TD vs WT for effective thief defense

[AceOfFrag]

I could use some guidance. My warring kingdom 8 wars/ age has asked me to play elf mystic this age. I am usually an T/a but very active so figured I would try it.

I am looking at about 5 raw wpa and about 4 raw tpa mid age- running 40 % guilds to get there.

I am worried about vulnerability to rogues- i know they will steal the runes and will be active enough to use the runes up , but AW is a beast- I usualy shread both faes and elves with it and wreck them easily.

am I better off modding up tpa with TD or doing WT's?

i had read years ago there was a point I thought over 3 tpa with normal mods it made sense to go with TDs.

thank you in advance for any help.

[Bishop]

WTS also reduce damage, there is no comparison to them for defense if you are facing ha/ros and even then they wont protect you fully.

[Ethan]

If you are actually talking about defense, WTs - pure WTs. There is *always* someone out there that can op you, and if all you wanted was to be protected, TDs won't get you there.

It doesn't really matter if you stay "safe" though, the question is how to do the most damage. If you are planning A/M, then you just have to admit your magic is going to be kinda weak, don't worry too much, and make sure you can attack. If you are going T/M, then you expect to *use* those thieves, and should mod them like crazy, to keep space requirements down to fit more defense... since attacks are your biggest danger.

AFAIK, <10 mTPA on a mage it just asking for AW. So either don't try, stack WTs, and make it take a long time and lots of losses... or go full T/M, get to 12-15 mTPA, and go NSing yourself.

[Katsuni]

Here's roughly how extra TPA works:

Your TPA is compared to the enemy TPA, roughly as (defenders TPA / Attackers TPA).

So if they have 5 to defend with, and you have 5 to attack with, you have about 100% failure rate =P

If you're on the defensive and have say... 15 mod TPA, but the enemy has 20 mod TPA, then they'll fail about 75% of their operations against you.

As such, it depends primarily upon other factors, such as how much raw TPA you have, how much crime science you have and so on. A really high TPA can leave you so strong against thieves that it's simply not worth it for them to waste their time on you.

Unfortunately, halfling rogues have a +50% TPA mod this age, so it's not really going to help you out enough, since a halfling rogue will probably attain double your mod TPA or higher, so it will definitely reduce the successful hit %, but not by enough to truly matter against a halfling rogue intent upon murdering your wizards.

Watch towers, in that case, grant a guaranteed capture rate (which also stacks with whatever TPA you already had for failure chance), and also happens to offer reduced damage taken for the times they slip through anyway.

Faeries get it a bit easier with +10% TPA and clear sight.

The point is... if they WANT you dead, you will be dead, and there's honestly not a whole lot you can do about that, other than make it such a waste of stealth/thieves that it's not worth the effort to target you instead of someone else.

Extra thieves on your side inflicts more deaths to their thieves when they fail, as well as upping their failure rate, so it's a good idea to have at least a few thieves running around. Every 1 TPA you have, however, means 1 WPA you don't have, and a similar situation occurs for you in that regard, so you might want to take into account that you want a nice big fat WPA to break enemy targets more frequently. It's kind of annoying to waste mana and runes (and sometimes wizards in explosions!) on targets that had nothing happen to them.

Extra TPA can be useful as well, however, as anyone can nightstrike these days (once upon a time only rogues could harm anything other than soldiers =P ), and rob the vaults will help a poor elf with their weakened economy due to missing Tree of Gold, so there are advantages either way.

More TPA means weaker magic but more useful operations and a stronger economy, but more WT's are generally a bit more effective against deterring a rogue that really, really wants you dead and will throw themselves against a brick wall to get at you.

Pick which one's more valuable to you, because you can't have it all.

[Spahrep]

Extra thieves on your side inflicts more deaths to their thieves when they fail...

does the wiki say this anywhere or is it just an accepted fact or speculation?

[idiocy]

wts. LOTS of wts.

you can build both if you're really, really worried about thieves, and have enough tpa to op attackers, but doing this leaves little room for anything else. might be worth it if the only thing to worry about from the enemy is thieves.

for a/m types, building thief dens in the middle of war is cheaper than training raw thieves, so if you came into war with a better-than-average tpa and attackers haven't raped you yet, they're an option - especially if you also up your raw thieves to compensate. that way you have defense from wts which you need, but space for other stuff as well - like defensive mods so you can actually defend against attackers. building td mid-war also means that you'll be better able to exploit fattened attackers, instead of trying to thieve in hostile and failing way too much for it to be worthwhile.

for t/m types, the only thing to do is build td and hope their Rogues suck at being Rogues, and maybe through in wt on spare acres.

for any type, crime science is very important. don't neglect it too much... easier said than done due to elf's craptastic economy.

[Spahrep]

Last age as elf mystic until i got my honor up to viscount i just kept 2.0 rtpa and 25% WT in times of war. Once you start getting your population and tpa/wpa bonuses from honor you can more easily up your rtpa w/o impacting your ability to land on everyone but other strong mystics. If you are lucky enough to get up to the duke/prince range your thievery can really come on strong.

[kYs]

If you are saying once OOP war, since you hv poor raw tpa at a start and hv no science pump, I did go for WT any day.

