ask noobium

[noobium]

You have no argument so you resort to insulting me, because you want the same degenerated game where ghettos play stupid, and line up to get farmed age after age.

None of this DURRR SUSTAIN **** held true when Cleric was a better personality than it is now. The good Cleric setups aren't picking Orc or Avian, they pick Dwarf - and then only when Dwarf is a strong race, which it isn't this age (it's good and playable for something, but not clearly the best option). What changed since Cleric lost +1 gen or reviving soldiers, that made Cleric suddenly great, when Cleric had better bonuses (and better bonuses relative to other persos)? That's right, nothing.

It's just another meme to keep the game at such a piss poor tactical level.

[LoRD_SaMPuaN]

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.
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

this post should be added to personalities page on wiki..

[LoRD_SaMPuaN]

You have no argument so you resort to insulting me, because you want the same degenerated game where ghettos play stupid, and line up to get farmed age after age.

None of this DURRR SUSTAIN **** held true when Cleric was a better personality than it is now. The good Cleric setups aren't picking Orc or Avian, they pick Dwarf - and then only when Dwarf is a strong race, which it isn't this age (it's good and playable for something, but not clearly the best option). What changed since Cleric lost +1 gen or reviving soldiers, that made Cleric suddenly great, when Cleric had better bonuses (and better bonuses relative to other persos)? That's right, nothing.

It's just another meme to keep the game at such a piss poor tactical level.

i have complicated feeling towards you noobium - its good that you keep giving bad advise to our opponents, but on the other hand this lowers the competition quality.. oh well, at least the forums are more active with you posting a lot..

[Palem]

I feel like this thread should be called "Disagree with noobium" lol


Keep it civil gentlemen

[noobium]

Speaking for the ghettos;
probably one of the biggest issues facing a ghetto kingdom is preparing gc for dragons, and generally managing their oow economy. while the problem with that isn't so much tied to a lack of income, being Merchant should mean that the ghetto has no excuse not to have dragons ready to go, and hastens rebuilding and pumping.
Even though ghettos have no shot at winning land crown or any other chart, they're going to want to pump efficiently just like any other kingdom, as that is generally good practice.

Probably the biggest mistake to make it to assume, just because you're ghetto, you don't have to play the game oow and don't gain any benefit from doing so. It can be rought, really rough, but managing your kingdom oow is crucial for engineering wins, and the gc from being Merchant is useful for setting up waves, pumps, etc. It's not perfect and suffers some weaknesses in long wars, but for an economic personality, Merchant is remarkably solid this age thanks to income penalty immunity.
The alternatives for Orc I see are Warrior (solid), Tactician (hard to justify because of spell duplication, attack speed can be irrelevant or a liability to orc), or Cleric (iffy, really only good if running fewer attackers than normal, or expecting to fight lots of Undead).
Due to the buff to Undead, I might consider using Orcs as Clerics, but even then it's mostly for noob protection, and if I really wanted to play to Cleric's advantages and fight long hostiles, I'd use Dwarf Clerics anyway in ghettoland.

[asdfghy]

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.

I understand what you are trying to say, but the same argument can be said if you want quicker attack time. Tact +15% Raxes = unreachable* attack time for cleric.
Also, I don't think it is worth it to stack hospitals on top of cleric because the bonus is multiplicative and greatly reduces returns. In your own math, adding 15% hospital only adds 18.3% percent. Nor do I want to stack Raxes on top of Tact, for the same reasons. (Noobium, I realize you entertain the idea of Avian/Tact for that crazy 8 hour attack time (I have in the past done the same.) But honestly I haven't seen any kd that are crazy/dedicated enough to pull that off; great in theory but impossible in RL. ;/)


And for the life in me, I don't understand why folks would belittle the other bonuses of tact (accurate intel and CS) especially when comparing different personalities. I feel as if we're just taking a part of tact and pretending that is all tact can offer compared to everything that cleric and general offers....

