War Chaining Strategy Discussion

[Verbal Abuse]

I was gone a couple years and when I come back I see that war chaining strategy is to attack the province with the highest offense first then work your way down.

However, I believe it is the exact opposite for the following reasons:

When a province is chained they always release defense to keep the offense. They can go for max gains with the kept offense. By attacking a high off and low def province first he released most def but still has max offense. If instead you hit the attacker with high def, when he releases he has less off because he started with less. Yes he may have more def, but you don't need to hit him as much after the chain because he can't do max retal.

The other reason is at the beginning of war everyone is pumped, but gradually due to attacking and enemy ops, everyone's offense drops. So it is better to hit the high def first so he doesn't turtle or get aided to pull away.

My old kd did it this way for years and won most the wars. Now all I see us doing is chaining a high off province and watching him make 4 or 5 hits for max gains the rest of the war. Whereas a province starting with less off would not be able to do it as effectively.

Also, my kd currently says leave the province with the lowest off/highest def for last, to let them get fat before chaining. Meanwhile, I think it is the opposite. Let the high off grow, get fat, while we are opping and killing his defense even lower. As he grows his gains decrease and his tpa and wpa make it easier to kill off the lower def he started with. Setting him up for an easier and quicker chain.


So am I wrong, and everyone else is right(so to speak). I haven't seen the logic of it yet or had it explained to me why it is better their way.

Just asking for your opinion, thanks.

[MyNameIsMatija]

Highest off - highest threat, needs to be put out of range of your potential UBs or whatnot first. Elites are harder to op down than defensive specialists anyway for a couple of reasons. First of all because of the op damage formula, second because meteor showers or propaganda can't reach them while they are returning from an attack. Lower defense is easier to chain because you need to use up less of your firepower on that chain and can move on to the next target quicker. I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons that I am not mentioning here as well, but these alone should be enough.

[Verbal Abuse]

Sorry. Nothing you said proves anything against my argument, but thanks for replying.

[MyNameIsMatija]

No problem, I love hearing myself talk anyway.

[Bo To]

Sorry. Nothing you said proves anything against my argument, but thanks for replying.

Matija gave a constructive replay about why the highest off is chained first but you don't find it 'provable'. Why are you asking questions if you don't want an answer?

And to be a little more clear - deep chaining is the most effective way to destroy off and get the target oor of the t/ms(which is more important btw). You leave attackers with high def/low off/tpa/wpa which aren't a threat for the t/ms and control them via ops/spells.

[s0830887]

Matija´s answer was actually pretty good.

Generally, lower level KDs will chain by top off first, then second top off, then next top off, and so forth down the list. Better KDs chain by which prov is most threatening, and also look for opportunities.

- Do we need to cut out offense so we can get UBs? Chain enemy top off first.
- Did one of their t/ms get plagued? Follow up while we can.
- Did their tanky provs send a little too much? Chain hard while we can.

Etc.

Almost every KD in every war will chain the top offenses first until they establish an UB line, at which point they will consider varying it up and chaining t/ms or whatever. There is no ´right´way, and strategic inflexibility in this game is one of the biggest issues facing mid level warring KDs.

[Delusional V]

not every kd chains top o. current war we haven't touched the biggest o guy. hes oor. in fact, i selected the most active attacker in core range, and the second most active attack because he had 0 incoming acres. then it was a matter of clearing the core, breaking their nw ladder to stagnate thier chains, and eventually ill get around to the big guy that attacks once a day.

when in doubt, or trying to protect your UB, dropping that big O province OOR is a good goal. but its not the end all be all.

i would however, never, ever, select a province running 110 dpa and 30 opa to chain. he breaks one of us 1 time a day. who cares. people making 4 or 5 in range hits on my core are more of a threat.

[JohnnyReid]

No problem, I love hearing myself talk anyway.

I love hearing you talk too, Matija! <3

[changeling]

I think it depends a lot on overall strategy. While offense does degrade over time in war, it cannot generally be targeted like defense - with ops NM/Ns/Prop, and multiple attacks with bloodlust/pitfalls. So leaving high defense to later is less of a risk since it can be dealt with as needed.

[Verbal Abuse]

I was not being rude or dismissive. His argument was the same I have already heard from my kd mates. I was simply stating that it, his statements, don't change my own conclusions.

That the overall decrease in off from both sides leans toward hitting high def first. And no i was not referring to hybrids of ppl with 30k off with 150k def. I still think it is easier to maintain the chains by letting the low def/high off grow and take advantage of the tpa/wpa decrease to reduce an otherwise smaller def to begin with for future chaining. While starting off with the ones with higher def ones while the offense is at max for the attacking kd is best.

So to be more specific, the most active high def would be targeted first. While the least active high off would be targeted last.

Flame away

[noobium]

Generally, taking down the highest offense province offers the best return on investment - that province is pushed out of range of your bigs and your nw generally aligns to run the chain deep. However, there are exceptions; if you can create a gap between the largest attacker and provinces down the line, you can effectively short-circuit an enemy's ability to chain. If you can drop #3 and #4, attackers down the line can't capitalize as easily on the attacks of #1 and #2 due to nw difference - and beacuse #3 and #4 probably have less defense to start, you can run the chains on them deeper than you would on #1 and #2 potentially. Then on the second wave you can chain #1-2 while keeping favorable nw range. This can backfire because #1-2 probably have better incoming acres when you do chain them, but if #1-2 are forced to hit t/m or bottomfeed when they hit you can still do a number on them (especially if you have lots of nm and MS to soften their initial defenses for 8-12 ticks). Meanwhile you might be able to chain #3-4 without as much investment in nm. This would make sense if, in an arranged war scenario, you need to unload your hits asap and can't afford to wait on nm runs.

