Relay Taping and Its Value During Chaining Condition

[Rissoto]

There are instances in the forum that mentions relay tapping. How would a person who is practicisng relay tapping handle chain? Armies will be returning in waves, and those acres will not be returning at the same time. It'll come in sequence and not burst. Would they be handling chaining differently?

In the event that chaining is around the corner, would relay tapping be better or much worse than a normal single burst multiple tap?

My definition of relay tapping is different taps that are done between a space of time, such as army returning in 4 hrs, 8 hrs, and 12 hrs.

P/s - I cant edit the tittle. Its tapping and not taping. Sorry.

[Zantetsuken]

It depends a little. If you are facing a super active opponent who can log on nearly all of their attackers to hit you at the same time, then nothing will be able to save you. But if the attacks are coming in over a few hours, then relay tapping has great benefit. If you have acres come in during the chain, it could very well make the difference between your offense deserting or staying, and relay tapping makes this scenario more likely to occur if you have acres coming in every few hours instead of every 8-11 hours. Against an unorganized opponent, relay tapping can largely, or even completely negate an effort to chain you.

[GodsLittleCow]

I always align my armies to return at the same time to provide the best chain tanking. Last age I was chained down to 150a and then popped right back up to 1000a after LL and incoming acres, resulting in losing 0 offense and even keeping a ton of defense and thieves. This was only possible because all my land come in at the same time to reduce my overpopulation enough to be able to hit out again. The danger of relay tapping is that your army comes back with 200 acres but you're still overpopped and can't send them back out, so they just sit there and desert until your main chunk of army comes back. And you could get hit further down in those hours.

In short: It's great against semi-chains, terrible against deep chains. In any scenario, having high incoming acres is the key to surviving a chain.

[StratOcastle]

Good explanation Zantetsuken. I've used relay tapping for some time.
Now that we know its likey worst case scenario; facing a super active waving kingdom; we can start to observe dismantling waves. I've done ok with undead, but who theoretically is best? Well, theoretically it should be faery, but in real game play we should be looking at dwarves. This doesn't mean we need dwarf cores because that changes too much of the offensive potential. This is about individual vs unit tactics.
The first thing you need to be able to do is block a barrage of spells like nightmare and tornado and lightning strike. Mystic aura is cheap on runes meaning you can spam the crap out of it. The only way you can do this is by being active. You want to attack first at max for 2 reasons: 1st is to obviously have the most incoming acres and 2nd is to create separation so gains aren't as high. That's one tap with QF. If you have the offense to multitap then you want to look at the enemy kingdom page. You may have a low defense ladder target(one of those aligned in the ladder chain)that you can create a secondary gap. If you do you can opt to hit this one to lower nw value.
What your doing is creating gaps in the ladder chain with your hits. If you have timed your attacks previous to chaining then continuing is easier. An easy way to get going for dwarf is to trad march QF, ambush QF, trad march with no QF and ambush with no QF. Remember that dwarf doesn't need build credits so your ambush is virtually as good as a full march.

Now, i get a lot of criticism for gap build strats. I've played undead cleric for a number of ages in the past and did just fine. When I'm in a kingdom there is no big splash like " wow, this guy can really play because of the obnoxious numbers ". No. This is a subtle thing that will be noticed by the enemies in your sector. When I start creating nw gaps and solidifying zones it's normally in the mid nw area. I use the unlikely combination of cleric low losses stacked with gs, hospitals and rax. As inefficient as this looks static, none of your super offense gurus are relay tapping. The biggest line I get is how useless hospitals are and how important tg are. Well, if we can hit that's all we need. - hospitals work on defense and offense - and I'm using both to maintain a nw while wilting my enemies nw. We need rax to tighten up the turn and beat warriors home or be in place to ambush tacs. Tacs are the trickiest and you need to understand cat & mouse games. Apply the tactics above.

