ZULU: The Virtual Kingdom of Age 82

[StratOcastle]

Zulu: The Virtual Kingdom of Age 82

ASSAULT - Asia
Dwarf: cleric*~ Alpha
Elf: heretic ~ Bravo
Elf: mystic ~ Charlie*
Human: war hero ~ Delta
Undead: war hero ~ Echo

SPEARHEAD - Australia
Avian: warrior ~ Foxtrot
Faery: mystic ~ Golf
Halfling: rogue ~ Hotel
Human: tactician ~ India
Orc: artisan ~ Juliett

HQ - America
Avian: tactician ~ Kilo
Dwarf: artisan ~ Lima
Faery: cleric ~ Mike
Orc: warrior ~ November
Undead: cleric ~ Oscar

SPEARHEAD - Western Europe
Avian: warrior ~ Papa
Faery: mystic ~ Quebec
Halfling: rogue ~ Romeo
Human: tactician ~ Sierra
Orc: artisan ~ Tango

ASSAULT - Eastern Europe
Dwarf: cleric ~ Uniform*
Elf: rogue ~ Victor
Faery: heretic ~ Whiskey
Halfling: heretic ~ Xray
Undead: war hero ~ Yankee*

Hello and welcome to TVK age 82. Though I'm not playing, I've based the kingdom from last age in accordance with changes. The kingdom is distributed with each race and personality as evenly as possible with 3 of each and 1 additional race(faery) and personality(cleric) to achieve a 25 province kingdom. My experience with faery cleric last age illustrated my army could break anything up to every core province in the #2 land kingdom as of our 5th war. Thus, I have no reservations concerning the weight of feary or cleric distribution. In addition, the defensive redundancy proved most useful for sustained land holding and damage absorption.

I'm quietly fond of artisan on the orcs for a race that finds itself shelled in most wars. To my mind the kingdom has a wealth of support so the mana depletion experienced by casters is far less troublesome. The lone undead cleric hails to my experiences ages ago. The undead in TVK are arrayed to be effective across the entire day with ample economic support to minimize enemy pressure. We want those elites built up to a healthy killer level ASAP.

Besides having elf and cleric casting support I was happy to see Pitfalls worked into both tactician and war hero. You'll note I've teamed these with heretics to reap benefit for attacker generals. My philosophy is to resist chaining at a priority level I've not seen in many kingdoms. This is both to bolster kingdom morale and retain as healthy an economy as possible: the less aid healthy provinces have to send the more likely we achieve unbreakable status.

Anyways, as always I welcome your comments and versions of your own TVK and wish you a happy and successful age.

Thank you.

PS: For those of you unfamiliar with the 5 division system illustrated above, I've arrayed the kingdom across a GMT chonographic system. Unlike most kingdoms that arrange waves at 2 GMT schedules, TVK operates on a 24 tick basis I call the elliptical wave.

The spearhead divisions are both the archetypical breakers and most likely targeted by enemy forces. Thus you'll note the assault divisions designed to flank and interfere with enemy attempts to subdue the pincer. HQ is a support entity designed to reinforce breakthroughs, stimey enemy advances or cleanup execution failures.

[StratOcastle]

Elliptical Wave Division Combat

So I've played for many years and one regrettable aspect I've experienced in most kingdoms is an adherence to full kingdom waving. What happens is a lot of players with real world obligations are forced to abide an itinerary that isn't congruent with family or work life. My solution was to take the sloppy waving of deep ghetto kingdoms and transform them into micro heavy organizations. Each division is comprised of players from likely player bases around the world.

One of my goals was to offer players a prime activity GMT sector that agreed with busy lifestyles. The race/personality distribution is designed to offer divisions the ability to be proactive, developing high levels of coordination and teamwork.
Anyone who's warred high caliber opponents are aware of the strength of micro: the ability to adjust and optimize to an ever changing landscape.