Using your initial chains to remove high defense provinces is possible but just not as effective, unless you're worried about potential runaways. If you have nm it's a lot easier to chain dspec-heavy provinces obviously. Generally against high-defense attackers it's better to shred their offense with ns and fb, especially if they're one of the biggest provinces in a kingdom. It's very easy for those provinces to bloat oor and wind up being useless for anything, including econ. Usually though, organized kingdoms tend to keep their attacking core at similar defensive levels throughout so it's a moot point.

[Ethan]

I think the major piece missing from your analysis is that we can't look at the chain province alone.

If the only goal were to render the chained province the most crippled, then chaining lower offense provinces makes it far easier to trap them down at the bottom forever. The the goal of the chain isn't actually to hurt that one province, it is to protect your kingdom.

Even in the case where UBs and hits on T/Ms aren't a factor, having the largest offense on a large province lets that province hit first (or at least early) in the chain against whoever they target in your province. They'll presumably be in good NW range, so they can do a tremendous amount of damage. (An orc warrior could in theory take more than 40% of a target's land singlehandedly if they defense was opened up a bit.)

The low(er) offense province that was chained is quite useless, but will still find something to hit.


Now look at the case where the massive offense is chained well. Even if the province doesn't have to release offense, he can't use all that massive offense on targets in range because he is so small. So while he's more threatening, especially if you let him grow... for the immediate future, he isn't really more effective than the low offense prov. If all the targets have had their defense blasted away, it doesn't take much to 4x.

But at the top side, things are different. The low offense prov can't take the place of the high offense prov, so everyone needs to "move up" a spot in the chain order. Since the strong start is gone, everyone has more trouble hitting fully, and some of the 2nd or 3rd hits get downgraded to conquests or off hits. The slower chain (or not as deep) lets your chained province stay bigger or force them to come back a second time - leaving your kingdom with more effective attackers and hopefully starting a feedback loop to win it.


To put (made up) numbers to the idea:
On a scale of 1 to 10, we can imagine that the chained low off prov is only a 2, while the chained high off prov is a 4 (he just can't hit good targets due to nw). But this isn't the whole story, because the chained high off prov means an unchained low off prov, maybe worth a 6. So I claim those two together put out a combined 10 (magic units) of danger. The unchained high off prov that pairs with that lowly 2 though is the numero uno, puts out a perfect 10. So they combine to be more dangerous at a 12, even though the chained target is really useless.


All that is why you'll see all the exceptions people talk about here too... sometimes the most dangerous province isn't the one with the most offense. Imagine a bank prov that was geared up to hit other banks before the war started (I don't know why the bank was attacking, but lets say it was to make an extreme example). It surly has the most offense in either kingdom... but it isn't worth trying to chain it first because it is already way too big to have good gains. It'll 4x your top every cycle, but it won't take that much compared to what the core attackers are doing. (And, one hopes that with all the NW tied up in the bank, you'll crush their core attackers due to numbers or size.) The key here is that, even though the offense is the highest, the NW range means it isn't a big threat. The same idea is used in a typical war to neutralize the big offense much the same way... just with too low NW instead of too high.

[Nightmare_]

The the goal of the chain isn't actually to hurt that one province, it is to protect your kingdom.

Even in the case where UBs and hits on T/Ms aren't a factor, having the largest offense on a large province lets that province hit first (or at least early) in the chain against whoever they target in your province.

All that is why you'll see all the exceptions people talk about here too... sometimes the most dangerous province isn't the one with the most offense. Imagine a bank prov that was geared up to hit other banks before the war started (I don't know why the bank was attacking, but lets say it was to make an extreme example). It surly has the most offense in either kingdom... but it isn't worth trying to chain it first because it is already way too big to have good gains. The key here is that, even though the offense is the highest, the NW range means it isn't a big threat. The same idea is used in a typical war to neutralize the big offense much the same way... just with too low NW instead of too high.

This, in a nutshell. You're not wrong, but for all intents and purposes, chaining high offense is the rule of thumb. When you fight a good war, unbreakables will carry the day. Protect/create your UBs while killing theirs, and prevent them from doing the same by destroying their high offenses, UBs, or both. Decreasing offense + creating NW differential is essential. Low offense, high defense provs have inferior ability to execute KD-wide plans unless they are: 1. UB econ tanks, feeding provinces and funding dragons 2. T/M

An added point is that higher offense attackers will generally have lower defense. If I can chain 4 of your higher offense attackers as opposed to 2 or 3 of your higher defense attackers, why would I do the latter?

There are several ways you can approach attacking:
1. Deep chaining high offense attackers (remove offense/NW)
2. Deep 'chaining' turtles/UBs (remove offense/defense/NW)
3. Semi-chain (remove defense/NW)
4. Max gain (remove land/NW)

There are substrategies that go into these, such as #1: chaining 2 highest offenses first or chaining the next 3 instead, but not important for this convo.
What you describe falls into #2. You're certainly not wrong, but it needs to be done correctly and in the right situation.

[octobrev]

If the provs you're bringing down are making 4-5x hits still then you haven't chained them yet. Your argument against chaining high offense provinces is founded on your inability to chain.

[Andurilas]

You can chain the prov with no offense and guarantee he won't be able to recover. Great! Now you've disabled a province with no offense. In 4 days when both sides are worn down and the other side still has Orcs with 40 dpa army out, that tanky Dwarf you knocked down to 200 acres will be cold comfort.