TGs vs. Forts

[Zauper]

You do have more offense with forts unless you are chained. Forts make it harder to chain you, and all your land is pretty much gonna be unbuilt after you're chained anyway. Saying "but after you're chained they're worthless) is a bad argument because you can rebuilt your land after people destroy it for you, if you want.

Er, if you're chained you don't have land to rebuidl, unless you raze..

However, you only have more offense with forts if you assume that I'm building more defense than you. Let's take this scenario:
We each have 18 mil/acre, as an orc. I have 30% TGs (25.2% bonus), you have 16/14 (16.13 ome, 14.45 DME). We both run 7 DSPA and 11 EPA:
ME --
Def: 35 DPA
Off: 123.948 OPA
You --
Def: 40.0575 DPA
Off: 114.9687 OPA

You'll notice:
1) I have more offense
2) We're trading triple taps.
3) I have more total military power.

Who has more offense?

[DDodge]

Realest what race/pers are you playing next age?!?

[hydroxon]

Aww Ethan, Danrelle, seems it's time to give up. Just glad to have met people like you here haha.

PS. Hallo (that person who posted earlier) has a spreadsheet that solves our optimisation problem, and so do I :P (Ethan/Danrelle, I would love to send you a copy..)

[darklink1987]

Forts are so blah..... i mean there are so many other buildings that are better. Unless your trying to turttle (assuming you are in a place you can pull it off) is the only way really they are viable in war.

Otherwise in war forts are useless.

[ElusiveWitch]

Errrr this is how folks get themselves into a whole lot of trouble out of the gate.

If I SoT'd Zauper and saw that offense vs defense ratio, call me crazy but I am NOT hitting him. Obviously an active attacker and I'm guaranteed a retal and if I was smart and spyed out his whole KD I'm likely to find a hornets nest. HELLO MCFLY! Not a smart thing to do. You attack people who don't/won't hit you back.

[DDodge]

Zauper has a pretty basic breakdown. Should help wrap this up

[Zauper]

Is Zauper saying 0% forts or x% of forts which is not practical to solve?

I'm saying that forts are situationally useful at best, and at most times 0% forts is optimal. At other times, it is not practical to try and determine and customize your forts %, and military, for each potential conflict.

[Ethan]

...
Let's take this scenario:
We each have 18 mil/acre, as an orc. I have 30% TGs (25.2% bonus), you have 16/14 (16.13 ome, 14.45 DME). We both run 7 DSPA and 11 EPA:
...

Are you stupid? I DO NOT RUN 7 DSPA.

[Ethan]

[Found the long post - just expands on the simple point above.]

I'll try to make this short:
Where your setups fall short is that there is nothing preventing the person in setup 1 from running 47.73 dspecs and 52.27 elites. In that scenario, they have 588.98 offense and 238.65 defense. That total -- 827.63 -- outperforms your setup 2.

Ok, lets do this again then. You say a 238.65 defense is good. You get 827.63 total military with 30% TGs, congrats.
I use 19.1% TGs, 10.9% Forts. I have 57.25 elites, 42.75 dspecs. I get 238.66 defense, so I'm just as safe, and I put out 610.79 offense. Giving me a total of 849.45. Oops, looks like a mix won again.


Maybe you can do better. Lets try and get a higher total with your approach again.
Lets say, seeing my great new numbers, you go to 59 elites, 41 dspec. Gives you 664.81 offense, and 205 defense, for a total of 869.81. Great, you retook the lead by 20 points.

Now, can I do better? Lets see... I go to 22% TGs, 8% forts. I use 62.32 elites, 37.68 dspecs. 676.37 offense, 205.04 defense, total 881.41. Up another 11 and change points!


What, I beat you again? How is this happening? Well... you'll just get more offense and less defense yet again - but wait. You've finally reached the point where it is a bad strategy to lower your defense more, cause you'll open yourself to doubles, or triples, or whatever. Congrats, you finally found the target defense - the point where more offense isn't worth the lost defense.

And a funny thing happened at said target defense... the TG/Forts split was better. But wait, you cry, the optimization maybe made the defense go too low! Nope - *all* of the defense drop happens when you try and beat the total military by getting more elites and fewer dspecs. Ever time *I* optimize, the defense either goes up or stays the same, so *my* optimization is always safe. While your must, eventually, fail due to insufficiently low defense. You were already in TT range of yourself before I stopped the chain as it was.


If your argument is that your *current* defense is higher than it needs to be... then you are being dumb even before you try and optimize. Your target def is X, and you are running 1.2*X. Lower your defense to X and you'll be better by definition. NOW, after getting to your target defense, optimize TG/Forts. Whatever the optimal result... you *can't* do better, again by definition.

[Zauper]

Are you stupid? I DO NOT RUN 7 DSPA.

Okay, then we're running 5/13, trading quadtaps, and I still have more offense. Or did you mean that was too little DSPA for you?

