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

[Jukelius]

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.

It wasnt this simple. Giraffes that age took advantage of kingdoms that weren't war ready. 3 out of 4 wars they had were against kingdoms that were not prepared to war elite kingdom. The wars were not started on even terms what so ever. Elite kingdom didn't need any such advantages to war, but they still searched for such . That's the reason people declined wars with them. Giraffes of course could have won the wars anyway, but they basically only warred when they were in superior position against their opponent.

For example if I remember correctly Spartans were pushed (or forced) to war and Stoners were weak as they were just gotten out of another conflict. In short, Giraffes poached for kingdoms that were weak at that point. We didn't war, but they tried to push us into war while we were pumping up in fort. Giraffes wont of course agree with this statement but thats how other side felt and this was shown in the quite heated debates that happened in forums.

[protector]

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.

Growing isn't just growing. It's also winning fights against the best other growing kingdoms. So essentially they're also warring but at a larger scale and with less targets.
The days were you can just dice yourself to 1st place and stay there, are long gone.

I'm not sure were the confidence that warring kingdoms are better than whoring kingdoms comes from. If it's that way as you claim, I challenge you all to grow and beat these bad whoring kingdoms. I'm pretty certain that a few leaders (nesta & cj, persain) from current/past warring kingdoms who have tried (or are) whoring, can confirm it's not as easy as it looks.
Does it mean I think warring kingdoms suck? To some extend, yes. However, there are obviously also good warring kingdoms and mediocre warring kingdoms. Likewise there are also bad/mediocre/good whoring kingdoms.

[Jukelius]

Growing isn't just growing. It's also winning fights against the best other growing kingdoms. So essentially they're also warring but at a larger scale and with less targets.
The days were you can just dice yourself to 1st place and stay there, are long gone.

I'm not sure were the confidence that warring kingdoms are better than whoring kingdoms comes from. If it's that way as you claim, I challenge you all to grow and beat these bad whoring kingdoms. I'm pretty certain that a few leaders (nesta & cj, persain) from current/past warring kingdoms who have tried (or are) whoring, can confirm it's not as easy as it looks.
Does it mean I think warring kingdoms suck? To some extend, yes. However, there are obviously also good warring kingdoms and mediocre warring kingdoms. Likewise there are also bad/mediocre/good whoring kingdoms.

I think most people agree that growth kingdoms overall are better than warring tier and would win against them more often than not. Those who disagree, probably dont know enough players who play in those kingdoms and what kind of skill level they have. All the best players tend to pack up eventually in the elite kingdoms. During my 15 years of playing utopia, its way way more common to lose good players to top kingdoms than actually get top players to join smaller kingdoms and help build them up. Only during past few years there has been a trend where good players actually want to stay in war tier and not look for opportunity to join the top. Maybe because the top has grown so slim that many consider it boring place to be.

Growth kingdoms can rely on their players to know a lot from the game, they are best of the best utopia offers, so they are able to grow when everybody in kingdom knows what they are doing and what is required. In war tier, every kingdom is filled with more casual players, the ones who dont know are care that much of the mechanics or are not able to invest their time efficiently in maintaining province. So the same level skill set just isnt there, while the elite are filled with players who could lead war tier kingdoms.

Another thing is also the contacts. TOP Growth tier has contacts everywhere, they cf all the threats and basically after that has free time to grow to their level out of reach from others, not so lucky with cf's. Without the contacts, you are not able to win growth tier. Back in days, you couldnt just cf everybody and then run 20 dpa province pumping gold, there were always kingdoms who would have taken advantage of that. Now the mentality basically is that "elite kingdoms wont be touched, no matter what kind of numbers they have" they have this own playground with couple of kingdoms competing against each other every age.

[StratOcastle]

You don't have to accept chaining without a fight. The honor, and this is personal experience, is in stalling and/or breaking the chain, drifting into a nw no-mans-land and feeding the enemies bigs down to get chained.

Most players can muster the activity to stall chains but they're instructed to fight in a manner that results in defense release. This phenomena exists as a side effect of the war tier because they believe acres are useless in the core. This is like some lost mechanical knowledge that an ancient dragon like me has retained.

