Fighting Styles:

[StratOcastle]

Trying to get a bounce is overemphasized related to the suff I'm trying to do in war. In no way am I trying to strut a level of superiority; this is about signature moves that may or may not make a difference. Obviously I'm not worried about sharing my battle habits; there isn't room in structured kingdoms to freestyle till wars end. Those are the only scenarios we would likely meet in battle.

Cool story @ noobium. Tadpole does banners @ madi, and I asked. You have style you're not sharing @ Billah.

I'm funny about oow hits and challenges in general. I'm all about retal, but very rarely hit oow unless instructed by wave. War against equal to superior opponents is fun. I didn't realize my timid nature oow until I experienced lulls in action in higher charting kingdoms. I'm completely disenchanted with bottom feeding. Recently I've switched focus to theater control builds.

I'd like to see someone's take on a high-powered HA style. I don't run them. With age comes a desire to help other guys have fun. Thus, theater control.

[Billah]

My style is to just pump my prov to as high of a tpa/wpa/opa/dpa as possible and then I lay a/t/m with army in/out. OOW i usually hit anon but I never hit anon in war.

[tetley]

strat, you didn't actually tell me what relay taps were exactly :P And now a new term. Wtf is theater control?

In terms of halflings, I would say a fairly typical tactic would be to wait until targets in range have sent out during war. Then you can break them with just offspecs, or tiny bit of elites if necessary. In a dream world, you could run high rax and beat them home.

[tetley]

btw, kingdoms have different fighting styles, not just players. You yourself talk about targeting nw zones - to be done correctly doesn't it take more than one person? you mention an interesting strategy of AMA's but wouldn't that fall into the category of rigid kingdom structure?

Maybe someone's personal flair involves leadership :P

[StratOcastle]

btw, kingdoms have different fighting styles, not just players. You yourself talk about targeting nw zones - to be done correctly doesn't it take more than one person? you mention an interesting strategy of AMA's but wouldn't that fall into the category of rigid kingdom structure?

Maybe someone's personal flair involves leadership :P

Yes and yes. If we look at AMA we usually have to look at BB and whomever they may arrange an alliance with. Elit has said he and flogger don't agree on kingdom builds. So if you widen magnification you can see the kingdoms(plural) strengths work off of each other. Was it 59 you guys crowned with avian core(?); but the point is that your core complimented floggers dwarf core and Elit ran a 3 race balance that made Hostile a horrible place to be. Look at the Pew2 setup this age. They don't have to be an ally for Elit to maximize his kingdom build strat. He simply needs to have an intuition: pew2 = no gb + FPA.
So I'm not here to belittle kingdom strat, it's simply not the purpose of the thread. I'm under the impression that AMA operates at a level that the core has little reason to go renegade. in short, I think Elit builds his kingdom after observing the kingdoms he's unlikely to war. He understands how to process and package acres: last age with elf center and WH top.
All the while people were treating my interest in war spoils as Ralphie and his Red Rider.

[kingarc]

i send 104.4 for attack that gauranteed attack....i usually send all my released specs to kill dragon if there is one, but if your chain target thieves are pointless other than intel so if you can bounce an attack why not. the more attacks they spend chaining you getting low gains the better. one of my favorite things about orc is reflect magic...theres nothing better than seeing that a t/m has cast meteor showers on themselves...i laugh every time...i have also had t/ms just stop oping me right after...

[StratOcastle]

strat, you didn't actually tell me what relay taps were exactly :P And now a new term. Wtf is theater control?

In terms of halflings, I would say a fairly typical tactic would be to wait until targets in range have sent out during war. Then you can break them with just offspecs, or tiny bit of elites if necessary. In a dream world, you could run high rax and beat them home.

Relay taps simply mean I break up my taps over a period of time rather than sending everything out in predictable Unique fashion. Once you get your troops out you no longer have any sitting at home unless you're called to hit a biggie.

Which brings up why(?)

