Tips on taking advantage of high"ish" NWPA as Halfling?

[Lime88]

Hey everyone.

I've started playing as a Halfling attacker in a non warring KD, first time playing and still getting familiar with the basics and stuff.

I have been running around 8-10 EPA for defense and rest into offensive specs. I'm not too big acre wise, and noticing that I've been getting attacked a lot, sometimes even double tapped by provinces quite a bit larger than me. I have enough offense to retaliate an attack, sometimes enough to double tap myself if I send out a chunk of my elites I can do it more often. But I'm constantly netting negative acres while retaliating, especially because I'm getting hit more often than I attack, running 10% barracks. I kind of wish now I chose a race that provides higher defense while army is at home (turtle?).

Still, I'd like to try and make this work and hope to get some suggestions on what I can do. Would splitting my defense into 50/50 elites and defensive specs lower my networth enough to make any noticeable difference? I was thinking that with 100% elite defense, the nice total offense number and ability to send them out on attacks would deter a lot of attacks but that doesn't seem to be case as of yet. Forts and/ or Guard Stations? My KD goal along with my own is just see how big we can get.

Right now I'm running:

10 EPA.
7-8 ospec per acre.
2 rTPA.
~64% draft.

8% Farms.
10% Banks.
15% Armories.
10% Guilds.
10% Barracks.
15% Thieves' Dens.
15% Training Grounds.
5% Towers.
2% Dungeons.
10% Stables.

My personality is Sage.

[Bo To]

Halfer is not a turtle don't try to do it. I will put it this way - halfer doesn't have better def than orcs/unds.

Why do you have elites? Better make 2 epa that you can send but if you don't have to you can keep at home and the rest 8 epa convert into def and off specs. If your army(excluding thieves) is going to be 17-18 people/acre I suggest you to go with 4 def specs, 1-2 epa, 12 off specs. Also consider some more rtpa.

About your buildings - if you are running sage and have some good pop sci -where are the homes? Also 15 arms?! Your main army is specs they are cheap and you get credits for them. Convert them into homes/hosp.

[Lime88]

Thanks for the suggestion. As for the elites, with the arms and banks they weren't too expensive to train so I thought why not. The mostly spec army does make sense and I won't need any arms to keep training them, maybe not even banks either? I do have decent population science at the moment, ~10%. I will definitely work on getting homes.

Keeping even lower defense than what I have now to boost my offense even higher is kind of confusing to me though. I'm already being hit enough, wouldn't that just invite more attacks on me?

[s0830887]

What level of KD are you playing in?

If we found a halfer on 2rtpa and a spec army, I would rub my hands in glee. NS destroys specs at a much, much higher rate than it destroys elites. THAT's why elites are good - no, essential - on a Halfer.

That tpa is also way underselling yourself. Halfer should be opping, and 2tpa is wasting the Halfer natural tpa bonuses.

What's your pop per acre? You shouldn't have any problem getting up to around 31ppa with good sci and halfer natural bonus, and if you are smart with homes (very high homes out of war to increase pop, and then switching them into war buildings at the last minute possible for war) you could easily get over 35ppa (approx 40-50% homes. Many players in-game go much higher)

- Get your tpa up. 4-5rtpa is where I personally would want to be if I was running halfer.
- Get decent wpa for protection. 3-4rwpa I guess. Again, more is better, but it's hard to get higher numbers if your KD isnt protecting you (if you're playing in lower ranked kds where pumping in peace is hard as you take lots of random hits)
- I'd run a full elite defense on and a full spec offense. You decide how you want to split that.

War build: perhaps: 7% farms, 13% guilds, 10% towers, 15% tg, 15% hosps, 10% stables, 3% dungeons, 10% rax, with a bit of land left over for personal flexibility (almost certainly TDs).

Also, as sage, you really want to be bringing in as much science as possible. Make sure when you are OOW you are very actively looking for guys with high sci to learn learn learn. The more, the better.

PS - I am not currently playing halfer, nor have I ever played halfer sage (I did h/r and h/t in ages past). We also have no halfers in our KD. So my advice might not be quite on the money ;)

[Lime88]

I'm in a pretty low level laid back kingdom, usually the biggest or top two/three. The kingdom decided they won't be warring at all, just trying to grow OOW. And all the random hits I'm receiving is the main reason I want to change/ improve on what I've been doing.

Being OOW pretty much all the time, I thought the 2 rTPA with the TD's and science would be enough to for me to steal resources when I need them. Haven't had the problem of being targeted with much thievery ops. If more will still be beneficial I will up that.

Populatation per acre is 30.4, with no homes at the moment.


Also, thanks for sharing.

[s0830887]

Well if you're not warring, then you can mostly ignore my suggestions ;) my KD only wars. Growth bores me.

Yes, 2rtpa is probably enough to steal from most enemy attackers. I would however suggest that usually the big $$ is sitting in t/m provinces, so you might wanna boost that tpa regardless as these guys are usually better defended than attackers. With your big sci and halfer +50% tpa, every investment of 1rtpa is easily a 2mtpa, prob 2.5mtpa return. So it's worth it, big time.

