War Question

[CPTK]

I'm in a war in which I, playing an Undead Tactician, got land fat as I was not a chain target early. A couple days into the war it came to the attention of myself and my kingdom leadership that I was in the networth range of their TMs and could break several of them.

I argued that I was already land fat and I should massacre the TMs, both to refrain from gaining more land and to hit the TMs where it would really hurt. My kingdom leadership overruled me and stated that massacre is not useful during a war, only in prewar. They opined that grabbing acres is what wins wars.

Following orders, I have since land grabbed one of their TMs for 2 straight rounds of attacks, becoming more land fat in the process. Predictably, I was assaulted with a barrage of MS/FB/chastity/NS and now have zero economy.

Should I have used massacre to begin with? And more importantly, should I use massacre for my next attack? If you agree with my kingdom leadership, I'll feel a lot better about the course we're on, and if you disagree I may direct them to this thread.

[noobium]

Don't think about your t/m defense for that decision, because as a growing attacker your t/m defense is always going to be lousy.

Some questions are;
- Can your attackers follow up on any hits you make?
- Do you have effective t/ms that could use the gap created by massacre to op the t/m more easily? Chained attackers with intact wpa can help too, especially with fireballing.
- Do you need incoming acres in order to avert overpopulation, should you be chained? Do you even have to worry about overpopulation so much?
- Is the war already effectively decided?

Usually the answer is - if you don't exploit a massacre target's weakened defenses, it's not very effective. Even a few massacres are useful for landing riots and MS more reliably, but if the t/m is allowed to repopulate peasants it's doing little. So, by default trads are the only effective move, under the assumption that the rest of your kingdom can follow up - if not immediately, then eventually. While tradding you will take honor and pick up some build/spec credits, while massacre gives you none of those things.

This sounds like the classic example of isolating a bloated attacker that is one of the last remaining offensive threats, if you are the only attacker remotely close to being able to break t/ms. In a lot of cases it is unavoidable.
As an attacker you generally want to take as few acres as possible while doing your job effectively. Unfortunately, without careful management of hits, many attackers bloat too quickly. You should always make the attack that is most useful to your kingdom, and not make attacks that are less useful just to avoid bloat. Sometimes bloat is unavoidable, but if bloat can be predicted you can plan for it by emphasizing offense training over defense training.
Since I don't know the particulars of your kingdom, I don't know what would have been the best play. Based on the information provided I would guess trad would be the only play, since it sounds like there wouldn't be a way to follow up massacre with something else.

[CPTK]

What role, if any, do you think raze now plays in war, given that it has recently been strengthened?

[crease]

its great for finishing off early chains in war just before enemies troops are home, 4 razes will drop max pop by 24% compared to 12% from min gains bottomfeeding. This is best done by elf/faery TM's or humans that are turtling.

Other than that its uses are situational, if your core has an op advantage and provs that can raze with no/lesser incoming without being too afraid of being chained then using razes to remove WT's on provs you are fattening to allow core kidnaps can be useful. It can certainly be better than massacreing said target now that it no longer destroys buildings, cause WT's will always cause the autofail, and destroying 59% of WT's from (using the same example) 4 razes can be a hefty drop in failure rates.

[noobium]

raze is pretty useful for finishing chains, as it removes whatever infrastructure that was in place.
aside from that, if someone can't pay build costs it is quite useful for waging economic warfare. 800 gc for every building is pretty expensive, and those buildings also take time to construct.

[neanderthal]

Stick with being a team player, teams win wars not traditional marches or massacres.

[noobium]

^ what he said.

However, sometimes kingdoms have flawed ideas about what wins wars, and the ingrained culture causes them to make the same mistakes over and over. For example, a lot of lower-tier kingdoms think that having more attackers will make them win wars by hitting more, and don't use defensive provinces anywhere near as well as they should.

The best ways I've found to avert attacker bloat would be...
- Prioritize hitting defensive provinces and semi-turtle provinces like Dwarf/Human. This is potentially dangerous if it means leaving big offenses around, but it is often possible to balance hitting down a t/m with hitting an attacker (or two attackers, in some cases).
- Try to put the acres on your defensive provinces early, rather than having all acres flow to attackers. This has many risks, not the least of which is exposing those defensive provinces to attack, but is one of the more effective options. This also coincides with the first option, by using your big offenses to drop a large defense and sidetapping dropped attackers.
- Utilize side massacre or learn attacks in order to destroy defense and economy without taking acres. (Alternatively, use massacre as your primary attack against t/ms and take acres on the side, if attacker defenses are low enough.) This is the hardest to utilize but works in situations where your defensive provinces can't send out or don't exist in your setup.

Ultimately though, attackers will bloat in war, and there is only so much that can be done to prevent it. The primary focus for the individual attacker should always be to do the thing that does the most damage, and work with their province around the kingdom goals... preventing attacker bloat is something that has to happen at the kingdom planning level. Attackers who make random and silly hits cause so many problems for fighting a war.