Undead/Merchant Build?

[FATstrat]

yeah cleric was the only pick when it had 50% losses and 1 general, especially for long-war specialists like FS, who are far from overrated.

If you spent an age with FS noobium you would see how efficient they are as a group and how clear-sighted their leadership is in long term war strategys. You can see from their WW vs pyro that they deeply understand the pros/cons of the KD setup they choose.

[noobium]

Learn to ****ing read. Cleric advantage is in ****playing other kingdoms, which is what FS is all about, being ****heads and crying to your allies / "the community" whenever someone refuses to play into your hands. If you look at it in those terms, then Cleric has some extra advantages over other personalities.

I'm not even going to bother with the rest because it shows a stunning (and probably deliberate) ignorance about game mechanics, just the same old "durrr i sustain moar troops" logic.
Tactician has way more versatility. It's not just about hitting faster or fitting the 12hr attack time cycle, it's about easier wave synchronization. Everyone else has to build barracks, which isn't always possible or desirable. The effects of easier troop synchonization go way beyond just cramming more attacks per day.
Warrior as mentioned is a natural +15% OME anyway, except it doesn't eat up pop space. By your "win before 24 hours" logic (which is dumb but not even going to bother, but you should know wars are won by defensive provinces), warrior is only overtaken by Cleric in offensive power after about 5 waves - 5 waves where the warrior starts with higher peak offense and thus superior offensive output per unique.

If you have better outputs per unique or better economic outputs, it stands to reason that those outputs are being leveraged in any situation, whether you're fighting a 1vs1 or multi-way hostile, or growing or whatever. Cleric has no additional outputs, only retention over time.

There are setups where Cleric's retention has more impact, like running fewer attackers and more turtles, like the 9 hitter / 16 tm setups that were popular for a while.

Undead's retention is a lot more substantial, but Undead comes with serious drawbacks like a hard restriction on thief ops and thus no nighstrike. I take it none of your undead have ever been shredded by a competent NS job? Even in ghettos I can expect to shred 15-20% of an undead's offense from a well executed core NS run. If I were really concerned about attacker offense, for sure I'd be directing stealth to focused NS. You should know tactics better than me, Mr. Pro Asshole. You should be able to calculate the effectiveness of NS on an attacker army. Then again, I see badinfo still about how NS doesn't affect armies out or doesn't affect elites, so that probably leads to a ton of kingdoms refusing to do what should be obvious.

Also lol, when Cleric was -50% and +1 gen, it was hardly "the only option". It was merely an option, and one that was often defeated by Merchant and Tactician, based on my recollection of wars. A great many kingdoms passed over Cleric then in favor of Merchant, Tactician, or Sage. Even the version with reviving soldiers wasn't an automatic win button until BB used it on a race that was actually suited to Cleric.
I remember getting into a hilarious argument with one of the so-called pro trolls about this very topic, when I argued that Cleric was being underrated by the resident IRC assholes. Naturally the community won and I lost, but my argument was scarcely different from what is the dominant thinking now - except I wasn't so bullheaded to think that my way was the only way, and merely defended the usefulness of +1 gen. Even then, I was more interested in the 5th gen than the troop sustainability... and most of the community didn't care about -50% losses either, because they correctly saw that offensive sustain by itself is overrated.

[Bishop]

noobium, watch the language please. You won't be warned again.

[LoRD_SaMPuaN]

...

our 'stunning ignorance about game mechanics' is consistently winning us wars, so i guess we will stick to it.. we are extremely lucky for not encountering you though, which would be the extermination of freeak race from existance by your 'overwhelming understanding of the game mechanics'..

[StratOcastle]

yeah cleric was the only pick when it had 50% losses and 1 general, especially for long-war specialists like FS, who are far from overrated.

If you spent an age with FS noobium you would see how efficient they are as a group and how clear-sighted their leadership is in long term war strategys. You can see from their WW vs pyro that they deeply understand the pros/cons of the KD setup they choose.

Being in that war(FS vs Pyro) I agree with FSs understanding of strategy and fluidity of execution. I won't discount what noobium states from the position of function.

I play in a manner that makes personality choice less relevant from a statistics angle. My preference for cleric is so I can freely interact with undead, the ability to create troop disparity via PFs, and troop retention from a nw position.

Strategically there were things Pyro didn't do. This however doesn't equate to wining because FS was more refined in their adjustments. Thus, I attribute the FS victory to a superior ability to see the field. Pyro is capable of flawless unidirectional navigation, but the ability to adjust on the fly and project repercussions was not. This isn't really a critisism, just an observation as an independent that must think on my feet as a way of survival.

Many kingdom telegraph their moves and aren't wired to look at the theater in motion. The intel gathering by FS was congruent with any deviation I made and they reacted with timely and appropriate aggression. This was also evident in our short war with Sparta, but the targeting was more pronounced because the principals were obvious.

'Stunning ignorance' was a reference to your smarts about sharing cool moves. It's a backhanded compliment ;-)

[Zauper]

Cleric is probably the best hostile personality. Combined with high hosps, you don't need to fear the losses from being initiated on, and can start camping provs troops home while holding the meter. This can be quite effective for destroying kdwide offense, especially vs undead who trend towards lower hosps (like 10%). It also has the bonus of significant def kills.

