Acre Fluidity
This is a simple concept based in the work ethics of a hyperactive. If you're in the attacking field you no doubt have been chained. I'm not saying you won't ever get chained again. First you have to have no life and dig competition in Utopia. Ok, so all this is is taking in acres fast enough to where your troops aren't abandoning due to lack of housing. If you ran an avian tac and sent one general out every 2 ticks you'd be bringing in acres awfully quickly, and thus have room for housing. If you also didn't just arbitrarily attacked but aimed at nw relevancy you might just open a nw dmz around your province.
When I was playing with this I was being attacked and countered with 2 ambushed to enemies above my nw and 2 trad marches below my nw. This is relay/zone genesis. The ambushes begin the time stretch, as you suddenly have a 2 tick segment between gains. Now I did this alone, but in TVK you might have a player in division who can Nightmare/NS etc. to get more mileage out of your array of generals.
Now you see, basically every kingdom not thinking out of the box will cry how you can't break a t/m now. What's ridiculous about that frame of mind is that you can look far and wide for kingdoms that actually engage t/ms early, while attackers still have offense. Either the game is stuffed with troll leadership who like to watch their players suffer and beg for aid unanswered, or there are too many leaders who don't understand alternative means. I'm serious. I've experienced this always in lost wars, where the only reason I'm a threat is because I didn't crash and drain my kingdom in the mud like the rest of the attackers.
The sense of urgency vs the amount of actual help is very frustrating. It really is that people who grew up in the digital age think in on-off and never experienced a dimmer switch. We can do a lot of nuanced and graceful things in Utopia, but you'd think it was just slamming a big red button by the way many players envision their role. Sure some are above it and those guys are in the best kingdoms. The bot is not their god, it is a tool for players who aren't mind slaves to mechanical automations. I didn't even use the thing. You see, if you invest your mind so mechanically that the bot is the all seeing eye then you'll only accept logistical outcomes and you CF logistically superior foes. And you only follow strategic concepts that are readily available in any forgettable war.
Renember: I'm pre-Internet, didn't use the bot, made fat provinces from what was projected as a nerfed race with -10% population with the lowest offensive elite and could break 22 of 25 provinces in the #2 land kingdom by our 5th war. Yeah, it was a faery you're supposed to run as a mystic. Why? Because they randomed me and I saw them. Oh, yeah I'm aware of top kingdom homes pump. I've been up there a lot and you have to know your limits, and the projected negative peasant count. I've been up there in war so I've seen the fully realized top pump. You need to see it to, but you won't if you CF your logistical superior. How will you know what works when it's really tough and the enemy is online 24/7?
Mind you, I have great respect for competitive kingdoms and never want to prevent them from mastering their destiny against their own. I approach high caliber exchanges as playtime and I didn't target sensitive provinces unless they got too serious. But again, this is where you learn and, if applicable, teach them certain aspects of the game. For one, I started using my forum name as my leader name so that would be randoms would have a chance to see if it's me. Some might want to hit me and they were welcome. Others had the chance to random a safer target.
I was told relay wouldn't work in the big kingdoms so I went up there to see..and it worked. I went up there with an elf cleric once and became very formidable; with near impunity. There was no fear or reluctance and I won my exchanges in war against full blown orcs. Top orcs. Out of war it was bedlam since we hadn't secured CFs and were a kingdom in an age off. That how you get in with your build instead of assigned builds. So I got to use my builds against theirs and I was no longer confident, I was sure. I knew then that I was fine.
My greatest problem is that I'm not motivated to hit down. I require strife to enjoy Utopia and the cultural limits of fear in the lower kingdoms along with my love of freedom to retaliate simply don't mesh. It makes me poison so I retired. There's no longer the option to run a single province kingdom or I'd still play.
Originally Posted by Bishop
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