Intro to Race/Personality Combinations

[Topsy]

As a relatively new player, I actually found Realist's thread(and his comments in strat) pretty helpful when I was starting to play again. The game is almost entirely situational, and the only way to get better is to understand how mechanics interact at different levels of play(intra-province, intra-kd, inter-kd, in hostilities, in war, in protection, ect.). Having something like "OPA" is worthless if you don't know what OPA does, how offense and acres interact, what you would do with that in any given situation with relation to the rest of your KD, ect. Similarly, the things about race/pers that are in the guide are only interesting/worthwhile if you can think about them mechanically. Most questions that aren't answered with questions can be answered in the game's guide, or are only useful to know insofar as it helps to explain different interactions. Unfortunately, discussions are almost always better had on IRC where you can ask questions, and respond to questions more fluidly, so getting a quick orientation here of "just do more damage to them then they do to you" is actually pretty solid advice.

[Twyla]

Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish, he'll never go hungry again.

Maybe it's just my age showing, but I deem the quote above to be extremely wise. Sure, you can tell a new player "Roll an Avian Warrior and use [such and such] build" and they may wind up as a reasonably effective attacker...

Until next Age, when Avian might not even be IN the game.

Now, they're out on a limb and pretty much as clueless as they were on day one.

Instead, take a few moments to explain WHY Avian Warrior is a good option and WHY a particular build makes it all the better - they may well notice something in the coming Age that YOU have overlooked so you can both take advantage of it.

Hel of Dim Forest wasn't the only top player in the game back in Age 10, and not many of the other 'top players' even noticed the Honor loophole. Even without that edge, half the top finishers that Age were other Races and a lot of people who tried to take advantage of it didn't succeed. Sure, one Race/Personality combo may have a decided edge during an Age, but there are countless other factors which can cause even 'the ultimate exploitation' to fail miserably.

Utopia is a complex game, and it takes far more than a few casually tossed bromides to actually learn anything.

"Just do more damage to them than they do to you"?!? Given the nature of Utopia, that's pretty much a given - hardly 'words of wisdom'. How about a few specifics (or even generalities) outlining how this is to be accomplished? Does kidnapping all their pezzies and emptying all their stores "do more damage" than razing half their buildings into the ground? Is capturing 15%-25% of their land "more damage" than either of the first two?

How, precisely, does this constitute 'solid advice'?

[Palem]

I had a chat with Bishop and we agreed that it is impossible to make Palem mad. What is this fit of rage, do elaborate.

I think it was some argument about playing the game at different levels. Idk, was a long time ago lol

[Topsy]

"Just do more damage to them than they do to you"?!? Given the nature of Utopia, that's pretty much a given - hardly 'words of wisdom'. How about a few specifics (or even generalities) outlining how this is to be accomplished? Does kidnapping all their pezzies and emptying all their stores "do more damage" than razing half their buildings into the ground? Is capturing 15%-25% of their land "more damage" than either of the first two?

How, precisely, does this constitute 'solid advice'?

Because it leads to those questions. But including some of the stuff that you say is good, aka not making it just an elaboration of what is in the guide so that its useful in future and more informative as to the game, would be a good way to improve your intro guide.

[Persain]

As someone who admittedly is not a big fan of Realest (based solely on forum interaction) and even as someone who in a fit of rage told him that the more he posts the more he looks like an idiot (or something like that lol), I will say that he knows his stuff.

At best, Realest is rough around the edges but he is a very good pool of knowledge, when he's not being rude and/or trolling.

Im not saying overall anything he has said is bad advice when people ask, like is this a good build. Ne says no it sux learn to play. which honestly is probably true compared to how he runs a prov but when someone makes a guide or asks a general questions like what dragon should i use in war, saying the guide is bad because a noob made it or saying the most powerful dragon, is hardly helpful. Its not that hard to say something like ruby dragons are usually used the other dragons are more situational. It takes no more effort to type and it actually answers questions to those who are asking.
Its a matter of him talking down to new players like hes better than them, Twyla is a great example

The problems arise when nubs like tywla want to propogate falsehoods, we need to stamp it down. When you see that she can oop at 600a, with 6k troops trained at 0.5 wpa and 100 books per acre, is that really something you want to defend and get behind? The amount of misinformation being written hurts the game, when the blind leads the blind.

anyone who has played an oop knows that those are off numbers but instead of approaching it nicely as, 100 bpa would require X science and thus leave Y money so it seems unlikely as a post he simply flames. when simple questions are asked or a basic utopia virgin guide is written there no point to flame we dont have the people left in this game to do that.

[Quacky-T]

anyone who has played an oop knows that those are off numbers but instead of approaching it nicely as, 100 bpa would require X science and thus leave Y money so it seems unlikely as a post he simply flames. when simple questions are asked or a basic utopia virgin guide is written there no point to flame we dont have the people left in this game to do that.

Yes, and Realest wasn't the only one to question/flame those numbers. If it was merely rounding up a bit, I'm sure this wouldn't have mattered, but when you start trying to pass up exaggerated numbers as legit, you deserve a bit of flaming.

I appreciate the effort of trying to write a newbie guide. By all means.
But when the creator of this Guide is someone with outdated knowledge and understanding, who firstly promotes an utterly useless race/pers combo and then follows it up by showing off false numbers (Obvious or not) to show how good her prov is/how good she is - I am no longer so certain I want to have new players reading this guide.

Of course this guide can be a great source of information - granted it were updated with the input from the community.
But like it is with any researcher caught providing false numbers to support their results, one would really start to question the creditbility of that researcher when reading another of their reports. (If they'd ever get to publish another)

[scorpio86]

I like the idea of golfer's/tywla's - his/her post but for a noob to enter this forum and read this thread, is does not read nicely. I think it is quite an accurate introduction into the social world of Utopia, if not the finer game mechanics...

[sacredorange]

No undead rogues? I believe that UD/rogue still gets all thievery operations, effectively removing the penalty. But I might be wrong. Nice post!

[excal14]

After coming back to the game from a very long break, it wasn't a bad read, somethings were outdated and the OP admitted that.

BUT it was intended for the new players who wanted a more in depth overview. Sure it wouldn't get you into the elite level, but it would get you through an age a bit more wiser. Besides its a work in progress as well since the OP is willing to take construction.

Welcome advice.

[nooblet]

I believe it is too constraining to lock a province into a set role... obviously certain races are heavily favored or disfavored at certain things, but there is a lot of room for flexibility when considering things like a/m or a/t, and how a kingdom goes about making those strategies work. It's entirely possible for a race to do things it's not necessarily good at, and a mistake to think that humans never mage, or dwarves never ns... they just should expect to be able to pull them off without some serious gaping holes in their targets. Still, playing a good hybrid-style province is hard... I've seen too many Human/Rogues and the like fail their ops and fail as attackers because they think they can do both things well, but without a good kingdom behind you hybrid play is almost always futile. Picking Hu/Rogue and expecting to be an awesome a/t can burn someone once they realize this, since the Rogue personality is tightly locked into a particular play style...
But anyway, even among attackers there are a variety of approaches someone can take with regards to how they manage their province, and what they want their province to do.

A guide like this would be helpful for new players, but it should go into more detail about the strengths and weaknesses of each race, beyond their statistical factors. Like, how should you approach playing them, how they function as a kingdom-wide strategy, common pratfalls of people who play those races, and so on. I've seen too many dwarves build homes, which they should almost never ever do, because they think that having perfect BE is a necessity.