Now back to the skepticism because I've gotten this also. " this is a greedy strat ". If you really pay attention to what a lot of guys say, it is that you are somehow responsible to be chained. This is completely wrong and I can prove it because I ran ' meat-shield ' by my own hand. I wasn't ordered. The fact is it is a worthless system because while everyone says it's to make the enemy predictable, the rigid thinkers don't adapt. You're throwing nw and acres away. The nw gap is not a doctrine, it is simply a tactic. It's a possible venue in the chaos of war. But what does it do? The reason you want the pocket, as Zauper clearly explains, is to create range. Since I've been associated with so many kingdoms that don't focus on t/ms the default is controlling the area beneath that traditional UB top. Range makes it harder for the enemy to land those disabling marches. Here's the point: the gap works for anyone on your side. I made it for you, not for me. Ask any offensive lineman what his job is in the NFL and it's not a greedy job, but it is dirty and anonymous.

In HRS I was accused of playing a tanking undead cleric by a top 10 leader(no grudge, much love) who was in our kingdom. This didn't sit well with me because in about every war I sustained the most hits of the non-chained provinces. In many cases I had absorbed more hits than the 1st overpopulated chain. Additionally I was regularly in the top 5 of land gains. And I ran no tg, no stables and no dungeons. So as bad as that sounds I want you to observe what people tell you against what you've seen. The world needs the high offenses to do what they're supposed to do, but this robotic notion that we should all run the same strat that guys like Zauper or Elit or flogger are tearing apart age after age is pure insanity. The fact was I was running a nominal defense that was below standard by a tad. I did learn something from playing ' meat-shield '. For those that don't catch hints, that means I assured my defense was slightly lower than kingdom standard to draw attacks. Obviously our biggest offenses got it first: The Warriors. But they weren't relay tapping, you see.

Wave freaks will shun relay tapping because it doesn't fit into the vomit like overture of 25 guys doing something in 5 minutes of their day. It's funny because if we are truly sophisticated, we can do both.

[Cry0]

Relay tapping only works if your opponent is bad at chaining, otherwise you get this situation.

You: 2k acres, 600 acres coming in, 150 acres x 4 armies every 2.5 hours over 10 hour window.

You get chained to 400 acres.
Army 1 returns, 550 acres
You are overpopped, going from 2,000*25ppa (assuming 0 science) to 550*25ppa -- 50k max pop to 13750.
Assume your build was 11 epa, 6 dspa, 1.5 tpa, 1.5 wpa, 5 ppa.
Each army is 5,500 elites. You had 12,000 dspecs to start. 3k wiz, 3k thieves, 10k peasants.

Army returns, you are at 5,500 army, ~3k wiz, maybe 2k dspecs left after chain, 3k thieves and 10k peasants. That is 23500 standing population + 16500 army returning every 2 hours over the next 6 hours, 40,000 total pop. Your 115% to send out is 15800 population You need to drop ~24200 population to send army out and you only have 23500 at home. You are stuck watching elites desert and die to that MS they probably stuck on you prior to chain.


If you really want to avoid desertions you need a KD set up to aid soldiers every tic and then a big enough chunk of land coming in with your army to send it out ASAP before they tap you again with army home.

[Persain]

what Cry0 said, i'd prefer to chain someone who tries then an i tend to chain over 5-6 hours because its easier.

[Nightmare_]

Won't work against KDs that hit you down in a few hours or less, but you might enjoy a decent level success otherwise. I like it. I think this sort of thing works best with a province that can effectively turtle its offense back up if it wants to join armies or increase def if it's targeted; elf, human and faery come to mind although faery doesn't really have the offense for it. Dwarf also to some extent.

[Cry0]

what Cry0 said, i'd prefer to chain someone who tries then an i tend to chain over 5-6 hours because its easier.

Relay tapping also adds a lot more room for error on the user end and multiplies the number of chances the enemy KD can hit you with your army home and really screw you over if you are a priority target to take out.

-edit-

Room for error = more chances to miss army out. If your army all comes in and out every 10 hours that is only 2 chances a day to mistime your alarm or get busy at work and miss it.. 8+ times a day adds a lot of chances for life to happen and screw you.

[Zantetsuken]

Relay tapping also adds a lot more room for error on the user end and multiplies the number of chances the enemy KD can hit you with your army home and really screw you over if you are a priority target to take out.

