The uses of Homes . . .

[_greenie]

Homes can be outmatched in any way possible. obviously your goals are to be prepared in any situation, and outmatch your opponent. Homes doesnt do that.

its all about BE apparently. but homes seems to make sense only whenyou reach high acreage. like 3000-5000. homes then become a bit more understandable as of use. i always prefered 20% banks (which the money can be invested wisely into sci) and have 90-80% BE then 100% and 10% banks (assuming ur having only 10% homes)

let say you have.

2000 acres with 10% homes.
thats about enough to get you to 90-95% BE with no sci.

10% homes is: 1600 pop (which is not much considering its a stagerring 200 builds) if 70% of that goes military; it leave 30% (like VT2 says) to other duties which usually wizards take 6-9%, 20% of that will then go peasants.
20% of 1600 is: 320....thats just not enough to make any difference in ur income. your military draft AND wages will go up and probably just cost u as much for you extra 1280 troops will cost in draft and wages expenses, in which only 7600 offense points(if elf) will be given and 5120 def points maximum if elites.

homes on a gnome isnt more useful imho, every homes you spend on a gnome will cost you 50% of that in farms. and more farms just means more weaknesses. and then you add the issues ive just mentioned. and thats wihtout mentioning what VT2 and the others just mentioned.

show me a strat with homes and a proper counter to those no homes ppl (with race and pers) and ill show you a non home and a proper counter to homes ppl (with race and pers) all with numbers*!

sci can outmatch any homes bonus anyway!

well, duh!!!
"hi, im going to run a race/pers with 10% homes, please create a counter to it"

not hard hey?

[Ethan]

@Delryn

I'll try to be a reasoned voice against homes - despite using them myself.

Though some will disagree with me, I posit the best measure of province strength is "MPNW", Military Per Net Worth (MPNW = OPNW + DPNW, with a fixed ratio or a fixed DPNW). Of course, to usefully compare, one needs to have other things, like TPA or troop losses, held constant. So buildings like rax and hospitals and dens all get put in, as a desired *effectiveness*. Not a %, because homes and draft will change the BE - but as a desired effect.

I wrote a spreadsheet of a *-> human <-* province, designed along these lines. (Most of this should be true more generally - but I have not run hard numbers for other races.) I found many interesting things, such as needing to keep 35-40% of your pop as pes. Most relevantly for this discussion - I found, even with high pop sci, that homes LOWER MPNW. I dump everything to spare into TG/Forts... and taking 10% away for homes lowers my static strength, even after stealing as much as I can from other building due to the higher BE.

Why build a building that isn't as good as another? A mix of TG/Forts is just better than homes - so build more TG/Forts! (There is a limit... but it is something like 50%+ land between TG+Forts, in which case you're skimping on some other important part of your province.)

For homes:
I take Bishop's argument about "static vs. dynamic" situations to lead to just the reverse - that homes ARE good for my strat. Reason is they work well while in pump mode, and are so close to TG/Forts in strength there is no reason to convert. It's a building that is useful right up until the war is actually underway. And once my land/pes is changing a lot, the birthrate is very helpful. That said, I don't build new homes while in war, except in very weird cases I've never run into yet. They were nice at the start for the extra military - but hosing that military after first hits isn't a problem anymore - TG or banks are more important.

[misashi]

Yea a follow up. Running homes i also feel is really race specific, and unless you intend on being a hybrid. I run a province with 12% homes and it fits nicely.

Having anymore % would cut into the output of other buildings even with the increased BE a potential 20% could give me. Especially if you're a thief, with max BE you'd still need 25%, or if you're a A/m, guilds and towers are static buildings.

From the attackers point of view, having a higher % of homes does give you a higher overall army but you lose them just as fast if you get chained.
A huge problem is that you're army leaves if you're not able to support it.

Say you have a 1k acre province that just got chained 6 times for 450 acres. at 60% draft not including wizards. Thats half your acres gone, with a full army you'll be hitting what easily high 80's, i think 90's draft. With homes you'll probably wanna draft even higher, they'd just gang you.

