High homes builds and war strategies for the ghetto .

[DDodge]

Uh sorry about that pathetic_sheep. That was drunk me posting last night...

[Atdy587]

How could pathetic_sheep show ignorance by arguing a point? All I've every read from him was sensible and well argued.

As is the case here. He is right that Homes not employing peasants is a bonus, not a drawback. To be more specific, a bonus to BE.





I absolutely can't believe I'm defending gojete/vines, it almost pains me to do it. But they have made a point about the advantages of Homes that people seem to have ignored.
I can only imagine it was ignored because it wasn't properly emphasized.

To do it right, let me give an example. Suppose we want to compare two provs A and B running the same attacker build: standard build. Now I take B and switch all TGs/Forts for Homes.

An argument used against homes builds was the following:
The prov using Homes will have lower off/deff then the one using mods.
Granted. But not much lower. It will compensate by having more population (more pezzies and more troops - assuming the same draft%) and a higher BE.

Now A and B enter War. Both exchange acres, both lose some pezzies and both lose some buildings. They are both rebuilding their acres.
Province A using TGs/Forts rebuilds said TGs/Forts. Province B using Homes, rebuilds TGs/Forts as well, instead of Homes.

Now B who was using Homes still has more pezzies, more troops and slightly better BE (since these are more or less a percentage of the initial numbers) and is building its way toward having the same number of TGs/Forts as the other province. Therefore, keeping all things the same for both provinces, there will come a time (actually quite soon in the War) when the Homes build overtakes the build that entered War with better modifiers.

What I've just argued is that builds with better modifiers are more prone to becoming fat during War, while builds with more Homes are easier to strengthen quickly, simply by switching from Homes to modifier buildings. This is a dynamic argument and as such, not easy to grasp. I don't expect many people will understand it at one glance.





Ofc, Homes builds are indeed weaker against Razes, Massacres (in War) and Tornadoes. A combination of those can get you overpopulated faster if you have more Homes. Yet these strategies to cause overpopulation are not really common, as they are not really the best.

The best way to cause overpop is simply by attacking for land.
Homes are not weaker against overpopulation due to land chaining (despite what Palem has once argued).
Why?
Land attacks always remove a percentage of the total land+buildings. That is, land attacks remove a percentage of the max population quota.
With or without Homes, you need the same number of attacks to remove the required percentage that will lead to overpopulation.
^That simply shows why. (please don't dismiss this point unless you understand it well)

Notice I've not claimed any % of Homes to be used. I've just made some points about use of Homes. I am interested to start a discussion on these points, but will ignore silly/wrong/stupid/empty remarks. *prepares flame thrower*

Using your example above. Assume A&B are at 1k land(for easy calculation) and that A runs 40%homes as gogete recommends and B runs no homes.
A's pop cap would be 400*33 + 600*25=28200.
B's pop cap would be 1000*25 = 25000
Lets assume each lose about 200 land when attacking each other.
A's pop cap reduction= 40%*200*33+60%*200*25=5640
B's pop cap reduction= 200*25 = 5000
thus A would be overpop by 640 more then B.
You say that both will rebuild to tgs and forts so A will still be over pop by 640 while B has no overpop.

If both lose land till they reach 300(semi chain)
A's pop cap at 300 = 8460
A's overpop = 19740
B's pop cap at 300 = 7500
B's overpop = 17500
With 200 land incoming(moment land gets in)
A's overpop = 16740
B's overpop= 14500
After building TGs and forts
A's overpop= 14740
B;s overpop =12500
B would have to lose less pezzies, thieves,wizzes and specs to hit out as compared to A. Your bonuses are effectively nullified as you would still have to lose them in order to hit.
Even if you try to maintain your build of 40% homes, you would still be more heavily overpop then a province who run little to no homes. Also dont forget the high cost of redrafting,retraining all those lost units which would have been lesser if you run modifiers instead.

[Danrelle]

Using your example above. Assume A&B are at 1k land(for easy calculation) and that A runs 40%homes as gogete recommends and B runs no homes.
A's pop cap would be 400*33 + 600*25=28200.
B's pop cap would be 1000*25 = 25000
Lets assume each lose about 200 land when attacking each other.
A's pop cap reduction= 40%*200*33+60%*200*25=5640
B's pop cap reduction= 200*25 = 5000
thus A would be overpop by 640 more then B.

FLAME Be so kind to calculate the difference in overpopulation percentage, not the total number. The percentage is what determines overpopulation, not the total number of people over the quota.

Don't feel bad though. =P This has been a common mistake. You will find that the percentages are the same.

Thank you for reading the post.. after DDodge covered it I thought no one would read it. =P

If both lose land till they reach 300(semi chain)
A's pop cap at 300 = 8460
A's overpop = 19740
B's pop cap at 300 = 7500
B's overpop = 17500
With 200 land incoming(moment land gets in)
A's overpop = 16740
B's overpop= 14500
After building TGs and forts
A's overpop= 14740
B;s overpop =12500
B would have to lose less pezzies, thieves,wizzes and specs to hit out as compared to A. Your bonuses are effectively nullified as you would still have to lose them in order to hit.