[Zauper]

[Found the long post - just expands on the simple point above.]



Ok, lets do this again then. You say a 238.65 defense is good. You get 827.63 total military with 30% TGs, congrats.
I use 19.1% TGs, 10.9% Forts. I have 57.25 elites, 42.75 dspecs. I get 238.66 defense, so I'm just as safe, and I put out 610.79 offense. Giving me a total of 849.45. Oops, looks like a mix won again.


Maybe you can do better. Lets try and get a higher total with your approach again.
Lets say, seeing my great new numbers, you go to 59 elites, 41 dspec. Gives you 664.81 offense, and 205 defense, for a total of 869.81. Great, you retook the lead by 20 points.

Now, can I do better? Lets see... I go to 22% TGs, 8% forts. I use 62.32 elites, 37.68 dspecs. 676.37 offense, 205.04 defense, total 881.41. Up another 11 and change points!


What, I beat you again? How is this happening? Well... you'll just get more offense and less defense yet again - but wait. You've finally reached the point where it is a bad strategy to lower your defense more, cause you'll open yourself to doubles, or triples, or whatever. Congrats, you finally found the target defense - the point where more offense isn't worth the lost defense.

And a funny thing happened at said target defense... the TG/Forts split was better. But wait, you cry, the optimization maybe made the defense go too low! Nope - *all* of the defense drop happens when you try and beat the total military by getting more elites and fewer dspecs. Ever time *I* optimize, the defense either goes up or stays the same, so *my* optimization is always safe. While your must, eventually, fail due to insufficiently low defense. You were already in TT range of yourself before I stopped the chain as it was.


If your argument is that your *current* defense is higher than it needs to be... then you are being dumb even before you try and optimize. Your target def is X, and you are running 1.2*X. Lower your defense to X and you'll be better by definition. NOW, after getting to your target defense, optimize TG/Forts. Whatever the optimal result... you *can't* do better, again by definition.

What you miss is that each time we go down in defense, my province is still superior to yours. Even from the starting scenario, we weren't trading singletaps. You'll also notice that each time we drop defense, you drop more and more forts from your side. You say I was in TT range of myself, but you were also in TT range of yourself. (and the starting scenario was setting it up so you could DT yourself).

Also, let's say I'm 10k acres and the biggest prov in your kd is 3333 acres with 90 OPA. I may have 40 DPA, just because I want to be safe on my size compared to my competitors. But when we go to war, I only need 30 to be safe. Are you suggesting in this scenario, that I should release dspecs to train additional offense? Do you really think that is an optimal use of resources?

When you get waved, do you say to your kd 'hey guys, we can't war until two days from now, I need to release some dspecs and retrain them to elites, but I can't until my extra forts get in'? Do you really think that is an optimal strategy?

Utopia is dynamic, you need to be prepared to enter conflict at any time, and against any possible setup. High off/low def is optimal, unless you're safe. The only time you care about defense when you're not safe is as it approaches tiered hits -- are you giving up TTs and only getting DTs? Then you either need more off or more def.

[Ethan]

I have no idea what you consider reasonable. Pick a war build, using a solid number of TGs. I don't care what, just not some crazy oop build. Anything you would seriously run, I'll beat it.

As an orc I'd probably run about 9/9, but part of that is cause my kingdom isn't good. 11 Epa, 7 dspa seems perfectly reasonable for a better kingdom to me, if you want me to use that as the starting point.

[hydroxon]

Ethan, nice post up there! Though, it seems your efforts are futile :(

[Zauper]

I have no idea what you consider reasonable. Pick a war build, using a solid number of TGs. I don't care what, just not some crazy oop build. Anything you would seriously run, I'll beat it.

As an orc I'd probably run about 9/9, but part of that is cause my kingdom isn't good. 11 Epa, 7 dpa seems perfectly reasonable for a better kingdom to me, if you want me to use that as the starting point.

Realistically? Early-mid age, assuming we have 18 MPA, I'm probably running 13/5, fading to 11/7-10/8 as I get larger.

I probably only have 15% land for TGs/forts. Maybe 18%.

The thing is, your response is going to be to take that defense (25 DPA), and then say 'ok, if we keep the defense constant...', but the issue is that that's the static approach. If I'm in war, I want to have the option to speed build 10% forts to pump my def and get past a defense tier and suddenly they can only DT me rather than TT me. OOW, I'm not going to get randomed, and the other issue with this is that the numbers themselves are impractical -- maybe twice over the course of the age would I actually hit them, the rest of the time my draft is going to be lower, because I'm growing. And I'm nearly always going to be training elites first, over defspecs. I'm mostly going to be hitting all-defense explorers, so the question is going to be: how can I get the offense to hit them the fastest? The answer won't include forts, because forts do not improve my offense.

[Danrelle]

Also, "utopia isn't static!" is just an excuse to be bad at math.

Priceless, brilliant! And so true...