Heavy Attacker + OPA Question

[jobi912]

Hey Guys,

Just wanted to get some discussion going as to what you guys think the best Heavy Attacker race is currently. I definitely think Undead and Orc are the top choices, but then it comes down to which personality best compliments the race. Undead/Warrior | Undead/Tact | Orc/Warrior | Orc Cleric are the first couple choices that come to my mind when thinking about it.

When it comes to OPA, what is the "ideal" OPA to maintain as a Heavy Attacker? I've seen people state around 80+, I personally have run 120+ with Undead/Warrior but the downside is being chained and having 0 defense after the first 24 hours or so (ran it with 0% hospitals). This is why I was thinking of changing to Orc/Cleric to retain a little bit more def so attackers would have to send more offense to break.

Would love to hear opinions on this and also a general strat for oow and war builds for which race/personality combo you think works best.

[natebane]

Human > Dwarf > Orc > Avian > Undead

Ideally you should aim for 80+ raw opa and enough wtpa to exploit weak or fat attackers. Personality should be more of a function of your kd's strategy.

[neanderthal]

^^. No kd in the top 5 chasing wars has a war core that is anywheres near what this guy is suggesting. Orcs and undeads, supported by humans and tms is what you will find as a vast majority.

[StratOcastle]

If you're in an organized war kingdom you'll tend to go with what the leadership wants, so neanderthal is good for that. He runs a very solid war kingdom and has done so for a long time.

I consider myself a barbarian. What I mean by that is I'm very loose on my build strats, I don't pay attention to ratios and I war mostly out of disorganized kingdoms. My feelings are you play what you have a knack for playing. I do have certain qualities I like in an attacker; for me, durabuility is a wonderful tool but I can adapt to several attacker styles. I've never had a premier offense, just a good one.

This age I'm running faery sage and I've done very well in war. My experience with attackers makes it easier for me to make key marches with limited offense. Faery bonuses make me durable vs ops and sabotage.

I like undead war hero because your ability to function out of war is as good as in war. War Spoils(war hero spell) allows you to trad march without anon and avoid ambush. This falls in line with your honor bonuses.

I've only run orc cleric once but I had great success because it mirrors my style. You'd think I'd run it more but I have other favorites. This age with plague immunity, orcs Reflect Magic and Clear Sight spells let you stay in the fight even vs ops and sabotage. The ability to cast Pitfalls as a cleric creates deeper contrast in violent exchanges.

I'm a big fan of avian tactician because I can be intensively active. And I don't just march all my armies at once. I relay tap my armies to put constant pressure on the enemy. Updating intel is a breeze and conserves thieves for ops.

Human cleric is very nice for the way I run a bigger attacker. I generally train my science even. I can attack without using anon because losses are low and it keeps me from getting obnoxiously fat if they do ambush. I like to operate in a nw zone and pull bigger attackers down to be chained.
Few players run humans correctly, and this age, have been my target of choice as a faery sage. Orcs are a close second, but I enjoy a challenge so this isn't because I think it's easy.

Orc warrior is almost too easy for my style. I've toyed with other attackers in war and have never been chained as an orc warrior. Relay tapping is very easy with this combo and you can tear open a nw zone rather quickly. I've been in wars with 2-3 dwarf sages concentrating on me and I came out with the most acres gained in kingdom.

~ My joy in the game is crossing swords with great players. In the disorganized kingdoms you can fight your way to find each other. I've lost some and won some. You find them out of war to and I've been bested twice by undead war heroes.
Have fun in your search. ~

[natebane]

War chasing kds want decisive quick wins, which orcs are pretty good at overwhelming given the initiative or against less skilled kds. Played correctly, as strato pointed out most don't, Humans trump all other attackers this age.

[Persain]

^^. No kd in the top 5 chasing wars has a war core that is anywheres near what this guy is suggesting. Orcs and undeads, supported by humans and tms is what you will find as a vast majority.

This...and the answer to opa is MOAR...always train more. i've been running 16-19 leet/acre all age on my undead warrior so well :D

[neanderthal]

Humans are great turtles. Not heavy attackers.

[StratOcastle]

LoL, I'm so bad at building strats I've run across guys that can double tap me and I can only single tap them in my nw range. This doesn't stop me. I'm kind of funny about the challenges.

Couple of ages ago as a human war hero I crossed swords with an undead tac and this was the case. It honestly makes me smile. I grabbed his full intel to see how this machine was built. Do I use any of this stuff? Not really. I mean, I know better but i face superior strats as the norm.

I'm not sure I could stomach being part in an irc cross chain anymore. I really enjoy being out in the field.