You are right here. The Homes build does lose more population due to being overpop, in this case. However, it is the population that it had extra. It does not reach a smaller population compared to the build without Homes.

After getting 200 acres in, when being at 300 acres, you're also losing practically all your ME modifiers from your buildings. =)
Are you saying the Homes build does worse after being chained than the build with TGs/Forts?

(None of them have modifiers and they have the same final population. Am I missing something?)

And how about making a comment about the use of having started with Homes when underpoped as well? I'm sure it's a relevant situation. I often find myself underpoped in war...

[Atdy587]

I am not flaming lolz just trying to prove my point.

I concede that percentage upon hit is the same but

when you rebuild ur land into tgs and forts the ones with the high homes will suffer more cause they lose the 8 extra pop per home.

Assume all incoming land rebuild into tgs and forts for easy calculaton,

the 40% homes which ur prov is running will drop to 24%.

u will have a higher percentage of overpop as compared to one who does not run homes as he maintains a smaller percentage of overpop.

While this diff may nt be significant at small acres like below 1k, at larger province, the more land they lose the more significant the overpop percentage is as the percentage of homes drop.

[jasonthe13]

hehe i tried high homes and it totaly useless for me...
same goes with another guy in the kd he had 40% homes but now we run 10-15%
i run 10%. just because i am too lazy to raze it.....the high homes dont even seem to do anything....with the 30% extra land i can dumb it in gs and wt which is soooo much better :D

[lmtdconv92]

High homes strat to me, is one of those strats that look great on paper, yet fall apart in war. I think the strat could easily work OOW.

[Ordray]

High homes strat to me, is one of those strats that look great on paper, yet fall apart in war. I think the strat could easily work OOW.

It doesn't even win on paper... Palem and I have gone over this I don't know how many times.

I'll run a comparison later with the above example provinces maybe...

[pathetic sheep]

To do it right, let me give an example. Suppose we want to compare two provs A and B running the same attacker build: standard build. Now I take B and switch all TGs/Forts for Homes.

An argument used against homes builds was the following:
The prov using Homes will have lower off/deff then the one using mods.
Granted. But not much lower. It will compensate by having more population (more pezzies and more troops - assuming the same draft%) and a higher BE.

Replacing the Tgs/Forts is very likely to be a fail. If the homes have an advantage it is to make the training grounds, forts, and/or barracks work better. The homes have to replace banks, towers, and farms. If you take something important out of the building strategy then the building strategy is missing something important.

Province A with 12% forts and 100% mod BE will have a 15.82% defense bonus. Province B with 80% mod BE will need to get +15.83% with 15.6% forts. Province B with 15.6% hospitals will have -31.67 military losses. Province A will have -31.63% losses with 12% hospitals. If both provinces include 4 types of percentage based buildings then Province A has 48% of the build dedicated and province B has used 62.4. Province A has 14.4% left over to build into homes. If the other 37.6 is dedicated to flat rate buildings province A gets another 7.52% acres because BE is 100 instead of 80. So province A can build a total of 22% homes and have identical combat bonuses and flat rate production as province B.

The question is whether or not 22% homes is enough to make mod BE rise from 80 to 100. That depends on a lot of things including your draft rate and sciences. If you add the extra income from the extra peasants from home bonus and remove a few banks it is should be enough. Depending on your assumptions for banks% it could be enough to reach gogojet's numbers. I believe that both 40% homes and 20% banks is a bad idea for a small province in a ghetto war kingdom. But there is no need to pick one or the other. A higher draft rate [non-peasant roles/acre would be more accurate] will make the homes more valuable.

Higher base percentages also favor the homes, for example 20% at 100BE vs 27.6% at 80BE or maybe 17.6% at BE110. You could easily argue that no one needs a 24% bonus to offensive military efficiency. But for barracks it could make the difference between 3 attacks per day and 2 attacks. The attack time needed is heavily influenced by real world work and sleep schedules. Some of us skip sleep or can log in from work. So of us can not or do not.

Rather than calculating the details, I think it safe to assume that your enemies are going to have an enormous impact on your province. If the opposition decides to not attack you at all you will rapidly grow and have way more peasants than needed for max BE [also if T/M kill your peasants homes do not matter so much]. At that point your homes will be mostly worthless and you will feel the pain of having few banks. On the other hand, if the enemy decides to beat down your province then you only need to draft enough soldiers to use up free training credits. So you do not need the extra income. But you do need the extra space for your surviving military, wizards, and thieves.

There is also reason to call into question people's experience with various strategies. Higher networth per acre, high military efficiency and lots of offense can (usually does) motivate other kingdoms to target you. You can assume that the enemy will always target someone. Making them decide to target someone else does not help with the war win. In order to have a good comparison you need to try both strategies while getting heavily hit by larger provinces.

[Danrelle]

Let me reiterate.

1. I do not advise people to go a certain % Homes. I'm just pointing out some strategic aspects about use of Homes that was mentioned by gojete/vines and seems to have been overlooked.

2. I have used the example with Homes replacing TGs/Forts because both types of buildings serve the same functionality: both provide a bonus to offense. As we all know TGs/Forts provide modifiers, while Homes provide more troops.

