Homes in War?

[TywinLannister]

Is it ever viable to build homes in war? Say you're getting nightstriked and meteor showered and have new land coming in and are at 50% of your max pop. And it seems like the war is going to go on for a few more days. Is it viable to build homes to boost your birth rate?

[Uhm hoi]

The birthrate depends for the most part on how many peasants you already have. If possible at all, you could get some extra thieves dens and kidnap those peasants back if you really need em. On a breakable attacker though, you generally don't want too much peasants. If you get chained with too much peasants it can get pretty hard to deal with.

[topsy's revenge]

homes in war are super situational. They are one of the rare buildings that can be helpful or actually seriously hurt you. If you can't be chained, they can't really do big time fb runs and you aren't facing undead they can be quite handy.

[John Snowstorm]

disregard topsy, build 90% homes at all times.

[TommyB]

If you can't be chained, they can't really do big time fb runs and you aren't facing undead they can be quite handy.

Care to explain the last part about homes being detrimental when facing undead?

[Palem]

plague

[StratOcastle]

Elf war hero :-D

and dungeons

[TommyB]

plague

Yes I thought of that. But would the possibility of getting plagued and both NB and hospitals failing to cure it and you missing out on the +birthrate from your homes for that specific case really prevent you from building homes that you would have built otherwise? Sounds like you expect to be plagued 24/7 which seems to contradict condition #1 (you can't be chained).

[fawk]

10% homes can be good on an attacker.
add love and peace and you should have high levels of population.

on the other hand keep in mind homes don't increase your damage output as an attacker.
they don't help you if you are being chained.. so you only really want them if you know you are not going to be chained soon. otherwise just go barracks/tgs and do max damage

[StratOcastle]

I've seen limited core strats with homes & science that carried huge offense and could absorb tremendous ops and sabotage. It was very effective in ghetto wars and I'm curious to see it's strength in the current nerfed mystic Tower environment.
I noted Pyros war in 58 when x-Abs commented on the non-existent traditional tpa/wpa and Pyros comments to Simians in 59 of having an overabundance of the same. So there is some evidence to the fringes of the strat in top play, but I never braved a survey to confirm homes.
I haven't experimented with the strat because it seems to work best in some numbers and a disaster if your caught alone with it.

To fully clarify what I saw in war: big faerys on top with an avian and undead cleric just below in nw. These were GS and WT heavy. The core comprised of a mix of orc warriors, undead tacs and clerics, and avian clerics. The orcs and undead were carrying the homes strat.
So we saw their huge offense, but pathetic wpa and tpa figuring we could easily shell. But by day 2 our resources were dried up and we couldn't chain all of them. Curiously we won this war, but it was time limited by diplo and the kingdom with this strat was less active. I knew the monarch as he previously served as steward there. Like most steward in spirit he's a fanatic and thus wouldn't divulge any secrets in forum.

[makeo]

Simple rule of thumb: Homes are a defensive building that synergises with unbreakability. As topsy said. The more unbreakable you are for whatever reason, the more you can derive value from them.

[makeo]

Bugger! Should add, the higher your ability to expand quickly without reprisals, more value homes have.

That's when I'd utilise more on attackers.

[kazinji]

Or that expansion could be false. They allow you to grow some just to take you down HARD. Bigger you are the harder you fall.

[scitzo]

Homes FTW!

[copious]

Homes work.
Just keep in mind the KD better able to hold on as long as it can to peasants is able to generate enough gold to fuel its war economy and outgrind the KD that doesn't.
Do your own war math and add your contextual variables to figure out where you are and where the enemy is at and who snowballs his advantages without over leveraging the rest.