Help?

[Attero]

Hey i am posting here because I would like to enlist the aid of some skilled players to help me grow as a leader in my kingdom. I do not think ill ever play n the top 10s or be considered a elite kd anytime soon. Im not recruitting just wanted to see if any monarchs, stewards or super veteran players may be willing to coach me up. I have been king for 2 ages now and there is still so much i need to learn but at the level my kd is in it is no where near where I want it to be. When players look for you to have answers you need to have them and many times i find myself second guessing a decision such as maybe a dragon we sent, targets we choose, ops we choose etc.. I can pm or go to any irc channels. Thanks to all who may help. I have massive amounts of questions.

[Palem]

Ask away

[Attero]

Well lets start with waves, chaining and dealing with players from other parts of the globe? So my question is...

1. if I have half my kd in Canadian American time frame and alot of players from say Singapore, Ireland and France how would I get the most out of my kd when my waves are broken into 2 or 3 parts?
2. What is the proper way to chain acres wise and when is it a waste of time after a certian points (explain), is it better to do the most damage early on in the first wave?
3.When is max gaining the best option?
4. Is it possible to be highly successful at a mid tier possibly top 30 level with players from all over the globe?
5. When giving orders (in the ghetto) is it best to mass everyone the orders or mass everyone to look and read in the forums?

Lets start with these basic few and I will continue after a few post

[Persain]

im more than happy to help too, here or irc when i have free time. cant promise 24/7 but if u send me a pm and stay online i'll always read it over and respond within a day or so. The best way to grow as a leader is to learn your own kd, get input from your own players make your own mistakes see whose active/who u can rely on. A lot of being a good leader will be geting your own kd to step up and help, u can run a kd alone but even the best diplomat/war organizer in the game wont lead a good kd if they cant put people in the correct rolls or take a weekend off now and again.

Well lets start with waves, chaining and dealing with players from other parts of the globe? So my question is...

1. if I have half my kd in Canadian American time frame and alot of players from say Singapore, Ireland and France how would I get the most out of my kd when my waves are broken into 2 or 3 parts?
2. AWhat is the proper way to chain acres wise and Bwhen is it a waste of time after a certian points (explain), Cis it better to do the most damage early on in the first wave?
3.When is max gaining the best option?
4. Is it possible to be highly successful at a mid tier possibly top 30 level with players from all over the globe?
5. When giving orders (in the ghetto) is it best to mass everyone the orders or mass everyone to look and read in the forums?

Lets start with these basic few and I will continue after a few post

1. This is the biggest issue all kds will face. There is no easy answer unless your willing to kick everyone who cant make a standard wave time or are willing to force people to wake up at 3 am. My kd solves this issue via our choice of wave times/styles and who plays what race along with the understanding that i will adjust kd strategy as much as possible but 3am hits can happen. edit* helpful hit, organzie your attacker cores such that "2 waves" are really just one wave with a 3-4 hour gap in the middle. use this to your advantage and make your smaller timezone mostly attackers such that you can chain...def deserts finish chain. This often means massive resizing of hitters after every war so your timezone/nw spread is done correctly for chaining*

2. a-The "best" way to chain is 4-5 taps/your hitter, all in nw range, all in 1 tick, the tick before the guy you are attacking gets his army in, and to take him small enough that u make him release "enough" offense. This will almost never happen perfectly, even in the best kds. Your goal at "chaining" is either to force the target to lose def or offense. Sp u want to lower the provs max population as quickly as u can in whatever way you see fit (raze/trad/ll are the typical ways). If your targets doesnt lose off/def to overpopulation you are semi-chaining (removong peasants) or max gaining.
b. its a waste of time when you either cant take someone as deep enough as u need to cost them military or when taking them down farther will hurt u in the long run. Determining if thats the case must be done on a war by war basis and is a judgement call that i cant/wont give a general concept to
c. depends on the war sometimes its better to chain to force def to get released so u can re-chain later to cause offense to leave, sometimes u want max leets gone asap...you need someone looking at intell guiding your wars to really figure out which is better atm.

3. when you want to take honor/land, some provs may max gain while some chain, the goal for "max gains" is literally just that to take as much as possible, not to inflict the maximum damage.

4. yes my kd has players all over the globe with multiple players spread in random places but most players concentrated in North america, the EU countries, and south east asia.

