Quote Originally Posted by NighT View Post
I could probably ramble on for quite a bit, but this basically sums it up by BoTo:

Best strategy to win a war - secure UB, control enemy's peasants via ops/spells, deep chain high off attackers :).

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When I used to play in the warring tier, I'd always try and have my TMs at like 110-120% of kingdom average, with 2-3 attackers the same size and then a bunch of attackers a bit smaller. Generally I ran very TM-heavy kingdoms, and I think this is where most kingdoms drop the ball. I've been in wars where we got out-chained by a lot (Ruthless) and in wars where my attackers just got stomped and destroyed by the enemy.
Last age we ran with 18 DE Mystics and 7 Faery Rogues (could be 19/6 or 17/8). Either way, we obviously aimed for very heavy TM-power. We werent able to effectively chain as we lacked the coordination for NM waves. We pretty much got stomped on the attacker-front, but we managed to secure like 6 faeries who were TM. As we managed to outgrow them (landlust) we could build economy + train offense on them. Our DEs all got massacred to bits (and I'm talking down to 0.2 raw wpa and stuff). In the end, because we had a long-term goal of building/outgrowing our Faeries and growing economy on those, we managed to secure the win.
In other ages, we've gone with like 20 pure attackers, and just overpowered enemy kingdoms. In another age, we ran a bunch of tacticians and this allowed us to outpace the enemy. Eventually this led to us lapping the enemy in attacks, meaning we could hit just after their wave, and return before their wave. This gave us a 'free' round of massacres on the enemy TMs.

To answer your question, there is no one strategy that beats them all. Generally, I'd say you want your TMs > their TMs. If your attackers get stomped, so be it. But by the time your attackers are down, the TMs should be out of range of enemy attackers. Once that happens, it's a very costly process to bring TMs down.
Dont under-estimate the power of economy. And offense. Economy wins wars. Offense wins wars.

The most important advise I can give you is to select something you want to be good at (short (48 hr), mid (48-96 hr) or long term (96hr+) warring, speed, economy, raw power, thievery, magic, difficult to chain, ..) and build a strategy around that. I've had a setup with 24/24 Halfling. I've had a setup built around orcs, around avians and tacticians. You are doomed to fail if you dont plan how to win. If you suck at TM-coordination, pick a bunch of races and personalities that are either very durable against enemy TMs, or able to quickly level the playing field by running a bunch of massacres at opening wave. If you hate doing NM-waves, dont build a setup that requires heavy chains to be effective, if you .....

Oh, and activity. Activity wins wars too. Leadership activity is the most important there is. Be online to ask people to burn their stealth/mana. Message them when troops are about to return. Send them gc pre-tick 'just in case'. An active/good leader can almost single handedly win a war. I'd rather have 21 sheep and a leader than 25 'pros' who dont talk.

I've also liked to war with less provinces against more provinces. This gives me a slightly bigger average province size vs less stealth/mana/attacks. It works really well to build your TMs out of enemy range. Numbers are definitely not always superior.
Regards,

NighT
As the KD on the other side of that war NightT talked about (Just checked our records, and to let you know she's not exagerrated, we did min 20 massacres, max 32 - average around 25 massacres on each one of 18 DE Ms =P That's a loooott of massacres, and had them all dropped to like 2k off specs in offense max. and this was in mid-age), I'd just like to second everything NighT says =P

Knowing your strengths, short, mid, long-term and having a plan for each, recognizing your enemy's strong point, and figuring out how to effectively counter or parlay your strengths to cover a weaker stage in the war is important.

One thing I want to stress from NighT's post, and NighT's T/M core was masterful, is the importance of having highly skilled and active T/Ms. T/Ms are really underrated in terms of difficulty and importance, probably because they have a low barrier of entry but high skill cap.

A bad inactive attacker will get destroyed of course, but past a minimum there's not that much more utility extra activity and experience can add to an attacker. An attacker has a higher minimum level of activity to be somewhat useful in a war, but gets capped out, where an attacker that can be online 20 hours a day and knows everything won't be that much more effective than someone who logs in just 3-4 times a day.

T/Ms may appear to be more forgiving on the low end, i.e. you're unbreakable so no need to worry about logging in late, you can skip a chain, just log in once a day to get MS out, or some ops - and you'll meet your minimum and contribute to the war effort and won't get your prov destroyed. However, for a T/M there is far more increasing value if you are able to be super active and have lot's of experience and know what you're doing. So, don't underestimate T/Ms and try to develop a solid core of experienced T/Ms who can be flexible and active.

Developing a solid attacker base that can follow orders, chain, and be chained, and that'll get you from ghetto to warring tier. After that though, it's developing a solid T/M base that'll move you further up.