Strategy Corner by FFW: Picking Your Kingdom's Setup
Every start of the age, we go into discussions about what is the "best" setup. How do we truly define what the best is? We're joined by Dowla of Hipmunks, Smiles of Warbirds and myself FFW of Merciless in a forum of how to pick your kingdom's setup and be a more successful warring kingdom. We've also got a special guest Peetah who has co-led many kingdoms to numerous crowns over the ages.
Let's talk about setups and is it truly important to have a setup?
Peetah: Yes, this will help leadership to coordinate efforts to win the war. Running a lot of different races and pers will give leadership a hard time to make builds. Set certain times to “nuke” a prov with ops.
Dowla: It is absolutely important to have a setup to achieve anything it is you want to achieve if it requires your kingdom to do well in the game. You can achieve screwing around without a setup.
Smiles:Setups are make or break and a lot of things simply won't work well. That being said, all the things that do work, are pretty similar
FFW: I think we can all agree that setups are important. All successful kingdoms will have a proper setup but not all kingdoms with a proper setup is successful. So let's go into the finer details of picking a setup.
Before we even start talking setup, let's talk strategy. How important is it to think about the win conditions before even deciding what to pick?
Peetah:There are different ways to win a war and a setup will make it a lot easier to achieve victory if it’s in line with your idea on win conditions. Par example with a smash setup you want to win at mintime. After that your chances of winning go down. While a setup based on econ can easily go war for a week. Do realize this will be a burden for leadership as well. You need to plan according to what you got available.
Smiles: I don't think you have to be super specific about the strategy. A general idea is enough since there are lots of things to think about and some assumptions to make but the early age is pretty consistent
FFW: Let's talk about the some assumptions in strategy for the age since you've brought it up Smiles. I normally like to assume that early advantages are the most awful for a successful warring kingdom since you want to be consistent through the age and not just win for the first 3 weeks and suck the next 6. Do you agree with this? For the record, I'm not saying you throw away the early age either.
Smiles: For the most part the early strengths can let you steamroll certain things but generally you can assume some early easy wars, leverage your later age bonuses since most early advantages don't scale well but some do.
FFW: What about you Dowla? I hear that you have got a unique perspective on this topic.
Dowla: We do not pick a setup with a focused effort on selecting a win condition usually. We usually just go for a good setup that works for us.The base line is creating something that the enemy simply cannot control anymore. There are ages where win conditions are very important and there are ages where we want to do well all around.
FFW: That's interesting Dowla, so you would rather pick a comfortable setup and then decide strategy on a war to war basis?
Dowla: That's how we operate. We agree on a setup start of the age, and a general way of how we'd play it. The dynamic of warring changes every war. We pick what works for us and it's usually something we're comfortable with. Something that wars well.
FFW:So would it be fair to say your strategic approach to setup picking is oriented around balance so you won't be too badly matched against anything the server throws at you?
Dowla:Yes. That is exactly how we pick our setup. Something that works well and can work against anything.
FFW: Let's talk about what worked for us in the past as to give examples
What's your most successful strategy that you've run with thus far?
Peetah:I think I played with most combos and won crowns with all. I’ve also seen all kind of setups win crowns and even multiple crowns in one age.
Most kingdoms develop a style they seem fit and chose a setup accordingly. Smiles, Dowla and FFW can probably give more insight on what makes a certain setup a HM/Merciless/Warbirdies setup.
Smiles: comfort strat, 2-4 pure mystic, 4 rogue 4 hybrid mystic synced core with the view of hybrid casters provide ET support and duration coverage of spells your TMs don't want to have to cast. They also work as a buffer where people might hit them instead of pure TM. The outcome is that you end up with more mana, more attackers.
Dowla: Tried a few different ones, but what works best for us is hybrid turtles that become UB and then steamroll from there.
FFW: I like having a big offensive fist so that core can create space for our TM to work a later war economic advantage and always assume you have to win on a 50% double networth win.
Picking the racial and personality choices. What works and what order do you pick in? TMs first or Core first?
FFW:I prefer picking core choices first since they are normally the majority in the kingdom, so it helps us to decide what our battering ram will be then decide what type of supporting actors we want to support the core.
Peetah: First, you need to find your balance! How much TMs how much hitters and do you need support? Smashing setups want at least 16-18 hitters. Plus do you wanna run hybrids or just pure hitters and pure TMs. Smashing kingdoms want pure TMs as they need to cover all thievery and magic operations. Your hitters you want to build to make sure you can hit enemy TMs bring down the winning condition of your opponent. Going for the econ play you want provs that are able to hold out and sustain their off. While you work on creating land on UBs and slowly convert to hitters. UBs mostly are your TMs. Basically circle back to the strategy you've chosen to play for the age.
