Undead Attacker Build Strat Advice

[noobium]

If I'm an Undead that is considerably big and I have enough offense to hit anyone I would want to hit, then I might have a defensive build... but if I do that, I'm not going to rely on just having 20% gs and 20% wt or whatever. I'd also be depending on there being no alternative chain target, all the alternative targets having similarly tanky defense, or the other chain targets being far inferior to take down. Then I'd just have to worry about that defense being stripped away by nightstrike and nightmare spam, being fireballed, and eventually bloating to uselessness.

The number of situations where it makes sense for Undead to tank up in a defensive posture, instead of just going ape**** with offense and eating the inevitable chain, are few. The main reason is that you want your Undead to have enough offense that kingdoms are obligated to chain in order to prevent their top from being wrecked. If an Undead can do that and keep good defense as well, then it might make sense for a more defensive build, but the result is likely that the undead is targetted with magic and ns/nm rather than landgrabs, thus negating most of those defensive buildings.

There is also the option of holding back ghouls, if you absolutely need to keep a level of defense at home. If that defense is the difference between a 2tap and a 1tap, and those ghouls are not necessary for a useful hit, then it's probably worth keeping ghouls at home and eating MS + defensive losses in order to wreck a chain attempt.

[Suur]

Cant argue much anything you said. Nothing wrong said. I would only like to add here that we have got our "top wrecked" (what actually ***s). Did not give them war win though. While they were doing it, in 2 waves they lost their biggest "low defense" undead attackers and they were unable to chain all our big undeads even with NM waves. When you are on land def allready it does take 2x less attackers compared to opponent to keep there everything under control and it does not matter what off you started with.
I am not saying that UD is a good UB attacker, just you need to keep reasonable dpa considering your size. Undead is hard to mix with other attacker races that have good elite def because you will give them plague.

[Bishop]

Offensive power is overpowered compared to econ or defensive buildings on attackers, and the dominant strategy is just to cram as much offense as possible on a province and **** everything else. Only during war do other building types start to be really useful for an attacker, and there are options besides offense cramming. Of course defense wins wars, imo that is how it should be. (I'd still say that offense is way too strong after the big defense nerf, and it is way too easy to destroy provinces through ops or attacks, but that's something else entirely...)

If I'm Undead, the best safeguard against being land chained is more offense for more incoming acres (or better yet, the ability to split between landgrabs and massacre), and maybe barracks. GS have uses for kingdoms that want to keep their acres in peacetime, but if I'm a warring ghetto I don't give a crap about acres. Against a chain, even high GS are only sparing 3-4 hits, and for a province with high off:def they are still going to drop to zero defense quick. If I were big and/or had defense worth a damn then I'd favor guardstations, but if I had 20+ hitters who could chain me in range then it's not happening unless I were to nerf myself by running way too much defense.

Offense has to be favoured though. The alternative of favouring defense results in a stagnant game. The only real issue i have with offense is that you cant kill it when it is out.

[Araqiel]

Offense has to be favoured though. The alternative of favouring defense results in a stagnant game. The only real issue i have with offense is that you cant kill it when it is out.

Ambushing is very effective in taking out mop, especially against orcs and undeads since their defensive values are so low.

I am undead this age and I hate ambushes more than I care to admit.

NS also hits troops out, but elites are notoriously tough to kill.

Anyway are there any changes scoped to be able to kill offense out? Your comment makes it sound like it is an issue you want to address.

[Bishop]

Nothing right now, but i think its something we should be addressing.

[Araqiel]

Nothing right now, but i think its something we should be addressing.

Sounds fun, cheers!

[Palem]

Removing elite protection from NS would be a good start.

[TommyB]

Removing elite protection from NS would be a good start.

I had the same thought, but I also assume that there was a reason to introduce it in the first place. Probably because spamming NS on an attacker was too powerful? Was it introduced when NS started to affect troops away? I don't know that's just the last time I remember when NS was changed.

Just saying it needs to be carefully balanced. Maybe it would be enough to weaken elite protection but that is hard to argue without knowing what the current mechanism actually is. :P

[noobium]

Enough NS will do a number on elites, even with 1/3 the normal kills. (Way back when it used to be that NS only killed soldiers o_O)

Massacre is pretty useful for doing everything necessary to set up the destruction of attacker offense... by late war it's better to mass attackers than land-chain them, as long as incoming acres are not a concern.

I think a better solution to offense sustainability would be to improve the effectiveness of TG and Forts, so that having stable infrastructure is worth more. Improving all building types would be a welcome change to encourage people to rethink building strategies, instead of just automatically cramming maximum offense or defense just to remain competitive.

[copious]

15% TGs
15% Rax
15% GS
15% Guilds
40% Homes.

(since you mention your KD makes surplus Runes, don't bother about Towers period)

per 1k acres, 40% homes brings in +3,200 / 25,000 pop (assume 0% sciences and 0% from honor bonuses)
that's about 12.8% more pop and about an additional 2k leets 600 wiz 600 thieves per 1k acres, and that's pretty decent bro.

Given acre exchanges and what not, you should probably still be 10% of all main 4 building types by min time even if you only used build creds to rebuild them only
Try it and see.

[noobium]

I don't know why people feel like they need GS.

[Palem]

I had the same thought, but I also assume that there was a reason to introduce it in the first place.

A lot of things were introduced people too many people cried. Not because there was a good* reason to change something.

*Good meaning mechanically sound. Obviously making your player base happy is a good thing lol

[kazinji]

I don't know why people feel like they need GS.

Seems like an attackers job is to take and keep land, yes. GS helps you keep land. 20% reduction along with emerald dragon is a chunk of each hit. If you are to be chained, you are going to be chained. GS just delays this, and hinders them from moving on to the next chain target. As with most ppl that ask for help here, they are in the ghetto's and war other ghetto's. They don't have 25 ppl all log in at the same time to hit one person.

[noobium]

why would an attacker want to keep land? land is almost entirely a burden for avian, orc, or undead to keep. you'd want to keep acres on provinces that can actually use them, and you'd want enemy attackers to bloat faster so that their acres can eventually be transferred to provinces that can actually use them.

the delay for building gs is equivalent to 3, maybe 4 hits, under good conditions. 3-4 hits on provinces with little defense, especially when that defense is prone to being nightmared and nightstriked and dies to desertions, is not going to stop much. might be different for provinces that are bigger than normal and have actually useful defense, but if I want gs I want to have a reasonable expectation that the hits against me are going to be single taps most of the time.

[StratOcastle]

I use GS/hospitals/rax to retain acres/defense/nw and hold a zone if most elements fall into place. The other heavy attackers bounce around like superballs which is what they're supposed to do. Maybe it's ghetto, but I've used this strategy to effect a nw bulge. Oftentimes I'll be the link that feeds enemy attackers down to our chained range.
I played a little football and base some strategy off blocking schemes, bend-don't-break doctrine and roleplaying a heavy attacker in the light of a center or nose guard. This is why I gravitate to cleric even if it's not efficient in expressed numerical value. In effect it's come into play to stall chains which is the essence of nw gap supremacy.

Of note: AMA retains(ed) elves nw center. Knowing the relative ops and counter defense with high defense retention they amount to a more refined example of what I try to accomplish. If you saw the initial wave vs CR you'd have seen all of CRs elves were hammered to the lower tier. This was ideal as they were now at odds with AMAs undead core. Before the wave CRs elves were intertwined at every nw level which was ideal from an offensive standpoint. In military parlance the AMA center was reminiscent of an armored division spearhead. I'm sure there's a chess strategy that Elit bases his distribution on, but I'm unfamiliar with the deeper aspects.