I don't think that any type of bounce add GBP or that they differ in kills. The only difference that i know of is that raze is the only attack which is NW independent.
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I don't think that any type of bounce add GBP or that they differ in kills. The only difference that i know of is that raze is the only attack which is NW independent.
I see, I will test some of this :) what are base losses again on defense/offense?
pretty sure aura has no effect on reflected spells, or we would have heard about it by now.Quote:
Originally Posted by UtopiaExpert
bouncing is dumb and usually not something you'd want to do, unless you know a kingdom is really focused on one particular province. in war it's the method of last resort to win against a stubborn opponent, at the start of hostile it's usually better to do damage/get gains on the provs that can be broken. i guess if hitting a huge bank in fort stance it's okay, but by now many provs should be prepared for this and know to bring money and troops for retraining.
What I like about bouncing is that you can do 14 hits yet not give away button. With Orc/warriors if you get in 3-4 bounces on a a PFed TM you easily drop their def by 25-30%, even more. And that's a huge chunk of NW you take down immediatly (they generally don't run hosps, your attackers do). We tried it a few times this age, sadly each time the opposition backed out.
I have been thinking about using it the way you describe UtopiaExpert. Next age i'll get the opportunity :)
UE: that's why you plan around retraining army, and optionally building hospitals to defray some of the losses. Orcs can kill quite a bit, but in hostile it only works the one time, and whoever that happens to has about 10-12 hours to retrain about 5-6 dspa (or whatever is needed to plug the gap created). Usually in a war kingdom you should be able to break most provinces outright, and it's usually better to accept enemy ubs, and either land 7 hits where they will do substantial gains, or wave outright and maintain the pressure all along for far more damage. I guess if both kingdoms are in fort stance it makes sense to bounce, other than that it's pretty silly.
Disagree with you noobium. The extra land/massacre/learn gains are nothing compared to the extra troop losses of 7 more attacks. I can promise you bouncing a TM 4 times will hurt him more than 2 hits. There is GBP to reduce losses after the first hit either. Last advantage is that you get all your armies out (which is kinda important playing Orc) without having to do side-hits with the risk of getting retalled.
"hurt" only applies if you can follow up with actual hits. it applies a lot more to large kingdoms that rely on cows that war-tier kingdoms with little size variation. the typical t/m shouldn't be much bigger than the kingdom average, while cows contain a lot more of the kingdom's acreage relatively speaking; 25% of a large province is a lot more than 25% of a merely average province.
with that in mind, retraining costs (replacing with specs) would be something like 5-6 dspec/acre. if you were sitting in fortified or just waiting for someone to wave into to you, your kingdom will likely have soldiers and money sitting on the core. the soldier cost would be maybe 0.5 soldier/acre among your 16 or so core attacker provs, the gc cost about 2100gc/acre of the bounced province IF they retrain in normal stance, 1200-1300 with fortified. The gc cost would probably be about 150-200gc/acre amongst your whole kingdom in normal stance, fairly expensive - but, if the t/m can log when the bounce is happening, the replacement troops will be mostly ready (entirely ready if you revert to fort). Again, building hospitals as a preventative measure mitigates this, and Elf makes it highly impractical. If those hits were directed at targets, you're taking resources that are harder to reclaim, and gaining resources that defray the military cost of bouncing.
Given that Faeries and Halfers are pretty fragile now, it's highly likely your t/ms should be building hospitals, especially if they plan on using elites to hit stuff. The 10% land investment might seem superflous, but if don't expect to hit, you should be able to rebuild them without too much money.
I suppose I should try before I bash, but it's still silly.
Does teh Merchant personality let the Undead get more Elite after attacks?
No.Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeyD473
I guess we agree Noobium. Bouncing can be used situationally but is also unwise situationally ^^
In war, how to play dwarf to get the best of them?
Bumped to the top thanks to forum wipe. It's not necro if it's on the first page amirite?
