Undead protection strat

[Thetom]

Hi, i would like to play undead cleric this age. Does anyone have a good step by step strategy to come out of protection with maximum power?

Eg do i raze farms first? What % homes/banks/armouries do i build and in what order? Assuming i want at least 20% of land for guilds/towers.

I was thinking just draft enough to explore to 600 acres asap then turn off drafting to keep growing peasants and saving $$. But then how many hours before protection ends is most economical to draft & train with patriotism on or do i need to just continue drafting for the full 72hrs?

Also is it worth trying to train elites in protection or worry about them later? I havent played undead before so i am also wondering does the % of elites converted from specs depend on the existing ratio of off specs to elites? ie do less get converted it you have less off specs?

Any other early age undead ideas are welcome..

[Bishop]

Conversions are based partially on how many elites/specs you have. A 100% spec army gets a boost of 100% conversions. In protection you want to maximise the offense you come out with so if you can squeeze in some elites then do so. I usually turn off draft until my armouries come in and i am fully popped, but i also tend to not explore much.

In general most oop builds tend to be 20-30% banks, arms and guilds with the remainder going to your kingdom or personal preferences. If you want to min/max how you oop then you can use a simulator to plan it better - http://forums.utopia-game.com/showth...pia-Simulators

[Budlightyear]

Some things I think are important for UD in protection:
Edit: In an early-warring KD

1. Grow to about 600 acres (no more than 800).

You don't want to grow much or you won't be able to field a good army. There will be plenty of targets OOP, and you don't want to grow out of range of them.

2. Train low def and tons of off specs (not elites) unless you have the extra GC. Elites are expensive, and you can hit OOP to convert specs.

3. Most people people will think twice about hitting you if they see you have a large offense. A large offense early on is a much better idea than a good defense.

4. If possible, wait till the training date to train your army and save some money you would've spent on wages.


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This is my build strat.

Initially:
Raze Farms, keep homes for now since you start off underpop
30% Banks
20% Armories
30% Guilds
10% Towers


I put 1k books in income and 500 in pop and keep science off until buildings come in.
Explore 100 acres
Turn off Draft for now

When first buildings come in:
If you can, cast Builder's Boon
Raze homes, build 10% Stables
Set science to "Limited" or "Sustained"
I usually first put 500 science in everything but food, saving thievery/military for last since you won't need it till you get OOP, and keep focusing on income/pop. Early on, income is better than pop sci, but don't focus on only one thing, either- a little bit of BE and decent pop science are also important. When you get OOP you want a little bit of crime/military science, as well.

Ideally, at this point you would turn draft on just enough to explore another 100 acres. As soon as you have another 100 acres explored, turn draft OFF and keep it off for another 12 hours or so and save up GC.

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About 16 hours after buildings come in and you've explored, you want to turn your draft rate back up. Watch your supply of soldiers/GC, and, if necessary, cast patriotism, but I believe as UD your econ (w/o ToG) is such that the bottleneck is often your GC to train soldiers rather than drafting soldiers, themselves.


Training Date:
Cast Inspire Army + Builder's Boon
Since the protection build has armories, make sure you train BEFORE converting. At the same time, make sure you have enough gold to convert after training.
Train 1 TPA
Train offspecs, as much as you can, and some defense - remember to save some GC for converting.


Your build can vary a bit depending on your draft and how many more troops you need to train. Mine will probably look something like this:

20% Banks
13% TG
5% Barracks
10% Hospitals
30% Guilds
9% Towers
10% Stables
3% Dungeons

If you have a lot of untrained troops and not enough GC to train them/convert, keep some armories and forget about barracks/hospitals, in that order, until you you can finish training/converting. You'll definitely want some TG, though.

When you come OOP, make sure you have self-spells up (Protection, Clearsight, TW).
The most important thing is to be ready to hit out and pumping wizzies at the same time.

[Palem]

1. Grow to about 500 acres (no more than 600).

Being larger lets you have a bigger army.

[Budlightyear]

Being larger lets you have a bigger army.

In absolute terms, yes. In relative terms, no.