-edit-

Room for error = more chances to miss army out. If your army all comes in and out every 10 hours that is only 2 chances a day to mistime your alarm or get busy at work and miss it.. 8+ times a day adds a lot of chances for life to happen and screw you.

This. The major downside to relay tapping, even against bad opponents, is that it requires a very high level of activity. And unfortunately we need sleep to survive.

[StratOcastle]

Hmm. Let's look at it from the standpoint of contending every acre. What is considered a good kingdom? I've faced good kingdoms and I've been on the side of the superwave to. As a dwarf cleric in Plaidovia we warred Shinra and I was standing before a camper waiting for me to exhale and I didn't. They ran the chain anyway and I rolled out with minimal loss. I was in a lower nw zone, but that's gonna happen.

In HRS we faced War Monkeys and after a few outside hits war was declared and they hit pretty hard, but I managed to hold my specs and never landed at the bottom. The outside hits were incidental from Disturbed I will mention as War Monkeys had no part in this action. We had an ongoing feud with Disturbed that age. I was undead cleric in HRS. Those are 2 examples.

So let's look at Rusty vs Stoners featuring BoB. If you recall Rusty vs Sanitarium we saw devastating chains well over the 1000 nwpa mark. This was not the case in particular to dwarves in Stoners. This wasn't due to relay taps, but what if they did? If you had watched the acre exchange you would've seen a dwarf-wide attack by Rusty by wave 2(?) and they were all marginalized to the bottom half of the kingdom page by nw. This was not sustainable by Rusty and we saw from this point the dwarf compliment climbed away. Rusty knows how to chain.

So in my case the common element was cleric, and the connection via dwarf to Stoners/BoB was mystic aura. Thus we have related qualities in dwarf cleric. I have no idea what personality Stoners/BoB were running, but we know they had mystic aura. So my impression is good kingdom refers to top kingdoms in this case, which is fair.

And remember as I said, relay taps are a variable tactic. I use them as freely as I camp, as I full unique, as I bait. In the case of Shinra I ran bait. I kept armies home knowing they could maybe double tap, but primarily single tap. If I had maxed vs their camper I would've been on the bottom spitting out my teeth. We need to be aware of our nw environment and have a little faith.

Agruments include the kingdoms in question got what they needed. I agree, but when you throw your forces my way you leave others unchecked; and that's really the point in contesting every acre. I fight for mine and have the activity to back it up. Next argument is the enemy catching me at home vs me catching them in a compromising position. It's what I do. I stink at build, but I know how to read a kingdom page and espionage. I know guys that eclipse my work easily, so this isn't about being better than someone else. My system includes outworking the other guy. No shortcuts.

[tetley]

relay taps, as local resident StratOcastle has coined it, are good at keeping a province going, but it's the worst at causing a lot of damage at once and contributing to a chain. It depends what your priorities are.

Typically I would say you want to chain a target either immediately after he sends out, to maximize defensive desertions; or immediately before his army gets home (or during its arrival if possible), to minimize defensive/peasant death and maximize offensive desertions. The latter is the more truly crippling of the two, but the former has its merits if your aim is to learn the hell out of someone at the bottom or try and PK them. The latter is also a bit harder to execute.

The point is that if you have armies perpetually coming in every 3 hours, the effectiveness of their chain is diminished because they can't do it either of these ideal times. Also if they aren't great at chaining, you will minimize your overpop. It's also useful, as others have noted, to send out once and then again on a lower defense target right after they send out/mixing normal hits with ambushes. Ideally you'd beat them home.

The downside is that with less land coming in all at once, if the enemy can match your activity, then they can chain you further as each of these armies come in, which would probably end up being worse losses for you overall than if you just ate a chain and managed it with thief/sol releases.

StratOcastle rails against the wave format but there's something you have to keep in mind: the discussion of relay taps and chain management is only relevant in the context of waves. It's a prisoner's dilemma. Relay tapping might be better than pure waves if a couple provs are doing it right, but it's definitely NOT optimal for every province to be splitting their hits. It's extremely difficult to properly chain someone without a wave.