Think about it this way: the amount of offense you need to break enemies vs the amount of offense they need to break you becomes prohibitive for the enemy on land defense. Because, when the smoke clears and the t/ms are counting on easy pickins they are presented with a problem. Someone who can break to bounce and pull acres from their core. Resources are low all around. I've been here before and they can't put you down if you manage your acres. Lord knows they try.

Defense is underrated in my opinion because everyone is buying offense and have essentially forgotten how to use defense. I don't mean you stack defense, I mean retaining defense. You can run your offense in such a way that it optimizes your defensive integrity. When you retain defense you don't release thieves, you can pay your army, you can provide aid, you can build useful buildings. This is the true logistic. The bomb baggers have their place, just not the entire core.

[handofthrawn]

Played on and off since the beginning. Simply put technology is why I love the war aspect of the game now. Back in the day trying to war using dial up and slow computers just didn't work very well. Now I can play from my phone any place or anytime. So warring is a blast and a lot more fun then growing. It's why most kingdoms don't want to grow but just war. So give warring a try you will love it lol.

[Persain]

I'm not sure were the confidence that warring kingdoms are better than whoring kingdoms comes from. If it's that way as you claim, I challenge you all to grow and beat these bad whoring kingdoms. I'm pretty certain that a few leaders (nesta & cj, persain) from current/past warring kingdoms who have tried (or are) whoring, can confirm it's not as easy as it looks..

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

[handofthrawn]

Also if whoring kingdoms are so good. Why do they hide there names until there way larger then everyone else?

[Korp]

Also if whoring kingdoms are so good. Why do they hide there names until there way larger then everyone else?

Also if you are so good why you refuse to tell your merits?

[Palem]

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.

You might have a point, if we all didn't start out on the same land/science/honor ;)

[Persain]

You might have a point, if we all didn't start out on the same land/science/honor ;)

Setup and age timing can give massive advantages/disadvantages. Remove those and simply setup a war between 2 kds of equal size/land/honor (which is more or less how war kds war eachother) and war v whore is mostly irrelvent for that 1 war. Force the kds to b2b2b2b2b untill one wins epically and u get where whore kds minds think better

[Hatyn]

You don't have to accept chaining without a fight. The honor, and this is personal experience, is in stalling and/or breaking the chain, drifting into a nw no-mans-land and feeding the enemies bigs down to get chained.

Most players can muster the activity to stall chains but they're instructed to fight in a manner that results in defense release. This phenomena exists as a side effect of the war tier because they believe acres are useless in the core. This is like some lost mechanical knowledge that an ancient dragon like me has retained.

Think about it this way: the amount of offense you need to break enemies vs the amount of offense they need to break you becomes prohibitive for the enemy on land defense. Because, when the smoke clears and the t/ms are counting on easy pickins they are presented with a problem. Someone who can break to bounce and pull acres from their core. Resources are low all around. I've been here before and they can't put you down if you manage your acres. Lord knows they try.

Defense is underrated in my opinion because everyone is buying offense and have essentially forgotten how to use defense. I don't mean you stack defense, I mean retaining defense. You can run your offense in such a way that it optimizes your defensive integrity. When you retain defense you don't release thieves, you can pay your army, you can provide aid, you can build useful buildings. This is the true logistic. The bomb baggers have their place, just not the entire core.

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?

[DM_Benjamin]

if you enjoy Utopia, you are playing it wrong.

[Palem]

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 game used to have land-based gains (with relative NW playing as a smaller factor). I think they switched to NW-based gains somewhere in the 30's (with land playing the smaller factor).

[Zauper]

The game used to have land-based gains (with relative NW playing as a smaller factor). I think they switched to NW-based gains somewhere in the 30's (with land playing the smaller factor).

It moved from LBG to the hybrid NW/LBG system in age 27.

I remember because that was also the first age of DBE and some dwarf kds really ****ed themselves by coming oop with ****tons of military abusing 1 gc training/etc and had no one to hit.

[Hatyn]

It moved from LBG to the hybrid NW/LBG system in age 27.

I remember because that was also the first age of DBE and some dwarf kds really ****ed themselves by coming oop with ****tons of military abusing 1 gc training/etc and had no one to hit.

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.