Efficiently Eliminating Avians during war.

[itRON]

I would like to start a discussion as to the most effective way to eliminate the avian threat during war.

elite training credits, low attack time, and ambush immunity makes them very dangerous to a kingdom. How do you beat them?

[CharToe]

Can't. They are op this age if players are active

[JerseyJoe]

You deep chain till their nw is too low to make decent gains/get decent creds. At that point they'd also be small enough to have hopefully released most of their def allowing tms to hit and help assit in keeping them down.

[Bo To]

Control enemy's solds. Avians with their elite creds rely a lot on solds to keep off/nw.

[Shrinky]

What about controlling food stocks on avians? Burning their farms down, putting explosions on them or on their suppliers and ensuring in general that food is hard to come by for them. Ideally these should be done during the sleep time of the avian province for maximising the starvation effects.

Of course, if one is trying this against an avian province that is super active and checking regularly, it's hard to pull off.

[Bo To]

That was attempted in one of my wars on one of our attackers. All we do was sending him 3-5k food each tick. It takes a lot effort to successfully starve a prov. Personally I don't think it's worth.

[itRON]

Control enemy's solds. Avians with their elite creds rely a lot on solds to keep off/nw.

This sounds like a good start to focus efforts.

Sounds like ns would have to be coordinated along with deep chain?

What is the best way of limiting soldiers...

[Bo To]

What is the best way of limiting soldiers...

Peasant control. Focus on fb and chastity.

[HerpNDerp]

I haven't warred a full avian kingdom yet, so keep that in mind. In a kingdom that has other attacker races (orc, undead) -- avians typically won't be able to pack a punch the same as orc/UD. Typically we try to chain the bigger MOs first, so orcs and undeads get dropped out of nw range of hybrids/tms. We let avians grow in size for the first wave or two (or three). Let their +birth rate accelerate their peon count. 24 hours into war, when they have 15k peons on 1600 acres, we chain them down to 500-600 acres. Use their bonuses to your advantage and deep chain them with lots of peons for effective overpop. Put an avian on land defense and you won't need to worry about the prov much moving forward.

[HerpNDerp]

That was attempted in one of my wars on one of our attackers. All we do was sending him 3-5k food each tick. It takes a lot effort to successfully starve a prov. Personally I don't think it's worth.

It's all about the execution. I don't think starvation is a very effective tactic against attackers in general just given the fluidity of their acreage. Dorfs on the other hand...starve tactics very stronk :)

[itRON]

I haven't warred a full avian kingdom yet, so keep that in mind. In a kingdom that has other attacker races (orc, undead) -- avians typically won't be able to pack a punch the same as orc/UD. Typically we try to chain the bigger MOs first, so orcs and undeads get dropped out of nw range of hybrids/tms. We let avians grow in size for the first wave or two (or three). Let their +birth rate accelerate their peon count. 24 hours into war, when they have 15k peons on 1600 acres, we chain them down to 500-600 acres. Use their bonuses to your advantage and deep chain them with lots of peons for effective overpop. Put an avian on land defense and you won't need to worry about the prov much moving forward.

I like it.

[HerpNDerp]

Something of note: Best time to deep chain an avian is right after they send out. This may seem obvious but in war you gotta make decisions on who to chain based on the timing of armies, amount of inc, etc. Can't ambush avians, and they attack super fast. 24 hours into war, MS should have been up the whole time. Coordinate an NS run to open the avian up, and deep chain the avian. Overpop works over time, so 5-6 ticks is important to get the defense of the avian to desert away. Some kingdoms we have warred tried to chain our avians like the tick before their armies return. It's a waste of attacks essentially, as our guy's acres return the next tick (so hardly any army leaves) and then he can attack you, and still get home before your armies do.

[Ethan]

Something of note: Best time to deep chain an avian is right after they send out. This may seem obvious but in war you gotta make decisions on who to chain based on the timing of armies, amount of inc, etc. Can't ambush avians, and they attack super fast. 24 hours into war, MS should have been up the whole time. Coordinate an NS run to open the avian up, and deep chain the avian. Overpop works over time, so 5-6 ticks is important to get the defense of the avian to desert away. Some kingdoms we have warred tried to chain our avians like the tick before their armies return. It's a waste of attacks essentially, as our guy's acres return the next tick (so hardly any army leaves) and then he can attack you, and still get home before your armies do.

Chain deeper, they aren't doing it right. (Only half serious.)

'Tis a real point though - a true deep chain till army lockout in some ways actually works better right before the army gets home (best when the army *is* home, if you've got the MO and can get your hits out faster than the enemy. Which could be <1 minute for good players that know what's coming.) The reason being the lack of time for pes to leave - more pes => more army released.

Remember the distinction between what I call a "chain" and a "true deep chain". A chain is removing defense and maybe some offense at the end. A deep chain is locking the army out from attacking until they release so much offense they can't hit up effectively any more. (NW range if nothing else.) Think dropping someone from 1200 to 300 and ambushing so there's <100 incoming. Having been hit by good deep chains like that a few times - they are absolutely *brutal*, and will just flat take you out of the war for days even if nothing else is done after that. Whereas a normal chain can be worked around with tricks like LL and sol desertions and some aid afterwards to rebuild defense.

A "normal" chain is still very effective because it puts you down to near land defense and wrecks econ for a while. But it is the deep chain that stops an attacker cold. It is a lot harder to do, both in terms of skill/activity/coordination, and also actual game resources (like attacks/mana/stealth), which is why you don't run into them too often.

[Pillz]

Chain deeper, they aren't doing it right. (Only half serious.)

'Tis a real point though - a true deep chain till army lockout in some ways actually works better right before the army gets home (best when the army *is* home, if you've got the MO and can get your hits out faster than the enemy. Which could be <1 minute for good players that know what's coming.) The reason being the lack of time for pes to leave - more pes => more army released.

Remember the distinction between what I call a "chain" and a "true deep chain". A chain is removing defense and maybe some offense at the end. A deep chain is locking the army out from attacking until they release so much offense they can't hit up effectively any more. (NW range if nothing else.) Think dropping someone from 1200 to 300 and ambushing so there's <100 incoming. Having been hit by good deep chains like that a few times - they are absolutely *brutal*, and will just flat take you out of the war for days even if nothing else is done after that. Whereas a normal chain can be worked around with tricks like LL and sol desertions and some aid afterwards to rebuild defense.

A "normal" chain is still very effective because it puts you down to near land defense and wrecks econ for a while. But it is the deep chain that stops an attacker cold. It is a lot harder to do, both in terms of skill/activity/coordination, and also actual game resources (like attacks/mana/stealth), which is why you don't run into them too often.

Qft.

[StratOcastle]

The problem with deep chaining is the potential for the enemy to exploit low gains from a single entity. Some kingdoms were better than others at deep chaining, which is really about being efficient in how you execute.

Here's the thing with avians, fundamentally: Your challenge is to keep avians at low acres to control their population bonus and thus curb the potential elite credits they can get into the pipe. You can attempt to steal food to exacerbate their population bonus on unbuilt acres. Frankly though, an avian core vs any traditional attacker core is superior for attacker killer business. This means you have to find a way to outnumber an effective avian core. Behold the simple math in the Emeriti build this age. - The alternative is t/m control.

Most anything recommended is effective against any attacker. The failure of avian will be in leadership. I could run an avian to infinity-good but that's not how things go. Most of those concerned about avian can exploit the naivety in the use of avians. The nuances of camping, vectoring and altering attack types will be lost on most leadership.
Avian has been to attacking what faery is to ops/sabotage but you have to be familiar with them to know this and use them effectively.