At 600 acres as an UD you're far more likely to be able to break (perhaps multi-tap) those with NWs similar to yours than if you grew. You get conversions as you grow, and you can keep hitting larger targets.

In comparison, most people OOP at higher (900+ acres) are humans or faeries and are pumping as much defense as possible. Not only are you the sitting duck at 900 acres w/o defense, but it's likely that faeries/humans will be training defense faster than you can train offense (with ToG and all...).

Let's say you do manage to break people after coming OOP at 900 acres. You still have little to no defense, you're land-fat and still growing, and your army isn't nearly converted - meaning you're little more than a land-fat human w/o ToG and mediocre offense.

So I guess it's relative.

[Palem]

Lol...no

The large banks aren't pumping out defense. They're pumping offense to secure naps from other kds with banks. Things aren't relative at oop. 40k offense is 40k offense.

Also, if those provs are sitting on no offense and you hit them, they can't hit you back and you win. When you come oop do you ever decide to random the guy that can hit you back two or three times?

[Budlightyear]

Lol...no

The large banks aren't pumping out defense. They're pumping offense to secure naps from other kds with banks. Things aren't relative at oop. 40k offense is 40k offense.

Also, if those provs are sitting on no offense and you hit them, they can't hit you back and you win. When you come oop do you ever decide to random the guy that can hit you back two or three times?

Let me get this straight: you're saying an UD in a (presumably average) KD should come OOP at 900+ acres?

[Budlightyear]

... Things aren't relative at oop. 40k offense is 40k offense.

40k offense at 600 acres is different than 40k offense at 1000 acres.

Which one do you think would be able to hit more people in their NW range, more often?

[Palem]

If they know how to manage their prov, absolutely yes they should oop at 900 acres also I'll pose a different question for you. Prov at 600 acres, prov at 1000 acres, who can grow faster? The 1k prov

[Budlightyear]

If they know how to manage their prov, absolutely yes they should oop at 900 acres also I'll pose a different question for you. Prov at 600 acres, prov at 1000 acres, who can grow faster? The 1k prov

Some people like to war, and don't measure their OOP strat by how fast it can grow, but how fast it can be part of a KD ready to fight a war.

You sound like someone playing in an all-faery KD.

If it comes down to "Who can grow faster" not "who can be ready for a war faster (while growing)" you probably shouldn't be giving advice to UD pure attackers.

[Bishop]

You'll be ready faster if you get big quicker and pump your stuff, rather than staying small and arsing about getting hit by noobs. You want to reach your goal acreage asap, and that's best achieved by exploring in protection. Offense deters hits, not defense.

[Seldum]

yup, can't agree more. Don't waste your time around 600-700 acres, when exploring is so cheap. You can easily hit provinces with 2k ospec in the beginning of the age and just focus on growth.

It also depends on your kingdom of cause. If you have 25 provinces exploring, there are going to be a lack in acres to explore.

[Resurgam]

Easier to not explore at all. Train say 500 dspecs, rest to ospecs and just TM/plunder your way for acres and elites.

[Palem]

As Bishop said, being larger makes it easier to get prepared faster. You have more pezzies, more money, you've already trained more and costs are still the same. If you come OOP at 55k nw, you're a weak province regardless of how many acres you're sitting on. I recommend people OOP with strong provinces.

[Budlightyear]

You'll be ready faster if you get big quicker and pump your stuff, rather than staying small and arsing about getting hit by noobs. You want to reach your goal acreage asap, and that's best achieved by exploring in protection.

I think some of the confusion is that he didn't say what size he wanted to end up as. I was assuming he was in a warring KD. If you're looking to war early, from my personal experience, PAs should aim to stay small (but powerful for their size) while T/Ms and (sometimes) hybrids aim to grow larger so they develop econ and have a chance at being UB.

... In which case your "goal acreage" is likely not much more than 900 well-developed acres before you war.

Hitting up to that size is far better for UD since you convert specs along the way.

Offense deters hits, not defense.

I never said it didn't.

3. Most people people will think twice about hitting you if they see you have a large offense. A large offense early on is a much better idea than a good defense.