5.whatever works for you. get your players trained to go to XYZ to read orders and keep it the same. The goal should be that everytime people log in the 100% know where to get orders and how to follow them. In my kd thats irc+bot as everyone can tweak/change the orders as needed and theres only 1 set of orders. In other kds that may be via pm, the Monarch msg, or the forums. the problems i have with those 3 is only 2 people can tweak the MM, pms are alot of work and hard to track if u need sudden changes and the forums can lead to multiple where post1=do x, post 2=do y post=3 do z....now what do i do x, y or z.

[DonJuan]

Persain did good so far

When you finally elect an opponent...most monarchs will see what advantages they have and will try to build an attack plan to protect those advantage. In the top 10, these advantages includes cow protection and such...which complicates things since you now have 2 war fronts (core war & cow war)

To keep things simple for you...your target selection should mostly be about removing your biggest threats on their side. This may be either high offense attackers or (if possible) Attacker-T/M hybrids in nw range of your core that can be doing more damage with ops

Sometimes you get lucky with an enemy province bouncing or hitting with no incoming land, then you take advantage of it by chaining him so hard his sphincter collapses within itself and he is land-locked for the rest of the war.

Your KD-wide op waves should be a part of your overall strategy, but it can range depending on your direction...main T/M will want to NM/NS chain targets to lower def and ensure a clean take down or even FB/Greed from your core to keep their economy slow.

[Craigus]

Well lets start with waves, chaining and dealing with players from other parts of the globe? So my question is...

1. if I have half my kd in Canadian American time frame and alot of players from say Singapore, Ireland and France how would I get the most out of my kd when my waves are broken into 2 or 3 parts?
2. What is the proper way to chain acres wise and when is it a waste of time after a certian points (explain), is it better to do the most damage early on in the first wave?
3.When is max gaining the best option?
4. Is it possible to be highly successful at a mid tier possibly top 30 level with players from all over the globe?
5. When giving orders (in the ghetto) is it best to mass everyone the orders or mass everyone to look and read in the forums?

Lets start with these basic few and I will continue after a few post

1. An idea is to make an online spreadsheet that everyone can edit to determine what their login times are. It helps with a bit knowing what to expect.

2. I think chaining in the warring tier is 90% of the time more effective than max gains. With a team with wishy washy time zones and Networth all over the place. I suggest making 2 - 3 chain targets depending on the NW gap. One big, one mid/small. Attackers can then hit within their networth and sidetap the smaller NW attackers on the chain list. Keeps gains high while also maintaining a chain to release defence/offence.

3. I think Max gaining is best when you decide you have disabled enough attacker power and you want to build Unbreakables. Also what I have learnt is that when you war a kingdom with a grudge you cannot let them grow too big or they will come back for round 2 so dont let them grow too big.

4. Yes, I think most kingdoms face the same troubles as you do these days. Just make sure you build a strat around it. Like using a strat dependable on nightmares is going to be a tough ask in a kingdom like yours.

5. We only use kingdom chat and I find we have so many people who are on the toilet seat at work to make their hits that they have no time to check in forum. I usually put brief details in monarch message in case they have no time to check in chat. It does take a lot of updating the throne message so sometimes you may need to change steward or monarch quickly if you away for extended periods.

[Bo To]

My reply is in contrary to other replies. Obviously you are asking for 2 things: how to organize your KD and how to lead wars. Those are very different things so its better if you get good in one first and then move to the other one. Now as the age is coming to an end I think its better to start organizing your KD.

1. Craigus mentioned spreadsheet where everyone can say his/her ideal time for wave/attack/op - tried this it was a disaster. It's better if you do it yourself - choose time for waves like this(your local time) - 7-9 AM, 11AM -1PM, 6-9 PM(the interval is made like this - before work / lunch brake / after work(before/after dinner)). Check how other fits in this and choose the best option. Try to get at least 8-10 people(depending on your KD size) to be online at the same time so they can make a good pre war wave and give hostile(if your are a waving KD, I know there are some who are PM-ing). Organized wave in 1-2 ticks is the best you can get. Always stick to the same time. You can move it with +/-1 hour but no more in any case or what so ever. Its better if you use utopia time.

2. Knowing your KD. Understand how your teammates like to play. Some attackers like to play with tons of def that dies from ms/ns/prop. Some like to play with none def at all(150 opa for the win) - understand how they play what is their safe zone and guide them to better and more organized play. It will take some time dont be inpatient and dont rush things. If you dont like someones game style suggest him to try something different and new but close to his style.

