Galava

[Tezkat]

Heh... You're gonna get rich off of me. I'm losing about 4 mil worth of stuff per attack now.

Free monies for all!

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

richer. ;-]


More protective money store up now.

Incidentally, so far you've spent some 6 million on me. Said money is mostly still sitting there, and will probably be mostly available for return if you need it.

As long as you don't take too long. ;-]

[Tezkat]

I'll probably dump some more monies on you soon, as I'm selling off my huge stone reserves now.




Since nobody else has been particularly vocal either way, I'm going to go ahead with treaty negotiations with the West Side Thug Unit. Most likely MDP or higher.

Just so you know what we're getting ourselves into...

The Thugz are currently among the most active raiders in the game. Due to their rather prescient decision to amass enormous armies before the war system went live, there isn't a whole lot other guilds can do about it except ask them nicely to lay off. Such conditions may not exist after the reset, as they aren't particularly numerous.

They're friendly with the DraGOONS and will probably announce a treaty in the near future. They also have good relations and an ODP with the Knights of New Galava, a small guild like ours.

In short, we'll be aligning ourselves with the crazy warmonger bloc.




Stuff I'm learning about the war system...


Troop count is king. Whoever starts with more troops will win.

Stick with one type of unit (magic, melee, or ranged). It's really not worth it to explore multiple weapon trees. You can only give each weapon/armour to one unit, however, so your first unit gets the best weapon, the second the second best, and so on. Nonetheless, it's a good idea to have all of your units active and of the same type, so that you can build them more quickly. Rotate your armoury upgrades among them when you get new toys.

Structure damage spells suck. Total waste of mana.

Rams and cannons can do considerable wall damage. However, it's probably best to use siege towers and forget about walls.

You can only select 2 types of defensive workshop units per war, and then only after the war has been declared. So there's a fairly strong first strike advantage if one is attacked while offline. I'd recommend barriers and trenches.

Buy/queue up all your workshop units before upgrading them. Price is Level x 1000, and upgrading is free.

You can only send 4 attacks at a time. These refresh after the troops arrive, not after they get back.

You gain (or lose ) a max of 25 allegiance per attack. It seems to depend on how decisive the victory was.

Progression costs after 1200 spiral upwards exponentially (seriously... I'm talking 100k+ resources and millions of gold per point--you basically have to plunder or trade for it at that point), so the top players are currently raiding everyone in range.

Raiding is currently more profitable than exploration.

Troop count is king. I'd suggest one troop per land as a bare minimum for anyone in war mode, and arbitrarily large militaries for those above 500 or so progression. You probably won't be able to hold off an attacker twice your size, but you will at least be lower on the target list. Troops are relatively inexpensive now. It's probably a good idea to make troop building your priority and use the leftover food/gold for exploration, etc.

[Tezkat]

Random updates...

Darkdragon's empire got rolled. My first province is about to fall.

The troop creation time was recently reduced from 1 minute/troop to 15 seconds/troop. If you have any troops queued up, buy a few more to reset the rate.

[Darkdragon]

I also had to be attacked on the same day which the router broke (which I managed to get fixed). Must be my bad luck.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

*whistles innocently from hippy mode*

The bank is still open; withdrawals available upon request. ;-]

[Tezkat]

I also had to be attacked on the same day which the router broke (which I managed to get fixed). Must be my bad luck.

If you have any info that could be useful to us about defeated provinces, please post!

e.g. How long are your provinces under protection after being plundered? Are you allowed to enter peace mode? Did anything interesting happen that didn't show up in the public war reports (e.g. workshop losses don't show up)? And so on...

[Darkdragon]

There were no workshop losses because I wasn't online to set which workshop upgrades to use.

I seem to be under protection from being attacked. Since the last attack was almost 20 hours ago, I can say it is at least that long.

All active building and training queues would be terminated when your province is fallen or plundered. If your attacker was a nice guy (mine was to a degree; he didn't plunder the first province) they would choose to move on to the next province without taking resources.

