Virtual Survey: Match Personality & Race

[noobium]

What is AMA playing this age? (meh, making a dummy account)

That by the way is close to what I would have picked if my ghetto were not stupid and had selfish idiots wanting to play Halfling for no reason whatsoever.

[StratOcastle]

LoL! ( low ominous laugh ) - AMA is apparently running WH on humans though I'm not sure of totals. The undead are tacticians and I'm assuming the elves are mystic. I should've been more observant of previous war reports vs Pew and RBL.

Honestly you guys have been gold. I've created 2 provinces this age to see charts and ended up having a good time.

[fawk]

Lets get some essentials right:
Merchant (+30% income) needs to be on a race that can TOG (faery/human).

Avian (-30% attack time) needs to be cleric.
Undead (-50% offensive losses) is well suited for tactician (-20% attack times), ensuring they don't lose much of their offense for the frequent attacks.
Halfer (+50% tpa, -50% thief costs) benefits the most from being rogue. Allowing him more ops and giving him access to propoganda.
Orcs (+20% Enemy casualties, +30% gains) is best suited for warrior +15% OME, bloodlust). to be specific, +15% OME on elites with 7 attack, gives you a bigger bonus then it would on an elite with 5 attack. So the bonuses from this personality stacks well with orcs, same for bloodlust (which increases enemy casualities)
Dwarf - War Hero
Human (+20% sci) - sage (-50% sci cost)
Faery - Merchant

[QuellCrist]

I too am learning from this. Thanx.

[StratOcastle]

Indeed, if this thread was a song fawk just got us back to the bridge.
We aren't just looking at alternative persona/race match ups but at how they work in concert with others. Even the basic alignment sometimes requires a refresher.

~ When I refer to archetypical builds I'm talking about persona/race that have a foundation of ability that exceed all others in that given category. Thus avian tactician is the fastest with no augmentation. Orc warrior is the hardest hitter. This isn't about best as much as pronounced character. In this template we have room for the atypical builds with an eye toward team synergy. ~

Thank you.

[noobium]

Lets get some essentials right:
Merchant (+30% income) needs to be on a race that can TOG (faery/human).

Avian (-30% attack time) needs to be cleric.
Undead (-50% offensive losses) is well suited for tactician (-20% attack times), ensuring they don't lose much of their offense for the frequent attacks.
Halfer (+50% tpa, -50% thief costs) benefits the most from being rogue. Allowing him more ops and giving him access to propoganda.
Orcs (+20% Enemy casualties, +30% gains) is best suited for warrior +15% OME, bloodlust). to be specific, +15% OME on elites with 7 attack, gives you a bigger bonus then it would on an elite with 5 attack. So the bonuses from this personality stacks well with orcs, same for bloodlust (which increases enemy casualities)
Dwarf - War Hero
Human (+20% sci) - sage (-50% sci cost)
Faery - Merchant

Why do you think that fast attack times require some loss reduction? Avian's difficulty is that they bloat fast and don't have that much offense to begin with. I'd be more worried about NS and magic rape, and looking for opportunities to increase their power rather than trying to sustain in a long war (no matter what, Avians are premised on doing their damage quickly, not playing as tanks). Since Avian is a minority race in this setup, it will automatically have issues using their best bonus due to being tough to synchronize with other attackers, so that adds to the relative badness of Cleric in this spot. (If we had lots of Avians, then I'd be more open to Cleric, but in almost any normal setup I would prefer Warrior, Tactician, or Merchant on Avian before Cleric.)

The best use for Cleric would be for races with expensive elites that they use for turtling, and for races that benefit most from omitting hospitals. It's also slightly better on races that would have better magic power, if using their Pitfalls (which you would in this setup, since effective pf casters would save their mana for higher priority spells). Human would be the best but they have two better options, while Dwarf fulfills the last two criteria. It's not like an Avian can't fit hospitals... and besides, Avians are based on doing their damage fast, not tanking and sustaining long wars. If we're going to try and fight 8-10 days, I'd want Cleric on a province that is trying not to get chained, and handles land bloat better than Avian.

I'd rather have Merchant on Human than Faery, because Human is more likely to grab acres and more likely to pump with a ton of peasants. Getting better utilization out of Merchant's free credits, and not having the tpa/wpa and build requirements of a Faery (if the Faery wants to use the most of their bonuses, anyway), is a better use of Merch. While Faery econ is a lot more secure, I think in a long war they are better served by Sage and superior t/m science in order to make up for their lack of a wpa/tpa bonus.