3. Organize a council. Search for people who are loyal, active and teachable. Activity is the less important. Don't do everything on your own. Get help - at the beginning maybe it will be only you but choose someone, teach him in leading wars and organizing people and find others. Organize this people in irc/skype to make the KD strategy - races/personalities/waves etc. I think 4-5 people should be enough and irc/skype chat is a must.

Craigus and Persain gave you a lot information about leading war/pre-war wave so I think if I say something it may confuse you. Organizing KD is really hard and it takes tons of time and patient. Wars are easy 2 days to 1 week.

[LoRD_SaMPuaN]

Well lets start with waves, chaining and dealing with players from other parts of the globe? So my question is...

1. if I have half my kd in Canadian American time frame and alot of players from say Singapore, Ireland and France how would I get the most out of my kd when my waves are broken into 2 or 3 parts?
2. What is the proper way to chain acres wise and when is it a waste of time after a certian points (explain), is it better to do the most damage early on in the first wave?
3.When is max gaining the best option?
4. Is it possible to be highly successful at a mid tier possibly top 30 level with players from all over the globe?
5. When giving orders (in the ghetto) is it best to mass everyone the orders or mass everyone to look and read in the forums?

Lets start with these basic few and I will continue after a few post

uve got many answers to those questions already & theyre all true considering those are all stuff that must be evaluated based on what you have at your hands.. so ill give you an advice which may help for all your overall capacities - create an active leadership crew of 4-5 ppl at most including you and delegate stuff, make sure you know all your crew well and make sure your crew have easy access to orders and precisely follow them with active feedback (talk after execution esp during waves!)..

you can find me on irc when needed, /query francis will do - of course when im online!

[Proceed]

Much appreciation to those knowledgeable willing to teach and share valuable information with the rest of us.

[pukusam]

make allies so they can land drop you when needed.

[Bishop]

Land dropping is lame, just explore up your runts.

[noobium]

I thought Ronin was an okayish kingdom?
I'm not that good as a coach but I can answer questions within reason.

"1. if I have half my kd in Canadian American time frame and alot of players from say Singapore, Ireland and France how would I get the most out of my kd when my waves are broken into 2 or 3 parts?"

Others answered this question in sufficient detail. Generally, the 24th utopian time is a good time, since that time frame works for most time zones. An alternative is to wave with part of your kingdom, but make sure the other provinces have army out and incoming acres (if needed). Waving all at once is ideal, but not all wars will start the traditional way - you might send a few hits before to gauge the enemy's response, and wait to see what the other kingdom does. If they give a button, you have a lot of advantages, and if they don't you will have done some preliminary damage.

"2. What is the proper way to chain acres wise and when is it a waste of time after a certian points (explain), is it better to do the most damage early on in the first wave? "

Also answered more or less as I would. Always hit in nw order and preferably all at once, and use t/m ops to soften up a target before a chain. Note that with heavy nightmares, attackers can have a reasonable chance of landing nightstrike, and because the thieves required to cap ns should be low, your attackers are risking very little. The extra ns damage is helpful for running chains deeper, and committing less offense to the chain. Unfortunately there is a large problem with oopsing when running lots of ops.
The simple answer to when it's not worthwhile is to see if you are causing significant overpopulation losses, and if the target can keep themselves useful after the chain. Once you have lots of attackers on low defense, a landchain isn't much use or actually harmful, for a variety of reasons. The best chain is when a target is forced to release lots of raw offense, or is pushed out of the nw range of provinces you need to protect (or even better, pushed out of any nw range, so they're effectively negated for a long time).
Usually after mintime is when you should re-evaluate your strategy. If your attack times tend to drift apart (as yours most likely will), chains start breaking down in longer wars and realigning your armies will lead to short-term diminishing of gains. Also, as war progresses, provinces seperate into low-defense chained guys, bloated land shells, and defensive provinces that should ideally be too expensive to landchain in one go.
Landchaining t/ms early in war is going to be a lot easier than doing it later, but you need to do it right. Maxgaining on t/ms will kill you against a competent kingdom; however you need to also consider whether you will have the offense to chain a t/m later on, and sometimes planting 1x or 2x hits into a t/m is a good idea to prepare them for an eventual chain or massacre later. Don't do something like maxgain on t/ms because of nw range issues - if you find yourself lacking the nw range to hit t/ms efficiently, then you really need to evaluate the offense your provinces keep, or utilize a different strategy. By chaining the t/m early, you'll be able to landchain attackers down the road, but you will likely need to chain at least one attacker, and preferably chain more in order to protect your top/keep in good acres.
Also note that if you use Elf/Fae/Halfer/Human, it's a good idea for those provinces to lead out on attacker chains you make. For a pure attacker, land is the last thing you want to keep, and you only need so much for overpop. Likewise if you can 4- or 5-tap an attacker, it isn't necessarily a good idea to do so - better to give each of your attackers 2- or 3-taps on that target, and split off on another target to landchain or massacre (or something to that effect). The particulars may vary, but you would want to allocate your hits so that no individual province bloats too much, especially your larger attackers; better to use your smallest attackers to run chains down, provided the nw range is there.
The best case for a high-offense attacker is that they are able to hit 1 t/m clean and have offense left to hit a weakened attacker - this gives your attacker healthy incoming acres for survival, and should help in setting up a target for your chained guys to hit, while it does the most to protect your top. Implementing that isn't always easy, if not impossible against certain setups. You'd want to either keep the offense needed to do that, or utilize ops to weaken your targets. Don't underestimate the value of vortex and running nightstrike on t/ms, even those with elite defense - if the NS kills are enough to permit better hit allocation, they have very high value for the cost. Anyway that was a bit too many words and some may disagree, but it's stuff I used after facepalming over the things ghetto kingdoms do. :(

