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

[Hatyn]

Serious nw kingdoms would try very very hard to avoid war because in anything remotely looking like an even matchup would mean both kingdoms warred themselves out of the charts

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.

[Zauper]

Winning a war gives you roughly 5% of the combined land of the two kingdoms, that is a huge incentive to war during growth.

And since it now is incredibly difficult to kill provinces, a chained province doesn't really have its age ended -- it probably takes a week to hit back to the whore cap.

[Palem]

Lots of mechanical changes have been made to make war more beneficial and push warring to lead to growth. Wars now award land based on the sizes of the kingdoms, you get free books, you gain honor, you gain tons of building and spec credits to help you grow into your lands (this is just for the other kingdom hitting the surrender button, not what you actually gain through the war).

The problem is that there's always push back from kingdoms that have no interest in actually being competitive. They just want to stay small and bash on kingdoms that they know they'll beat because they're not as good as they are instead of pushing themselves against a kingdom of their same level of talent.

ninja'd by zauper :(

[Zauper]

The some extent, the whore cap is actually a bigger concern -- there's limited things to do to grow when you hit the whore cap. if you war, win or lose, you'll have shifted prov sizes -- for example, if the whore cap is 3k acres, and you go to war, and 8 provs grow to 4k, and 8 provs shrink from 3k to 1k -- even though that's a netloss of 8k acres in war itself, you can now re-grow those 8 provs to 3k acres, and you will have netgained 8k acres from the totality of it.

On top of the 'free' pool acres from the war win bonus, that is a huge bonus that you get from warring -- the ability to re-whore lost land, making you significantly bigger as a kd.

What people don't seem to realize is that acres below the whore cap are essentially worthless.

Put differently, atm the #1 is IRS, at 153k acres. YOLO/BB is #2 at 138k, and Emeriti #3 at 120k.

#2 and #3 are about to fight. The winner of that fight is likely going to be larger than IRS, particularly after they empty their pool and re-whore. Or if not larger, significantly less behind if we decide to grow a little.

Of course, the science (and credits) gained from warring is significantly less than what you can buy if you're OOW and the credits are worth less than just high econ generates. So it's a bit of a plus/minus situation.

Diminishing returns makes our advantage a bit lower though.

[Persain]

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.

being the bigest/largest doesnt mean your the best. not even remotely...theres been a couple of recent examples where pretty terrible kds "won" the age. To that end I'd also argue that there is no tangible benefit from being having the most acres as at any point in time you could get 2v1'ed or 3v1'd and lose the acres. The game is small enough that if you aren't liked or respected its pretty easy to organized a multi kd coalition to knock out first place. People just dont really do that because its not as "fun" as other methods of winning.

Anyway the game is basically broken down like this. There are a few kds that are WAY better at gaining land than any other kd. These kd WILL WIN every age unless there is something like one kd purposefully feeding a worse kd all their acres to win. Other "good" kds, mine included, are just not really on pace to put in a full 3 month effort to compete AND win long term.

These "good" kds can very much beat (but by no means easily) the "best" kds when evenly sized,honored, science lvls.... However as i said they dont have the energy to micro manage a kd and gain land to try to win a 3 age long fight..thus at some point in the age most of them will fall very far behind and have no real shot at winning. Similarlly these "good" kds dont find it fun nor difficult to know that the "best" way to get land is by hiting a kd 70-80% your size and forcing them to fight what is likely a 1 sided battle. I.e. 1 sided win, 1 sided win, 1 sided loss, 1 sided win...age ends in 4th place....thats just not as fun as 4 battles between kds that theoretically both could win either fight. Thus these kds chose to just fight back and forth multiple battles with kds of similar skill.

Ultimately competing for land/nw is very dependent on the leader. Fighting wars much smaller can be much more impacted by any one of the 25 players in a kd...and thus people sit there with friends not really trying to "win" the whole game, but just having 1 off fights over 2+ days and talking with their friends.

[Anri]

Good old memories.

Zauper:
WpT was a damn strong KD. They warred us and it was the first time i saw a KD deep-chain in a flawless way. We learnt a lot from them and copied the strategy they used. I was glad when i saw a KD that tagged Wolfpack tactics in the 50-60s and messaged them just to find out it was not the original KD, just some ghettonubs that never heard of the real WpT. :/

****

Wars was far more destructive back then, could be many dead provs on both sides and it was hard for both kds to recover after war. Kds really had to think twice about going into destructive wars that could put all age at risk. I can honestly say i entered a lot of wars i knew from the start we would lose, just to make sure to damage them as much as possible and come out without any acres lost by min time. Waste thier time, kill their wpa, chain a few down, open them up to be farmed by another shark oow. No ww bonuses, no tax interest and what not.

Server was more fierce and destructive overall.