Activity is obviously the fuel. Usually I'm breaking taps by 1-2 ambushes and 1-2 trad marches. One of our guys in The Wishmasters is currently at the apex of the design(but i havent shared this for kingdom reasons).It's exactly the same situation I had vs Legion while in HRS and Accra while in Incarnation.

1- One benefit is that you're not getting caught with your entire army home.
2- Target choice is more timely. You get to levy your incoming acres vs threat assessment.
3- I build during war and vary my times with mix of accelerated and standard to keep vital percentages fluid.
4- Acres come in at shorter intervals which results in lower losses if chained.
5- Vital to not just resisting chains but stalling as well.

In the busy SN it's not all that obvious what's going on. You selectively tap your range and ambush down rather than up. All you want is a gap while retaining defense. You can forfeit acres up because your goal is to be the catalyst for overpopulating enemies. Once the enemy bigs have ranged themselves you can now turn the crank. I run cleric to sit in a nw position. Thus my build isn't about being the biggest offense; that job is for orc warrior. My job is to keep our bigs big and our smalls well fed. By creating the nw gap it prevents our bigs from tumbling into release. This build is about acre and dspec retention along with a tactic that floats gains at a regular pulse.

Theater control is about being ready to tailor the kingdom situation for better performance. In organized kingdoms you have banks and what have you. I'm doing some of this now(theater control, not banking) but dwarf tac is much more ideal. I'm providing aid to particular HAs. I send a little gold, soldiers. I hit enemies to get them in max range for others. I gather zero loss intel so the heavies can retain as much tpa as possible. Again, I'm not trying to grow for glory, but to be in a nw range of benefit. I want to maintain a wpa as well to provide support prelude to attacks.
Banks aren't always on or they might have greater kingdom responsibility. Theater control is about making your sector better and would compliment gap/zone tactics if such existed. I address it in my Virtual Kingdom thread, but not specifically.

[StratOcastle]

I guess theater requires a definition. Theater in Utopia for me, in this thread, is in reference to areas of defined action and objectives. That is: top, middle, bottom.
The top is typically trying to be UB and specialize in ops.
The middle is where the core war is decided.
The bottom is the area of chained or new wet behind the ear provinces.

[tetley]

Why don't you lead?

[tetley]

I'll say breaking up your armies has its merits but it makes it harder (obviously by definition) to do a bunch of damage all at once. Which can be relevant... I would say especially in the bottom "theater" :P

I think one thing a lot of kingdoms don't pay enough attention to is the bottom (I myself have improved in this recently.) After a couple days of war, control of the bottom can be as essential to long term victory as the middle.

Relevant story to both this post and this thread I guess: I play a human war hero. In our last war I got chained from around 800 to the ~250 acre range. We were facing Sanitarium running an absurdly-suicidey all-undead-core strat. As I went down I just released thieves and sent elites to the dragon so I never really was too overpopped.

The downside of this was that my NW sucked when I got to the bottom. In retrospect I probably released too much. But it turned out to not be so bad. I could easily break loads of undeads in the bottom for max gains, but it would have been pointless to do so since I was always breakable by the UDs with huge offence. Instead every cycle I four-tapped one of their smallest undeads on land def or close to it. My ****ty NW meant I was still hitting them in range but I wasn't grabbing that many acres I couldn't retain.

I was taking maybe 40-80 acres when I could have been taking 150+, but I was making a way bigger difference doing so. Coordinated with a few other provs, we were able to make people suffer a 2nd round of releases/desertions. Just having a global "max gain if chained" order (which I find typical in a lot of kingdoms) would never accomplish this, since nearly no one would pick a 130 acre target of their own volition.

[StratOcastle]

You're pointing out something I noticed Simians did from a kingdom standpoint: paying attention to the bottom vs Monument a few ages ago. This is good math and sometimes I've wondered about a system of collapsing the enemy bottom while supporting your own.