Or a few mages would just massively fireball you at the same tick, with increased % of BR it really doesn matter. Tornadoes would be another prick, or arson. Name your pick. You can have a huge army but a few simple ops would crush your province pretty easily. Nice static numbers for 1 ATTACK, then you're useless.

[Bijo]

and, all time favourite, vines maths: link another link

what kind of sick math is that?!?!?!?!

[misashi]

lol BIJO, that is incredible. we have a new professor on hand to teach us mathematics. if that was really the case my NW would be 2 mil right now with my sciences.

Man is vines a moron.

[ViscountGrey]

24 raw defensive dudes per acre, known to you lesser players as 120 DPA, doesn't leave a whole lot of room left over for useful stuff, like thieves, wizards, peasants for stability, and offense.

It's really just a waste to tack on so much defense, because if I want to hurt you, I will - case in point; conquest.

Do note that, raw, each acre of built-up land gives 25 people to play with, and 32 if the acre of built-up land in question is a home.
The stoned viscount claims he has 24 of those as defensive dudes.

If it was possible for forts to give more than 37.5% defense - which, even at high BE - requires immense numbers of them - 50% of your land at 100% BE - this still wouldn't be believable, because we've been told the good viscount has 52% homes, which doesn't even leave enough acres left to get the max bonus at standard BE.

Don't get me started on how the homes make it possible, either, because it simply doesn't.

Just like vines and his UB3R1337!!!!! gnome, this is just stupidity.

And you just proved that you don't listen...... go ahead and conquest me.... but that defense does not come from having DSPA.... it's a massively high volume of leets... so if you conquest me it may tickle me slightly, but what happens to you will REALLY hurt.....

Say whatever you want about numbers, but try actually playing it and you'll see how much ass it kicks..... so far I've been able to retal anyone who has the military size to break me.... and because they're downhitting, I get more off them than I lose.

[VT2]

So you're running 'massive' numbers of elites? That networth of yours must be extremely tasty, and might mean I won't have to conquest you, but can break you with a regular attack.

[Avenger]

Wow, ViscountGrey is just as fail as vines. Location please?

[UnknownGhost]

Wow, ViscountGrey is just as fail as vines. Location please?

His location is (). Come dance.

edit: no locs pls, pm them to him if you want

[ViscountGrey]

Wow, ViscountGrey is just as fail as vines. Location please?

Hah! You want me? Come get me then you'll see how epically you fail. It's tried, it's tested, it's proven to work.

[Lordwarallied]

Viscount, your problem is your not looking up to three moves in advance. and your not looking at deeper mechanics.

always think, how will my enemy get what he wants, whats the strats he building. if I was to hit myself or war my strat with all the specifics, how would I do that? Now lets say im warring or defending from a province/kd that knows my tactics, strats and are skilled and going to do exactly what they should be doing. what should i do then?

there are your answers to how to deal in most situations in advance, ofc there is always a bit of luck and probabilities involved.

SAY NO TO HOMES!!!

_greenie: well ofc, but isnt what we do al lthe time anyway? i dont need him to just show me for me to have one. i just wanna see what he can come up with. and its under that mentality showed above that his strats will just be overwhelmed. but not much is needed to be done with 30% homes.

[Avenger]

Proven to work against what? Noob undead?
@Bishop: late edit, already saw his reply, tho I didn't expect him to actually post it.

[UnknownGhost]

@Bishop: late edit, already saw his reply, tho I didn't expect him to actually post it.

Why wouldn't you? did you think he played in some 5 mil nw ghetto?

And I guess you're right anyways. He didn't post it. I did. But offer stands. Feel free to try to smack him up.

[ViscountGrey]

Proven to work against what? Noob undead?
@Bishop: late edit, already saw his reply, tho I didn't expect him to actually post it.

Tried and tested against Fagsalom

[Lordwarallied]

lol