[citadela01]

People shouldnt take noobium too seriously.
His understanding of game mechanics is limited to very basic stuff.
Its usually best choice to just ignore his advice.

[Nightmare_]

tl;dr: Orc/Cl or Ud/War. Undead/Merchant doesn't even

[StratOcastle]

People shouldnt take noobium too seriously.
His understanding of game mechanics is limited to very basic stuff.
Its usually best choice to just ignore his advice.

This is so bad. You shouldn't say this. We should all work toward being civil. Even if all parties don't come forward, we should be bigger than Godzilla about stuff like this.

Lots of personality and race blends seem middling till in the hands of a master. like faery cleric...

[octobrev]

The only realistic way to vet information would be to have a crown count associated with each persons forum account~

[RedPanda]

The only realistic way to vet information would be to have a crown count associated with each persons forum account~

Even then, each age is different due to change in mechanics. Then you have to count in playstyle and kingdom leadership.

[khronosschoty]

Learn to ****ing read. Cleric advantage is in ****playing other kingdoms, which is what FS is all about, being ****heads and crying to your allies / "the community" whenever someone refuses to play into your hands. If you look at it in those terms, then Cleric has some extra advantages over other personalities.

I'm not even going to bother with the rest because it shows a stunning (and probably deliberate) ignorance about game mechanics, just the same old "durrr i sustain moar troops" logic.
Tactician has way more versatility. It's not just about hitting faster or fitting the 12hr attack time cycle, it's about easier wave synchronization. Everyone else has to build barracks, which isn't always possible or desirable. The effects of easier troop synchonization go way beyond just cramming more attacks per day.
Warrior as mentioned is a natural +15% OME anyway, except it doesn't eat up pop space. By your "win before 24 hours" logic (which is dumb but not even going to bother, but you should know wars are won by defensive provinces), warrior is only overtaken by Cleric in offensive power after about 5 waves - 5 waves where the warrior starts with higher peak offense and thus superior offensive output per unique.

If you have better outputs per unique or better economic outputs, it stands to reason that those outputs are being leveraged in any situation, whether you're fighting a 1vs1 or multi-way hostile, or growing or whatever. Cleric has no additional outputs, only retention over time.

There are setups where Cleric's retention has more impact, like running fewer attackers and more turtles, like the 9 hitter / 16 tm setups that were popular for a while.

Undead's retention is a lot more substantial, but Undead comes with serious drawbacks like a hard restriction on thief ops and thus no nighstrike. I take it none of your undead have ever been shredded by a competent NS job? Even in ghettos I can expect to shred 15-20% of an undead's offense from a well executed core NS run. If I were really concerned about attacker offense, for sure I'd be directing stealth to focused NS. You should know tactics better than me, Mr. Pro Asshole. You should be able to calculate the effectiveness of NS on an attacker army. Then again, I see badinfo still about how NS doesn't affect armies out or doesn't affect elites, so that probably leads to a ton of kingdoms refusing to do what should be obvious.

Also lol, when Cleric was -50% and +1 gen, it was hardly "the only option". It was merely an option, and one that was often defeated by Merchant and Tactician, based on my recollection of wars. A great many kingdoms passed over Cleric then in favor of Merchant, Tactician, or Sage. Even the version with reviving soldiers wasn't an automatic win button until BB used it on a race that was actually suited to Cleric.
I remember getting into a hilarious argument with one of the so-called pro trolls about this very topic, when I argued that Cleric was being underrated by the resident IRC assholes. Naturally the community won and I lost, but my argument was scarcely different from what is the dominant thinking now - except I wasn't so bullheaded to think that my way was the only way, and merely defended the usefulness of +1 gen. Even then, I was more interested in the 5th gen than the troop sustainability... and most of the community didn't care about -50% losses either, because they correctly saw that offensive sustain by itself is overrated.

Good insight but the insults were not needed. You can easily negate the benefits sustained troop losses with correct manner of chaining to your opponents.

[Tadpole]

Thread posts getting tldr...

Saw this though...

you say arranged wars and diplo stuff as a positive for cleric, while it is completely reverse & cleric shines in non-arranged conflicts.

...very much true. Cleric is a hostile pers. Standard pick for us in many ages in RK - since we didn't arrange wars. For a wars-arranged style, it does loose some utility.

Personally I'd pick tact on UD. For leadership slack. Uniform wave times without having to worry about rax fluctuations. So nice. Making leading less taxing > most other stuff. Also, its strong. When I'm feeling lazy and can't be arsed to micro manage everyone, tact is nice :)

[Bart of Sparta]

UD tact without rax is a waste. run 20% at least. major buff of UD is troop sustain when attacking a lot...

[Tadpole]

Mmm. Agreed Bart. Best use of -losses bonus is indeed frequent hitting. You're missing something crucial though. A well rested tadpole wins wars.

Edit: Also, your argument is odd. If you want to utilize UD -losses bonus it's actually less important with Rax on tact than any other personality. Rax multiplies poorly with tact bonus. Not that rax on tact is bad, but it is worse than on others (taking cycles, hits/min-time and manageable scheduling away). Unless your argument is UD without tact is a waste, and UD tact without rax is a waste. So any non tact, non rax UD is a waste. Than you make sense :)