Strategy Corner by FFW: The Strategy For OOP Wars
Out of Protection Wars (OOP War) have been aggressively pursued by most kingdoms in the past 10 ages. We're going to take a closer look at OOP Wars and how to be successful at OOP Wars. Contributing to this piece are retired leaders Topsy and Rong De aka thunder aka Edgnor who are previously leaders for Giraffes and Carnage respectively. Carnage is one of the only kingdoms to ever win back to back war win crowns while Giraffes was one of the most successful growth kingdoms in recent ages.
Why bother with OOP Wars?
The logic behind OOP Wars is to get into that first end of war ceasefire (EOWCF). When you exit protection, your provinces are fairly weak. You have limited army, little land and little science. Getting to that first EOWCF can set your age up beautifully if done correctly. Winning puts you ahead in a better position but losing still puts you a little ahead of your peers with no OOP War.
Since we know the value of that early EOWCF, how do we get about getting an OOP War?
Generally, OOP Wars are either arranged via in game mail, discord #arrange-war channel, PM via external communicators or randomly waving. There are pros and cons to each method of setting up war. Generally, in game communication would protect your location better than posting in MUGA discord unless you are well hidden. Those who are comfortable with letting the world know their location can find MUGA Discord to be very handy in reaching out for arranged war.
How do you win an OOP War?
The strategy behind an OOP War is going to be very different from your normal war. In an OOP War, runes are short, thieves are limited and everyone starts with about the same amount of military.
OOP Wars have a lot more to do with the intrinsic benefits of your race/class than other wars. Some of the advantages to look out for would be higher spec stats(+1/+2 specs), economic and military bonuses (Tree of Gold/attack time/gains), or more elites(elite from spec conversion) will all be fundamental advantages.
OOP Wars are generally won on the premise of maintaining more resources than your opponent. This is because more resources leads to more military, land and honor eventually where you will be able to go down the path of eventually doubling your opponent's networth for the automatic war win. This is why the innate bonuses that your race and personality gives you is extremely important.
The focus therefore, is on the economy of each kingdom to decide the victor.
If economy is the name of the game, how important is offense and defense?
Any war that has 7+ ppa average is going to eventually be a peon war. Peon wars are won by either 1) safe peons or 2) uncontrollable peons. If you opted to explore and go full defense on some tms and then aid off, then you have (1) as a win condition and can afford to be a bit higher offense on core so that you can remove anyone on their side that might fulfill (1).
If that isn’t on the table, whether because they went full offense on too many provinces or because of the mechanics of the age, then all that matters is the ratio of taps, modified by their speed/strength/and economic buffs of the race/pers. If you can hit them 2 times and only be hit once in return, then you are going to have far more poproom to grow into. It goes without saying that if there are selective provinces with economic bonuses such as +income or +banks efficiency, you will want to address them with as much of a priority as high offensive ratio provinces.
The lower the base amount of taps, the higher the gain is from having more. Only go silly high off unit:def unit if you have a super high conversion rate or if you are 100% sure that both sides are going full def and exploring on good unbreakable targets. The likely candidate for unbreakables are Mystics. There won't be any other combination that will be truly unbreakable since other combinations can still be fireballed early age. Watchtowers will mitigate thievery ops significantly.
Aside from offense and defense decisions, the ritual choice and dragon choice are equally important.
Affluent is the most sought after OOP War ritual. This ritual gives you +income and +draft rate which are invaluable when you are racing to fund dragons and train military. As an added bonus, if a withdrawal happens at min time, you have an active affluent to carry you through.
Benediction is a currently in theory good OOP War ritual which is not well tested yet. +birth rate and +BE can potentially be very good in an OOP War setting because it helps you fill peons in your lands quicker to bank roll your kingdom. This leads to peon advantage which is not easily removed in OOP War.
Onslaught is a simple ritual that adds offensive power. This can improve your maximum offense and helps you ensure that the opponent will have a very hard time establishing unbreakables; however, please note that while on paper higher offensive numbers are good, the win condition is still economic in nature.
Expropriation is thought of as the strongest offensive ritual for OOP Wars. +gains and +credits are valued so highly when resources are scarce. This will allow you to train more than your opponent assuming you can secure soldiers to train.
Havoc can be an interesting choice if the kingdom is thief heavy. This translates into stronger thievery ops such as night strike which gives you a military advantage.
Other rituals are not discussed as the writers do not believe there's much merit to use them in an OOP war setting.
Although these rituals give you an advantage, it is important to note that you may not get the ritual fully off before your OOP war and leaders will need to balance between a subpar ritual or waiting for a fully charged ritual.
