Sooo many Undeads - Discussion

[Pak]

Interesting replies in here :-)

Although I personally would say that UD will have trouble because of the science later on. Its huge.
TMs are also a nightmare for UDs.

However you guys are right that they have good sustainablity which is a huge plus. Especially compared to orc. However I still think that orcs can be utilized better.

@Persian yup, you are right about the avians that it burns you out. But in a active KD that utilize them well it would be awesome. And you dont need to go full Avians, you can always mix it with some other race.

I wouldnt say that UD is useless, but there are better choices imo and I understand people going with UD, just surprised that so many people went with them.

Still its nice to get other peoples POV. You can never stop learning new stuff about utopia.

Edit: Ofcourse i understand that in some setups UD would work better then Orc. Im just talking generally here. Not in a specific setup :) However we can still compare setup vs setup, but i don't think people would like to share that here ;-)

[Milkman]

I personally think that the impopularity of orc is due to its poor sustain and the resource losses penalty pretty much canceling out their gains bonus. Or at least making the margin compared to other core choices a lot less then what it used to be. I think that the majority viewing orc as crap is the main reason to pick undead. Orc looks crap, avain burns out and all that is left would be undead in most peoples mind :)

I personally would not recommend a full undead core. The science penalty is going to be really hard mid to late age and conversion rates are always a bit of a gamble. You never really know how much elites you're going to have and if it is too low, offense will be medicore or undead. By late game they might struggle running higher offense then humans and avians. The sustain perk is nice but that one got nerfed by 1/3th. Was 75% last age. Plague might not be that inpactfull on a server where the non-undead choice is avian/cleric :D

[Pak]

I personally think that the impopularity of orc is due to its poor sustain and the resource losses penalty pretty much canceling out their gains bonus. Or at least making the margin compared to other core choices a lot less then what it used to be. I think that the majority viewing orc as crap is the main reason to pick undead. Orc looks crap, avain burns out and all that is left would be undead in most peoples mind :)

I agree with many of your points, and wouldn't recommend a full orc build either.
However a few orcs (instead of UD) mixed with other races (Will not go into specific setups) would do better imo.

But i also know that UD and Orcs are very different this age. Orc --> heavy damage, and UD --> Sustainability (Again, just speaking generally without specific setups)

And ofc the choice of personality is huge as well.

[skoyl12]

Changes are really balanced this age and it's quite hard to pick best attacker. Undead biggest drawback for me is that they cant train elites with gold. If they could they'd be really overpowered.
I was close to getting un/wa and ignore elites. Un/wa with horses has 12.1 point specs, land efficiency and no attacker drawback (like -gains or extra loses)
I consider Un/wh and un/tacts weak choices though

[Nightmare_]

Changes are really balanced this age and it's quite hard to pick best attacker. Undead biggest drawback for me is that they cant train elites with gold. If they could they'd be really overpowered.
I was close to getting un/wa and ignore elites. Un/wa with horses has 12.1 point specs, land efficiency and no attacker drawback (like -gains or extra loses)
I consider Un/wh and un/tacts weak choices though

I actually believe ud/tact to be the best ud pick, followed by ud/warrior. :p

[Pillz]

Ud/wh is sort of nice due to no Plague, dragon or income penalties. But the half effectiveness of wh conversions sort of detracts from it. Rather get a full bonus from tact or Warrior.

That said, ud is a trap. You loss elites (only - 50% losses now) on all attacks, but you only convert on successful land attacks (not clear in original proposed changes).

Since scientists spawn as been slowed abducts are both more valuable for obtaining scientists and less effective due to the fact people will have fewer scientists. Undead have - 35% sci and thus scientists are less valuable to them.

So you're an Undead, abducting so you can have at least some sci to make up for your deficit, losing high value elites on each hit, but receiving less benefit for each scientist.

And you can not retrain those losses either.

[Quacky-T]

I am a Monarch a ghetto, consisting mostly of new players (lacking experience) or returning old players (Who also mostly lack experience). Last age was very slow, with most of them starting out with poor off:def ratios, rarely attacking etc..

This age I asked most of my guys who is staying, to go Undeads. Reason is that UD is fairly straightforward to play, you dont have to switch builds frequently, armies are cheap to maintain, while also having fairly strong offense. But perhaps most importantly is that success requires the player to make hits 1-2x every day in order to convert specs into Elites. Along with "forcing" activity, this gives a measurable form of success as there is a drive to convert elites, and the higher number of elites you are getting is proportional to making good hits. (So in theory my guys also gets more experience attacking and picking good targets).

