Aid Strategy & Mana/Stealth

[Attero]

This is actually quite sad because it seem like something that would come easy but my kd is having a hard time doing this. We have a basic setup with (Red, Yellow, Green) depending on the severity of the need. Can anyone give me solid strategys for a smooth aiding system or just getting the mates involved in doing this, I dont think we are selfish with our resources just lose sight in things.

I have heard of just a select few UBs aiding all in need and stacking up TB and later down the line those who have negative TB just send them extra resources to drop the tax they recieve. I have also heard of AID teams that are clustered together depending on NW and Race.

As for my second question, is there a way to track Mana and Stealth%? I want everyone to keep their %s above certian levels OOW so that in the event of getting hit into or finding a good targets there are no delays in ops. If I ask someone to tell me their % they can lie, the only way I can think is for them to screen shot this to me but that seems extreme.

[Obduro]

Stealth and mana are shown on upoopu, if you get them all to use it, and use the auto updater you can track it that way.

[noobium]

ditch the red/yellow/green stuff. you need what you need, when you need it, or you are capable of holding onto resources better than a vulnerable province (either because they don't have the defense to prevent plunders or ops, or because they're sitting on too much gc for one province).

some general tips i've internalized (but don't really enforce - i don't lead **** in my kingdom):

- have accurate self-intel so you know what everyone has, and who needs stuff. this is a given for a lot of other reasons.
- don't ask for aid unless you need the resources for something, or you need to get rid of a huge surplus.
- during war, all of your kingdom's resources - money, runes, and to a lesser extent food - should be used for kingdom-level projects, not distributed out of some false sense of fairness.
- make reasonable projections about how much money and runes your kingdom makes as a whole, and base your dragon funding scheme on that. you (usually) don't want to spend all of your money rushing a dragon when your opponent intends to tank it, and even if you need to fund a replacement, you should budget how much money to spend per tick rather than dump every last gc into it.
- don't use aid to mass-train defspecs (training the bare minimum so you don't get 4/5-tapped is fine though) on provinces that can't secure themselves against mages and thieves, unless you can spread that aid to multiple provinces or the war is basically won. you might be "unbreakable" but without thief defense you're wasting your troops and credits
- don't use aid to mass-train thieves on provinces with too little defense (again training what you need to defend against attackers is fine, as usually you will need to retrain some to fix thief weak spots).
- if you're playing an attacker race that isn't dwarf, consider saving your building spec credits for the first 24 hours of war, or whenever you need a particular building type for some clear purpose. this way, if you are chained you have building credits to ease rebuild cost, and if the war is basically won before mintime you can build banks+homes or guilds to get a head start on rebuilding. leaving the acres barren also improves your nw-efficiency and building efficiency slightly, at least in the short-term. (i am assuming you enter war with a build that will be good even if bloated by 30-50% of your starting acres, and you can avoid starvation.
- likewise it is usually better to hold back on using spec credits until you need them, rather than burning them too early and getting overpopped. if you do use spec credits and are playing an attacker, they're likely going towards offspec rather than defspec (if not, then they should).
- if you're trying to improve your attacking core, it is better to distribute aid over multiple provinces than it is to aid one province heavily, unless that province has a reasonable chance of security against attacks AND thieves. probably the first priority would be to fix those weak spots that require little aid, like provinces that need a few hundred thieves to intel or op weak points. you can't aid ALL the attackers, but you can usually aid 5-7 attackers to improve their offense; doing so makes it easier to push down targets with higher nw than you. also important to make sure that all of your attackers are capable of keeping home enough defense to deter turtles, as letting turtles get hits for basically free is bad for business.
- in a long war, you're going to have to force everyone to get smarter about aid and espionage, rather than just continuing as if this were early war. follow the peasants, figure out who can draft soldiers and who needs to use their spec credits (when it's time to use them).
- aggressive draft and patriotism are something your attackers should do in almost every war, for as long as they have the economy to do so. even if you can't train the soldiers, using soldiers to cover desertions, and later on for soldier-bombs, is very helpful. it also means you have fewer peasants for other kingdoms to steal. if your kingdom already has enough soldiers to put together aid bombs, or your t/m types can start drafting heavily, then you can focus more on building up peasants on core provinces.
- don't block your aid unless you have really bad trade balance or have explosions on you (in case someone aids you randomly), and don't be discouraged from throwing resource piles on random people. it is way more important to make sure you don't have stealable or plunderable money piles on a few provinces, and that you can be aided soldiers/food in cases where you can't be online (soldier blocking, and when a province gets chained their farms are dead).
- 10-15% tax is not a big deal. note also that negative trade balance disappears faster than positive balance, so by running trade deficits and not aiding back, you are creating a larger barrier against aid tax in the long term. when you get taxed 30%+, then it gets probelmatic.