[StratOcastle]

Honor for your quote @ noobium:

The optimal situation for any attacker with huge offense is to hit at the moment that is most useful, not necessarily to get armies out as soon as possible. If I can risk holding armies for 3, 4 hours in order to wait for a better spot to hit, that would be the most preferable course of action. Reduced attack times should be avoided as much as possible, but there are situations where it is useful to return before your intended target.

This is a strategic ghost. I'm not a very good player but I know this kata. Both on offense and the ability to recognize on defense. Quality advice.

Reference below: it's off topic, but this advice needs to be here to. ;-)

[noobium]

wrong thread dood :p

[The Moon]

Avian Cleric; Keep troops alive as i would expect to be attacking very often.
Elf War Hero; Someone had to have this ****ty Personality.
Dwarf Merchant; Extra gold coins to help grow quickly.
Faery Mystic; Obvious
Halfling Rogue; Obvious
Human Sage; No comment.
Orc Warrior; Mounted Ogres at War with high % Training Grounds...
Undead Tactician; No comment.

>**.*....:.<*<<...:.*...:.>***............*.*.....<......:.*>..:.<.*><<<..:.*.***.

[QuellCrist]

One thing that I'd think would be cool in this thread, is that while the parameters said 3 of each race and 3 of each personality, they never said that the race and personality had to be the same, I wonder how that might change things.

I read the Stat0 role play thread and realised this.

For an example, you could if you wanted have 1 human cleric, 2 human merchants with 1 dwarf merchant and 2 dwarf clerics.(Just an example)

I'd be interested how noobium and Persain might adapt to that.

[QuellCrist]

That basically to what extent do they go with the archetypal solution, and how do they then balance that against pragmatic needs.

[noobium]

If I were going 3 each race 3 each personality and no repeat rule, then I would pick 3 copies of the same race/personalities over.

[StratOcastle]

Yes, there is plenty of evidence supporting 3 persona/race in the game as is. War kingdoms of some stature often display relative balance as did AMA last age. You must also understand that we navigate stance and CF in our best interest based on build and distribution.
Seems I might be on a AMA fanboy ride, but I put things in this perspective. When your looking at a kingdom who fights like an ancient master in a Kung Fu movie, with one hand behind his back, and then you see they run war heroes we know skill rises to the top.
When the universal belief is army in/out yet we've either witnessed or exercised the role of camper we have an exception to the rule. I like to find these exceptions.
The point of the virtual spread is to exercise the array of ability given in game, not the most effective strat in a given sector; This offers us the chance to learn the exceptions with dedicated builds equipped for Spelunking. Others will say there are no stones in this game unturned, yet I point to AMA again who in consecutive wars were harassed prior to war and dismantled them. Had the last conflict been 20 places south of the top 5 it may have been 3 superior adversaries bested. and imagine the one expected victory they had was vs Roughknecks. More than a match for many kingdoms.
Not a fan, but I pay attention to the apex predators.
One supposes we could counter the failures of AMA on diplo. Now wouldn't that be an interesting thread in these forums.
~ Strategies of Diplomacy: where is my leverage ~

[noobium]

Undead/Human/Elf is just the superior setup this age, whoring or warring. It particularly rapes Halflings, not that most setups have problems raping Halflings.

[StratOcastle]

I've played in order this age/ * I always gift 40 credits on moving to compensate invites *

1-human war hero because I had a lot of undead in a random kingdom with little economy. Didn't even know there was some order to these things, just dig ToG, immunity and cool elites.
2-elf mystic because I joined an all elf kingdom. I left because they changed strat and I dig challenge. They are doing well in honor charts.
3-random to a cool kingdom as an elf cleric to experiment with durability. Experiment was a success in war victory. Luxury of wizard bonus kept ops to a minimum and gs and rax equalled steady progress. Trained every tick I wasn't building and had science active even in the struggle to control nw center.
4-finally a mission. It's why I play. AC was bleeding players so I joined to help hold the line. Undead cleric with traditional strengths. We won our war, the 1st of the age. AC dissolved soon after.

I got a good look at a pro run dwarf sage and watched the undead merchants rocket into the top echelon. Part of this was the players online were the dragon slayers so we were subjects of lower defense. The result was undead merchants largely unchecked till it was too late. Fun age thus far and I might squeeze in one more experiment with dwarf tac if we level here in The Forgotten Few. :-)