Honor Plinko

One of the hidden strengths of the multi-racial/persona kingdom strats is the offense to defense ratios. When I was in The Faery Circle the inherent high defense of faery played toward a lower tap enemy volume. I’m sure honor kingdom players are acutely aware of the dynamic, but the ghetto world may not be.

In seeing wars unravel you can almost track victory by honor. Many ghettos get a false sense of accomplishment because they’re winning an acre race and their t/ms feel cozy enough. This is sad because they will follow a lack of strategic literacy with statements like they “don’t care about honor”. My friend, I care about victory and thus care about honor; at least as the defining gauge in progress. If your honor is stagnant or leaking you better trace that leak. You need to see who’s saving stealth, mana and runes because those guys are sandbagging you.

It is no mistake that many smarter kingdoms play opossum through prelude to mid-war. Well I poke the matrix when I sense BS and you can tell by reaction how honor aware your enemy is by poking an honor cache. And it’s not necessarily the honor, it’s that they’re hitting and not being hit back. This is either by numbing kingdom ignorance or near unbreakability of the enemy. You have to ring the alarm because everything depends on it.

Now, the hidden strength of multi-tiered racial/persona is the root system of feeding honor to well protected provinces. Unlike mono racial cores with a smattering of t/ms this virtual kingdom offers stages of defense with an array of builds from glass cannon attackers to semi-tough hybrids to super mages and cows.

Honor systems like roots or whoring land kingdoms work on a principle of nutrient security. Nobody gets chained and lands with tons of honor; it flows to those who hit early. Those who hit early are usually your glass cannons so they can’t retain the honor efficiently. So you play a game of reverse plinko where you navigate hits based in subsequent honor retention. The flow will continue back and forth, but it’s in the strategic economy of hits(both military and ops) by retention level that will pool honor.

You have to ask yourself why land kingdoms have astronomically huge cows and attackers at meager war kingdom sizes. That principle is land based as well. If a land kingdom outsizes itself it will relatively starve amongst its competitors due to cf meta. Unlike the complex build I present as the virtual kingdom, land whoring kingdoms are built for low drag nw/acre efficiency. It’s funny to me because a lot of mid tier players get concerned about nwpa when they’re completely surrounded by threats of every shape and size. This is why I build for capability. I’m fine with being outside the nw ideal if I have a formidable toolbox.

The ability to fight up means you are a threat to land kingdoms. You can’t defend yourself, but you can make them look elsewhere. Builds that depend on narrow efficiencies are highly vulnerable and obvious targets for larger kingdoms. If you build your entire t/m core on narrow nw principles you’ll be swallowing your pride quite a bit. It works great in a planned war against quaint opposition but to feel victory against a true challenger will escape you.

You see, even large opponents have to account for variable offenses/defenses. They might know to break off the fangs of your kingdom but the might and breadth of a full array of every ability in the game can be a crowbar of retribution. Fools gold is just a crack in the door. Your kingdom can do everything, it’s just a matter of dialing in the combination.