But the story changes once you get pumped up nicely in science and raw tpa. You can opt for both. TD & WT (TD higher than WT).

[flogger]

run roughly 25% WT's AND 15% TDs, don't be an attacker at all. Rest of build is forts/guilds/towers and about 10% homes. Key is to try to stay significantly larger than enemy halfers, so they have NW differential working against them, then you should be relatively safe. Your kingdom should make sure before you fight you are larger than the enemy rogue threats you want to fight. Something like 5 WPA and 7 TPA should be your aim.

[mastakizzor]

having a mixture of both is the best for me.. when you're up against an average KD with few rogues, have around 15% TD 15% WT.. but if you're against rogue heavy KDs, usually more than 3, then switch to 25%WT 10%TD.. it is all situational based.. if you're the only supermage in the KD, killing your wizzies is the best plan for enemy rogues.. but if there is few other supermages in your KD, taking your wizzies down with all that losses and stealth used is just a waste..

dont forsake pumping crime science.. at least train half the amount you invest on channeling science.. so at the end of the day, you'll have a good mTPA plus the fixed rate by WT to increase enemy's failure rates...

having TDs is also important for the reduced thief losses it provides.. you surely wont be doing intel gathering only as a T/M, so with ops like NS and all the robs, you'll bound to lose a lot of rTPA..

[Spahrep]

run roughly 25% WT's AND 15% TDs, don't be an attacker at all. Rest of build is forts/guilds/towers and about 10% homes. Key is to try to stay significantly larger than enemy halfers, so they have NW differential working against them, then you should be relatively safe. Your kingdom should make sure before you fight you are larger than the enemy rogue threats you want to fight. Something like 5 WPA and 7 TPA should be your aim.

Last age was my first age as elf mystic, but i never had that much raw TPA and relied more on my 25% WT in any conflict. Not saying its the correct or right way but thats why I did.

@Flogger - I had 7 raw wPA modded to around 28 or so, and i still was having difficult times landing MS on rogues that turned out to have around 12mod wpa. Was that bad luck or ?? Running only 5 rwpa just seems crazy to me. This why i had only about 4 rtpa and used those WT.
Can you give me a quick rundown on your 5wpa / 7tpa ?

[idiocy]

totally disagree with elf t/m. elf has to be attacker to reach their full potential, but the problem is that they need to accept the reality that they can't defend against everything as a static province, and that they will need a contingency plan for the various terrible things that can happen. elf t/m is a waste... better to play fae/mystic or human/mystic and be able to do things besides spam MS. (elf's terrible economy and terrible military strength is a valid knock against elf for sure, and competent kingdoms will do everything to kill elf)

people overrate rWPA way too much. channeling sci + libs + honor bonuses > raw wpa, and the best way to get honor as elf is to kill the things that take away your honor before they kill you, while making chains and thief ops against you as costly as possible. some might be killed, but if limiting the number of chained elves to one per wave, after the third wave the most dangerous offenses are dropped to a sufficiently low level (if and only if your elves are contributing to chains). then the only thing to worry about is thieves... faery/rogue has been nerfed to a level where they're not an auto-win button like before, and halfling is about the most overrated race ever.

if you're not making a strong grab, leeching good acres from defenseless provinces, or running conquest to leech honor safely, you might as well keep your armies home, and if you refuse to do those things when the openings are available, you should have picked faery. new acres on elf are awesome, because they allow for dynamic strategies that faery can't use, and do attack damage in the process. playing elf t/m is at least somewhat defensible in many cases, but playing elf a/m and being afraid of new acres is defeating the point of being an elf in the first place.

[mastakizzor]

last age i found the perfect figure for the ultimate success rate.. its 10rWPA.. =D

had 3rWPA at the 1st war, failed on all T/Ms and a/M hybrids.. had 5rWPA by 2nd war, failed on all T/Ms only.. had 8rWPA at late mid-age, 50% fails on other mystics, less fewer fails on others.. had 10rWPA on last war, failed once in a blue moon..

[idiocy]

could have just been the difference between fighting good t/ms, and fighting crappy t/ms. the power of human fail is strong.

people overrate housing science so much, especially on a race with no native economy boost. go straight for channeling/crime once the basic levels of alc/housing are set and it's so much better. tools is kinda crap, food is really good for freeing up acres and directing them towards specific areas. crime and channeling are effectively population boosts in a way that has a greater impact on actual power, and don't become meaningless the moment an elf takes in acres. some elves have learned to go straight for channeling, but a lot miss crime science and how valuable it is. war science is theoretically useful, but it's not likely that it can be bought in huge enough quantities.
war win and eowcf science go to alc/housing of course, but other than that, pump time is for the sciences that affect elf's primary offensive function, and the obvious defensive gap that they can't fully close.
trying to go for alchemy/housing like human or faery just means that those races will win every time, and you're spending tons of cash to get where those races (and to a lesser extent dorf) are at several days ago, and where orc/avian are yesterday.

[Hope]

elves should never be T/M as they suck and I agree A/M is the best combo. elves defense will definitely be broken through one way or another.