Has it really been 10+ years? Help a bro out.

[Zauper]

Damn that had to of sucked, is that why randoming for land is fairly uncommon now? Because gains are based on NW?

I can see NW based gains in war, but OOW that change just seems like it killed a whole avenue for growth.

it's not really that randoming for land is uncommon, it's just that there is limited opportunity for it. Part of the issue is that, over the course of the age, the top kds wind up with more of what 'inflates' nw than other kds do -- more science, more gc, more wiz. The flipside to that is that top kds can manipulate NW to extend the whoring range.

But since most kds don't grow very much, you tend to wind up with very limited target options.

[StratOcastle]

When did NW become such a big factor in gains? I knew it always played a role, but i remember it primarily being based off of relative size in terms of acreage and not NW so much. So ideally if you're getting chained you would fall below a certain threshold in terms of NW to try and force a transition to max gains versus chaining?

The mechanics that use to make defense obviously viable went through a metamorphosis simultaneously with nw gains; most concluded to build offense. Now I stink at focal mechanics, but I'm decent at general analysis. Offensive math is flat. It doesn't account for manipulation of playing style. Think of it like a DNA chain. The defense moved, but didn't go away. We're not talking about dspecs, but a spectrum of defensive disciplines.

- If you pay attention to conduct in war you'll notice; This is a good age to see the signature of 2 dimensional thought pattern. The reason is that avian is mechanically dominant but you'll see very little bloom in the pattern of damage inflicted by most avian dominant cores. This shows a basic misunderstanding of the strength of speed. My reference to "bloom" is in the attack varietal including learn, plunder, raze, massacre.

Just so you know I'm not blowing pure smoke I ran a solo province in 63. I enjoy challenges so I set out to grow only through explore and retaliation(I wouldn't launch any unprovoked attacks). I didn't steal unless it was in retaliation. I didn't propose to CF any kingdom. By the end of the age I had 7 CFs in place. I was offered 5 and I offered 2.
Besides the standard randoms I retaliated attacks with 4 of the top 6 land kingdoms. This isn't to convince you of the quality of my province, simply to point out that I was in range as an acceptable target to the top kingdoms. This means I was in the size range of the top warring kingdoms as well. No top warring kingdom offered a CF and I offered them no CF.

You must know that my province would come up on anyone's target finder as I grew. There was no choice but to grow. I didn't hide and regularly published my progress reports here, in forum with my province and kingdom name. If you're following you then must conclude that my nw gains on retal were crippling vs fully loaded kingdoms.

I have experience in this because I run a gap tactic and have for several ages. I only volunteer to join organized kingdoms if they need a fill in, but I don't like being in a phalanx. My personal tactics are to isolate single provinces and tear them down. I do this by forging a nw zone by clearing out all the max gain viable enemies. A classic set up I use is ambushing 2 of the larger enemy provinces that trad march and trad marching 2 separate smaller enemy provinces in an elliptical relay. The idea is to keep fluid acres moving at intervals that result in minimal desertions. The nw zone moves as my nw and the enemies nw undulates in war. The larger targets are initially only ambushed to increase their nw and the smaller provinces trad marched to reduce their nw. Once the zone becomes established I can then start feeding down large provinces to my kingdoms chains. My armies are generally running 2.5-3.5 ticks apart depending on build and much faster as an avian.

While this is an activity sensitive operation I've found it superior to common core practices. This doesn't mean I don't believe in waves. The killers obviously must push as much offense as necessary, but to my mind the full spent general waving is much like driving deep into enemy territory and not covering your flanks. Most of these hapless attackers must wait around 8-10 hours for relief acres to arrive. Thus, many are too easily chained to land defense and must release resources to be able to attack with their massive offense. My way, I can still be chained but it takes effort to keep me down. It's my intention to force my enemy to kill every dspec and not desert or release. Thus the great offense is accountable to break my defenses and not move freely on to my kingdoms t/ms.

[protector]

it comes from the fact that 1v1 on even terms in land/science/honor SOME of the war kds could beat the better whoring kds. And SOME those war kds have lost to average war kds. i.e. my kd beat beastblood when "relatively" even and we lost to XYZ when we wared them with a 80% nw disadvantage. So clearly that kd could easily beat beastblood, lol. In addition I'd argue that when some of the whore kds take the age off they can sometimes get easier wars as oooh i've always want to fight CR/BB/whoever lets just war em..."yea we lost but we gave an advantage and they weren't as good as they seem to claim"

With that said if u wanted to organize things u'd to top whore kds>top war kds>crappy whore kds>crappy war kds......and the top whore kds are "better" in that over an entire age they will consistently perform while war kds mess up via the whore/cow/pumping part of the game that typical war kds get to ignore

Well, take football. Every good team has its off days and every not-so-good team has its days where it goes above and beyond. That's why no team finishes the competition with only wins and no losses.
If you pick one of the best whoring kingdoms and one of the best warring kingdoms and let them fight 10 times, pretty certain the whoring kingdom wins the most.

[Elldallan]

I agree, and thats what makes the whole war thing counter-intuitive. At least from past perspective to current. There is no tangible benefit to warring other than a numeric character on your KD page, and as stated before it holds less value than the other string of numeric characters displayed there. If your highest land/nw KDs are regarded as the best and most skilled.. Shouldn't logic dictate that remain the majority of players goal? So why war? And if warring for the sake of warring must persist, then shouldn't the mechanics have changed to at least make it more conducive to growth or at the very least , no great detriment? One bad war can end an age for a KD, let alone particular individual provs in the current climate.

Uhm, I thought I was pretty clear about this, but that was how it used to be back in the ages you're supposedly from, nowadays it's not really that way, nobody gets permanently crippled etc, and warring is pretty much required for top nw/lnd kingdoms because of how ww bonuses and explore mechanisms work.
The mechanisms did change a whole lot.