How do play Dwarf to get the best out of them? They're really good at handling attacks oow, and okay at growing. Their bonuses are passive and don't give a direct bonus to economic output or attacking, so this hurts them both for growing or warring. Dwarf isn't really good at fighting quick wars, but they can fit well with a lot of races - basically all of the attacking races work well with them, and the Dwarf/Elf synergy is still strong (but not as strong as it was when this question was posted).
This age, everyone else got better buffs than Dwarf, and Dwarf's only gain is that they naturally cast pitfalls. PF is a good spell, but the Dwarf's favored personality (Cleric) already had this spell.
Being Cleric is useful because it accounts for Dwarf's troop loss weakness relative to every other attacker, and not building hospitals is even better for a race with +30% BE and freebuild; or, in situations where a province really needs strong troop sustainability, Dwarf is better able to keep hospitals built and stack them with Cleric's natural -40%, allowing their armies to remain remarkably stable.
The flipside is that Dwarf damage output is going to be very tough, and it doesn't matter how well their economy and troops sustain if they are getting dominated by Orcs and Undeads too early. Picking a personality which enhances Dwarf outputs, like Merchant or Warrior, doesn't work as well as one would hope. At least this age, a Dwarf/Warrior gets pitfalls, which is really useful. You wouldn't want to have your Elf or Faery casting pf if a Dwarf can do the job just as well.
Dwarf/Tactician is pretty fail... their military isn't strong enough to really maximize faster attack speed (unlike humans and the 7pt hitters), they don't reach the really low attack times that avian/tact and their nw-efficiency is pretty bad already. It's remarkably easy for Dwarf Tacticians to bloat, and their bonuses become irrelevant or a liability; and for a turtly attacker with substantial defense, there are better options.
Generally, if you're playing Dwarf (or their counterpart, Undead), you want a province that can handle being hit and handle rebuilding, and should keep that in mind.
For a big cow there are far better options than Dwarf this age, though I guess it works...
Not to intrude on your thread...and i'll let u elaborate more if u feel the need, but dwarfs work best when they have high science. They get more out of the science due to their ability to act as more of a blank canvas AND are able to pump science easier than other races. If u plan on running dwarf, 1/2 your work will be out of war pumping "correctly"Quote:
Originally Posted by noobium
How to win Honor/WW crown this age?
This is true, the two are not mutually exclusive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Persain
Everyone needs science, even orcs.
Fight the other honor and warring kingdoms, it's the only way that isn't incredibly scummy.Quote:
How to win Honor/WW crown this age?
Obviously setup is only a small part of warring, so much of the game is mindgames and engineering situations as favorable as possible. Most likely though, if you want to win honor crown, it is better to pick your fights rather than have them picked for you, and your setup should be picked with the expectation of giving button for most of your wars - especially the wars later on, when you have to fight the strongest war kingdoms. It's not just about what races you pick, but where you prefer to position them.
My preference for setup would be to pick Orc/Merch, Av/Tact, and Elves. I might want some Faeries as well, but an advantage of not having Faeries is that more kingdoms are likely to offer button or accept a declaration, thinking the kingdom with less defensible provinces will be an easier win. A setup with 25 provinces that are all able to attack without training ospec midwar is really helpful for reaping maximum honor when you've won. The worse situation for a Faery is that massacred Faery = deader than dead, whereas an Elf can at least fall back on being able to attack, however poorly. If you have Faeries, you're keeping in mind that their function is more defensive than offensive... using Faeries as banks (or something like banks) is really the best way to use them. Economy and military don't have fail rates, and you'd want to favor strategies that are not dependent on the RNG.
If you want either chart, it's far better to fight quick wars rather than wars of long attrition, but your setup should be able to fight a long war if it has to. Long wars and dragged out hostiles are bad for business. Your goal, then is to make sure that when you do wave, whoever you wave will not be able to drag out indefinitely, or else they would lose too much ground to even consider pushing a button.