mana/stealth: the only way to know is to take your kingdom's word for it. using a reliable intel-sharing platform and demanding people use it alleviates MOST of these problems (unless someone is bored enough to fake their province intel). if you can't trust your kingdom to hold on to stealth/mana then you probably want to fix that yesterday. it isn't too much to say "hold x stealth" and "hold x mana" before and during war. you would generally want to hold at least 30% stealth/mana if you're not planning war, just so you'll have some stealth to use if you are waved. finding a particularly lucrative target to steal might encourage t/ms to burn their extra stealth though. (by the way, you should have your attackers, especially orcs, avians, and undeads, constantly scouting for targets whenever they are not at war, holding back the same 30% of stealth minimum; to do otherwise is pure nubbery, there is no sense in wasting t/m stealth for intel attackers can get more efficiently).
as to making sure your nubs do that and don't go off the reservation; just tell them to keep a certain level of stealth/mana and why you want to keep it, and if you're preparing for hostile make sure your nubs don't waste any stealth/mana before it's time to go. if someone goes against those orders, then they should be able to explain a good reason why they did - it MIGHT be worth it to drop to 10% stealth if a particularly rich thief target is found, but it's stupid if some nub burns it on useless retal ops.

[Bukharistan]

ditch the red/yellow/green stuff. you need what you need, when you need it

+1

...

Ah well Noobium said it all, +3 for your response noobium :)

[ZenithSun]

- Resources should only be stacked on banks with a huge networth differential and reasonable magic def, or provs with high WPA and 15% + WTs (Elves work best), and on the very high end of defences in the war

- Aid should always be asked for before given, ESPECIALLY soldiers. exceptions are if ur mates are close to money- or food-starving
1. gold, enough to pay wages to attack
2. food, to not starve
3. runes, when you know you can fireball someone- remembering fizzles are useless

- Aid projects: if you're creating/maintaining UB, on peasant-protected provinces. solds if credit stacking.

- DON'T excessively aid Aid-sinks who are being chained with low def, only send a minimum to these

[TommyB]

957. Go one age without aid packages. Kick anyone sending an aid package. This will teach your players to build self-reliant provinces and gain a deeper appreciation of aid packages. ;-)

[StratOcastle]

Well, I'd say playing in a self reliant kingdom is maturing medicine. It rounds out a team player who has covered most other aspects of the game. It can also wake up a greedy player. The best aspect of playing in a self reliant kingdom is learning build doctrine. Not just what, but when, how and why. The reasons to steal gold and runes. The idea of accelerated build, etc.

I'm in kingdom with Attero and I'm trying to push an aspect of the culture without changing it.
Positioning ourselves for best performance requires some sacrifice. I chose me as one to sacrifice because I'm only here till EoA. In this discussion it seems centered on war, which is fine, but we need to get to the idea of preparation. Aid in grooming for war isn't just about getting pumped. A good martial artist knows you have to warm up and be limber and loose. Aid is your cornerman. You can use it strategically so you want to get use to the act of aid exchange. A lot of things you only learn by doing. Aid like intel is an aspect of the game underused where it's needed the most.

[claritinclear]

Use Upo for knowing stealth and wpa/tpa level. Our kingdom just started using that and it has been working well.

It will help if everyone knows their role. For example an active attacker might not be able to use the runes as well as a mage during a war situation. It'd be nice to have minor protection on, but runes are probably better spent on offensive ops to the other kingdom. Once everyone knows their role they will be able to build for it and only ask for stuff they really need to do their job. If someone's trade balance is really that bad - they need some help setting up a more self reliant province.

[Attero]

Noobium, you knowledge as proven most useful on more than one occasion. I didn't expect such a epic response but I would like to thank you. Also thank you to everyone who has replied here it has proven most useful. Keep em coming :)