20-25 man KD level strategy

[natebane]

Inspired from responding to stratocastles thread, I've only noticed province level guidance and queries for help in strategy talk. I would like to invite more players to participate in higher level strategy thinking and develop a 20-25 race/persona mix based on current age bonuses, and outline the concept behind it. Strategy can be directed towards any kd level goal. No strategy is unbeatable, but the best can be defined as having the highest success rate against the widest range of the field, or most probable opponent.

Conditions: Activity and player skill being equal.

Goal: To enhance the playerbases' thought process on kd level strategy through exchange of ideas, and hopefully increase the competitiveness from the bottom up.

Sample 20 man:
4 avian cleric
4 orc tactician
4 orc cleric
1 human sage
1 faery sage
3 elf mystic
3 halfling rogue

A bit simplistic, but just a sample: Integrated attacking core built on speed, sustainability, and gains. 3 specialties of each op and 2 sages for supporting ops and extra kd econ.

[Stingaaaa]

From my experience of having halfer rogues in the kd at 20 province level. They are one of the first to go. unable to mainatin decent defence is a real killer. And if chained its hard for them to recover.

run 4 faeries all mystics for the extra mana.
have 2 concentrate on damaging ops and 2 on tog.
Their sabotage is wayyy better than a halfer so the damage they do is better. Fair the theives are expensive but its worth it.

[kazinji]

From my experience of having halfer rogues in the kd at 20 province level. They are one of the first to go. unable to mainatin decent defence is a real killer. And if chained its hard for them to recover.

run 4 faeries all mystics for the extra mana.
have 2 concentrate on damaging ops and 2 on tog.
Their sabotage is wayyy better than a halfer so the damage they do is better. Fair the theives are expensive but its worth it.

Rogues are usually first to go, thieves are one of the first to leave when overpopped. Faery's are punching bags, if you spend a lot of time out of war they take a lot of random hits as they can't do anything back. And with Beastmasters being expensive 1 hit can cost you mil + in troop losses.

Halfers have 10% pop, which stacks with science, honor and homes. You can keep a few more troops and still maintain same D, and elites are cheaper.

All mystics would not has access to the rogue only ops and lose the extra stealth per tick.

I like the idea of a faery sage, NS and FB fiend. But drawbacks above.

[noobium]

The simplest setup for ghetto is majority Human, with Cleric or Warrior personality. It is not necessarily the strongest setup, but it easy to learn the game with and gives a lot of options inside and outside of war. Pairing Human with Undead/Tacticians and/or Undead/Warriors and Elf/Mystics works well. This setup works at all levels, not just for ghettos. It's built specifically to tear down Halflings as quick as possible, fares well against Faeries, and outlasts Orcs/Avians in long wars.

Races to stay away from in low-tier kingdoms:
-Avians, because their faster attack time is difficult to utilize without solid coordination. Even with the best coordination, Avian isn't necessarily the best option. Probably the best of the worst, but Avian works best in packs, and if playing Avian you are usually obliged to be hyperactive which is problematic at low tiers.
-Halflings, for reasons I will elaborate on below, but basically - they can't defend, are giant defensive liabilities, and don't put out anything useful to account for themselves.
-Dwarves, because a low-tier kingdom is not going to be building any cows or use any large provinces, rendering most of Dwarf's bonuses useless. Without those bonuses Dwarf doesn't fill any truly useful niche.

Orcs are playable in the ghetto, but they lack durability and flexibility. They also are difficult to justify pairing with Human, but it can work. Orcs almost universally want to pick Tactician. The upside to Orcs that is particularly useful is that they aren't locked out of offensive thievery, something which cripples Undeads in longer wars.
Faeries are problematic for the same reasons t/m in general are problematic. They are still playable, and can do great things against low-tier kingdoms that don't know how to handle t/ms appropriately; and in the end, they are still not as fragile as Halfers.

If you are in a ghetto, Halfling is super super bad because they are not likely to utilize their bonuses towards any effective end.
A simple question a Halfling should ask themselves is - what are they contributing to a kingdom that a Human, an Elf, or a Faery cannot? My experience is, for the liability that Halflings present, they often do not do anything useful in war, and don't defend particularly well. Fae, Elf are better defenders by far, and Human has a really good case for playing a defensive province with far better utility. Even Dwarf can arguably outperform Halfers due to better economy.

I would avoid picking Faery/Mystics this age in any kingdom, since they now lack CS and don't have any WPA bonus. The best Mystic option would be Elf. Human/Mystics are okay for covering MS on weakly defended attackers, while being the only playable Mystic that can expect to enter war with strong offense, but -5% pop hurts hard.

For any ghetto, you should avoid mixing too many races. At the most you should stick to 3 races (4 if you combine Orcs and Undeads, since both are similar enough in function and both play well against each other).

Similarly, for each race you should pick one personality and stick to it, rather than mix personalities, particularly for attackers. Humans generally do not want to be Tactician, but Orcs almost universally want to be Tactician - in order to align attack times, the Humans would have to build 20-25% barracks while the Tacticians build none, and this will attain roughly 10 hour attack times for everyone once war is fully engaged. For t/m races, personality mixing is sometimes desirable, but generally your ghetto mages should pick Mystic and avoid running too many of them, only keeping what is needed to maintain MS and do nightmare runs.

