. Or, noting that attacker returns home right after tick, and quickly stealing gold would trap army at home, or that no t/ms with large gold stocks were around and a raze might do more damage to his population space, or that you could do 4 ambushes (and kill off offense) and make it back before him to land further attacks. But at the same time, you have to recognize which players you can entrust to make the right call, and which attackers you cannot (i.e. someone who just hears that oh razing right before army back if low on gold does more damage, and just lands 4 razes and finding himself destroyed 12 ticks later, or choosing to massacre the enemy when he's at home, or, with only offense to hit before the army returns, but can only conquest afterwards - and not understanding conquest does less damage).
Or in the T/M sphere, for example - you might give the order to NS X, because you want to drop his offense quickly when his army is back to stop him from opening up on a t/m with defense just under his offense. You want to make sure your experienced t/ms know the why and goal of the actions, so that they can dynamically, for example steal horses the minute they get home to achieve the same goal more efficiently, or recognize when the attacker is negative income and steal jsut enough gold to trap at home the tick before.
But I just want to stress that, "letting a brilliant player do his/her thing" isn't just sitting back and letting a smart player make all the decisions and win the war for you, that doesn't work and will backfire more often than not. But if anything, takes even more work from you to make sure that strategy is communicated and understood, and that the output of that player is still managed and directed, just that you're using goal-based management, not micro-management.
Well said, changeling, and a worthwhile read.
Thanks Strat0castle, and I just want to stress I emphasized the need to make sure you communicate your strategies fully and in great detail to truly extract value out of flexibility in your KD members, because from everything I've seen from you - you definitely do that! And just wanted to stress that I find that part critical.
It's that I can't approach Utopia from a pure winning perspective.
There are things in life that get lost in translation. Things that are hard to convey to the Internet generation they don't notice in their conduct. I'm not speaking about superiority, this has to do with nuances and intuition.
I'm often telling younger players they're not using their dimmer switch. That full blast and off aren't the only approaches. Because they haven't developed what's known as mellowing they react literally and in square waveform.
Thus, I find deep explanation of strategy rather tedious.
You might understand if I explained in D&D 4th generation the game took on a very dogmatic illustration of game mechanics. Each character was very deep in complexity. I'd spend time researching my fellow players options just to keep up. A few did the same as me.
Follow this:
Others did not do broad research into shared mechanics or specifics to fellow players. This is where character conception and the mechanical world meet. Burt was our leader and had a very defined way of conducting himself. Namely, in combat he would engage the most dangerous perceivable threat regardless of destiny. He often was heavily outmatched. But the orbital strategy was set: we will engage insurmountable threats and we will adapt to consume the theater of battle or be consumed. This is team work.
Because our leader would set a reliable precedence in every conflict we were free to evolve our execution and strategy around the understanding that we will engage and the central threat will be confronted. He was the flag we planted right in our enemies face and we fought furiously around defending that flag. Me and the deeper students intermingled our ability in fairly sophisticated ways, but there was also a flare for creativity driven by desperation.
We learn from tough opponents by observing their way of being. In freedom we learn by trying....
Does it need to be said? Yes, because it is by lack of intuition that we are here. Being in a wave dialing up the correct responses and executing as quickly as possible feeds a feeling of accomplishment. It doesn't offer room for epiphany.
I spent my ghetto time in seeing the great waves and the timing and the reasoning... and then I had an avian tac with mystic aura, mana and lots of runes. I found out I could begin punching holes in the nw alignment. I found out I could spam mystic aura and stop the majority of spells aimed my way. I found my speed aloud me to step up my wave counter tactics and I begin to spin the first pulsed uniques. I later learned that this wasn't new. Someone asked me if I was an old player(old Utopian) because he hadn't seen that style in years.
But in that genesis there was no partner, no sparkle of comradery and the willingness to take this thing off the charts and into new territories. That doesn't discourage me. My continued path was that of understanding why things are the way they are in Utopia. I don't need the mechanics because I'm not attempting to be overpowered; I'm only here to have fun. This is why I self induce challenge idioms and don't study game mechanics. If I'm effective off the cuff I'm not going out of my way to rain misery on the frail base.
I would have to agree with everyone that says to adjust your tactics to what you have, not what you think would work best.
At the onset of every war in my kingdom, we develop a war plan. This outlines targets, overall goal, and what we are going to do next. If someone comes online and doesn't know exactly what to do, they just look at the war plan, which we kept updated constantly as the war evolved and new threats emerged. Also, being able to pinpoint the enemies' tactics and plans beforehand can be a HUGE boon. For example, if you see the kingdom's strategy relies on their ritual, you can abolish it. If you plan your abolish, you can complete it very quickly, and cheaper than casting a new ritual. Then they have to choose between using runes and mana to harm you, or recast their ritual that their strategy relies on. Keep an eye out for little things like that, all through the war, and adjust your strategy. If you are facing dryads, steal their war horses as their army returns. If facing dwarves, GA their farms and steal their food, MV their NB and cast drought and gluttony. Every kingdom has a weakness, sometimes it is obvious, sometimes you have to look for it.
Also, know YOUR weakness. Don't pretend you don't have one, don't spend so much time trying to hide it that you lose your strengths. Plan around it. Work with it. I know my kingdom is not good at wave times (different time-zones means it's always 3am for someone, and we aren't trying to crown!), so we don't use them, and we don't bother trying to coordinate NM waves. We play to our strengths and try to exploit the enemies weakness.
Btw - If you aren't good at wave times, don't TRY to work wave times.. If everyone has a different attack time, having them keep their army home for an hour or two to coordinate is just asking for us to destroy you. I've seen it in a few different wars now. If you try too hard to coordinate waves, you make your attackers a whole heck of a lot easier to disable. Armies home quickly become dead armies. Our number one rule for attackers during war is, Army-in, Army-out. I don't care when, just don't let them sit at home!
You probably won't win every war, unless you are very selective about WHO you war, but if you can put up a good fight, you can at least withdraw with pride.
Although I agree this is true, it is also situational. Sometimes it can make a huge difference to have one of leadership ask just a couple of people to hold the armies for just a couple of hours so that they can coordinate with a couple of other people whose armies are coming shortly. There are risks, but there can also be big rewards
Agreed