The Amber Room ~ Age 63 Virtual Kingdom

[StratOcastle]

Division 1 AMBER

1) avian merchant - Dancing Sword
2) dwarf tactician - Hammer Of Thunderbolts
3) faery sage - Deck Of Many Things
4) elf mystic - Ring Of Wizardry
5) halfling rogue - Eyes Of Charming
6) human war hero - Luck Blade
7) orc warrior - Maul Of The Titans
8) undead cleric - Amber Golem

Division 2 MIRROR

9) avian merchant - Mirror Of Mental Prowess
10) dwarf tactician - Apparatus Of Kwalish
11) faery rogue - Ring Of Wishes
12) elf sage - Staff Of Power
13) halfling mystic - Portable Hole
14) human war hero - Helm Of Brilliance
15) orc warrior - Vorpal Sword
16) undead cleric - Clay Golem

Division 3 GOLD

17) avian merchant - Efreeti Bottle
18) dwarf tactician - Sphere Of Annihilation
19) faery sage - Tome Of Mystical Equations
20) elf mystic - Ring Of Shooting Stars
21) halfling rogue- Shadowcloak
22) human war hero - Rod Of Lordly Might
23) orc warrior - Trident Of Submission
24) undead cleric - Bronze Golem

Monarch

25) faery mystic - Staff Of The Magi

* The above are only preliminary. Thank you.

The current alignment serves 10 Tree of Gold capable provinces. Speed was concentrated not just for focal supremacy but to leave other provinces to offensive requirements in a decidedly faery biased age. Orc warriors will be the strongest medicine to deal with the advent of Clear Sight in the faery arsenal. Avian merchant is an early nod to preparation and the need to split spec credits due to elite credits. While human may have been nerfed I still feel it can achieve honor to compensate for the science challenge. Undead cleric will require higher activity to be rewarded with zone domination.

Human war heroes and undead clerics are to work in concert to establish net worth zones. Avians and dwarves are running interference to protect the integrity of orc, elf and halfling. This in turn should default to protecting faeries. Halfling and faery can concentrate efforts on softer targets with elves concentrating on hard targets with appropriate support as situations dictate. The faery mystic monarch offers support in a multitude of sectors.

Additional player input is in Thread: Preliminary: What You Want To Play 63
In Strategy forum.

[StratOcastle]

Human War Hero & Undead Cleric:

This tactic is a rewind of previous ideas. Parallel to ladder chaining these 2 work in concert to secure acres. Targeting to compliment each others strength and cover each other weaknesses the enemy is subject to a methodical breakdown.

Where The Synergy Runs Wild:

We're ideally running Avian Merchant & Dwarf Tactician to engage threats to the killer, thief and mystic compliment. These builds can run traditional uniques with the Dwarf Tactician as alternate camper to the Human War Hero. The enemy fed through via Avian Merchant initial engagement unless Orc Warrior level offense necessitates. Undead Clerics can be on a constant relay tap offensive with Human War hero engaging with War Spoils at opportunity. Thus, there is a chain with near to max gains through the attacker core. Human War Hero camper is dependent on accumulated ops which is the Dwarf Tacticians trigger.

So chain order by build, if intact, runs:

Orc Warrior
Dwarf Tactician
Avian Merchant
Undead Cleric
Human War Hero
Undead Cleric - 2

Elf Mystic and Faery Mystic trash hits dependent on plague. If the Human War Hero has additional offense they can continue the push.

These are only ideals and we never operate in absolutes.

[tras19]

What are your structure rules this age so I can create a template!? :-D you know I love formulating kds haha

[StratOcastle]

Hello tras. Welcome back and congratulations!

Rules are:

1- the Virtual Kingdom is 25 provinces.
2- there must be 3 representives of each personality & race.
3- the 25th, the monarch must be a unique combination.

For clarity ~ personality

3 cleric
3 merchant
3 mystic
3 rogue
3 sage
3 tactician
3 war hero
3 warrior

For clarity ~ race

3 avian
3 dwarf
3 elf
3 faery
3 halfling
3 human
3 orc
3 undead

The Real Challenge:

It would be interesting to see an organized kingdom adopt The Virtual Kingdom template.
For players who embrace challenge and might enjoy a spin on a more intricate level of organization.