Retal wars can happen, as do gangbangs (however much people talk about "honor"). Only so much can be done to prevent the latter, but for the former, if you wave someone, you have to plan around the potential for retalwar, and make sure any retalwar is more damaging to the kingdom you fight than yourself. Bear in mind, if both kingdoms have the same goal of winning honor chart, for most of the age they can't afford protracted hostiles any more than you do. (Whether people act on that is a matter of luck.)
Depending on setup, it's usually better to just wave all your provinces, rather than trying to be clever with hostile meter. Some setups are good for that, but if you're playing Orcs or Undeads it's a terrible habit.
Arranged wars are kind of ****ty. I don't like them, too many people want to engineer favorable conditions, and start complaining when you try to do likewise. Best would be to just wave / offer button, shut up and let a grown-ass man or woman make their own decision with it. It's not worth it to get too clever with diplo, just ****ing war, retalwar, or don't. The d-bags who start this forum drama horse****, it's best not to deal with them any more than you have to, isolate them and don't allow them war wins / honor beyond what they deserve, and fight them when you're able to fight them.
At some point you're going to get a bunch of horse**** from these people.
Winning the honor crown is mostly luckboxing and some scumbagging, it's honestly not worth it to expect #1 right away. If you can get a top 10 honor chart place though, you are usually capable of getting closer and closer. There are too many things to say to get #1, and I'm hardly an expert on everything and anything. There are, however, common noob tropes which should be avoided, and one of the worst tropes that got popular lately was DURRR SUSTAIN.
edit: I should have mentioned up above, one of the most common ghetto mistakes - don't assume that you're always going to succeed 100% of ops and, in general, never be too overconfident or assume that a province is untouchable based on flawed assumptions. There's a fine line between judging a kingdom's strategic aptitude (since obviously some kingdoms are not going to be able to chain efficiently due to organizational weakness), and ignoring a weakness because you haven't experienced what it's like to get massacred in the ground. At the same time, it's hard to fully prevent some of the things that can wreck a province, like the rape province button, or a ton of massacres flattening a province to nothing if done rapidly enough.
edit 2: Massacre in war is super super good. Use it - it works even better if you picked Orcs, as not only are your massacres stronger, but unlike Undead the Orcs can actually capitalize on mass. Massacre is highly effective in ghetto wars, when dealing with low-defense provinces that you wouldn't want to waste a chain on; if they're not smart, the ghetto will keep land-grabbing with their provs because they've committed to land chains. If they are smart, at least you're not making that province stronger by giving them the range to keep dropping your core, and you've set up a target to help your chained guys recover.
Better kingdoms will realize that they do need substantial defense on their provinces to lock off potential sidetaps, so this will not be as effective.
Our kd does both. We try to prearrange a war, and if they say yes, then we hit enough to give button, and wait for them to do it. Has worked well last age for us. *****es gonna be *****es, not much you can do about it.Quote:
Arranged wars are kind of ****ty. I don't like them, too many people want to engineer favorable conditions, and start complaining when you try to do likewise. Best would be to just wave / offer button, shut up and let a grown-ass man or woman make their own decision with it. It's not worth it to get too clever with diplo, just ****ing war, retalwar, or don't. The d-bags who start this forum drama horse****, it's best not to deal with them any more than you have to, isolate them and don't allow them war wins / honor beyond what they deserve, and fight them when you're able to fight them.
At some point you're going to get a bunch of horse**** from these people.
Winning the honor crown is mostly luckboxing and some scumbagging, it's honestly not worth it to expect #1 right away. If you can get a top 10 honor chart place though, you are usually capable of getting closer and closer. There are too many things to say to get #1, and I'm hardly an expert on everything and anything. There are, however, common noob tropes which should be avoided, and one of the worst tropes that got popular lately was DURRR SUSTAIN.
Thanks for the insight. Looking at the survey, I don't see that many Orc/Merch, Av/Tact, and Elves. It will be interesting to see. I like no bs/negotiating warring. But I don't believe it's possible to win any of the crowns w/o going through the bs/negotiating.