[natebane]

Mounted human elite in war-> 8.05/3 7.1 nw 1.1338 op/nw
Mounted undead elite --------> 8/2 7.1 nw 1.1267 op/nw
Mounted dwarf elite ----------> 7/3 5.85 nw 1.1966 op/nw
Avian elite ---------------------> 6/2 5 nw 1.2 op/nw
Mounted orc elite --------> 8/1 6.35 nw 1.2598 op/nw
--Orc's offense is roughly 11% more nw efficient than human


If you look solely at offense efficiency, then orc wins. If you look at pure offense/acre numbers then Human wins. Looking at both together, human is strictly better than undead. If undead is a heavy attacker then human must be too. Looking beyond into the racials there's enough going for human to pick them over another. Turtle elite with chain resisting bonuses..c'mon.. ToG + Fok to pump sci.. you guys can think w/e though

[dieaready]

Human/warrior works wonders for me. 100 opa and 40 dpa w/o elites. Nice thing about that is the hidden mod, your bonus 15% off in war is not shown leading people to underestimate you. At 100 opa in war you actually can hit for up to 129 opa before you start adding in mercs ;) add in tog, qf and you are doing pretty well. Sci wise, humans are bad for pumping, even with fok, but still can be pretty respectable.

As a human/warrior my OME bonus is ridiculous, I get about 155 to 165% including the racial bonus. This means I need to send less troops and results in about 20% or so less losses due to 20% less troops sent.

Heavy attackers should be at least 100 opa minimum. Off/NW shouldn't be too much of an issue as human/orc/ud can hit 0.6+ while most t/ms are at 0.5, so if you are within 20% NW range of a t/m you should be able to break them.

[StratOcastle]

All true stories, but as a faery sage I've held my own. All I've done is split elite count and ospec count. Additionally, I really prefer fighting on even nw or against more powerful opponents.

The reason I mention this: if you're in a kingdom that doesn't dictate race/persona you'll find you can fight anybody if you have the wherewithal to do so. The math is important but it's not a deal breaker. Think about it. In the last war TFC lost I wasn't running away from the core as much as chasing the enemies top human. He was superior in every way and I couldn't even op the guy, but I ambushed as soon as he opened up to attack. To me this is just an anchoring point. You have to get a piece of them and it's always been my style.

After Coffee Edit: I'm not recommending faery sage and I had no intention of depending on my army this age as my main form of offense. We do have a player in kingdom who fully intended to run a faery attacker no matter where he played. There's no secret tricks, just a willingness to fight the efficient attacker strats like orcs, humans, undead and avians.

[jmiedema]

It really depends on what your kingdom is wanting to do as well though. Undead is good if you want to bounce wave, or run an extended war. Orc/Cleric is great for running low wpa/tpa numbers if you are very active because you have Reflect Magic and Clear Sight (activity is important so you can recast if it gets MV'd off before they chain you. Humans/Orcs are great at getting back into fighting shape in between wars due to ToG and Free Draft respectively. Dwarves are good for staying in pump builds longer as you can quickly switch to a war build if you get waved. Dwarves are also good for adapting mid war builds, like switching TD's to Watchtowers etc.

80 OPA would be on the very conservative end, especially this age. 100-120+ is more where you would want to be. Most TM's would struggle to remain effective while maintaining more than 110-120 dpa, so if you can have 120-130 opa then you can break similar sized T/M's which is very good and gives you more options especially in hostile.

I would say overall if joining the age this late, you would probably have the most success with Human/Cleric, Orc/Cleric, Undead/Warrior. Human might be a bit late to have since one of their bonusses focusses on sci, but with ToG you can also get into the fight, and grow pretty quickly.. /shrug lots of options, but those would be mine.

[noobium]

Avian is really really underrated.

Really though, a lot is a matter of playing to each race's strengths, how provs interact with each other, and how they match up against other setups. Humans have the best overall skillset, but they are not infalliable, bad diplo and bad hostile management is ruinous. If I were only using 10 or so attackers I'd stay away from Human or Dwarf.

[StratOcastle]

The thing about undead is I've got about 50 self spells I got to keep up as a faery sage and only so much mana. This means plague can potentially hang around a long time.

I kept hitting my buildings tab to regard my hospital percentage as the month rolled on...

[noobium]

or forget about curing plague... also faery/sage is not a heavy attacker silly strato.

oh i forgot...
it's better to look at the kingdom makeup than think about individual provs. a prov that is primarily an attacker is only as good as the provs next to them.
generally, humans and orcs work better if they're in large numbers, and avian/undead work better in smaller numbers (3-5 provs) working alongside a human or orc majority.
dwarves are kinda weak this age, but they can still fill a lot of niches (HA core, HA specialist, "hybrid"), and they can use pf/fg without being cleric or a t/m race.

i haven't done enough theorycrafting this age, but i think setups with full attackers and no true t/m are slightly better now than they were in the past.

to answer the question about opa - there isn't really a fixed goal, the important thing is that all of your attackers can follow up each other. 120 opa for an orc or undead is pretty standard, but it's not obligatory; there are many wars where an orc would rather have 10 epa 10 dspa rather than 12 epa 8 dspa, so long as the orcs are hitting what they need to hit. undead tends to want huge offenses regardless, and avians usually want high epa for growth and war. when not expecting to give hostile to a kingdom, most attackers tend towards very high offense and 4-7 dspa, just enough that you aren't too easy to multitap