In closing for a 20 prov kingdom I would pick something like:

10 human/cleric
6 undead/tactician
4 elf/mystic

This gives enough of a balance between defense, durability, and offensive power to take down most targets, and only lacks thief power. If thief power is desired, swap some of the humans for Faeries (Rogues) or Elves (Mystics or War Heroes). Subbing one or two Elf/Mystic for Human/Mystic is fine, but it requires more micromanagement to put those Humans in a position where they are going to be highly successful. With Clerics, you have pitfall capability in your core, which frees some t/m mana for more offensive magic. All 20 of these provinces are capable of emphasizing offensive spellcasting and performing fairly well at it, while they also have enough attack power between them to tear down most provinces. The only drawback is that it can be difficult to NS without using nightmare or massacre beforehand, and it doesn't perform particularly at taking down useful unbreakables. Fortunately you should have enough ability to fireball those ub provinces and contain their economy. It is also possible to make do with only 3 Mystics, but it is recommended to have enough depth in the Mystic category to account for bad luck or mages being targetted during war, and also to have enough spellcasters to execute nightmare+nightstrike runs.

[natebane]

Been busy with school exams. Here's a build I've been thinking about and would have liked to have tried:
All attackers
6 human rogue
6 halfling rogue
8 undead tactician

Calling it the witchhunter. Obvious lack of spell power, but has an innate resistance to thief ops and more attack power than traditional builds. Priority targets should be neutralizing enemy mages through ops or chains, then overwhelm the core with thief and attacker superiority. Use propaganda after enemy thieves have died off to take their elites and turtle up.

[noobium]

Don't bother with Rogue unless you can make a good case for needing AW, and can show that you can use AW and Propaganda effectively.
I'd pick Faery/Rogue over Halfling/Rogue in most situations, as Faery works better as a pure t/m. If you are heavy on thief and mage power, then the Faeries are probably able to attack as well. Nightmare, sabotage/spellcasting damage bonuses, and ToG are way more important than +50% TPA.
In order to get the best utilization out of Faery/Rogue it is preferable to pair them with races that can massacre effectively. Avian, Orc, and Undead in sufficient numbers can do this well, with Undeads being the easiest to use and adapt to landchaining or durability.

Playing in any kingdom without any MS casters is problematic. At the very least you will want 3 casters to cover MS sufficiently, and 4+ in order to cover MS and have mana left over for magic ops.

A problem in low-tier kingdoms and some mid-tier kingdoms is that they do not use Rogue ops anywhere near maximum effectiveness, and often can't arrange their t/ms to log all at the same hour. This severely weakens t/m strategies, to the point where it's better to stick with attacking and economic options.

Human at any level is great because they are the only turtle race that can put up an effective offense for landchaining, and the defense on Knights allows them to keep home enough defense to hamper chains in long wars. Economic bonuses, lack of a severe penalty, and the ability to function well at low draft rates, make them the best balance between offense, defense, and economy in a lot of cases.

An alternative setup - pure Human, no BS. The only problem with that setup is that it will have a punishingly slow start, and it lacks some utility spells a kingdom would want like Amnesia. It works better to have stronger offenses and better t/m races to support the Humans, but a pure Human setup is good for teaching intermediate-level players how to utilize pumping and science for the win.

[natebane]

I was thinking the best perk to trying the TM-less build was having your entire kd at the same size. With nw disparity in traditional kds between TMs and their core, fighting kds of equal nw should put your team somewhere in between their core and TMs, making your raw defense more valuable against attackers and closer in range to their TMs makes your raw offense better. So you'd start off with a huge dominance in the nw range you're trying to control with NS chain prepping against you an uphill battle to where nightmares would be you're biggest threat, but you have the ops and effectiveness to nullify their ability to do that and MS.

I think the opportunity cost of losing MS could be net damage in your favor if you could pull it off. Essentially working towards the point of your guys aren't taking any ops vs. them taking thief ops and outnumbered in attackers. Mage ops favor endurance and the stronger econ, but you could push the UD tacts more mage heavy making them a weak mage for things like greed. Or situation dependant you could leverage your advantage towards pulling off a quick win. One other thing about the build that was intriguing was you could focus Greater Arson the chain targets to keep them off training grounds or another key building that's possibly keeping them afloat. Throw up a gold dragon and take out farms. So in that sense I think a rogue core would give you stronger utility to finish off a chain.

[StratOcastle]

I've not seen greater arson used effectively, but that's only personal experience. However, standard arson with tornado support will probably get done what you need. I still support the rogue persona due to the higher stealth. Again this is where efficiency and effectiveness bump heads. Since the rune shortage I've notice ms are not as common. This also makes certain home strats more viable. Again, I don't use them, but I've seen home strats designed around low wpa attackers. Say what you will, but the enemy mystics did mv soon after we ms and it works(a few moons ago). So if we were paying attention we recast, but now where are we getting all this mana/runes?

- Keep going natebane. I'm happy to see your curiosity in kingdom strats.