Dragons on the other hand, we have divided into two choices only as effective OOP war choices. Since networth will likely be low, dragon health is going to be low. What's most important is the general dragon bonus of reduction in draft rate and reduction in income. The longer the dragon stays on, the more you benefit. Therefore, you will only want 2 dragons as your OOP War choice.
Emerald dragon is great if your opponent fails to slay during their wave. Reduction of gains and increased military losses is an incredible penalty in the early stages of the game. Emerald also has the most health of all available dragons albeit costing the most. Wherever possible, this is one of the two preferred dragons to use.
Ruby dragon is great at creating a military efficiency gap. Since it reduces Military efficiency, it can be used during your wave or your opponent's wave. If your opponent does not slay, the reduction in military power helps limit the number of available hits and could dissuade your opponent from hitting your higher defensive provinces keeping them safe for now. If used during your wave, it helps increase your available hits and could potentially bring defensive provinces into your range.
Either way, if your opponent slays before continuing on the wave, you've gained time advantage which does help in the long run. Other dragons such as Topaz and Sapphire are too weak in health and effects to even pause your opponent's wave for slaying. Amethyst just does nothing much since -sci effectiveness is very weak when nobody has effective science.
We've covered offense and defense. Let's go over the thievery and magic ops now.
Thievery and Magic ops are very situational in OOP Wars and general logic applies.
As economy is the gameplay for OOP Wars, Incite Riots is the number one priority op. Wherever possible, Riots should be maintained on all provinces. -income is incredible at limiting dragon funding and training.
If you have a shot at making unbreakable provinces, you can Night Strike high offensive provinces and Rob War Horses. Alternatively, you can use them to target soldier pockets (soldiers are a premium resource in OOP Wars) or help your attackers increase the number of hits they can make by killing defense specs.
Kidnap is another highly valued op which you can use to remove peons while adding to your own. This is generally used when you are pushing for the war win.
Propaganda is a highly situational op which rogues can use. If you find yourself already ahead by a mile, you can gamble for wizards. Propaganda can convert wizards from heretic and mystic provinces if you are lucky which will help rogues set their wizards per acre up quicker.
Magic Ops on the other hand are very difficult to access as runes are very scarce in OOP Wars. In general, Tree of Gold is the most powerful magic op you can use. Having more money means you can get your dragon quicker or get soldiers trained.
Not all provinces will have Tree of Gold. The 2nd most valued magic op is Fireball. By focused targeting of Fireballs you can take a province down to low peons which effectively stops draft and income production.
Explosions is a good op to use on certain provinces to limit aid. This is especially important in OOP Wars where lots of aid packets go around.
Meteor Showers is not highly prioritized as it is expensive and tends to do very low damage in the early stages of the game. It will be useful if you can keep it consistently on high defensive provinces to limit their defensive training.
Mystic Vortex is a very good op if it manages to remove Minor Protection or Greater Protection from targets especially if it helps your attackers make more hits on their wave.
Storms and Droughts should be attempted. Storms has always been regarded as the poor man's chastity which helps limit peon growth; however, anyone competent will have Nature's Blessing active at all times so be warned that it might not be successful.
Nightmare, Tornado, Fool's Gold are generally too expensive to cast and should be a luxury only option. Nightmare although effective at increasing the number of hits you can make, is extremely expensive on rune cost and only viable if you are either swimming in runes or have races/personalities that reduce spellcasting cost.
Greed is not effective early age as wages are cheap but could be something to cast if you have extra runes and mana.
We've discussed the scarcity of runes in OOP Wars. Here are some ways to address them
Runes being the most expensive resource early age since spell costs are generally high relative to rune production early age needs special strategies to address. Generally, there are two ways to address this.
Method 1 relies on simply running more towers in your build kingdom wide. It is not unusual to see 25-30% towers in OOP Builds.
Method 2 relies on phasing in more towers as you gain land during OOP War. You do this by building more towers than usual if you really feel the rune pinch. The end result normally ends with 30% towers.
Alongside running more towers, you can also focus thievery ops to robbing resources effectively denying your enemy the opportunity to use the runes while giving your mages the opportunity to use them; however, this comes at a cost since you will need high tpa stealth to do riots, night strike and others.
Closing remarks
In summary, the underlying strategy of OOP Wars revolve around the economy of both kingdoms. While some strategies focus on income, peons and soldiers, other strategies might focus on land grabs to limit maximum pop growth and networth to reduce the effectiveness of gains which allows one side to pull ahead. Choose what works for you and don't forget that OOP Wars don't mean much in the long run. You can still win crowns or do exceptionally well even after losing an OOP War.
Once you are more confident in OOP Wars, you can run laboratories and universities in OOP Wars because even if you lose, you will still be 2 scientists ahead of others who don't and that translates to a huge advantage when the middle age arrives.
-FFW -Topsy -thunder
