Undead Rogue?

[skoyl12]

Any attacker/thief suffers from the things elit said. Undead might be in a slightly better position because they can afford extra space for TDs (TDs are a must for any thief)

[StratOcastle]

You'll be fine. Undead rogue rings up as a positive. Your not a " kingdom rogue t/m ", you're an undead guy that can steal stuff. That's a positive.

And don't let people scare you with efficiency talk. Yes, we all know about efficiency. The fact is I've run inefficient builds against the highly efficient builds everyone loves and I can say I've been on the winning edge. Age 64 I ran orc warrior vs dwarf sage more than once late age and there was nothing coming my way that scared me at all. Not a thing. Heck, my adopted province was under 70k books in every category except gains. You have to know how to play what you have to your advantage.

Whenever we talk about this stuff someone acts like an inefficient build will result in you being turned to little pile of dry turds. This just doesn't happen. People said humans in 63 weren't nw efficent attackers, but I can tell you they solo like a boss. I outgained about every guy I retaliated against short of what(?) two guys? One was an undead war hero. The other was an Emeriti avian with GS, but it was near even. I was a human war hero and I went through the age only retaliating and exploring.

People said that undead cleric was worthless because you get chained to land defense so easily. That's true, but you have to know how to play again. If were just going to wave like numbskulls then yes pick something useful. On the other hand, if you think through your wars and exploit enemy weakness you can run a quality undead cleric. I've run plenty of happy resilient, strong finishing undead clerics. ~ Undead rogue is fine. It covers all the bases an attacker needs in the ghetto and you have enough force by your 7/2 elite to hammer provinces in the most dangerous kingdoms.

[smercjd]

Undead Rogue is better this age than last age by far! You can train elites again!!

When I played U/R EDIT: This wasn't last age
Undead: -50% O-Loss, Plague, No Food // Only Intel Ops
Rogue: +1 Stealth, All Ops

Current U/R
Undead: -75% O-Loss, Plague, No Food // Only Intel Ops (better spells)
Rogue: +1 Stealth, +75% Crime Science, 2x TDs, All Ops

UM YES PLEASE!!!

[dark viking]

Ok, so i am playing in a kingdom that is running 3 A/T hybrids and i have elected (with one other kingdom mate) to play UD rogue and one other has gone human rogue.

I run a lot of calculations on the various combos available to me and as far as i could see UD rogue is the best (closely followed by human rogue).

We have now come to the end of the first week of the age and this is how i am shaping up:

Size ~450 acres
OPA (modified) - 88opa
*Note - still have around 300 offspecs to convert to leets*
Dspecs PA - 6
rTPA - 4 - mtpa - ~10
WPA - 0.65
Draft - 71%
Building efficiency - 92% (with 5% tools science)

War Build:

Homes 35%
Training Grounds 13%
Barracks - 10%
Guilds - 7%
Towers - 5%
Thieves dens - 17%
Stables - 10%
Dungeons 3%

The clear advantages that UD rogue has is the offense losses, powerful leets, build space, and plague which make it a great durable attacking race, couple this with the frankly awesome buffs rogue has had it provides all the ingredients to a great A/T province.

Now human rogue as i see it has 3 advantages over UD rogue and i will go through these now:

TOG - Fair one this is a big advantage! but imo when heavily drafted and likely to have been FB by a good kingdom its no good in war and only for pumping OOW, plus the leets cost more so the gc is partially eaten up this way.

FOK and science generally - Science is obviously going to be slightly better and more so as the age goes on, however an active UD rogue can counter this a little with doing OOW learns on good targets with much fewer losses = less retrain costs, and also it will have higher offence that Hum Rogue OOW so can hit more targets.

+15% ME in war - This is a good bonus but lets looks sensibly here undead has 7 offence leet and human has 6 so that in its self is the same bonus and undead has it OOW to.

Some of the undead rogue (when played in my strat) disadvantages as i see it:

No hospitals - This is ok if you are active and army in / army out imo, plus with TW it also gives a little overpop resistance. JUST DONT GET CAUGHT WITH ARMIES HOME :)

Easy chain target - Yes it may look this way and to be honest is this a bad thing at all? What would you rather be chained early in a war a heavy attacker or a hybrid? I know my choice.

Massacres and razes (due to high homes) - Yes massacres and razes are a risk but lets be honest if they want to waste time and risk no incoming acres to do this on mass is it a bad thing? thieves can be retrained cheaply in EOWCF anyway and with ~90opa you can just revert to attacker role and maintain enough tpa to NS shelled / fat attackers in the meantime.

Some general points and tips with this strat -

You need to be active in and out of war - War - is armies in and out plus lots of opping - OOW - is lots of learns plunders and stealing gc etc....

Your BE needs to stay above 90% - this is important for your TD ability mainly, homes will help greatly with this (another advantage over Human rogue)

Adapt in war quickly - If you are chained you need to decide very quickly whether you release offence or thieves, in most wars in reality you will only need ~50 opa to 4 tap other chained provinces so consider this when you release as you may be able to maintain crazy tpa and op at low levels to. Plus if you have a drake on you 7 point leets will help!

