Learning Curve on the Clock
When we're talking about top kingdoms or charting war types we can imagine they've run sims to figure out certain strats. It's no great leap to then figure, while many might be experienced and not feel a need to sim, there's always an OCD player who wants the sim to satiate their tremors. These are the bot freaks and yada, yada... Anywho, they aren't wrong, but safety is a margins doctrine.
Let's look at one build that I can unequivocally behold as an "edge of control" combination that apparently was discarded from competitive circles. Forgive me, since this is from memory and I'm not a recorder type; I'm a gist type.
There was an age not too long ago when humans had reduced losses to troops at home, and cleric was still available as a personality. Common wisdom is these overtly high survival rates are bad for defense because of overpopulation. Early on I learned that this was true as my attempt to stay within the kingdom strat for sizes was like one of those volcano experiments. Luckily I was in a kingdom where war was common and chaos within war.
I've mentioned I run fat province strats, but it was here that the fundemental took shape rather than the blob mentality I usually attend. I'm not a numbers guy, but I know when I'm seeing a numbers scenario. Once I'd figured out my acre lead angle: the number of acres to function in strife/being attacked I attained what by Utopian standards was virtual invincibility. I had long experimented with chain stalling through relay/zone tactics, but usually the tipping point was within enemy logistical reach. I'm saying that, in other build experiments a reasonable if extraneous amount of enemy effort could overcome my tactics. It was with this human cleric that repeated efforts to chain my province were ineffective and it was a true effort. I was hurt, but recovered each time within ticks and before the enemy could remarshal the effort. I exited the last war so huge that I destroyed the build and restarted as an orc mystic to stay within kingdom friendly limits.
The motor on that build required a level of maintenance but it was so torque heavy I regret not running it in a micro-kingdom. To understand this, I mean top kingdoms go on about elite nw and some intricate gains math, but these are contextual to the game they play. For instance, I'm familiar with top kingdom pump and I had toyed with these mechanics early on because the human had bonuses that made going deep that age an interesting prospect. Since I was playing in the lower tier the randoms cause some serious hemorrhaging to homes pumped provinces you would rarely experience in the top. Remember that I don't attack unprovoked either so this was full army home.
Now see, I've been out in the field as a province in a micro-kingdom and the one thing for sure is constant randoming by enemy kingdoms. The other factor is my non belief in CF culture; it's there but it's immaterial to the business at hand. This was a perpetual build that begged to be in constant motion and thus unacceptable for top play from that perspective. The question is if it was nw appropriate and I'm sure they'd say it wasn't which gets me to the point of action. What if you don't stop? You know, like what if you go where the acres lead you? Since I've tangled up top I have a feel for their brute mechanics. This was certainly in that discussion but I think it was dismissed too early as it sim'd an overpopulation/nw disadvantage. My findings were that the build required an instinctive juxtaposition in that your function was perpetual fat building with no static pump. In other words it was whoring as a way of being, not a strategic decision. Sure, it might've been clunky in the seamless fit of nw range exploitation, but you must remind yourself I didn't come at the build with whoring in mind. The build just wanted to whore so eagerly, I couldn't disrespect it by razing acres after the last war. I have a personal thing about surrendering resources(acres)and prefer to start over than lose resources(acres) through negotiaion.
The bottom line was that those who tried very hard to take my acres were pushed aside. It was creepily easy once I'd formulated my sloppy math which is to say a "feel" for the build. It reminds me we sometimes have to run these things to see their actual capability. The human cleric required a different pump strategy rather than a standard system applied to nw efficiency at negative peasant load.
Originally Posted by Bishop
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