Climbing the honor ranks as T/M

[yuuki]

I just wanted to ask a T/M honor expert for some advice on climbing up the honor ranks. I know WW plays a big role, but how do you manage to avoid losing honor throughout the age?

This age I never made it past baron which is kinda shameful for a T/M.. Somehow I always end up getting chained pre-war/in-war, losing tons of honor in the process.. I'm wondering if its because Im attracting too much attention by AW-ing enemy mystics during hostilities/start-of-war.. Should I not be trying to maximise damage if I want to gain honor ranks?

I usually run about 12 epa, 15% forts so I dont think my def that low.. comes up too be about 86 or so mdpa with greater protection.. and about 6.5-7 raw tpa which works up to be about 30 mtpa.. should I be sacrificing more offensive power for more def? Though i feel like with 90-100 mdpa my opping stats will be crap and even then i can be broken by suiciders anyway..

So is it even viable to be unbreakable? Only way i can think of doing so is by being the largest in KD by a decent margin.. but that doesnt seem to be true in several prince/princess provs in-game atm..

Its frustrating playing T/M and being stuck at the baron rank.. any tips/advice from a pro would be most appreciated!

[LoRD_SaMPuaN]

I usually run about 12 epa, 15% forts so I dont think my def that low.. comes up too be about 86 or so mdpa with greater protection.. and about 6.5-7 raw tpa which works up to be about 30 mtpa.. should I be sacrificing more offensive power for more def? Though i feel like with 90-100 mdpa my opping stats will be crap and even then i can be broken by suiciders anyway..

your defense is way too lower than what it should be.. you need to aim for a min. of 100 dpa and prefably around 110-115.. chances are you have low draft/low pop science/low military science - id advice you to work on those stats, draft down to 5 ppa and make up the rest of necessary population with extra homes.. 86 dpa is calling in for getting chained, esp as a rogue..

[Bukharistan]

1. What race are you running?
2. 86 dpa is pretty low for a TM, especially if you're not at the top of our KD. I'm running 130 dpa right now. 100 dpa should be a minimum. It's no prob drafting high as a TM as your wpa isn't affected by
3. Magical ops give you a lot of honor.
4. If you're pure mage build watchtowers to guard against rogues.
5. Make sure you're a bit bigger than your largest attacker, unless your KD runs more TMs of the same size/type in which case there is a certain % chance you get picked out of all that are available. Right now our KD has 4 TMs, average size of our attackers is about 2K acres, with our top on 2500. I try to stay just above that to be safe.
6. The guys that are princes at lower size are usually part of an oiled machine in which it often costs the enemy more to take out 1 TM than the gains are in the long run. Also, once you get 1-2 good wars at the start your pop/wpa/tpa increases through honor allowing you to run more def.

[Dowla1337]

Pretty much what the guys said, but do draft even under 5 pezpa, go crazy on drafting. You will be able to get your population back once you need to kill a dragon or when you grow a bit.

[yuuki]

Thanks for the input guys.. so it seems like I'm running way too low mdpa as a faery rogue.. I couldve sworn i read up 12 epa somewhere.. maybe thats at the start of age.. I think my science is decent.. usually about 1k bpa, mainly in pop and crime sci.. so its probably my draft rate.. I think I've been maintaining around 7 ppa.. in fear of my BE dipping below 80%.. and i usually run 20% homes too.. ill try <5 ppa from now on and screw BE%

What about playstyle? do you maximise damage right away e.g AW enemy mystics/sages right off the bat when hostilities begin? or start safe with less agro ops?

[LoRD_SaMPuaN]

Thanks for the input guys.. so it seems like I'm running way too low mdpa as a faery rogue.. I couldve sworn i read up 12 epa somewhere.. maybe thats at the start of age.. I think my science is decent.. usually about 1k bpa, mainly in pop and crime sci.. so its probably my draft rate.. I think I've been maintaining around 7 ppa.. in fear of my BE dipping below 80%.. and i usually run 20% homes too.. ill try <5 ppa from now on and screw BE%

What about playstyle? do you maximise damage right away e.g AW enemy mystics/sages right off the bat when hostilities begin? or start safe with less agro ops?

as a rogue, tools science is also vital for you to maintain as high be as possible for best td output.. you best find the ratios that suits your environment - and find solutions to the problems you experience.. if you are always ending up getting chained, you would want to increase your dpa and/or add some defensive buildings and/or convert some tpa to def etc.. there are no set in stone strat for any prov or any situation, just some basic guidelines..

