A war doesn't consist of one round of attacks. The only way your scenario makes sense is in two ways: Either
1.) Your running a turtling Undead with low offense
or
2.) The other kd is running low offense and you're close to unbreakable.
If 2, then run forts, but 2 won't happen because "low kd offense" isn't a strategy. If 1, then you're not playing efficiently.
Forts are never a viable option unless you're close to being unbreakable.
Well I will say this, I consider Forts to be useless except when Training Grounds are maxed. I'm not sure they're too different from Guard Stations. Guard Stations protect your own province exclusively, Forts reduce the overall offense of the enemy kingdom if they attack you, which is kind of like Guard Stations which protect your kingdom. But I see what you're saying as they don't stop you from getting chained.
Also I should note that Forts are low on my list of considerations, I just didn't want to eliminate them without any discussion.
I'm very interested to know what the maximum % of dungeons a person can use without it being inefficient? It seems like Dungeons>Stables as long as you can still fill your prisons on each attack. But I don't know what that entails exactly. And do the prisoners come from enemy soldiers before other units? What am I taking when I capture prisoners? Is it essentially like extra losses for my enemy when I hit them? Thanks :)
As a simple man I tend to run the below for Ud/Tact:
GS 20%
TG 15%
Stable 15%
Hosp 15%
WTs 12%
Guilds 12%
Towers 8%
Dung 3%
Though I'll grant you could drop a couple of % from Guilds and Towers to put in 4 to 5% something else.
That's a nice all around build. I really, really like Homes though. They do so many good things, especially for Undead as it gives me some way to deal with Fireballs since I can't kidnap peasants.
Homes do pretty much zero good things in any war where you're actually getting targetted though. You go in with higher pezzies, but as FB kills % of pezzies you have (not a set amount) you lose more pezzies per FB in the beginning. I don't know exactly how many extra FB it would mean a KD having to put into you vs not having homes, but I do know it is low enough to make it no issue at all for an organised KD.
And then when you're down to few pezzies it makes no difference anyway. You get a small BE Boost from having less jobs to fill, but honestly you'd be better getting a small bonus from a building than no bonus at all from homes and a marginally better BE from less jobs. Particularly if you are investing heavily in only a few buildings otherwise.
The Birth Rate bonus is also minute given that it works on number of pezzies you have. Base BR is 2.05%, so lets say you had a 50% boost from homes then that is 3% near as. If you've only got 200 pezzies no homes means you get 4.1 pezzies, with homes 6 pezzies. 2 Pezzies is pretty much doing nothing for your income or BE. Plus any BR boost can be instantly nullified by Chastity.
The only thing vaguely useful is allowing you to run marginally more troops at the outset. If that is your intention you might as well run Homes pre-war to get the improved draft levels and BE and then raze homes as or just before you wave to put in some of the other buildings you wanted, WTs for example. BE drops slowly over time so the boost will carry on into the first bit of war and you'll have the extra troops going in.
The reason I'm getting Homes is not for the extra peasants, it's for the extra military that comes from those extra peasants. I get about +1500 Elites from my homes and if I get Fireballed it doesn't really change that. I can see you have good knowledge on the game but I don't quite see why Homes are not useful as they do provide a huge military boost.
As above if you want the homes for the military that's fine, run them pre-war to get the extra military. Then as you're waving, switch the homes out for something else. You get the extra troops from having ran homes plus the benefit of a useful building in war.
I see what you're saying now. Thanks, that is a really excellent tip and I will absolutely do that.
This old thread of mine should explain why you need to swap homes out if you're using them to pump extra military and not worrying about pezzies...
forums.utopia-game.com/showthread.php?618107-High-homes-bad
And yes, I realize you aren't running as high of homes as discussed, but the concept is the same.
Thanks for that link. I'll read the thread and reply later here :)
Homes are okay only if:
- They are filled with elites, defspec, or thieves
- There is nothing better to build.
- Ponies are not important (Homes slightly outperform horses, but horses have a few differing benefits)
Since Undeads are basically giant piles of offense, the useful buildings would be Training Grounds and maybe WT. GS are overrated unless aiming to retain acres outside of war, and even at that they are not that good. As Tactician, barracks are not necessary unless the whole kingdom has attack time bonuses. Stables might be an alternative, but Homes are more useful economically and put up slightly more raw power.
Some things that are problematic for you;
- You seem to want to avoid being chained, but if you are Undead you almost always want to be a chain target. If a kingdom is forced to chain an undead, it means they are not chaining a defensive province like Halfer or Faery, or a province with lower chain resistance like everything else. GS would make sense if an Undead is too dangerous to be left un-chained, but the number one reason to chain an Undead early is because the Undead has so much offensive power. Building enough GS to deter a chain takes away from that power. GS are more useful for kingdoms that do not want to lose acres, which for most kingdoms is irrelevant.
- Forts are almost never a good idea on attackers, at least outside of war or hostile. As Undead, Forts are particularly bad because any Undead that tries to build up to UB will eat lots of NS and magic spam, and Undeads get much less out of training thieves during war than other UB candidates. The only way to make forts work is to have thief and magic defense covered sufficiently, or to destroy enemy thieves to the point where they can't NS effectively. Most wars do not reach this point without one kingdom surrendering, except for nub kingdoms that don't understand what the hell they are doing.
