Running High Homes as T/M?

[chubtubdaplaya]

Someone in my kingdom, Faery/Rogue is running 40% homes, no banks, and trying to convince everyone it's the best build for T/Ms. I run pretty high homes on my T/M (20%) but 40% seems overkill. If he goes to war and gets chained, bye bye extra people.

For the record, this guy ran an attacker w/ 40% homes earlier in the age and ignored me when I called him on it. He was PKed within 48 hours of a war, and came back as a faery. Sigh.

Am I in the wrong here?

[topsy's revenge]

if your ub as rogue then 40% homes is normally the right call. All that really matters on rogues is TD and forts if they get you ub, so homes increasing BE on those is good. Pretty much gives you infinite sustain with high raw send ops(like AW/Prop)

[Palem]

The problem with running high homes (some homes in general is fine) is that it doesn't leave you with enough build space to cover the essentials.

You can't have enough towers to cover your rune costs, guilds to get good spell duration, Forts to stay (relatively) UB, TDs to lower thief losses, possibly WTs to cover heavy thief pressure AND be running a large amounts of homes.

[DonJuan]

A high homes strats in general perplexes me...maybe there is a connection that I am missing.

I have seen a few KDs this age run +20% on all players across the board...most of them ignoring hospitals or TGs or WTs (for attackers) and the same for T/Ms.

But its proven to work as they are harder to op, possibly due to higher pop space thus more raw TPA, obvious economic advantages pump dragons out like Chinese-made dolls, and too difficult to chain completely unless they have no incoming acres.

What is the math behind running high homes, besides increasing BE and PPA?

Would running a similar build strat be the only answer to countering a high homes strat?

[Bart of Sparta]

We generally run 70-80% homes during pumps for our TMs, dropping them for war (40% for rogues, 25-30% for mystics). As topsy says, for rogues BE is CRUCIAL, so 40% is an absolute minimum unless you really have great sci and are confident you can slay a lot to create pop space.

20% TDs on 100% BE = -95% losses
25% TDs on 90% BE = -90% losses (twice as much)

It really depends on the situation though. Not all wars you need your rogues to send max thieves to prop or AW, so in these cases it might be better to run other buildings instead.

Homes on attackers aren't a huge problem. We ran this on our (bottom) UD/tacts this age:

1. Homes: 200 (20%)
2. Training Grounds: 200 (20%)
3. Military Barracks: 200 (20%)
4. Guilds: 100 (10%)
5. Watch Towers: 100 (10%)
6. Stables: 200 (20%)

With 16 epa about 180 opa. Attack time about 8.5-9 hours.

[DonJuan]

Thanks Bart,

the strat I seen on most attackers (given these guys were sages but I also seen "/Rogue" attackers in other wars) with high homes.

We were fooled because we did not see TGs, Rax, WTs or Hospitals...just super high homes. Still trying to figure out why we had such a hard time and how we can counter them.

[Blue Mass]

High home build do much better at bigger acre sizes. I've ran 40% homes even higher than that. The highest I've ran is around close to 70% and I've never been chained down. He needed to make sure he had enough tpa and wpa if not they would us opp him and of course he would get chained down however if he had enough tpa and wpa those homes would have helped him greatly.

[Milkman]

We generally run 70-80% homes during pumps for our TMs, dropping them for war (40% for rogues, 25-30% for mystics). As topsy says, for rogues BE is CRUCIAL, so 40% is an absolute minimum unless you really have great sci and are confident you can slay a lot to create pop space.

20% TDs on 100% BE = -95% losses
25% TDs on 90% BE = -90% losses (twice as much)

It really depends on the situation though. Not all wars you need your rogues to send max thieves to prop or AW, so in these cases it might be better to run other buildings instead.

Homes on attackers aren't a huge problem. We ran this on our (bottom) UD/tacts this age:

1. Homes: 200 (20%)
2. Training Grounds: 200 (20%)
3. Military Barracks: 200 (20%)
4. Guilds: 100 (10%)
5. Watch Towers: 100 (10%)
6. Stables: 200 (20%)

With 16 epa about 180 opa. Attack time about 8.5-9 hours.

What kind of build do you run on your orcs?