[noobium]

solo honor is silly.

really though, the best way to secure unbreakability is to do a better job of tearing down attacker threats, though you would want good starting defense to make that easier. getting high honor ranks is less about taking it and more about keeping it - once you are able to keep it, you can leech more and more honor off of people. most of that comes down to your kingdom's ability to attack and sustain rather than anything you do as solitary province - and really the best way to make sure you extract good honor is to isolate solitary provinces and make them non-functional in the most efficient method possible, and the way to make them less functional doesn't always involve attacking the target directly.

86 dpa is way too low - i can hit that and have plenty of offense to spare to smack an attacker, even without any ops support. with low honor and low science you can't get really good defense. you can do something about low science with better planning, which leads to better honor in the long term.

honestly this late in the age, if i want to gather honor fast and i don't have a lot of science to work with, i'd look at going attacker and taking the risk of a drop. i'll either become a bloathog with a decent defensive skillset, or i get chained and i can batman for honor, sort of like any suitable attacker would. either is preferable to being a not-very-good t/m that gets smacked around whenever someone wants honor.

[Persain]

Thanks for the input guys.. so it seems like I'm running way too low mdpa as a faery rogue.. I couldve sworn i read up 12 epa somewhere.. maybe thats at the start of age.. I think my science is decent.. usually about 1k bpa, mainly in pop and crime sci.. so its probably my draft rate.. I think I've been maintaining around 7 ppa.. in fear of my BE dipping below 80%.. and i usually run 20% homes too.. ill try <5 ppa from now on and screw BE%

What about playstyle? do you maximise damage right away e.g AW enemy mystics/sages right off the bat when hostilities begin? or start safe with less agro ops?

lower draft, i currently have 1 feary rouge in my kd on 2.2 peasnets/acre and hes in the neighborhood of 140 mod dpa, 8 raw tpa and 5 raw wpa.

For playstyle , do whatever your kd needs. if/when you've won spam NM/prop to whore honor on an in nw range high honor prov. If chained get your kd to zero def an attacker, Then quad tap him every 12 hours. Make sure the guy is 80-110% your nw and try to keep as much def as you can so u get bottom feed on by attackers to lose the acres your grabbing. (bottomfeed= lower honor loss)

[smercjd]

IMO, in order to avoid losing honor as a TM in war is to become UB. You have to know the offense of the KD you're up against. (Preferably a few days before war) -- you will have to explore/dice up to a size where 90-100 dpa is enough to be UB. Then, you want to be very difficult to op. Especially in the magic department. Magic eats the most honor. So you want to know their max WPA and aim for no less than 1/3 of their highest -- preferably at 1/2 (the higher the better of course). With 1/2, they can't FB you as well and MS and those tough ops will be especially hard. For thievery, if you can't sacrifice too much to actually train thieves -- WTs should do the trick.

As others have mentioned - it's much better when you have a whole KD to rely on. But those are the basics. If they can't break you with attacks/magic/thievery - you'll just be sitting absorbing honor the whole war.

[noobium]

^this too. bigger t/m has space to train the defense needed, and normally you would want your t/ms to be the biggest provinces in your kingdom. it doesn't always have to work that way but it is usually preferable.

[JuiceB0x]

This is just my humble opinion...

Being UB these days is just not all that feasible. Chances are, after 24 hours of war, you can become UB -- but typically you are still reachable by CQ and whatnot. If the enemy wants to take you down, then they will take you down. The sooner you accept this, the better.

That being said...

The best way that I've found to keep your honor is to have a strong kingdom behind you to help you out. Warring I think is the best (and maybe only?) way to obtain honor that puts you on the charts. Activity is super important -- in war, you should typically never have stealth or mana above 20%. Unless of course you are saving up for a NM/NS wave.

Playing a fae/sage pure TM built for damage, I try to run something close to the following

15 - 16 EPA
7.5 TPA
5 WPA

Of course, early age is different, but you'll have to adjust for that. My goal is to shell out tremendous amounts of damage so my attackers can head in for 2/3/4 taps. Attackers win wars, yes, but they win them MUCH faster when they can hit 4 times as opposed to once or twice per wave.