It would be interesting to see 3 organized kingdoms in either the exploring or warring tier adopt The Virtual Kingdom template as loose tournament play. The participants could organize their template in any fashion in accordance with the 3 rules.

The tournament is as this template is; to honor the balance the developers have created in our game. Those who question the balance are welcome to use this template to demonstrate otherwise.

Have fun no matter where you are. It's a game, so play it.

[StratOcastle]

Personal Choice:

The Amber Room as I have arrayed is personal choice. I'm a player who enjoys stacking qualities.
I'm not naive to the beauty of switching the dwarves to cleric and the undead to tacticians: This would make a more efficient kingdom. There are a peacocks tail worth of variation I've represented in previous Virtual Kingdoms. You could do things like running 1 elf mystic, 1 elf sage, 1 elf war hero to cover the expanses of high penetration spell use to ignoring sapphire dragon effect.

The Virtual Kingdom I put forward is an interpretation of my bias.

For you music minded, you can look at the Virtual Kingdom as a hifi speaker cabinet: It's balance and clarity to game mechanics throughout the frequency range. By tweaking personality and race we color the speakers with our unique personality. In game we see certain signature builds indicative of function. Look at Beastblood or Freeakstyle.

[StratOcastle]

Golem Diplomacy:

It occurs to me that undead conversions are a startup concern. My solution is negotiating attack exchanges with undead from another kingdom. CF will obviously be negotiated prior to the exchanges.

In roleplaying we can interpret this macabre affair in dark age pageantry. A festival for the dead. A joust. The theater is real, but the undead embrace it like we embrace staged entertainment. All are welcome to behold.

The Amnesia Cannon:

Once again this age we've included the amnesia cannon sage. The scope and reach are only limited to how far we can drive our faeries. Their purpose is clear for both offensive and defensive engagements. They tighten the unit for our science challenged human war heroes. As you may have noticed, we've engineered a system for bottom feeders to be dragged into our creepy clutches. We prefer diplomacy of a friendly nature.

[StratOcastle]

Why We Don't Use Undead Tactician/Warrior:

The reasons I don't use either of these in The Virtual Kingdom goes back to what I call stacking. While I find the undead tactician one of the most efficient builds in the game I chose dwarf to cover this task.

Dwarf is capable of faster attack times, thus returns. This is a tactical advantage.
Dwarf has mystic aura and tactician gets clear sight: total defense, not partial.
Dwarf has free build allowing it to serve emergency utility.

The orcs get the nod for warrior in The Virtual Kingdom. There are a number of roles I'd like orcs to enjoy, but it is at warrior that their strength is irreplaceable.

Orc can more easily muster trackable offense, not relying on specialist bloat to achieve numbers.
Orc is a 7, not a maybe.
Orc can inflict more damage.

The undead get the job as cleric for reasons I find most compelling; experience. From the standpoint of synergy you'd have to look at changes. The inability to train elites makes warrior unsavory here because we want to know our warriors are maximized to strike at extreme range. The inherent slop of the undead dynamic offers itself freely to cleric. This build invites the peripheral hits that our dwarf tactician ignores. We need a build that is the attack absorber and reigns in zones of attacker conflict. We don't want the undead in positions that would risk our fellow provinces to plague. If we assigned tactician to undead we increase the risk of spreading plague internally. I've played undead cleric quite a bit and the characteristics it carries into age 63 certainly fit.

[StratOcastle]

The Avian Merchant Shift:

You may know I'm a huge fan of avian tactician in ages past. There reason we don't go tactician age 63 is because we already have clear sight and there are economic concerns with training defense. Alternatively, war hero is almost a great fit but we still have the economic ceiling in the way of training.

Merchant build credits, spec credits and tree of gold offer a balancing aspect to build strategy and kingdom. Avian birthdate bonus gets the tree of gold going and serves out of war handily.