[PinkCat]

I have never seen someone run 20% stables before. That seems a bit high to me. Any explanation of why 20% is reasonable?

[Azureflames]

I have never seen someone run 20% stables before. That seems a bit high to me. Any explanation of why 20% is reasonable?

20% stables is 16 horses per acre, he said they run 16epa, it's 1-1.

[2Utopian]

math... he said 16 epa so 20% would mount all.

[Andurilas]

I've simmed this out with a bunch of pure TM configurations. In general high homes beats other builds. The only exception is that libraries can boost WPA where nothing else can. But otherwise a high homes strat can yield a higher DPA, higher max send, higher TPA, better econ, etc. Banks slightly outperform in income but they do nothing else for you (unless you expect to lose pez).

As for amount, my sweet spot landed around 33-35%. 40% would be the top of what I'd run as a base strat. As others have noted, you might run much higher in different settings (pumping).

[Andurilas]

Also, a lot of TMs run high homes then draft to 60% and whine when their BE drops below 105%. That's totally missing the point.

[Bart of Sparta]

What kind of build do you run on your orcs?

Again depends on their position within the KD. Orcs obviously have less buildspace so have to settle for less offense than the UD (but compensate with higher output).

Last war we ran this:

Bottom orcs:

1. Homes: 150 (15%)
2. Farms: 80 (8%)
3. Training Grounds: 150 (15%)
4. Military Barracks: 120 (12%)
5. Hospitals: 100 (10%)
6. Guilds: 100 (10%)
7. Towers: 50 (5%)
8. Watch Towers: 100 (10%)
9. Stables: 120 (12%)
10. Dungeons: 30 (3%)

2nd biggest Orc:

1. Homes: 100 (10%)
2. Farms: 80 (8%)
3. Training Grounds: 150 (15%)
4. Military Barracks: 100 (10%)
5. Forts: 50 (5%)
6. Guard Stations: 50 (5%)
7. Hospitals: 100 (10%)
8. Guilds: 100 (10%)
9. Watch Towers: 150 (15%)
10. Stables: 120 (12%)

Biggest Orc:

1. Homes: 100 (10%)
2. Training Grounds: 130 (13%)
3. Military Barracks: 100 (10%)
4. Forts: 100 (10%)
5. Guard Stations: 100 (10%)
6. Hospitals: 100 (10%)
7. Guilds: 100 (10%)
8. Watch Towers: 150 (15%)
9. Stables: 120 (12%)

(we aided him both runes and food by the tick)

I've simmed this out with a bunch of pure TM configurations. In general high homes beats other builds. The only exception is that libraries can boost WPA where nothing else can. But otherwise a high homes strat can yield a higher DPA, higher max send, higher TPA, better econ, etc. Banks slightly outperform in income but they do nothing else for you (unless you expect to lose pez).

Not always like that. Just to show you my sci last war:

Without libs:

18.3% Income (650,000 books)
5.4% Building Effectiveness (110,000 books)
16.9% Population Limits (2,573,306 books)
57.2% Food Production (194,548 books)
6.9% ME (678,106 books)
104.3% Thievery Effectiveness (1,149,072 books)
208.5% Magic Effectiveness & Rune Production (2,039,764 books)

With libs (20%):

** Effects Summary (Known Science Only) **
24.2% Income (650,000 books)
7.1% Building Effectiveness (110,000 books)
22.3% Population Limits (2,573,306 books)
75.6% Food Production (194,548 books)
9.1% ME (678,106 books)
137.7% Thievery Effectiveness (1,149,072 books)
275.2% Magic Effectiveness & Rune Production (2,039,764 books)

The extra 5% pop was about 1.5 ppa. 20% homes would've given ~2.5. Given I was running 12 raw wpa and 7 raw tpa the space-safing (or boosting) there was huge.

[handofthrawn]

I can say this about high homes it's a pro build mainly. You need to understand your position in the kingdom to utilize having high homes. Many people miss use high homes because they don't understand there job. For instance attackers might use the extra pop space for more tpa or wpa. When really they need to run higher opa to make it worth while. Seeing your probably sacrificing something. We could argue all day about this but main thing is understanding your place in the kingdoms plan.