[natebane]

That was one of the reasons I first started thinking about a mystic-less core. I was playing as an elf mystic and got chained, and realized I needed to devote 30% of my land to towers just to produce enough runes for 1 FB a tick. 50% for a MS cast with +80% from channeling sci early age. So fighting a rune shortage even with decent kd distribution, and fighting through mystic aura/reflect magic, wpa drawback and autofail from sapphire I thought maybe rogue could be the alternative go to persona making the kd a little more streamlined. I usually tend to veer towards unconventional strategies as its fun to try different things and catch people off guard.

[noobium]

Greater Arson just doesn't do enough damage at its cap to be effective outside of extreme cases. The only one that comes to mind is using GA to tear down watchtowers (if Nado is unavailable for whatever reason), to be followed by a whole kingdom following up with their own thief ops. By removing WT beforehand, the remaining stealth winds up being more effective, making it a net positive, and GA is more effective than general arson at removing that one building type.

Fighting a war without MS is a bad idea. Don't do it if you want to win. While MS is often overrated, it is usually going to be by far the most effective op a mage can cast, especially once the big offenses are dropped. I've fought a kingdom that played with no effective Mystics, and the advantage of not having any MS on a whole kingdom is so huge.
Mystic is also useful for filling the need for nightmares on races that otherwise lack access, which is important if picking Human or (barf) Halfling Mystics. Finally, double guild effectiveness saves 10% acres for normal builds, and greatly reduces the time required to attain a useful wpa.
Even if you cannot utilize all of your mana, those reasons are enough to justify picking Mystic. Also note that races with ToG (Faery and again Human, and I would prefer a Human over a Faery mystic) are getting a cheap spell to use that excess mana, so rune supply isn't necessarily the end of the world.

Being chained as a Mystic is tough. If that happens you should expect your kingdom to build extra towers or steal runes for export. Even though it takes 30% towers on your chained acres to cast, for your big provinces it means a reduction in kingdom-wide rune costs. It is still preferable for Mystics to not get chained, but it is hardly the worst situation to be in.

[mastakizzor]

1 Faery/Mystic - MS/FB/NS/Bank
1 Faery/Rogue - AW/FB/NS/Bank
1 Elf/Mystic - Supermage
1 Halfer/Rogue - Superthief
2 Elf/Mystic - a/M
2 Halfer/Rogue - a/T
6 Orc/Cleric - Suiciders/Initiators
6 Undead/Warriors - Trumph Card

its a basic setup i've used for a 20-prov KD as a ghetto few ages back.. those faeries and hybrid attackers were UBs, being 20% larger than others.. orcs always initiate a wave and with 30-35DPA, they are surely to get chained 1st.. make sure these orcs are played by those who can handle chain well.. coupled with 20% GS at least and a decent amount in military science, these orcs will be your frontline attackers.. as clerics and with some hospital, it'll keep the damage to your troops minimal.. with extra gains from race mod and science will keep your acres balanced..

undeads must be aided enough so that they can train solds into specs all while long during a war.. they'll be able to sustain their OPA even in a long war.. with reduced offensive casualties and chance to convert offspec into elites, undeads are your trump card if they were left unattended by enemies..

once you've got all 20-prov as per the setup, its highly recommended you to add another 1 or 2 UB banks like human/merchant or sage into the KD.. having a 21 or 22 prov KD is silent trick most successful KDs are following given that all prov are active and contributes..

[Tovarishch]

1 Faery/Mystic - MS/FB/NS/Bank
1 Faery/Rogue - AW/FB/NS/Bank
1 Elf/Mystic - Supermage
1 Halfer/Rogue - Superthief
2 Elf/Mystic - a/M
2 Halfer/Rogue - a/T
6 Orc/Cleric - Suiciders/Initiators
6 Undead/Warriors - Trumph Card

its a basic setup i've used for a 20-prov KD as a ghetto few ages back.. those faeries and hybrid attackers were UBs, being 20% larger than others.. orcs always initiate a wave and with 30-35DPA, they are surely to get chained 1st.. make sure these orcs are played by those who can handle chain well.. coupled with 20% GS at least and a decent amount in military science, these orcs will be your frontline attackers.. as clerics and with some hospital, it'll keep the damage to your troops minimal.. with extra gains from race mod and science will keep your acres balanced..

undeads must be aided enough so that they can train solds into specs all while long during a war.. they'll be able to sustain their OPA even in a long war.. with reduced offensive casualties and chance to convert offspec into elites, undeads are your trump card if they were left unattended by enemies..

once you've got all 20-prov as per the setup, its highly recommended you to add another 1 or 2 UB banks like human/merchant or sage into the KD.. having a 21 or 22 prov KD is silent trick most successful KDs are following given that all prov are active and contributes..

I ran a KD set-up very similar to this - we had avian/tacts instead of undeads. Worked well.

[natebane]

3 elf mystic-----t/M MS
3 faery rogue---T/m NS/FB
2 elf mystic-----a/M chastity/MS
2 human mystic-A/M chastity
5 elf cleric------A/m nightmares/FB
5 human cleric--A/m pitfalls

Defensive endurance build to counter pure offensive races, and chastity rape other human builds