These are simply my thoughts and opinions and it will be genuinely interesting to see how we stack up to to the equally active and knowledgeable human rogue as the age progresses :)

[Zauper]

What do you do when they let you grow, your TPA ratio falls apart and your off isn't enough to be a credible threat?

[Palem]

What do you do when they let you grow, your TPA ratio falls apart and your off isn't enough to be a credible threat?

You prop the people that were being shelled in the other kd for easy thieves and army ;)

[Zauper]

You prop the people that were being shelled in the other kd for easy thieves and army ;)

BE and TD% falls as well, you lose too many thieves for it to work unless you have dedicated rogues pulling down TPA and GA:WT in order to open them up for you, and none of their rogues prop you for your thieves that you can't protect.

[tetley]

Zauper: does your reasoning suggest that A/T rogue personality is never a viable strategy?

[dark viking]

Zauper I don't know about other kingdoms but when we run hybrids we try and keep them smaller and compact and use them to hit at the end of chains or do tactical razes and massacres where needed (shell targets for instance).

This means they don't get to fat so can keep tpa high, as with reason I discussed before if they do become a chain target (unlikely as they are small already) this can be an advantage in its self to.

Also with an AT gaining sensible acres steadily in war with 35% homes pop will fill fast and so will income so with this along with speed building and propaganda can mean you stay pumped. If you are FB or shelled (again u likely as u are small) this to me takes the heat off much more destructive provinces in the kingdom anyway and leaves the opposition exposed with little incoming acres.

And to be honest if all else fails and you need to make big land grabs with 90 ish opa you can revert to an attacker role with NS and prop on shell targets if needs be :)

[StratOcastle]

Zauper: does your reasoning suggest that A/T rogue personality is never a viable strategy?

Either that or he's trying to throw us off; sorta like GB protection in the Hitler video. It's hard to tell if he's exasperated with our stupidity or stunned by our enginuity :-D

I'm thinking if you can have p90x why can't I have logic confusion?

[Palem]

Zauper: does your reasoning suggest that A/T rogue personality is never a viable strategy?

I actually wouldn't run hybrid with anything that doesn't have a +WPA/TPA bonus on it

[Verminator]

I actually wouldn't run hybrid with anything that doesn't have a +WPA/TPA bonus on it

Every race can have one of those, it's called science. ;)

frankly, a rogue enhanced TD/crime sci combo would be just fine.

[Zauper]

Zauper: does your reasoning suggest that A/T rogue personality is never a viable strategy?

It can be. CR ran ~15 rogues one age (last age prior to this of double TD). We used our dedicated thief rogues as I described -- destroying WTs and doing the initial props to eat TPA. It let our rogues sustain TPA through growth.

The deeper draft of an a/t vs a pure thief means lower BE and higher thief losses -- and the higher thief losses, combined with either overpop or growth generally means than an a/t winds up as just an attacker after ~3 waves. Rogues have some tools to mitigate that (specifically, prop) but prop requires significant TPA advantages to pull off to start with, and has high losses associated when you fail because it's a big thief op. The net result is that you really need to be smart about employing that kind of strategy.

Dark viking -- it sounds like your 'hybrids' are really just being played as 't/ms that hit low defense targets'. Which aren't really hybrids. Hybrids have to attack. (And hybrids are better at the top than the bottom).

A a/t gaining acres in war will get fireballed. An a/t can't afford 35% homes in war unless you're warring terrible kingdoms, because running 35% homes means you're going without valuable buildings (in your case -- forts, gs, 20% TDs which is about the sweet spot, WTs to protect your weaker TPA (funny story -- a/t are the best prop targets for t/m because they let them repopulate thieves very rapidly and don't run buildings to protect them), hospitals, etc. 0 GS in particular is a red flag; i could probably overpop (and make useless as a/t via desertion -- thanks for running mass homes) 4-6 of your hybrids per wave, and big attackers aren't that scary because they're easy to contain with ops.

If the bulk of your argument is 'our hybrids are worthless so it's good if they get chained' then your hybrids are worthless and you should do something worthwhile with them instead.

Strato -- I've also run undead/rogue before. In fact, I would hazard that I ran the first undead/rogue kingdom, because I did it the first age that undead was selectable and had only intel ops. (and tog. and nightmares. and a 6/7 elite. Undead was ridiculous that age).

[asdfghy]

Big heavy weights doing the talking : D.

Not that it really matters but currently in this age, the best a/t would have to be Dwarf/rogue with that 30% BE. Way better than 5-7% land saved with no farms. And if you can rob bushels food concern isn't too big a deal yah?

[Danzig]

I have run 20 a/t in akingdom before with pretty good sucess as a top 50 nw warring kingdom. Mind this was about 8 years ago. a single undead rogue for any kingdom outside the top 15 should be ok to run.