Another aspect not immediately apparent is that each division was visualized as a fragment of good players from altogether ailing/bad kingdoms. Over the ages I've seen many fine kingdom disintegrate for the inability to retain good players yet still identify as the kingdom they use to be. Culturally, each division represents the best part of a lost kingdom. My approach is to incorporate these players, culture intact, into TVK. Their leader is then a member of council but the strategies they use in division are proprietary. The fringe benefit is healthy competition between divisions. One might see the strategy of another division superior to their own and can thus adapt to better ways. This flies in the face of the many failed merges I've witnessed where the host kingdom feels superior because they have retained more players and thus force an alien culture on their guests. So they lose players and continue being close-minded ghettos that fear the best and surrender pride to retain honor, land or science. I've long opposed the powerful and the rewards are staggering: like inventing new ways of kicking ass.

The greatest weakness in traditional 2 wave-a-day philosophy is the aspect of wave derailment. I've been in what appear to be very healthy, active kingdoms until something goes wrong at wave time. Then we see the impatience of players who have real world schedules to keep and things can go sideways quickly. You have 24 people stacked in line awaiting instructions and absorbing unnecessary punishment from the enemy. Anyone familiar with the "oops" glitch know this can lose a war. My solution was to truncate the working parts of the wave into 5 compact, highly pivotal divisions. While TVK might not run off a huge Nightmare wave'n'chain the eliptical wave operates like a Bruce Lee water proverb. It's always there and is a creature of opportunity. The elliptical wave is ideally set to derail traditional waving.

Before we begin imagining ridiculous strengths in this system, it was designed as an ergonomic alternative to traditional rigid wave doctrine. Great kingdoms that use traditional waving and win wars are there because it works for them and the type of players they can recruit. The elliptical wave offers my best effort to get casual yet focussed players to the battlefield against pro kingdoms. The compact divisions minimize train wreck behavior. One division might have a miserable outing but it's not a 12 hour depressionfest waiting to right the wrongs. This is why we have council and responsibilities distributed across the divisions. The fact is, if say the Australian spearhead fails to break a t/m as a division objective, the HQ division has 4 attackers at its disposal to crack defenses, including an orc warrior.

[StratOcastle]

Dink & Dunk

On many occasions I've worked from absolute desolate ghettos up to exchanging attacks with top kingdoms. So what? Between top kingdoms and dumpster fire ghettos are an ever increasing formidability of kingdoms as you climb the charts. As you progress and attack instead of CFing you experience the raw level of aggression competition grade kingdoms exert. The idea of resistance isn't just hyjinx it is a system of learning. The higher threat you present the more likely your enemy will tip their hand. You want to see their full capability; the tricks, the efficiencies, their friends or multis in the shadows. The more you resist the more you learn.

And what did I learn? Well, elliptical waving is the embodiment of my play style. I'm a terrible province manager by most measures but I think this is more that I play intuitively and the vast majority of players play mechanically. That is that I depend on my ability to play to the scenario rather than the mechanical reality before me. I can certainly see that a pumped high caliber attacker from a crown wearing kingdom striking my fat faery cleric is mechanically superior to me in about every aspect but one: I hit back.

Why do I hit back? Because I know pumped means fragile economy, or this guys a sprinter. I'm a marathoner. These guys often belong to kingdoms too intimidating to experience 3 incoming randoms a day from different kingdoms. I swim it and have for years. My management system is apparently so bizarre that every time I elect a sitter the changes I see upon return are mind boggling. Even my own kingdom mates who'd fold in the shadow of a top 10 kingdom don't understand; no offense. You want to win and your kingdom is teetering on the abyss you strike back.

"Jack Wilson: You're fast and you like pain. You eat it like candy. I've seen a few cases like that in my time. The more they get hurt, the more dangerous they become. But you got to be durable, too. Real durable. Most ain't."

Thus, I don't build for common optimization. The funny part is that my faery cleric could break anything that mattered: I mentioned every province except the top 3 unbreakables in the #2 land kingdom. Cromulent Republic doesn't count for a very good reason, and that's that they never attacked me. I respect that because they never attacked me random since their inception. But consider what I'm saying. I'm not optimized but I'm in the wheelhouse and I'm not bleeding gold. Economy is your cardio and your chin is stronger for it. Diaz brothers anyone? Quite.