Is there anything which I can help answer?
=======
Is 30,000 troops enough?

[Tezkat]

Hmm... I'd say 30k troops is about a lower limit. Most would have to be in the outer province. Basically, you're in range of almost all the top empires, who all have 100k+ troops and are now gaining 70k+ troops a day. To defeat a province, you basically need to bring a province down to the point that you can hit them with 4 decisive strikes (sending at least as many troops that you have) and get to max allegiance all at once. They'll hit a 30k province once they run out of easier targets, but very few will be able to demolish it in a few hours, giving you a chance to rebuild if you're online often enough. (Some have ridiculous troop counts due to bugs and such, though.)

I think using the "ignore and move on" (as opposed to plundering or occupying) protects a province for 24 hours. At any rate, your first province is already out of protection. When the second one goes green, people will be able to declare on you again. Might be a good idea to go hippie mode for a day or so until you get your military built up.

If you have the funds, I'd just keep building troops and not stop. It'll actually pay for itself eventually, since raiding is quite profitable... and being raided is rather expensive.

[Darkdragon]

I actually happen to be short gold right now

I have a healthy amount of food at the moment, and would like to ask what formula do you use to determine the tax rate (i.e. I would like to know the fine line where you need to change rates to be more profitable). And if Tezkat won't mind, use some of his surplus gold to jump the amount of troops I have.

After all, you did say you can never have too much troops.

[Tezkat]

A simple test is to add up the gold and market value of resources produced at 10% and 20%. Whichever gives you more is the tax rate you want to use. Given the current price of food, it's almost certainly going to be better at 10%.


You can use my monies if you want. Put up resources for llearch to buy.


Incidentally, it looks like the beta will last until at least September--probably later--in case peeps are still holding off joining the fun...

[Darkdragon]

I think the Admin changed the speed of creating troops, and might be related to population; I have one province slightly smaller and, despite being the first province to have started troop creation, is behind the other two provinces. Either way, it would take 4 days for me to finish. Guess I'll be in hippy mode until then...

[Kasarn]

Looks like it's 30 seconds per unit.

I also read somewhere that Peace Mode slows training speed... but I dunno

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

There is mention in one of the admin updates that the speed has been changed, and to add one more troop to reset the timer.

So if you add one more troop to the smaller province, it may speed up...

[Tezkat]

Admin changed it from 15 seconds to 30 seconds per unit last night. If you still have anything queued up at the faster rate, best leave it alone till it's done. I wish I'd queued up a bunch more while it was still super fast. My opponent probably has a few days of troops left to go at the speedy rate.


I've seen anecdotal reports of hippie mode affecting speed. Anyone care to test it?

[Cogidubnus]

I have joined!

And I am extremely confused.

I read the newbie guide and am getting as much land as I can, but I'm losing gold and such, and I'm not entirely sure what I should be doing... >:

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

You should be getting Tez to help out. Or me, with Tez's money...

Basically: for the first little while, money is scarce, and hard to get. Having big friends who can flick you large wodges of cash for trivial amounts of resources is useful, since it gets you over the hump and up to the point where it becomes profitable; it can also help you reach greater profitability faster.

In my case, I'm pulling down something like 60k gold, 3k food, and 1k each wood and stone, per day. Once you get some farms, mines, and mills in, then you start making a profit.

Further advice is possible; mainly, find some resources, and put them up at 100k each; if you've joined our guild, one of the big guys will buy you out from petty cash, and you can then take the money and build yourself up.

If it helps, I have a fairly large spreadsheet full of info that I've picked up over the time, and Tezkat linked a land calculator which I found useful...

Edit:
The guild is here: http://galava.net/guild?id=285

[Tezkat]

I put a quick guide together. Uh... it's mostly cut and paste stuff, so it's not terribly pretty yet. But it should help a little.

Basically, concentrate on getting your resource buildings up and running. Then build up all the other stuff.