"3.When is max gaining the best option?"

There are more strategies than landchain and maxgain. For strict max gains the way most people envision it, the war should be essentially won. Hitting for maximum damage per hit is like maxgaining, but you pay attention to defensive kills and target peasant counts, rather than just hitting the target with most land/honor. If you have a lot of bloated attackers, massacre is a good strategy to win in the long term, especially if you can engineer a one-sided massacre wave - then all of your provinces should be able to function as a/t/m against the massed targets. You need to do a lot of massacre to make that work though, and it might not be enough to overcome a kingdom's bank and t/m advantage.

"4. Is it possible to be highly successful at a mid tier possibly top 30 level with players from all over the globe?"

Making the top 30 is pretty easy just by fielding 25 provinces and having the ability to win against the average war kingdom. Around that level is where people pull the most egregious horse**** and make the game horribly unpleasant to play. The top kingdom drama is more like bad dinner theater.

"5. When giving orders (in the ghetto) is it best to mass everyone the orders or mass everyone to look and read in the forums?"

Mass message for brief notices (no more than a couple paragraphs), explain your reasoning in the forums (or just copy the orders to forums, but do make a forum thread if your kingdom uses ingame forums). One of my biggest problems is not writing a huge textwall. I have to wean myself off of that.

More organized kingdoms use IRC and whatnot for communication, and there is a long-ingrained habit of not using the ingame forums. I think it was because the old Swirve kd forums were vulnerable to cracking.

[UtopiaExpert]

Bishop:

Land dropping is lame, just explore up your runts.

Nothing is more important than age changes.

I'm glad you agree with this Bishop. I posted some suggestions on how to get the server closer together land-wise and NW-wise in the suggestion's section. This will greatly diminish the use of farming out. Very good point Bishop!

@Attero.

As long as the current mechanics are in place, make sure you landdrop. It doesn't pay off to be big and to fight out of your league, plus you get some extra protection from farming out (you can decide the moment on which you wish to give acres, not the top).

Second point is to not random kingdoms friendly towards your cause (and in general don't excessively random kingdoms that can cause you problems later on).

Top 30 is definitely possible. My KD is evenly spread across 3 timeszones (NA, EU, SGP/Aussie). 21st-22nd is usually possible, and our aussies give sitting (SGP don't need it as they're die-hard).

Best way is giving personalized orders to each individual, but things like waves can be put in monarch message.

[noobium]

Land-dropping is lame and people should learn to play their position regardless of race. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need your t/m all at the top (and you do realize that arrangement is ideal for large kingdoms looking for easy targets?)

That said it's part of the culture of the game now, because people be lame like that.

[Persain]

I thought Ronin was an okayish kingdom?

They are, i thought goodz played there too so they even had a wealth of knowledge to pull on. Thing is they got caught off guard with a couple of fights picked wars against kds that were simply better organized and are still learning how to build up a good kd. Those "mistakes" cost your a lot of confidence and can snowball into feeling like your geting destroyed when the war/fight was actually incredibly close. Leadership then focuses on how to improve each nuance of the kd.