The Human Factor:

We can't move merchant to human, nor should we move tactician to human. The dwarf has the speed to navigate around ambush and dwarf can't accelerate build. Human war hero is too slow to navigate ambush, but can use war spoils and can accerate build. The human also has a presentable offense that transitions well from our orc warrior to undead cleric. Whatever the warrior hammers is typically sorted by the war hero and cleric. War hero and cleric should be attentive to keeping each other safe from enemy max gains.

Expecting humans to run a lot of elites is typical. Our endeavor with war spoils to to offer a place to train defense specialists. On the surface we can soldier ball and accelerate build/train to have a formidable defense set before an enemy wave makes it's next run.

EOWCF:

Merchant on avian offers a rebuilding advantage. Dwarf has free build. Human has tree of gold. Undead cleric has the highest troop retention in game. Orc warrior can aid soldiers which helps in several ways.

[StratOcastle]

The 25th Element:

We currently have a faery mystic operating in the 25th position in The Virtual Kingdom. Here's where we get to ask many questions:

1-Would we be better served by the apparent efficiency of Undead Tactician?

2-How about an Elf War Hero to balance against dragons?

3-Elf Sage Amnesia Cannon?

4-Halfling Mystic for acre efficiency?

5-Faery Rogue?

There are plenty of options here with the additional flexibility of setting up the kingdom in an array of possibilities. Is redundancy at turtling and ops more important than bolstering the attacker core? These are all things we can think about in how we might balance our own Virtual Kingdom.

[StratOcastle]

Nightmare This Age:

One of the reasons I chose faery mystic for the 25th position in my kingdom strategy has to do with the overall drop in elite defense across the attacker biased races. While we might've gotten more mileage from 3 faery mystics for the depth of mana we might've hit the wall on rune consumption. An account of enemies desire to steal runes can exacerbate a mana to rune balance. I also want the depth of reliability we get from elf mystic. The balancing act here was with land efficiency which we have sacrificed to some degree.

Again we want to concentrate on circling the wagons around our 3 elements of high penetration: elf mystic, halfling rogue and orc warrior. We want amnesia from our faery to push threats from both higher and lower tiers in the interest of these 3 elements. This may seem secondary to goal, but the endeavor is to open enemy threats to deeper strikes in all sectors. Since amnesia presumably drops science evenly we can then engage with more efficient effect. This of course is simply an option. Conventional shelling is always there if that serves the greater good.

An odd strategy could be human mystic in the 25th position as we had last age to cast chastity on shelled provinces. This along with plague and a degree of peasant elimination could be effective if more difficult to coordinate. The human lack of mages fury and science cost challenges made this an esoteric move.

[LoRD_SaMPuaN]

i got some short free-time on my hands, so i decided to craft an idea which MAY bring some elements of this fantasy and real gaming environment & strategies together..

i will be using the three divisions system, each focusing on unique gameplay of their own.. hopefully i will be able to create synergy of some sort between them in the war field, balancing the 'rainbow' weakness of the kd using different race/pers combos with similar overall output.. ill just start picking something, and improvise on my way to 25th spot..

squad #1 - quick resolve
this division focuses on making waves in 9-10h patterns, prioritising speed over other aspects - namely avians, tacticians and qf casters.. different members specialize on sustainability, high offense and econ capabilities.. designed to max gain to contain any outrunners, or make hit'n'run on opponent tms where needed - utilizes unremovable speed buffs, elite offense and cs/elite training/free building to combat shelling attempts..
1- avian cleric
2- undead tactician
3- avian merchant
4- human tactician
5- avian warrior
6- orc tactician
7- dwarf warrior
8- dwarf cleric

squad #2 fists of rock
the idea of the squad is running 12h wave patterns, aiming for deep chaining a single attacker with t/m backup.. the squad utilizes nightmare & ns capabilities and sustainable high-offense provs..
1- dwarf sage
2- orc warrior
3- orc cleric
4- undead rogue
5- human war hero
6- elf war hero
7- undead merchant
8- human mystic

squad #3 sanctuary
the power core of the kd, specially armed with very high tpa/mods to combat opponent tms or aid attacker squads when they are outgunned..
1- faery mystic
2- elf sage
3- halfling mystic
4- halfling rogue
5- faery rogue
6- faery war hero
7- elf merchant
8- halfling sage

monarch
1- faery sage
the most versatile combo in the game, will be there wherever help is needed - be it attacking department, thievery or magic..

there it is, my virtual kd - who wants to war?