Even though in war, attack time with tact w/o raxes is 9hr ish, this still gives opportunity for the tacts to double wave a non-tact kd here and there during a war--especially a long war. I think this is a great benefit of tact that hasn't been mentioned.

[asdfghy]

I feel like this thread should be called "Disagree with noobium" lol


Keep it civil gentlemen

LoL, I agree. But the forum feels so dead, so I thought it would be nice to talk strategy, since I am interested in gibbering about it.

[noobium]

I have yet to see a substantial answer why suddenly Cleric is so obviously awesome that running anything else is a waste of time. Ten ages ago or thereabouts, when Cleric was legit better than it is now in absolute and relative terms, this argument wasn't a thing.

[citadela01]

I understand what you are trying to say, but the same argument can be said if you want quicker attack time. Tact +15% Raxes = unreachable* attack time for cleric.
Also, I don't think it is worth it to stack hospitals on top of cleric because the bonus is multiplicative and greatly reduces returns. In your own math, adding 15% hospital only adds 18.3% percent.

This is very common mistake people make. Adding hosps increases your combal loses REDUCTION by 18.3%, that does not mean you reduces your losses by 18.3% when compared to cleric w//o hosps.
Actual combat losses difference between two clerics in question would be 0.6*base to 0.417*base which translates to whooping 30.5% diference ... as you can see thats still hefty return on invesment.

Reason i emphasize 12hs atack time is because it fits rl requirement, pretty much every warring KD waves in 12 hs cycles and most individual players will tend to so the same in ghetto, it just fits rl schedule. So you are right, there is zero reason to stack rax on tact but as you can see theres plenty reasons to stack hosps on cleric, and obviously tg on war etc etc ... tact is the only discussed personality whos main aspect (building saving one) can not realisticly be stacked.

Rest of tact bonuses are minor, CS is nice but acurate intel rly is overrated. Only intel op you should be doing with 100% accuracy is SoT and you can pretty much get that one on anyone easily enough, som's and everything else are perfectly fine with 10 thieves. Exception is when you need accurate intel to calculates someones wpa but if you are that level of organization than you know how to go about those things w/o sacrificing personality choice for that.

[Persain]

His game knowledge is very limited.

His game knowledge is fine and on par with most, his strategy and reasoning in this specific reason are lacking though. Its why some kds can get utterly crushed in SOME wars and yet be VERY strong in others. See last age my kd vs BB twice. In the war where we lost they used their advantage and knowledge of Cows to take about 25% or so of our land. My kd didn't know how to stop it so we got beat HARD. In the war that we won against them (no cows, closer sized, small advantage) we took only like 10% of their land because they still knew how to stop us from stomping them.

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.

attack times actually have very little impact on the game when it comes to core v core. Sure 3v3 cow wars and even well timed t/m / UB att times matter they want to get armies out->in and stay unbreakable. But when your talking core v core u cant really do that, any "good" kd would start simply staggering their cores attack time so that when you finally do attack they get to attack you leets out.

The Alternative is you want good attack times to massacre/ambush.
--Massacres sure, that could be usefull but again, its not like theres only 2-3 people your trying to dodge you either have "enough" land that u can risk a kd using staggered attack times hiting u with zero incoming (in which case what does a 8 hour time do that at 11 hour time cant).
--Ambushes are like who cares. If i care about my incoming land i'll annon, if i dont then im probably hiting u hard enough that the goal is overpopulation. And i dont care if u grow 3000 acres after i chained u the idea was to remove the "threat" via chaining.

