Chain or Shell?

[CPTK]

Is it more effective to overpop a prov with traditional marches or to kill pop with ns/massacre/kidnap/ms/fireball/storms/chastity?

[Chrystal Palace]

each situation is different. i hate massacres because i dont like to be caught without any incoming land. but sometimes there is need for it. it all depends on the race, enemy kd setup, and what your trying to do. there is a prov in every war you want to shell and then take his easy acres but massacre is not the way to go.

this is only my opinion. like i said it depends on what youre trying to do.

[Palem]

technically I guess more "effective" would be chaining, just because it forces very large and quick military drops. Otherwise, as CP said, every situation is different.

[Lestat]

In an idea world you would deep chain 2 provs and FB down others in the same wave.

[makeo]

Chain those you wanna eat now( often most immediate threat), shell those who you wanna eat later(those who might become a threat).

[noobium]

The question is, if your chains do not cause defense, thieves, and peasants to desert, then what was the point of chaining?
It isn't too hard to calculate the damage of a chain over so many expected hits, and you have a rough idea of when those hits will occur. A rough guess will do, no need to dig into spreadsheets.

Creating a land shell is situational. If you have the means to chain all attackers, using landchains is going to be better than leaving a land shell open, but there are only so many generals. Sometimes you will have to leave a few provinces to grow, but it is more a matter of necessity or expedience than something that should be aimed for every war.

[topsy's revenge]

ideally, you chain the people you wouldn't be able to shell. Shelled provs can be quite useful!

[StratOcastle]

ideally, you chain the people you wouldn't be able to shell. Shelled provs can be quite useful!

That was a handsome answer. I'm always renewed faith in mankind when I hear things like this.

[noobium]

ideally, you chain the people you wouldn't be able to shell. Shelled provs can be quite useful!

This is true, you will want to mark attackers as shells early on; but putting in the ops early is not as effective as using nm+ns to prepare chain targets, or aw/nado to weaken mage and thief threats; while maintaining MS and greed cover is more important early on than later. The first two days of war are the best time to maximize the effectiveness of attackers and landchains, and during the first two days there is not much space for wpa/tpa or economic variation between attackers.
Sometimes it makes sense to throw some spare massacres or exploit someone who screwed up their t/m defense, but aside from that, I wouldn't want to use too many nightstrikes on someone I wasn't going to attack in the near future.

Anyway, every war is different, and sometimes it is going to be better to shell out a particularly large attacker in order to inflict more chain damage early. I disagree that it's always going to optimal to chain 2 shell 2, but against some setups it's going to be the most efficient method (like fighting a kingdom with lots of attackers around the same size).

[Tapout]

I thought NM + Chain was preferable to NM/NS + Chain because NM only forces the troops (bar soldiers) in training whereas NS kills them outright. As the end aim is overpopulation surely it's therefore more effective to leave as much of the pop in tact as possible?

[noobium]

I thought NM + Chain was preferable to NM/NS + Chain because NM only forces the troops (bar soldiers) in training whereas NS kills them outright. As the end aim is overpopulation surely it's therefore more effective to leave as much of the pop in tact as possible?

Nightmare, Nightstrike, then chain. Maximizes the number of hits on a given province (and nightmare can open up more nightstrikers). Doing something like this means being more likely to 4- and 5-tap attackers sooner, and opens up the range of who can send out safely. Something like this is very useful for races like Elf and Halfling, as it means that those races can (a) keep more defense at home while participating in land chains, and (b) accelerates the destruction of the number one threat to halflings in early wars, by pushing down high offense attackers sooner rather than later.

If NS is unnecessary after a round of nightmaring, then of course do something else. That has to be figured on a case by case basis.
For most kingdoms, nightmare isn't used due to timing issues, so the effective orders become "NS the next chain target 12 hours before hitting". If a kingdom has that issue, then they're going going to want to capitalize on NS damage sooner rather than later.

Ultimately, overpopulation is a means to an end, to do the most economic damage possible to the target. If the troops to be overpopulated die sooner, it makes no difference if they are nightstriked or desert. If the troops to overpopulate are offensive, then taking steps to maximize the acres taken in a chain is essential, even though defensive losses should be minimized. (usually, an offense that can be removed by chaining would have low defense to begin with, so it falls under the category of "if something else is profitable, do something else instead").
What makes those chains more devastating is being able to increase the acres taken, since any kingdom has a limit of how much offense and how many generals they can field, in addition to whether those provinces are in the best position to do chain damage.

While this isn't the only way to play, during the first hours of war it is more profitable to use NS to chain deeper or open up a target with considerable defense, rather than use NS to prepare a shell with no follow-up. Doing FB and NS early - when attacker thief defenses are going to be better and attackers don't have that many peasants to lose - is a suboptimal use of mana and stealth, unless the shell target starts with bad t/m defenses (which only happens if someone else is making an 100-level error in province management).

Massacre early can be a good idea, as long as attackers keep in enough incoming acres and are doing effective chain damage. (This is also why using NS to chain deeper is preferable to making shell targets early, since it gives a wider flexibility in target selection when splitting between landchains and massacre attacks.)

Finally, using nm+ns to chain deeper should give attackers more peasants to work with later on; while this is a short term advantage with some drawbacks, the economic windfall from chaining efficiently is useful for all sorts of purposes, including a shift from landchains to massacre and/or maxgaining.

Somewhere in between these things, chaining t/ms is also a factor. You will probably want to chain at least one or two t/ms or high-defense provinces early in war, but while those chains take place you can usually pick an attacker to chain as well. When doing this, it is helpful to know which attackers can eventually be shelled, even if no immediate action is taken.

The ultimate goal is to maximize the use of all the offense attackers enter war with, since high offenses can die very quickly after 2-3 days of war. It is better to make the most of that advantage while it exists, rather than use NS on targets that are not going to be dropped soon.

[topsy's revenge]

nm removes tpa. NS is dependent on superior tpa ratio. The two have very high synergy, but be careful about removing too much nw.

[kazinji]

This was for a longer war. Against a kingdom that used all tm's to attack. Let them get some more acres above what they started with. And start shelling them out, with massacres. They stopped attacking quick.

[Spahrep]

In an idea world you would deep chain 2 provs and FB down others in the same wave.

This is key. You never want to FB the province you are chaining, you want to cause over population. I've seen people do this often.