Divisions & Teamwork
The allure around Utopia often focuses on the wave. Kingdoms in the upper echelons often benefit from well coordinated waves with all provinces online. Many mechanical efficiencies are apparent, with few exceptions.
My focus here, in The Virtual kingdom 70, is to explore alternatives to waving. Taking seemingly disorganized efforts and combining their objectives into one effective goal oriented strategy. This isn't new to some of the most polished kingdoms. It is in warring these accomplished kingdoms that these ideas emerged. While these ideas may be lost on those who have proven track records, this is aimed at kingdoms seeking a system more inline with their style of play; specifically, lower tier kingdoms.
There are certain characteristics of lower tier kingdoms that I've witnessed countless times: namely the relationship between thief/mage operations, hybrids and attackers. Communication and activity tend to be poorly matched. Even so, most orders are given to the thieves and mages and other orders given to attackers. But what if we integrate like activity sphere provinces into action committees or as I call them, divisions?
What we're doing here is putting a microscope on how things are done in polished kingdoms and compacting those practices into manageable accounts of 5 provinces. One practice I believe in is touching each and every enemy province so that none can go through their day without seeing something in their news.
The first thing we do with a division is we match our 5 against 5 of our enemies. We see logistically how we match up. Where are we weak, where are we strong, how can we defeat an equal number of provinces and serve the greater good of the kingdom? Will we need reinforcements? The enemy isn't attacking us in divisions, how do we react to their global strategy? - These questions can be answered in first seeing how the team reacts to adversity. The success or failure of your reaction is based in teamwork.
Since I'm an analogy expert, I think the best way to evaluate oneself is through similarity:
SWAT teams
Special ops mercenaries
Mechanized warfare
Rock & Roll bands
Sports like basketball, football, soccer
Cheerleading
Work
Hi-fi audio
Astronomy
A look at the divisions can help. I'm not saying these are perfect, but that they're oriented toward an engagement structure. So, the northern and southern divisions consist of the highest attack/ops/sabotage landing percentages. The northern division is consistent with engaging enemy rogues and similarly built provinces. The southern division is more closely designed to engage enemy mystics. Each of the northern and southern divisions carry a duo of attacker escorts.
The northern division has the avian warrior and human sage. The southern division has a dwarf war hero and human tactician. The primary provinces; elf, halfling and orc, in each division, directly engage enemy t/ms while the escorts run interference to help keep enemy counter attacks at arms length.
The eastern division is designed for heavy core engagements, generally in the heart of the kingdom at the lower nw ranges. The western division is designed to engage higher nw core and hybrid provinces. These roles will obviously coalesce as chaining and shelling proceed on both sides.
The central HQ division is a jack-of-all-trades. It is to be defended, it is to reinforce, it is to push where the enemy hasn't been pushed and provide a nucleus to the orbital divisions. This division is envisioned as the Winston Wolf(Pulp Fiction) of the kingdom and should be home to the most active players. The avian tactician can move from assignment to assignment faster than any other province in the kingdom. The faery and dwarf compliment provide the versatility to adapt to a plethora of climates.
All things being equal, I'm not ready to call this a war kingdom or a frustrated top kingdom. The setup may seem wanting in certain regards but this isn't all about meta.
The Virtual Kingdom is a celebration of Utopia and offers every advantage and disadvantage. It is a pageantry of the developers work and central to the most important structure of the game: culture.
Originally Posted by Bishop
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