In actuality what really matters for attackers is to balance
1.Chaining.....% land taken/attack time and how well u survive a chain
2.Raw military power
3.OPs....damage to and from, how much econ they can produce
4.Military sustainability
And if u try to sort the personalities how they play out
personality||Chaining......||Raw power || OPS.....||Military sustain
Tact..........|...+Major.....|..................|.+minor..|...-minor negative
Sage.........|....+minor....|....+Minor....|.+Major..|........
merchant...|..................|..................|..+minor.|+minor
warrior......|..+major......|.+massive...|.............|....+minor
cleric.........|....+major....|.....+minor .|.+minor..|....+Major
war hero....|...................|................|...+minor |.....+minor
Mystic........|.................|-minor negative|+Major|.....-minor negative
Rogue........|.................|-minor negative|+Major|.....-minor negative

Most should go Warior/cleric/sage>tact/merchant>war hero/mystic/rogue on evaluating the personalities. Sage however depends on good science and warrior can scare away an enemy that sees big numbers and goes holy crap we cant compete with that.

anyway...edit

I have yet to see a substantial answer why suddenly Cleric is so obviously awesome that running anything else is a waste of time. Ten ages ago or thereabouts, when Cleric was legit better than it is now in absolute and relative terms, this argument wasn't a thing.

Its not that its "Awesome" its that its not worthless and a viable option compared to the others. I just personally think that merchant is still a bit weak due to ease of FB, sage is to weak without learns protection, and tact is kinda useless as you never need to be attacking faster if u plan for a "long" war. (sure tact is viable if u are SURE u can win quickly or, parely that quick win into a nw win)

[asdfghy]

This is very common mistake people make. Adding hosps increases your combal loses REDUCTION by 18.3%, that does not mean you reduces your losses by 18.3% when compared to cleric w//o hosps.
Actual combat losses difference between two clerics in question would be 0.6*base to 0.417*base which translates to whooping 30.5% diference ... as you can see thats still hefty return on invesment.

We are talking about the same thing. You are viewing it in the perspective of how much extra units will be saved compared to the original amount that cleric has helped saved already. I am viewing it from how much reduction in base loss. Without cleric/hospitals, no reduction in loss. 100% base. With Cleric/no hospitals, it's 40% reduction in loss, With cleric/hospitals (in your scenario) is 58.36% reduction in loss. I am viewing it in terms of absolute base lost. :D

Reason i emphasize 12hs atack time is because it fits rl requirement, pretty much every warring KD waves in 12 hs cycles and most individual players will tend to so the same in ghetto, it just fits rl schedule. So you are right, there is zero reason to stack rax on tact but as you can see theres plenty reasons to stack hosps on cleric, and obviously tg on war etc etc ... tact is the only discussed personality whos main aspect (building saving one) can not realisticly be stacked.

If we're talking about RL conditions, then yes for most people 12 hrs cycle is most convenient. I and others that I know of have done magic with tact. (Maybe we're just crazy but w/e). Let's just say it's very situational.

Rest of tact bonuses are minor, CS is nice but acurate intel rly is overrated. Only intel op you should be doing with 100% accuracy is SoT and you can pretty much get that one on anyone easily enough, som's and everything else are perfectly fine with 10 thieves. Exception is when you need accurate intel to calculates someones wpa but if you are that level of organization than you know how to go about those things w/o sacrificing personality choice for that.

I have won crowns and we used tacts...that's all I had to say about that....

[citadela01]

If we're talking about RL conditions, then yes for most people 12 hrs cycle is most convenient. I and others that I know how of have done magic with tact. (Maybe we're just crazy but w/e). Let's just say it's very situational.

I am not doubting tact is viable (even only) choice if you want to race 3 attacks a day benchmark, outside of that nitche I rly dont think its worth picking up.

I do disagree about evaluating clerics hosps via base losses perspective tho. Relative troops loss difference should be observed since that is the diference you will feel and effect the hosps will provide.

[Samsquanch]

I have a legit question for noobium. What wins wars? Say you have two equally active kd's with the same set up (racially and persona wise). If one had a better strategy that enabled them to win the war, what would that strategy be?

[noobium]

presuming both were carbon copies of each other in stats, stockpiled gc, fighting in a vacuum?
it would really depend on a few things:

- who is more active. obviously.
- who is more aware of their setups' strengths and will play to them as war progresses, or who uses tactics which are generally sound.
- who has initiative in engaging hostile (the effect of this varies based on what setup is copied)
- pure luck.