And btw..what is UD so hated as an attacking race? I rather enjoy them a lot.
Undead can't theive and their elite nw is way too high, for a start. The spec convert requirement was a terrible penalty. Plague is way too random and situational, though it is the only good reason to pick Undeads. Offensive sustainability is the most overrated thing going; any long war is decided by defensive provinces, not offensive sustain, and long defensive hostiles are things that kingdoms really don't want to do. I could see picking Cleric for a kingdom full of noobs that isn't warring, but if I go that route I'd rather play Dwarves than Orcs.
The reason people don't pick those options is usually because they're dumb and pick crappy options like Orc/Cleric. What people pick in this game is usually a matter of what they're told to pick, not what's actually good or viable. People are told to play Orc/Cleric or Avian/Cleric for stupid reasons they shouldn't be in, and have convinced themselves that it's the only way to go, rather than doing the smart thing.
I'd only want Dwarves as Cleric, and that's due to their other bonuses rather than troop losses alone. Everything else is iffy at best.
Why not humans clerics? -58% def loses and they will have some sustain on the elites.
Plague is always good at the beginning of the chain.
Sage and Tactician have better bonuses against races not named Undead. Sages can be problematic and are really overrated around here, but Tactician is really good for synchronizing hit times.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bo To
Human/Cleric is better than Orcs, but many of the same things apply, except you'd actually use your elites to defend at times. Basing your strategy purely around troop sustainability is a terrible strategy, up there with Zapp Brannigan's strategy against the Killbots. Any troop sustain bonus should be considered along with what that means... for instance, Elf's old bonus meant that they had to be chained hard or don't bother, and Undead's bonus is great because it's tied into a race with a strong elite and Plague. Dwarf makes Cleric work because they build for free and have solid defense, making them really strong at handling attacks. Human is more smash/grab in war, even if you're playing in a ghetto (again, only considering them as the majority of a kingdom, not specialist roles like cow). In such a situation, if you're playing it right, hospitals are enough sustainability to do what you need to do. For long hostiles or wars, a human's major threat is more from being hollowed out with ops, or fighting against races who get a lot more freebies than human gets. What you'd really want is something which boosts your output offensive or economically, or something like Tactician or War Hero which have strategic uses.
For what it's worth, when Rusty (may they burn eternally in Hell) stomped my ghetto, they had no hospitals on their human/tacticians, in an age where Humans had less military strength than they do now.
I'm new. Tactically speaking, what's the purpose of kidnap and fireball on a province (and when should this be done)?
again this is ask "noobium" but hes ignoring a few key points :P
Over the time scale of 10+ days offensive sustainability IS directly related to a defensive prov. If i can simply control your peasants so neither side is training all i have to do is wait out your offensive decay while my offense sustains. Eventually i can pool resources such that 10-15k def is "enough" to create a defensive province in my kd while u'd have to pump to 20-25k.Quote:
Originally Posted by noobium
Thats y kds like FS almost always win, they just say my war strategy is going to be war untill both kds are gutted completely and hope we survive better..its also why
Tact is a HORRIBLE chose on human because with qf and tact your already at a lower attack time than most can sustain via army in/out. For the random attacker CS provides no def against t/ms who simply coordinate and cast MV before doing their op runs, its better to not need hospitals and overbuild WT. [NOTE: on attackers....RM is MUCH better than CS since you force the enemy to risk RMing MS, and MS is routinely cast...CS is comparable to RM via FBing, it'll "help" but ultimately it wont really slow the enemy down]Quote:
Originally Posted by noobium
Typically choice is going to be do i want more offense (warrior) or what provides more free space to my build cleric/tact. Its why cleric tends to be better than tact. W/that said war hero/sage/merchant are all options, but u have to KNOW u can close a war or how to pump science/wpa better than the enemy kd.