[khronosschoty]

Good old memories.

Zauper:
WpT was a damn strong KD. They warred us and it was the first time i saw a KD deep-chain in a flawless way. We learnt a lot from them and copied the strategy they used. I was glad when i saw a KD that tagged Wolfpack tactics in the 50-60s and messaged them just to find out it was not the original KD, just some ghettonubs that never heard of the real WpT. :/

****

Wars was far more destructive back then, could be many dead provs on both sides and it was hard for both kds to recover after war. Kds really had to think twice about going into destructive wars that could put all age at risk. I can honestly say i entered a lot of wars i knew from the start we would lose, just to make sure to damage them as much as possible and come out without any acres lost by min time. Waste thier time, kill their wpa, chain a few down, open them up to be farmed by another shark oow. No ww bonuses, no tax interest and what not.

Server was more fierce and destructive overall.

The good ole days,,, I liked the fierceness back then.

[nipster]

I wouldn't say that kingdoms that go for growth are better, being in a warring kingdom is more fun and requires more skill. It's like a chess match, you have a plan and your opponent had a plan, you have to counteract their moves. Growing is boring you just sit there and explore and dice, been there done that. The warring tier is where all the action is.

[Zauper]

I wouldn't say that kingdoms that go for growth are better, being in a warring kingdom is more fun and requires more skill. It's like a chess match, you have a plan and your opponent had a plan, you have to counteract their moves. Growing is boring you just sit there and explore and dice, been there done that. The warring tier is where all the action is.

This issue with this is that it's not true. When the top kds get bored and take an age off ghettoing and warring, they stomp all over the top war/honor kds. All you have to do is look back a few ages when giraffes took an age off and did that. And conversely, when warring kds try to go for land, they inevitably get stomped in war because they don't have the capacity to pull off long-term strategy.

The whole counteracting moves thing is also bull**** because most of the wars are just pming someone and saying 'give me a war' rather than requiring long-term planning or strategy.

The only chance that warring kds have to beat growth kds is if they catch them early age and get lucky, having wasted long-term potential (explore pool) to get a leg up and taking personalities that don't scale as well.

[nipster]

This issue with this is that it's not true. When the top kds get bored and take an age off ghettoing and warring, they stomp all over the top war/honor kds. All you have to do is look back a few ages when giraffes took an age off.

They were 4th in Honor and 37th in war wins, I'd hardly call that running the table

[Band of Horses]

They were 4th in Honor and 37th in war wins, I'd hardly call that running the table

1337 warring kingdoms had small necks and thus were afraid of giraffes. More dodges than that movie with Ben Stiller, his wife, and Vince Vaughn. You lose every war you don't take -Wayne Gretzky. Giraffes handed the warring tier like 20 loses that age.

[Zauper]

They were 4th in Honor and 37th in war wins, I'd hardly call that running the table

Except they stomped every single war/honor kd that would fight them, including all the big names and the others were afraid to?

i.e. they stomped last ages ww winner, the prior ages honor winner, kd that won honor the age or two before that, etc.

Ultimately, one of the significant issues with the honor/war tier is that there is no consequence to deciding to not accept a fight. In the honor tier, you can just decide you're not interested in fighting a competitor and walk away. Not even a question of inferior prep, was just embarrassing.

[Hatyn]

I wouldn't say that kingdoms that go for growth are better, being in a warring kingdom is more fun and requires more skill. It's like a chess match, you have a plan and your opponent had a plan, you have to counteract their moves. Growing is boring you just sit there and explore and dice, been there done that. The warring tier is where all the action is.

I'm sure exploring/dicing was always the most effective for pure growth, even back then. But i know for the ages i was stuck in a mediocre kd or an outright ghetto; i would do quite well randoming. I'm sure randoming isn't completely dead, but it sure looks that way. Was that a result of the major decline in players and/or the kingdom stance feature?

I get the sentiment that warring is the only really fun thing though, but i don't think that choosing not to war from a growth standpoint really dictates who is the better group of players.

[khronosschoty]

Except they stomped every single war/honor kd that would fight them, including all the big names and the others were afraid to?

i.e. they stomped last ages ww winner, the prior ages honor winner, kd that won honor the age or two before that, etc.

Ultimately, one of the significant issues with the honor/war tier is that there is no consequence to deciding to not accept a fight. In the honor tier, you can just decide you're not interested in fighting a competitor and walk away. Not even a question of inferior prep, was just embarrassing.

Quality post and I believe it.

[Loons]

Ill make this simple, since I really have no business in this convo hah!

At OP, you just have to take being chained as an honor. You did something right prepping ur prov. If you do a good job at it, expect to be chained first, watch your prov deteriorating in war (keep it alive), sit at the bottom and watch the rest of the kingdom fight it out. Rinse repeat and have fun with it :D