So there's this thing with accumulation of knowledge from years of gaming. When I first started playing Utopia my previous game experience taught me you learn mechanics through reps, not rigid ideals. So my earliest builds were avian tacs because the repetition put me on to how the game works. I then went on to running undead clerics and augmented my attack system to ape avian tac features by relaying my generals. This offered me acre fluidity and got me onto the idea of chain stalling. Chain stalling was the origins of my style of nw zone supremacy and the idea that full blown pumps were the brainchild of players who run t/ms not attackers. So chain doctrine by my educated guess wasn't optimized because people that don't attack apparently invented it.

Let's put it this way: If you're familiar with a multitude of gaming types from board games to RPG to strategic reenactment, it became apparent to me that chain waves are at once colonial strategy and archaic as dreadnought thought craft. There's no blending of mobility and position, just lots of firepower and spearheading. No flanks were considered. To this day most kingdoms simply chain with absolute naivety. Very few use a bit of offset micro but it's still a big honking wave like T-Rex with those tiny arms. The rarest use micro to victory and this is who I studied in game.

Dink & Dunk is really about dropping damage on the spots the enemy left open. While most kingdoms think of Nightmare waves as a "kingdom strat" I think of it as a constant crowbar. You can use Nightmare and Amnesia as examples of a whole different aspect in tactics. Sure, I'd open up on a guy with some heavy Nightmare casting, but that's dual getting rid of runes and positioning an enemy for nw zone supremacy. When you use Nightmare you don't have to chain a guy, you can use it to get extra hits. You can use it to increase your thieving success. You can use to to reduce an attackers offense while his army is home.

The idea of creating nw zones is to put a wedge between yourself with kingdom mates, and max attacks by your enemy. You might begin to understand my proclivity for cleric. Instead of playing yo-yo with chaining and neglect, you create a picket line to defend your kingdoms provinces. Once I've established a nw zone by knocking all enemies out of a designated range I then can effectively chain enemy provinces above me and wackamole enemy provinces below. Meanwhile you self regulate land and retain wpa/tpa.

And what happens when people try to duplicate these results? Sadly; remember we're talking about mechanically adept players who aren't intuitive...they try to run zone across the entire kingdom. But why? Because their minds are still anchored to the colonial musket barrage and dreadnought uniformity ideal. It's a type of OCD.

Strategically, you don't want everyone running zone. You want designated zones, which is basically your active flank, AND elements to spearhead enemy hardened positions. The zone is respite for your players and a minefield for the enemy. It's very hard for many players to wrap their head around what is effectively hybridized attacking. You're creating obstacles for the enemy while achieving objectives for kingdom. That's why you see assault divisions in this kingdom.

The spearhead divisions have interference capability to pinpoint enemies that might derail the objective. That's what the avian warrior and human tac are for, if needed. The spearhead is comprised of a triangulation of the 3 main defenses in Utopia: Orc - military defense, Halfling - thievery, Faery - magical. The spearhead is designed to probe any enemy within kingdom reach on all 3 front to find a venue of breakthrough. Once one is achieved it open the target to the other. In the aspect of military, it opens the enemy to followup attacks by the avian and human. So you see that if the avian and human aren't occupied to run interference they can cross chain the target behind the idealized killer orc.

Now let's say the avian and human are occupied with defensive attacking. This is what I mean by dink & dunk. The target is doubtless damaged but not finished by a stretch. So like my style of acre fluidity through relay, the target is subject to the next division online. They get little to no respite, and that's how I amplified my personal playing style to kingdom level. Look at the divisions and cross-section of capability. It's quite possible we will attack every tick of the age excepting eowcf.