Dowla:We usually agree on T/M choices rather quick and then keep on deciding on core picks until the last minute. First of all I want to say it's not me personally picking the setup. It's a group of us doing it. Usually the whole LS team decides on it. A few of us make a setup we'd play, then we all comment on each others setup and we work from there. So we incorporate a bit of everything or we create a totally different setup than anybody proposed. For T/Ms there are always a very limited amount of choices that are playable, and by this I mean combos that work the best. While for attackers it's much more complicated. A super heavy attacker can mean more T/Ms, an econ based attacker can mean less, do we want long wars or do we want to zerg rush, it all depends with them. So, we set the T/Ms and they set the dynamic. What kind of attackers we need and then we pick what works for that type of strategy. Or simply we're comfortable with this many T/Ms and this many attackers. That's our go to if we have troubles agreeing on what we want.
Smiles: As stated before, in my head the most generic setup is:
4 mystics
4 rogues
2-4 paladin/cleric/PF caster depending on what the age needs.
15 synced core
I usually start there
ask, is it a heretic age?
If heretics, what am I cutting to stay in that 8 Pure TM range
FFW: There seems to be a lot of focus on picking the right TMs so let's talk about that next
Picking Your Kingdom's TMs. What works?
FFW: I see you didn't put much emphasis on heretics Smiles? What's up with that?
Smiles: It's fine to have 1 heretic just for access to blizz/fg depending on the age but I don't think they're bad. I just rarely have that 1 tick sync for NM and I in general am not a fan of NM like I used to be. With the exception of high GS+WT+dpa tanks, I don't ever think you NEED NM because it just makes chains go deeper, rarely adds additional chains and rarely allows you to hit TM+Chain as is the classic desire for NM. So really you're trading significant TM mana just to take chains a little deeper. Deep chains don't matter as much anymore anyways. I chain to secure UB, if it doesn't go deep enough, but trims their offense, good enough for me
FFW: What about you Dowla, what do you value in picking TMs?
Dowla: Most usually it's bonuses in TPA/WPA. We value it over anything else as in the event of a dragged out war it allows us to try raining fire over enemy T/Ms with out own. Or in any war. T/M supremacy is what it's all about.
FFW: I can relate to that. I love population bonus on my TMs since it leads to better raw numbers which leads to much better modified numbers to have TM supremacy late age.
Smiles:Generally for TMs, all TMs my order of priorities >UB, Defense mostly >T defense >wpa>tpa>eco/offense. Recently, I prefer the safest easiest possible rogues. Since if a rogue every gets chained/massed out, they're basically unrecoverable although wpa and honor recovery isn't possible for the most part. Mystics, I like TOG paired with +1 mana but I am more willing to pick the mystic I expect to be strongest at its peak
FFW: Before we close, what's the single most important advice we can give to aspiring war kingdoms out there? You go first Smiles
Smiles: Pick a kingdom you admire or setup you think is strong and just copy. Add a small spin for what you like and don't be original. When Warbirds formed and we were ready to run a top tier setup for the first time, we essentially straight copied Hipmunks from the age before as we had warred them twice, lost twice.
FFW: Dowla will be pretty happy to know Hipmunks inspired Warbirds to an extent. Let's hear from him next.
Dowla: If you're unsure on how to play it and what exact setup to pick then pick something simple. Start with something simple as two types of T/Ms with 3-4 of each, 3-4 clerics and pick the rest as heavy attackers or ditch the clerics and everything else can go into attackers. Keep it simple until you start feeling comfortable with changing it and doing things a different way, a way that suits you. Do know that every single one of the best warring kingdoms has a usual way they pick setups and each one of those setups works for them because they've gotten good at playing with those setups.
FFW: Be bold and brave. Don't hesitate to experiment with choices since all the best strategies and setups have been called retarded or silly once upon a time. Your new idea could be the next top strategy but be sure your entire kingdom is on board with it. Consensus is important.
Editorial Section:
Wrapping up this session, it is clear that there's no one best approach in picking your Kingdom's setup and strategy. What is truly important is that you choose a strategy that works for you and remember that mastery over a particular strategy would cement your place as a top warring kingdom. When it comes to the finer details of picking your race and personality choices, pick a combination that is most comfortable for what you want it to do. The key important takeaway is the concept of objectives and whatever combination you pick should conform with the objectives of your kingdom.
PS: Dowla volunteers to help people struggling with choices if you PM his retired ass on discord since he inspired Warbirds. Link to his interview on his honor crown achievement below
https://blog.utopia-game.com/post/61...utopian-crowns