(Ofc, Homes do not give you enough troops to beat the modifiers. Ofc, Homes provide other benefits as well. (more pezzies/Income, better BE) Ofc you could replace Banks or what not. I gave this example to make a point: to show that entering War with Homes has some strategical value.)

3. I've never said one should build any Homes during War. The effect of Homes under discussion is to increase the population you have when you go into War. That's all.

4. The argument I've presented is based on the following fact. Comparing A and B and keeping everything constant (both attack and are attacked the same, oped the same way). One can get modifier buildings during War, but one cannot increase an army size relative to the other during War. Not if everything is kept the same. The province that started with more troops will always have more troops, because all modifications to army size are based on percentages. But the province that started with modifiers can be caught up by a province that started without them, simply because of the strong land fluctuations during War.

5. I've also pointed out that having more population due to entering War with Homes does not mean that you are easier to overpop, except if you are targeted with heavy razes, tornadoes, or massacres. (and that is not an efficient tactic anyway) My point was that Trad Marches reduce your max pop quota by the same percentage, no matter what you have built on your lands.

These are the points I have emphasized. They show that entering War with Homes has a certain strategical value. When and how you should use Homes is up to your judgment, ofc.
I'm interested to continue a discussion about these points. (not saying they are the only relevant ones, but they do provide a basis and if we can't settle on these basics, extending the discussion will once more become chaotic.)

[jasonthe13]

i say max shld be 15% homes :p
too many other more usefull buildings....

[clarey]

Let me reiterate.

1. I do not advise people to go a certain % Homes. I'm just pointing out some strategic aspects about use of Homes that was mentioned by gojete/vines and seems to have been overlooked.

2. I have used the example with Homes replacing TGs/Forts because both types of buildings serve the same functionality: both provide a bonus to offense. As we all know TGs/Forts provide modifiers, while Homes provide more troops.

(Ofc, Homes do not give you enough troops to beat the modifiers. Ofc, Homes provide other benefits as well. (more pezzies/Income, better BE) Ofc you could replace Banks or what not. I gave this example to make a point: to show that entering War with Homes has some strategical value.)

3. I've never said one should build any Homes during War. The effect of Homes under discussion is to increase the population you have when you go into War. That's all.

4. The argument I've presented is based on the following fact. Comparing A and B and keeping everything constant (both attack and are attacked the same, oped the same way). One can get modifier buildings during War, but one cannot increase an army size relative to the other during War. Not if everything is kept the same. The province that started with more troops will always have more troops, because all modifications to army size are based on percentages. But the province that started with modifiers can be caught up by a province that started without them, simply because of the strong land fluctuations during War.

5. I've also pointed out that having more population due to entering War with Homes does not mean that you are easier to overpop, except if you are targeted with heavy razes, tornadoes, or massacres. (and that is not an efficient tactic anyway) My point was that Trad Marches reduce your max pop quota by the same percentage, no matter what you have built on your lands.

These are the points I have emphasized. They show that entering War with Homes has a certain strategical value. When and how you should use Homes is up to your judgment, ofc.
I'm interested to continue a discussion about these points. (not saying they are the only relevant ones, but they do provide a basis and if we can't settle on these basics, extending the discussion will once more become chaotic.)

you have not played in a proper full on active war sir, and i beg you to leave these boards. and dispose of that spreadsheet before going into war.

[Danrelle]

you have not played in a proper full on active war sir, and i beg you to leave these boards.

That's me. *trying to exit, but none of the doors lead out...*

dispose of that spreadsheet before going into war.

Spreadsheet? What spreadsheet?

Comments/Suggestions, puppy?

[DDodge]

You have it the opposite. Having homes pre-war is a complete waste. YOU DONT USE HOMES TO INCREASE YOUR TOTAL POPULATION BY 800... you use them for the birthrates.

There are 2 times when the birthrates are beneficial.

1. Beginning of the age
2. When you have outgrown an opponent in war and have incoming land and your total population looks like this:
Total Pop - 44,789
Max Pop- 112,789

Build 6% homes on the incoming land.

Other than that these so called numbers are terrible, because you are employing those numbers assuming you wont get attacked at all. You think KD's dont grab surveys before determining opening chain targets?

[Scavenger]

Homes are used for BE. Not pop, not BR... BE.

[Danrelle]

BE, BR, pop... stop trolling. Knowingly or not you guys are diverting the topic instead of addressing the claims.

@DDodge: I have not provided numbers. Just strategical arguments. One of which proved the fact that being chained with Homes does not leave you worse off than being chained without Homes. Did I assume I'm not getting hit?

Another argument above shows that there are potential uses for the pop bonus from Homes before entering War.

I have mentioned myself that Homes obviously give more benefits than just a bonus to pop. I chose to focus on one of those benefits, trying to prove that having Homes at start of War has some use, even if you only look at the pop bonus.

Let me ask everyone this: Is it good to go into War pumped? Then Homes can help you be more pumped. If you enter pumped, you can turn on the modifier buildings later. You get plenty of opportunities due to relatively large land fluctuations during War. (Again, did I assume I'm not getting hit?)