Now let's show you more. You can create special units from each division by +/- timing players who can play outside of their prime activity sector. You can gather even select generals from each province to pinpoint a tick to smash a particular enemy; maybe a tough dwarf just before his build comes in. This can be done cross kingdom and include elements from different divisions. The flexibility is important to recognize to understand the full scope of elliptical waving.

[StratOcastle]

Acre Fluidity

This is a simple concept based in the work ethics of a hyperactive. If you're in the attacking field you no doubt have been chained. I'm not saying you won't ever get chained again. First you have to have no life and dig competition in Utopia. Ok, so all this is is taking in acres fast enough to where your troops aren't abandoning due to lack of housing. If you ran an avian tac and sent one general out every 2 ticks you'd be bringing in acres awfully quickly, and thus have room for housing. If you also didn't just arbitrarily attacked but aimed at nw relevancy you might just open a nw dmz around your province.

When I was playing with this I was being attacked and countered with 2 ambushed to enemies above my nw and 2 trad marches below my nw. This is relay/zone genesis. The ambushes begin the time stretch, as you suddenly have a 2 tick segment between gains. Now I did this alone, but in TVK you might have a player in division who can Nightmare/NS etc. to get more mileage out of your array of generals.

Now you see, basically every kingdom not thinking out of the box will cry how you can't break a t/m now. What's ridiculous about that frame of mind is that you can look far and wide for kingdoms that actually engage t/ms early, while attackers still have offense. Either the game is stuffed with troll leadership who like to watch their players suffer and beg for aid unanswered, or there are too many leaders who don't understand alternative means. I'm serious. I've experienced this always in lost wars, where the only reason I'm a threat is because I didn't crash and drain my kingdom in the mud like the rest of the attackers.

The sense of urgency vs the amount of actual help is very frustrating. It really is that people who grew up in the digital age think in on-off and never experienced a dimmer switch. We can do a lot of nuanced and graceful things in Utopia, but you'd think it was just slamming a big red button by the way many players envision their role. Sure some are above it and those guys are in the best kingdoms. The bot is not their god, it is a tool for players who aren't mind slaves to mechanical automations. I didn't even use the thing. You see, if you invest your mind so mechanically that the bot is the all seeing eye then you'll only accept logistical outcomes and you CF logistically superior foes. And you only follow strategic concepts that are readily available in any forgettable war.

Renember: I'm pre-Internet, didn't use the bot, made fat provinces from what was projected as a nerfed race with -10% population with the lowest offensive elite and could break 22 of 25 provinces in the #2 land kingdom by our 5th war. Yeah, it was a faery you're supposed to run as a mystic. Why? Because they randomed me and I saw them. Oh, yeah I'm aware of top kingdom homes pump. I've been up there a lot and you have to know your limits, and the projected negative peasant count. I've been up there in war so I've seen the fully realized top pump. You need to see it to, but you won't if you CF your logistical superior. How will you know what works when it's really tough and the enemy is online 24/7?

Mind you, I have great respect for competitive kingdoms and never want to prevent them from mastering their destiny against their own. I approach high caliber exchanges as playtime and I didn't target sensitive provinces unless they got too serious. But again, this is where you learn and, if applicable, teach them certain aspects of the game. For one, I started using my forum name as my leader name so that would be randoms would have a chance to see if it's me. Some might want to hit me and they were welcome. Others had the chance to random a safer target.

I was told relay wouldn't work in the big kingdoms so I went up there to see..and it worked. I went up there with an elf cleric once and became very formidable; with near impunity. There was no fear or reluctance and I won my exchanges in war against full blown orcs. Top orcs. Out of war it was bedlam since we hadn't secured CFs and were a kingdom in an age off. That how you get in with your build instead of assigned builds. So I got to use my builds against theirs and I was no longer confident, I was sure. I knew then that I was fine.

My greatest problem is that I'm not motivated to hit down. I require strife to enjoy Utopia and the cultural limits of fear in the lower kingdoms along with my love of freedom to retaliate simply don't mesh. It makes me poison so I retired. There's no longer the option to run a single province kingdom or I'd still play.

[umajon911]

Im famous!