OOW for growth, maybe you could consider something like: 20 homes 5 farms 15 guilds 10 towers 10 tds 20 tg 10 hosps 10 stables. Did I forget any buildings? You would have to steal a bit of food here and there, and you'd wanna steal runes to dice while also hitting for land. I don't know how big you wanna get, but that would give you reasonably consistent upward growth.

[Lime88]

Sweet, alright I'll make some changes and hopefully things start going smoother. Thanks again.

[dieaready]

Skip elites entirely, go pure spec, elite nw sucks but your ospecs ARE the elites, so abuse it as much as possible. If you follow s0830887's advice you'd end up with an A/T/M and will be pretty useless... If you want to play pure attacker you can easily hit 200 OPA based on ospecs and your off/nw efficiency would be much better than orcs. I'm playing half/sage myself and am running A/t but still beating all the attackers in my kd in off while having higher than average def... Homes is gold for halfers this age, 20% homes and only ~8.8% pop sci and I'm hitting 33 pop/a. You got a pop bonus and an overpowered ospec, so abuse that as much as possible. Your aim isn't high nwpa but high off/nwpa. Orcs and UDs will hit around 250-270 nwpa while a good halfer should only hit about 230-240 nwpa but will be able to hit as hard as the orcs and UDs. This means more off for your kd to use while not bloating up the kd NW.

[s0830887]

Skip elites entirely, go pure spec, elite nw sucks but your ospecs ARE the elites, so abuse it as much as possible. If you follow s0830887's advice you'd end up with an A/T/M and will be pretty useless... If you want to play pure attacker you can easily hit 200 OPA based on ospecs and your off/nw efficiency would be much better than orcs. I'm playing half/sage myself and am running A/t but still beating all the attackers in my kd in off while having higher than average def... Homes is gold for halfers this age, 20% homes and only ~8.8% pop sci and I'm hitting 33 pop/a. You got a pop bonus and an overpowered ospec, so abuse that as much as possible. Your aim isn't high nwpa but high off/nwpa. Orcs and UDs will hit around 250-270 nwpa while a good halfer should only hit about 230-240 nwpa but will be able to hit as hard as the orcs and UDs. This means more off for your kd to use while not bloating up the kd NW.

If he goes full spec army, they will be NS'd away in an instant. Elites not only give better op protection (vs prop, Ns, MS, etc, as they die at a vastly slower rate than specs) but they also allow for extra flexibility as enemy defenses drop and you can start to send more elites out on attack.

As I said before, if I see an attacking halfer with full spec army, I'm not going to bother chaining them - I'm going to prop them and NS them with ease and make them pretty useless from that point on.

[Bo To]

It's never easy to NS/prop halfer. And he said he won't war. There is no ns/prop/ms in normal stance :).

[noobium]

halfs aren't really good attackers.

a decent rule of thumb is to go 1/3 ospec 1/3 dspec 1/3 elite... that way you would have enough practical offense to be viable, but keep the option to limit your enemies to singletaps; while your nw isn't shot entirely to hell by using brutes. it's also easy to remember and scales to any draft rate. if you have the time to draft super deep you probably have time to adjust ratios based on your present situation.

[dieaready]

If he goes full spec army, they will be NS'd away in an instant. Elites not only give better op protection (vs prop, Ns, MS, etc, as they die at a vastly slower rate than specs) but they also allow for extra flexibility as enemy defenses drop and you can start to send more elites out on attack.

As I said before, if I see an attacking halfer with full spec army, I'm not going to bother chaining them - I'm going to prop them and NS them with ease and make them pretty useless from that point on.

That is what WTs are for... Or simply run a higher tpa. Besides if the rogues are opping the attacker wouldn't that mean the mages get a free hand? And there is always ET for the rogues...

There exists a counter to every strat you can run, so I'd rather run an efficient prov. Going according to your suggestion the halfer is already pretty useless and fat on NW and you might as well run another race for an attacker. By running pure specs a halfer is more efficient than an orc, and you will be able to pretty much break any T/M within 25-40% of your nw.

[beans]

to keep down halfer nw use only specs for defensive army. depending on your strat thatll be 1/3 to 1/2 of your army. Then for offense id use a mix of spec and elite. If your a smaller attacker in your kd and dont need to tank then use almost all ospec. Small attackers are low risk for ops and chains so no worries. If you are a large attacker use mostly elites (maybe 1 ospec for every 3 elites) so that you can tank on very high defense and army will be more op resistant.

Make absolutely sure you use max/lots of horses as a halfer, very NW effecient at 3.33 power per nw (vs 1.25 for ospec and .70 for elites)! TG/forts also help get good mod numbers with out raising NW.

[Paddlepop]

Good to know

[dreaku]

since you do not war you don't have to worry about ns, so go mostly dspecs as def. have some 2-4 epa. again not warring 15% TD's is probably to high. i would skip the arms totally and start thinking of libs (10% is pop sci sounds good bpa).
also TG are weaker for halfer than stables. i would suggest to max your stables per ospec (7-8 ospa seems a little low) or steal wh if possible, keep 5-10 tgs maybe
and as many said above get homes :)