[StratOcastle]

What Is The Virtual Kingdom?

Well here I present The Virtual Kingdom as a balanced template of all personalities and all races in the game. The 25th province can represent the efficiency of the age or a perennial favorite in your arsenal.

What The Virtual Kingdom really is has to do with perspective.
Do you believe in yourself as a player?
Do you have faith that you can play up to the balance of the game and not the bias of the trends?

I've been in many wars as a volunteer in the lower kingdoms. Places with no continuity, places of fear and victims of bullying. I've also warred formidable kingdoms. In fact, the last war I was in was against a classic well organized super waving kingdom that understood mechanics and used them. My kingdom didn't lose because we had a bad kingdom strategy. We lost because we misused the strength we had. We squandered and sat idle.

This balanced kingdom: The Virtual Kingdom, is not a path of failure nor one of success. The Virtual Kingdom is asking a question. This isn't an institution, this is freedom. Can you be a team player while being your best? I'm betting that you can. That's what this is all about. Unbiased clarity of purpose with the freedom to do your best can only result in flawless unity.

Can we always be at our best? No. But what you may fail to see is that we stumble together and we hold each other up.
This kingdom is virtual but the ideas are real.

[StratOcastle]

Thank you LoRD_SaMPuaN. You've done a great kingdom!

I love the effectiveness and the style. Very well planned.

And now an analogy on my style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y92NgQxg8BQ

[StratOcastle]

Avian & Dwarf ~ The Poor Mans Faery:

You guessed it, complimentary bonuses. The blurse(blessing curse) of avian this age with elite credits has nearly relegated them to merchant to exercise depth of leverage. I have found some narrow effectiveness in avian war hero that requires kingdom coordination is squared away. That aside we have merchant on avian and what a choice it is. Looks to have earned the attention of top warring kingdoms in the core.

So let's look at our speed team. I haven't found a better fit for tactician than dwarf because the synergy here is just not available in any other attacker race. Let me clarify. All races have a weakness that can be covered or left open with personality. The dwarf tactician spell book covers all the ground I could ask for in combination. The defensive spells cover both mystic and rogue incursions. The speed bonus with quick feet allows for some ambush dodging. The defensive spells make an easier road for land fat than any other attacker combo. You could argue orc tac, but even in a conventional kingdom it loses it's greatest strength at warrior. Dwarf has free build. Undead tac can stop rogue but can't do anything about mystic.

Lest we forget, it's avian that gets sabotage bonus and dwarf that gets spell damage bonus. The dwarf tac can use stealth for intel while retaining mana for popping fireball and the incomparable fools gold. Avian can then exercise full stealth. The idea here is for these guys to check the paripheral defenses of selected targets. Test that twpa(thieves and wizards per acre). The buddy system here is about exchanging aid, tag teaming and being there when the other factions in kingdom have their hands full. It's not a greedy relationship, we've assigned these two to run interference for the builds that pack the most punch. In taking care of business these two look out for each other, just as human war hero and undead cleric look out for each other.

All thing revolve around defending the onslaught of elf mystic, halfling rogue and orc warrior. Pictured:

Spearhead ~
elf mystic
halfling rogue
orc warrior

Assault ~
human war hero
undead cleric

Theater Control ~
avian merchant
dwarf tactician

Logistics ~
faery sage

Everybody is looking out for each other, but defined roles allow us to prioritize responsibility. If the undead cleric suffers undo damage we can bump the aggressor(s). Though I've ordered this in a reactionary light we're actually taking the initiative. We want to do things to dictate the action and force the enemy to react. Part of having the speed duo is to change momentum if we find ourselves in a defensive reactionary situation.

[StratOcastle]

And having seen what I’ve seen—and given the chance—I feel it is my duty to say something. English statesman Edmund Burke said: “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men and women to do nothing.”
- Emma Watson -

A quote of a quote may seem unimaginative, but think of it as a torch passed to the next to run with it.

On a lighter note http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T8ipIc2PGc