In my case things don't always work out, so style is second to substance. I try to temper idealism with practical execution.
I've faced kingdoms that counter my every move or are pros at SN. My mind can't absorb all the information available from SN or I'd ape the practice. I do try to convey the beauty of our enemies strategies so that players gifted with clarity of interpreting can try. The queen of Incarnation was gifted in this way along with Pak.

Pak was a brilliant bottom player that advanced my understanding of chained evolution. He became even more dangerous when chained. This mirrors some of what you are explaining in bottom gains navigation. He played avian sage as I've mentioned him in these forums before.

The reason I don't try to lead is that I've never been able to cross the road between being a 'feel' player and speaking the language of the mathematically biased players. I'm very right brain/left-handed so I think in shapes, and artsy-fartsy ways that don't translate well. Even my build strats are pretty numbers not exact percentages. I usually site AMA as an example because when they execute a move I can see it clearly on kingdom pages. My intuition tells me somebody in AMA has crossed the road I haven't.

[StratOcastle]

My outlet for leadership endeavors is in the Virtual Kingdom thread I write in Roleplaying. Part is idealism and I'm careful to point out the thread is a reference template. Fun is the core reasoning, not charting. But I do feel some players lost in the ranks of warkaday waving and dictated strats could find a better game experience by choosing practical freedom. it's not to attract players who are happy in rigid kingdom doctrine.

The Virtual Kingdom is a practice in balance based on a 3 kingdom merge. The idealism comes from utilizing a strat that is zero core. In practical terms, the kingdom is comprised of 3 of each personality and 3 of each race. This results in 24 players divided into 3 divisions. Each division has one of each race and personality. These division function independently of each other and each division is comprised of players from the 3 major Utopian time zones: European, Asian and American.
I base the divisions on real game merge offers I've seen in Recruiting. Thus the Virtual Kingdom has basis in real game potential. I reserve a 25th position that is a practical monarch. The monarch chooses a persona/race combination not yet represented in the 3 divisions.

While the Virtual strat is dictated it is heavily influenced by player input. One reference being the 3 avians:not seen as practical mathematically I have seen do well as in Noobies Don't Bite. Every ability and shortcoming will be found in the Virtual Kingdom.

[madi]

Why don't you lead?

strato has lots of knowledge, but likes doing his own thing... he could b in lots of top kd's, and the best part about him is he is always just trying to better himself in the aspects of the game and the game as a whole...

[StratOcastle]

Thank you madi. I'm humbled

[madtyres]

Gosh, just reading this thread I know who you are, Strat (Occult) from Age 59. Your style of writing is so unique lol

I'm an old-new player (played 10 years ago, re-started last year), so have lots to learn from a tactics POV. At my current kd, we are (usually) excellent at deep chains and focusing FB/NS targets etc. But I find that beyond that, we lack the vision or strategic planning to go further. When we win wars it is because of pure attacking power, but if war drags longer, we generally just end up in a massive acre-exchanging contest at mid to low NW zones. I feel like we can do better.

There is something I always wanted to learn: province pumping. How and when. By pumping I refer to soldiers and gc, unless there is something else that can be done
1) How to choose who to pump - a chained HA to get him out of chained zone? A mid-range HA to maintain him at that NW? A big HA to become UB or to take down enemy T/Ms? Or a A/T or A/M to become UB?
2) When should it be done? When the war degenerates into a crazy mess of acre exchanges at the 48 hr mark? Or at another time

I also like the idea of chaining Rogues (esp Halfers) in first 24 hrs of war, to 1) Overpop them so they have to release thieves 2) One less T/M in mid-high NW range to deal real damage to big guys. This rarely goes heeded in my kd though.

Forcing a nice NW gap in mid range instead of only focusing on chaining big guys is something I would like to see done too. Happened somewhere between our war with EWS last age where they took a long time to chain down an Orc Warrior on our side because we inadvertently hit down their mid-range attackers and their chains kept stalling. That was nice, but unfortunately we didnt actually plan that lol