Science is also super important. Early age I would suggest pumping magic sci to around 50% / thief sci 25 - 40% -- then you pump Income and Tools. Once you have 15 - 20% income and 8 - 10% tools, then you can fill in the rest. WW Sci bonus definitely helps here.

Mid age you should easily be able to run 100 mod dpa. Mid to late age you should be easily 110 - 115 DPA.

The thing about honor is you can lose it as quickly as you gain it. I hit prince last age and it was tough, the bonuses were great, but literally being chained once in a war would have prevented that.

[Bukharistan]

Haha lol juicey I run exactly the same ^^

[noobium]

you can be taken down but will it be profitable to do so? if you're on very low mdpa and are of average/small size, then your faery is easy to attack, if not immediately then in future (unless you are really diligent in controlling attackers). for faeries high dpa is effectively better offense for use in attacking, or a bigger reserve to slay dragons once attackers can no longer hit. i'm afraid i shouldn't be giving away too many tips here for my own sake. ^_^ but yeah, anything below 90 mDPA at this stage is way too low against an organized and prepared kingdom, barring some setups and planning on your part.

if you are a baron at this stage of the game, though, it's likely you don't have enough honor to lose, and plenty to gain. if you don't have the science to be a convincing t/m, you're in a bind as faery. a stop-gap solution is to go with homes+forts (20% of each minimum, as high as 35-40% homes) in order to get the raw military needed to defend, if you cannot grow acres for whatever reason.

[JuiceB0x]

I think playing a TM these days is more so about making the enemy REALLY think about hitting you. Its not so much about being UB -- but more so about making it very inefficient (for lack of a better word) for the enemy to target you.

Ideally you don't want to be breakable by more than 10 provs, as that could be a pretty devastating chain. If you can make it so that the enemy has to send out 75% or more of their army to single tap you, thus they have to leave little defense home, chances are you won't be targeted.

Where I am at right now, if we were warring a kingdom of relative size -- some provs would only be able to single tap me. You'll disable me yes, but my attackers will have a field day with your attackers. If I have to take one for the team in order to put us ahead, then so be it. I'm always fully prepared to take a chaining.

Its really about the trade offs -- does it make sense to waste an entire wave taking down a non attacker? What does the enemy gain by hitting you down? Being breakable isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you're breakable but its not worth the other kingdom's while, then you can be considered safe.

[noobium]

also note that when you have more than enough defense, you have a lot (and sometimes a very lot) of military that you can slay dragons with at near-zero risk.

really though, the really high honor ranks come later in the age, when high-honor kingdoms go after each other. you won't get much honor fighting small fries and opping Lords, but you have to be able to win the war before you can talk about extracting maximum honor. in early wars, most of your honor is coming from doing things that turn the war into a win, rather than going for short-term honor gains - simply because at that stage, provinces don't have a whole lot of individual honor to take, but kingdoms have a fair bit of honor collectively. very likely, after two wins you'll have viscounts in the t/m core, and after 3 wins you can expect baron attackers and maybe some counts/marquis in the t/m core, and with those honor bonuses comes the capability to build more flexible provinces (and more opportunities to build up science and differentiate provinces that way).

it is very likely that if going for early war, all of your provinces would play attacker (or better, a kind of a/t/m), since at that stage individual provinces have so little to defend, and enemy kingdoms have fewer offensive (and defensive) options. if you can play your cards right, a race like elf or halfling can survive the initial onslaught, and their wpa/tpa advantages are more pronounced if they picked personalities that coincide with their racial bonuses. (elf/halfer not playing their preferred personalities would be primarily attackers or a/t/m anyway). faeries have a perfect spellbook for playing attacker early age, before attackers can put up the really threatening offenses that make hybrid attacker impractical. your faes and elves might have bad land placement after your first war (win or loss), but acres at that stage are relatively cheap so it's not a big deal to make post-war adjustments and revert to a t/m role. if you're lucky though, you have t/m provinces with more acres and honor, and the acres would have flowed to your eventual t/m rather than your attacker core, which is the perfect setup for your second war.