Just wanted to say I love this thread and strategy discussions! Old timer returning to the game after 10+ years :)
This gets thrown around a lot and I am going to finally call BS. If I am forcing you to hunt for CS with MV, burning mana and runes, AND I am active like these T/Ms who want to run ops on me it isn't all that hard to be ready for the ops run and get CS back up if they purge it before all that many ops get through (Thanks oops page!!!). Saying it provides no defense is flat out silly and seems to make the assumption that T/M cores are just superior humans to core attackers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Persain
Yea I don't know anyone in my kd or any of the kd's we warred last age who bothered to use MV.
lol... that wasnt my point and if thats the case you are probably doing it wrong...
How so? According to you it doesn't matter if both sides are active anyways...
well we can start with clearing ms off key provinces or TW pre chain but I don't plan to get into all the uses of mv here, I just want to challenge persain.
To say off sustainability is irrelevant because wars are decided by high deff provs is nonsense in its own league. Total off and total deff are relevant only in relation to eachother, not independently.
If you take into account that main cause for decrease of offense is combat loses, while big part (huge even on key "would be ub" provs) are ops, combat losses reduction effects (offensive ones in particular) have huge impact in war.
New players should take anything said by op with a grain of salt, some of his advice is legit, but theres a lot of crap.
And stay away from tactician, its hands down worst personality in game by far for anyone not aiming at 3 attacks a day.
Also Persian is right, RM is way more impactfull than CS, but only for attacker. IN case of tm provs, mystics in particular, CS is gamebreaker.
So much this.Quote:
Originally Posted by citadela01
not touching with ten foot pole
I am going have to disagree with tact as the worst personality.
I think Tact works exceptionally well with UD. It gives CS (CS is better than no CS. MV is only 50% chance of removing and only strong caster can land MV with good success rate, so less other harmful spells like MS.) It gives the UD high utility on thievery being the #1 intel gatherer and never losing thieves on failed ops with 1 thief : D)
Reduced attack time vs military loss vs more fire power..it's a toss up and really how you think about it. I would say they are about the same.
Tactician is useful not because faster attacking is inherently better, but because Tactician allows for a province to run no barracks/qf and keep useful attack time. The value of attack time is not a linear boost, a given attack speed is either useful for some purpose or it isn't. (Although it should be noted that stacking Tactician with other speed reduction losses can be useful tactically than stacking Cleric with Hospitals is... for Warrior and Merchant, stacking their bonuses with other traits is more obvious.) A province can't always micromanage their prov to include barracks, but usually wants to wave in tight formation whenever possible, especially humans due to their army.
It's pretty obvious that the strongest badplay trope going is DURRR SUSTAIN and I have no interest in repeating what is obvious, but seriously, how many long wars are decided by attackers hitting big t/m? If big t/m are going down, it's because they're getting reduced via ops, or those big t/m by themselves aren't doing enough output to stop the smaller kingdom.
In situations where both kingdoms are depleted of economy and one side is Cleric, then yeah, the Clerics have an advantage core to core... but that situation isn't one that should happen if you want to be an effective kingdom, whether warring or growing, usually within a week of war, one side would have a substantial advantage economically. Even then, at that stage, what a kingdom has done with their provinces to date should have had meaning, and Clerics do less with outputs than Warrior or Sage, or Tactician if they are using the speed bonus effectively. If Warrior and Sage didn't output significantly more useful action over a week, a kingdom ought to ask themselves why and how that happened; sometimes it can't be helped, but part of playing the game is positioning provinces to utilize their assets as optimally as possible.
Going back to Tactician, I think they're not very good as an individual province, and on paper their stats just suck. They are however very nice if there's a purpose behind them.
For a sustainable personality on Orc or Avian, I'd rather go Merch than Cleric. Merch does a lot more to engineer situations which are favorable to an Orc kingdom, and performs well enough in long wars if a kingdom can supply soldiers.
pick someone offline, get chained attacker to cast MV a few times. 3 rogues do op runs "together" and boom cs doesnt help. Basically a worthless spell.Quote:
Originally Posted by 2Utopian
Now if your talking about having CS on a t/m or a high wpa a/m...sure thats completely different but no one should be going a/m and choosing tact.