- Homes and Stables together are pretty bad, since ponies don't directly benefit from BE.
- Stables work best for kingdoms that initiate hostile, since the stables can be immediately razed and rebuilt at a time of the aggressor's choosing, when money should be plentiful. It is assumed that a kingdom that initiates hostile will attack army-in-army-out with their attackers until the hostile is resolved, whether they have built stables or not, as you do not want to be a heavy attacker caught with armies home. In any event, once Stables are filled and armies are sent out, the Stables themselves are deadweight - they can be razed or allowed to be destroyed, and replaced with your actual build. Doing this with Stables does not damage economy or lead to overpopulation the way it does with Homes. Therefore you should looking at what you are replacing those Stables with, not just running 15-20% stables or whatever is suitable for your purposes. (I would run 5% stables on every province except pure t/ms as insurance against being chained, and it is not necessary to mount every offensive troop, but opinions on this might vary...)
- Dungeons are pretty much mandatory for any multi-tapping attacker, and overbuilding dungeons and holding back prisoners is a viable strategy.
If I am assuming I am generic Undead/Tactician in a generic warring ghetto, and my kingdom had a significant number of non-Avian attackers without Tactician, waving another generic ghetto with the setup ghettos typically use - primarily high offense attackers, iffy use of thief power, and of course I am planning to war someone as soon as possible, I'm looking at something like:
Offense buildings:
25% tg
20% stable
5% dungeon
Magic buidings:
10% guilds
5% towers (this can be as low as no towers, if I start war with a sufficient gc and rune stockpile)
Defensive buildings:
10% watchtowers
(This can be directed towards other buildings if wt are judged unimportant, but 10% wt will deter other attackers from attempting thief ops; since I wouldn't emphasize crime science or tpa on undead, it is likely that most attackers have a 2:1 or better modTPA advantage on me, and that is sufficient for spamming low-yield thievery or NS.)
Economic buildings:
20% homes (if I want gs, this and stables are where I am most likely to pull from, up to 25-30%. don't run anything less than 20% gs, it's a waste of acres)
5% banks (this can also be no banks if I have sufficient gc stored up pre-war)
If I feel like it would be worthwhile and I don't need gs, some acres might be pulled from the above to build 10% hospitals, but most times I would prefer added offensive potential.
As soon as I have hostile started, I raze off the 20% stables to towers and any extra guilds, tg, watchtowers, barracks, gs, hospitals or banks I might want for this particular war. Most of the time this would be towers, if I have good channeling science (and if you aren't getting good channeling science as undead, you're doing it wrong and should be slapped in the face).
The homes presume that they are being built as part of a pump, and being filled with pure elites over what I would normally train. It is possible to lower or eliminate stables and replace them with Homes for similar effect, but I would want at least 10% stables in order to mount the troops I would retain after a deep chain. 20% stables is nice because those ponies don't die to nightstrike and have less nw weight than ghouls.
I should also add - anything less than 20% training grounds in a pre-war build is just nerfing yourself unnecessarily. TG are still by far the most useful building for a heavy attacker. For Undead in particular, their selling point is their huge peak offense and overall military power, combined with not needing farms or hospitals as much as other attackers. Going as high as 30% TG might be better, in order to account for incoming acres. You would want to be able to take in 50% of your acres and still have strong TG, rather than building or rushbuilding TG to keep up offensive strength. Since the other build options are weak, it's not like you are short for space... if other buildings were all that useful, I wouldn't be bothering with Homes or Stables, anyway...
Last edited by noobium; 23-02-2014 at 23:32.
Here are some points of interest from your post, noobium;
1. If I understood your implication correctly, Horses only experience significant decay whilst at home. Decay does not occur while my army is out.
2. I should probably lose my Guard Stations in favor of other buildings, most important would be Dungeons.
3. I was told not to use Banks during war. Is this bad advice? I often find my coffers empty and don't fully understand why I was told to not use Banks. I suppose it is largely because of the reduced % bonus increase of income after being Fireballed, but Banks still produce flat income.
4. Why is it so important for Undead to have good Channeling Science? I do have a good amount but I don't see why you emphasize this in particular.
5. I worry that WT might go to waste if I'm not op'd, that's the only reason I was willing to consider otherwise sub-optimal buildings such as Forts. I like the idea of using buildings which are useful 100% of the time.
6, Is 5% Dungeons as much as one can efficiently use before issues arise?
7. Do Dungeons effectively add to Defense Losses? What part of the army are the prisoners taken from?
8. Unrelated question, my friend says Guilds increase magic effectiveness. Can you confirm this?
And with regards to the other thread, Palem, my conclusion is that running very high % of Homes is clearly a poor choice in very competitive play, although in more modest fields of battle it can potentially be extremely abusive. I would prefer to stay in the middle ground at 20%.
100% usable buildings is an ideal, not necessarily great practice.