Realistically, two kingdoms which engage each other will not be on equal stats, and usually (if both sides are playing tactically sound), it depends on whether the setup used favors being the aggressor or being the defender. It's not a hard rule, but something like Orc, Undead, or Human are better as aggressors, while Dwarf is really tough to wave into especially with an appropriate mindset.
Usually, two kingdoms with a carbon copy setup would run different buildings depending on whether they were the aggressor or defender, so it's rare to find two kingdoms that are exactly evenly matched, just because of the difference between an aggressor and defender in hostile. If, for some bizarre reason, both sides agreed to a war declare date w/hostile already set and had the exact same stats, then it's more complex, but generally holding armies

Okay, so what wins wars? Ultimately, the ability to snowball advantages, wherever they may lie, so that inch by inch, one side can take more and more as the war progresses, and there is nothing the other kingdom can do about it. In theory, every war could stretch out nearly indefinitely, or until ubs on one side have all the acres, but if one side has a hammerlock on gaining acres, honor, or anything else appropriate to their goals, extending a war (or a hostile) means little more than annoyance. That would be the conditions for winning if just looking at war on its own, and not thinking about chart shaping, or stalling someone so they can't win honor or war chart. There's no arbitrary marker for winning a war like "oh i haz ubs", "oh my t/ms stronk", or "oh my offense will live forever", if one side has a reason to stall for a better end position, then they're going to go on, and if one kingdom will only keep losing resources with each successive wave, then they need to push the wd button sooner rather than later, even if they're aren't losing that much on paper.

It sounds like a cop-out, but honestly, there's no one-dimensional strategy to auto-win, and I don't even consider myself a god at this game. What I do know are things which don't work, usually from experience getting mauled in ghettoland, and things which are really overrated. When in doubt, do the thing that does the most damage to an enemy's outputs, and keep doing that with every wave, every attack, every op, every soldier and every gc. That's a generally useful offensive strategy, anyway. Defensively, your job would be to to make sure your provs keep putting out damage, and prevent enemy attempts to strip those outputs away from you. With that in mind, you have to think then about the best way to remove or limit enemy outputs over the next wave, and looking forward 24-48 hours for what would follow.
Although usually it is beneficial to tear down individual provinces, often times split damage is more effective for the goal of damaging outputs, for example peasant control usually involves splitting fireballs/massacres, or it's better to split nightstrike to control the largest offense that can hit your provinces, as this means effectively being able to keep less defense on your t/ms in relative safety.

Though I suppose a shorter way is for me to say "I don't know" - I don't claim to be all-knowing, but I do know what I see when I observe war kingdoms and growth kingdoms fight each other, and I don't have any of the biases or ego involved in those fights. What I have seen, between kingdoms that start even and don't screw up, is that sustaining offense by itself is largely irrelevant, and Cleric is a substantial hit to a provinces' outputs, economically or militarily, next to most other personalities.

[Samsquanch]

Though I suppose a shorter way is for me to say "I don't know" - I don't claim to be all-knowing, but I do know what I see when I observe war kingdoms and growth kingdoms fight each other, and I don't have any of the biases or ego involved in those fights. What I have seen, between kingdoms that start even and don't screw up, is that sustaining offense by itself is largely irrelevant, and Cleric is a substantial hit to a provinces' outputs, economically or militarily, next to most other personalities.

It's all good, I was just looking for some perspective. Last age, out of the 6 wars I had with my kd we lost one, and the one we lost was very close, and dragged out a few days. We had relatively equal activity and land gains, it basically came down to economy. They were able to get out an extra dragon, and it slowed us down just enough to the point where they gained the edge and we conceded to them. They were also able to chain us a little bit more effectively, and keep our chained provinces down at the same time. Military numbers themselves didn't really seem to matter, we were all quad tapping and trading acres towards then end anyway.