I put in itallicies and ***'ed a false statement, many VERY good/effective kds plan setup's based around everyone is going to be gutted how to win after that.Quote:
Originally Posted by noobium
As well I bold-ed the key statement in your "Argument" that cleric is bad. What you do with what you have is the key point. With that said given the current bonus's "attack fast" is less of a bonus than sustain...epically when on 100% unbuilt provs like a good portion of attackers end up in war.
No building effect from personality should be evaluated w/o considering diminishing returns effects and how it correlates with stacking same type of bonuses from buildings.Quote:
Originally Posted by asdfghy
Simply translating given bonus into direct building effects starting from 0 buildings build is misleading.
ie:
average prov running say 80% BE:
tact 15% attack speed = ~15% buildings
cleric 40% combat losses = ~21% buildings
6% dont look too gamebreaking, but lets add hosps to the mix and say cleric includes 15% hosps in his build:
cleric combat losses reduction = 58.36%
tact trying to achieve same number would actually need ~42% hosps, 27% difference.
In another words he cant achieve it, cause it would be dumb to try. Same logic applies to warriors and tg's, sages and libs, merchants and banks.
Succesfull province is built by emphasizing one's strengths and stacking cumulative bonuses. Other personalities can do this but tactician cant since everybody just wants 12hs attack times. Unless going for 8hs and 3 attacks a day you should rly stay away from tact, its bad.
Yes CS is nice, and even accurate intel can be useful for ghetto player but its peanuts compared to what top personalities provide.
Top 3 personalities for gheto/warring tier attacker are sage, warrior and cleric in no particular order, since choice of one you use should be based on KD setup and not personal preference.
Merchant and WH are kinda iffy since they have some glaring weaknesses
Agree.
...
hospitals are not equivalent to barracks (or tg, or schools/libs, or any other rough personality equivalent) - i.e., combat losses may not be relevant to your province at all times, and attack time may not be relevant to your province.
everybody does not just want 12 hr attack times, that's a silly and limiting argument. i want attack times that are low enough for my purposes, not some arbitrary attack time that plays into what my opponent expects. also consider that barracks can't always be built, or aren't at maximum effectiveness, and that can lead to attack times drifting apart - which leads to further complications, especially for a human core.
i don't know why someone would pick a personality for attackers at the time attackers are at their weakest utility, instead of picking something which plays to attackers when attackers are strong, or something with better economic bonuses like Merch. there is some allowance for Dwarf or Human Clerics, but that's because both races would use elites to defend, and have other traits that work well with Cleric's bonuses. for Orcs or Avians, you'd be far better off picking Warrior or Merchant if the only concern is sustaining offense or economy, since both have traits that are useful in short wars, growth, and for Merchants rebuilding/pumping. i'd still argue that the only really good personality on Avian is Tactician anyway, just because of how strong Av/Tact speed can be when used properly. if people cannot think about how to use Av/Tact properly and think in terms of MOAR HITS, then yeah it sucks and they deserve to lose, but that's something that people can figure out i'd hope.
re: CS - its a small but non-trivial step to remove it via MV. if i'm really cautious and have control over logins, i'm going to jump on when i suspect an enemy would wave, so i can re-up my buffs and do all manner of trickery to stall an enemy wave. it's still not a guarantee, since a kingdom might just use NS to shred and i can't re-up 24/7. CS is not the reason i'd pick Tactician by itself, but it is a nice buff, along with not losing any thieves on intel (which will, over a long war, bleed a significant portion of starting thieves)
Cleric is more economy centered pers on high draft attacker than Merchant is even oow, and in war merch is pretty much crap. Bigger you get and deeper into the age you are more true this statement gets true.
Only times merch is superior is early in age, at low drafts, and in eowcf.
To imply cleric is not economy centered personality like you do just goes to show how little you know.
Ill repeat my advice to new players, take anything op says with grain of salt. His game knowledge is very limited.