Guilds increase magical effectiveness yes. The best way to find out is if your in war and your build strat is behind your acreage. You'll fail a great number of spells in back and forth combat.
Noobium is by far more knowledgable in these matters. I run some fairly offbeat strats that are not efficient, especially by noobium standards. I do enjoy a relative level of success, so some things depend on your approach to threat recognition and how you address them. My only criticism of efficient design is it's predictability.
love that thick mahogany back with no belly carve or anything...pure thick wood ! The thing ROCK is made of !Originally Posted by Bishop
________
Weed bowls
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=...+say&FORM=VDRE
That's probably a good way of looking at it. I do think there is a greater than normal chance I can get away with exploitative builds due to the relative level of competition I expect to face in the short term. It's the classic argument of stability versus exploitation. I feel people nearly always prefer the conventional route, especially the ones that have to deal with effective counter strategies. But I suspect my opponents to play not well, but poorly. Even with 20% Homes my army is extremely powerful, 40% would be absolutely insane. If they do op me down, yes I would be fairly screwed, but I'm not convinced that they will. If they don't focus on me my gains will be extremely high and I can triple tap key targets with ease.
With the build I mentioned in my initial post I had the highest acre gain during my first war with the build. I did that while being a fairly new province but also getting minimal ops (24/7 MS was all). MS + Troop losses from combat cut my offense down considerably although I was still in better shape than most at the end. But one war doesn't paint a clear picture. I know I could have just as easily been pounded by competent Thieves.
To me, it seems like Homes between 5 and 20% are pretty ideal. Going 30+ is highly exploitable indeed.
1. Assuming you send horses out every tick that they are home, and assuming no thief can steal horses from you, then the only horse losses should be from attacks. No losses to Nightstrikes or overpopulation, and no added wages. If you leave horses at home and do not have capacity for horses, then your ponies leave fast. I am presuming that you can always get your armies out the minute they return home, or at least the same tick that they return.
2. Guardstations are situational. If I were to build guardstations, I wouldn't bother with anything less than 25%, and I would only build them in specific situations. The easiest way to negate guardstations is just to hit someone else, and as mentioned, if you are undead and someone chains you, it is usually the best possible case for your kingdom.
3. Banks are a poor building for war. If you do not have any problems paying troops, then they are not necessary. I put in 5% because that is usually what I need to maintain 200% wages with 5-6 pez/acre, and it captures some extra income during the brief period an Undead can expect to keep their peasants.
4. Undead should have good channeling science if they expect to be chained, because a chained undead needs to be casting offensive magic in order to maximize their usefulness. Slightly better wpa also allows them to resist a few more core fbs, nados, and lls. Finally and probably most importantly, an undead that keeps their acres is probably going to want to aid runes to their kingdom in a long war, and undeads have a lot of spare acres due to their traits. I'd want channeling to be around the same level as housing science by mid-late age... if my channeling mod w/o libraries is under +100% by then I'm not too happy.
5. The same is true of any defensive building, which is the reason why I'm not too fond of gs, and forts are generally agreed to suck bad. I think forts on attacker are better than the average player gives them credit, but still highly situational. Watchtowers are the most effective defensive building at what they do, and counter one of the worst threats to a heavy attacker.
6. I had close to 10% dungeons as Avian/Cleric at one point, filling them through randoms. It works fine if willing to take a short-term hit to offense and economy, and saving prisoners for the really important big attacks. 5% can usually be filled with one hit on a defensive province, if that province doesn't have hospitals. It's a guaranteed fill is the target has town watch active.
7. No. Prisoners are taken from killed troops.
8. Guilds only affect selfspell success, and the duration of all spells. It doesn't do anything to determine whether offensive magic succeeds or fails. Whoever spread that rumor probably doesn't want chained provinces to cast. Utopia is full of such disinformation.
Homes are only useful for provinces that have the time to pump properly (at least when concerning attacker provinces). Outside of fortified stance or eowcf, the cost of filling Homes is prohibitively expensive, making it annoying to utilize the extra population for anything useful. Once pumped, the Homes are worthless. It's entirely possible to raze and rebuild homes after a pump, in order to let excess peasants die off. A lot of high-level strategies involve using high Homes (somewhere around 80% iirc) to attain draft rates that are otherwise impractical, and keeping a province just under the threshold of overpopulation while razing the Homes off. Doing this requires lots of money and preparation, and if timed incorrectly it is not particularly useful.
In this case, I'm building Homes because there simply aren't that many useful % buildings for dedicated attackers. Training grounds, barracks, and hospitals are basically it, with wt or td being useful in certain spots. Since you are Undead, hospitals are much less useful. You've already ruled out barracks for reasons. It's entirely possible and sometimes preferable to raze the Homes, let the 2 pez/acre die off, and replace with your actual war build.
Also - ffs, don't maintain the same build consistently throughout war, or peacetime growth. Incoming buildings should focus on one building type, rather than trying to build up everything at once. You can set up your province to build 25% gs or wt or rax on their incoming acres, at a time where those buildings are actually going to be useful (with better BE, too).
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