Stepping into Zones
The idea of nw/acre zones isn't without influences along my way in gaming. I've explained before the dwarf warden I played in D&D was an area effect based attacker. These thing always have inticacies but my main battle guns were the area effect attacks. This was better understood, by the royal me, because I had previously read a little on Soviet War Doctrine. And it wasn't that I learned zones from Soviet War Doctrine, it's that I drew from their strategy what NATO was doing without ever reading about their tactics. The Soviet War Machine always expected us to strike first. If you start from standard issue handguns all the way to ICBMs you'll notice a pattern in the developments of each side. We had speed, accuracy and communication. Soviets had firepower, durability and navigation. I'm simplistically using the word "navigation" to explain a method the Soviets reportedly used to move against the area pushing the most firepower. If you put these elements together you'll note the evidence suggest the Soviets expected to have communications cut and thus navigated through tactics and used their apparent strength in firepower to engage.
So the way zones work in TVK is based in relative enemy nw/acres. This is the default system for players lacking the instinct to separate threats subjectively; yes, not objectively. Each division draws off a nw area that intersects the nw area of the next division at center radius. Each division sweeps furthest flank to furthest flank, thus forcing the enemy into max of the following zone. The zones fluctuate with nw/acre loss/gain and are live, organic representations, but always center radius, to center, to center radius.
This is a simplistic explanation. Everything can be mathed out from province power ranking to individual player performance. I prefer to slur these things toward an instinctive feel, but I'd imagine some of the spread sheet disciples would love to dissect a kingdom by esoteric variables. if that hasn't made sense yet; zones are a foundation strategy, but pinpointing troublemakers is micro. For instance, we can't ignore the active shared spell casting faery or the most resilient orc anyone's seen. Stoic robotic strategies, no matter how good, require manual override tweaks because great competition requires adaptation.
Basically this is an adaptation of a ground theater concept where attack choppers support mechanized divisions. The rest is fundamental assault founded in German ww2 squad tactics. These consist of flanking, closing range, cover fire and finally, eliminating the objective. We approach these flanks as military(troops/forts/modifiers) defense, tpa and wpa in Utopia. This way of thinking can help you to assess the relative strength of an enemy position.
Originally Posted by Bishop
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