How it works out remains to be seen I suppose

[MrCurious]

Avain cleric in war has a 8.4 hour attack time since they lowered base attack time to 12 hours in war. 8.4 hour attack time +1 hour wave 30 min to plan each wave means leaders have to run a wave, 7 hours later start planing/running a wave. Thats if only avains are hitting, and everyone is in sync. if kd hits are 11am-12pm(lunch time), 7:30pm-8:30pm, 4am-5am, that means a key wave is in the middle of the night for usa. If you try to shift it so theres no middle of the night hits then a wave occurs right in the middle of the work day.

If/when people start+- hours and u have say a few humans mixed in you litterally can end up with people attacking almost constantly by day 2

If you run a one race core with NM/NS waves then yes avians will burn you out i agree. But avian as core in subtop/middle and lower tier would work (with cleric). Very solid combo and a space saver (no stables/rax). I really dont like the -35% sci penalty on undeads - its too massive.

[MrCurious]

Ud/wh is sort of nice due to no Plague, dragon or income penalties. But the half effectiveness of wh conversions sort of detracts from it. Rather get a full bonus from tact or Warrior.

That said, ud is a trap. You loss elites (only - 50% losses now) on all attacks, but you only convert on successful land attacks (not clear in original proposed changes).

Since scientists spawn as been slowed abducts are both more valuable for obtaining scientists and less effective due to the fact people will have fewer scientists. Undead have - 35% sci and thus scientists are less valuable to them.

So you're an Undead, abducting so you can have at least some sci to make up for your deficit, losing high value elites on each hit, but receiving less benefit for each scientist.

And you can not retrain those losses either.

I agree with you there Steel

[astron]

It takes so much for a KD's leadership to effectively run an Avian set up, it isn't as simple as running waves every 7-8hours because as you climb up the ladder, you'll be faced with so much more plays that literally keep you on your toes more often than just logging on once every 7-8hours.

Camping prov "dead time" (knowing when your opponents sleep) to pull a starvation run / PKing chained prov / soldier blocking (you burn stealth to check these stuff, and the more often waves are, the shorter on stealth you'll be as the war drags) / catching armies home (the longer the war drags, return times tend to spread further) / sabotage wiz and ET becomes more "damaging" due to short recovery in-between waves.

There's a whole plethora of small tricks experienced kingdoms can pull / know opponents could do which could potentially make any leadership think twice before committing to an avian set up. KDs probably get better traction running a UD/HA setup instead and plan them around countering AV plays without having to put in as many hours monitoring NW of your provinces every 15mins to make sure they arent dying while your KD mate sleeps.

Personally I would be looking foward to watching 2 good kingdoms (warring or whoring alike) fight each other in an Avian vs Avian set up. Even the most experienced leaders with a full roster of experienced players will tell you that leading an Avian set up is very taxing, even without having to micro-manage as much.

[Persain]

If you run a one race core with NM/NS waves then yes avians will burn you out i agree. But avian as core in subtop/middle and lower tier would work (with cleric). Very solid combo and a space saver (no stables/rax). I really dont like the -35% sci penalty on undeads - its too massive.

we've run 2 avain as chain finishers in the past to some success....but once u start running them them as 1/3 to even 1/2 your core all these arguments Astron lists become valid. It also horribly messes up your timing for nm waves (and saying u just nm every other wave when they sync is defeating the purpose of nm waves). That doesnt even adress the fact that i let people use +-hours so i'll end up with attacks every 2 hours by day 3 of war. Thing is its not even that my kd isn't capable we wared boss in LCN oop on an avain v avain setup back in the 60's. Followed by proteus and kygal <12 hours after we left eowcf and won both fights. People can argue against it but if u are using your setup to the fullest it will be more taxing, theres simply nothing around it. If u dont feel that stress you arent using your setup to its fullest and u might as well go with something inherently less stressful.

[astron]

people can argue against it but if u are using your setup to the fullest it will be more taxing, theres simply nothing around it. If u dont feel that stress you arent using your setup to its fullest and u might as well go with something inherently less stressful.

qft !

[Pillz]

qft !

That is the trade off though. It is a taxing setup.

[astron]

we ran an avian set up against Emeriti 2 ages ago and we had armies returning every 2hours by the third day. people will start setting sitter (and you will be hitting every other hour round the clock). the fatigue will snowball really fast if you are trying to play it to the best. we pulled an 18k acre lead initially and fatigue leads to mistakes and we rolled it all away into a 40k? loss by the end of the war. LOL

[StratOcastle]

You have to have the players that want and can play avian. These are hard to come by.

Perhaps it's just me, but with 634 undead beating the snot out of everything before them to convert you'd think about 50 of em would be accidental cows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C02lvgmm4DQ