[Kasarn]

Hay guyz, does anybody want to be a guild mod?

Mods just approve membership. Judging from the Mod Panel, I think you might be able to set/remove bans but, afaik, only the admin can actively kick people out.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

We have two already, isn't that enough?

[Kasarn]

Yeah, two is fine... but since it's never actually been discussed before, I thought I'd ask.
Given that we're a micro guild with a membership drawn from this forum, mod status doesn't really matter that much.


Also, I just got a form letter from TRI asking if we'd be interested in a merger or protectorate.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

You can use my monies if you want. Put up resources for llearch to buy.

Just FYI, your account was just debited 2.5m to Illizad... ;-]

[Darkdragon]

My provinces are now out of protection. Since I was plundered 3 days, 17 hours and 50 minutes ago, we can cap that as a maximum value for duration of protection.

Onwards to testing the hypothesis if being in peace mode would slow down troop production!

EDIT: Peace Mode does not slow troop production

I'm attacked by someone from TRI. I'm mildly annoyed at this so I stuck all my resources in the market and storehouse and is going to send a majority of my troops off to war elsewhere.

[Tezkat]

I've agreed to an ODP with the Thugz to start us off, with possible upgrades pending. We're not planning to announce it publicly just yet though. Aside from mutual non-aggression, it doesn't actually require action on either's part, but we could ask them for assistance, if required.

Have you been in contact with your attacker? He seems to be putting in a fairly lackluster effort for a prog raid...

[Darkdragon]

No, I just assumed he hasn't logged on. Since it's been about a day I think I can offer peace and contact; I just know he's one of the mods in TRI. Reminds me of the treaty offer Kasarn got a little while back...

Not that I know what to say to the guy...

EDIT: Since I had not much to do, I have finished a draft version using fancy language and is in the phase of adding humour. If there is any desire to see this draft, please say so.

[Kasarn]

It wasn't an offer, it was a form letter. Actually, it wasn't even a form letter because it wasn't personalised. It was just an ad from TRI's recruiting department.

How do you steal progression anyway? I haven't seen it done, but then, I haven't looked. If it's anything like LW, you probably can't steal it from an empire with half your progression level.

[Tezkat]

Can't hurt to try. The best defense against raiders is to make it difficult to raid you. They want to be in and out as quickly as possible, otherwise you're just using up a war slot they could be allocating to easier prey. On the other hand, the big players are getting desperately short of targets to prog raid, and prog rapidly becomes unaffordable for them, so he might want to duke it out anyway. We could ask our new allies for help, if it becomes a problem we can't solve on our own.



You raid prog by plundering it. You have to defeat a province by getting 100 allegiance. You also get a few points if you occupy a province. For picking on smaller targets half your size, you usually only get prog for the last plunder/occupation. I got a whole 2 points for the last empire I rolled.

Check my war history for an idea of how it's done...

[Kasarn]

If you did get 2 prog, then the progression stolen doesn't show in the War History. I guess because it only counts attacks and not when a province is defeated.

[Darkdragon]

I think I've a record of around 15 progression stolen. I've gotten some on the first province I've plundered before. Perhaps there exists a relation?

[Tezkat]

True, plundering doesn't show up in the war history. It's just what you do when you defeat a province. But the war history gives you an idea of how to defeat him in the first place.

I got 0-3-2 of of this most recent guy, 0-2 off the last one, and 0-0-6 off the first one (though that ended in occupation rather than plunder). I've yet to get any prog off of an outer province. I figure it might have something to do with how many provinces you've crossed in the war and/or how recently they've been plundered by other players. Size might matter too. A number of people have reported 4-6 prog per province when fighting people close to their size.


EDIT:

By the way, Darkdragon... you do know that defeating a province wipes out all the troops and queues present there, right? If you want to save them for another day, you'll need to move them inside your empire rather than sending them off to battle. On the other hand, you might be able to hold off for a while if you keep sending your troops off and forcing him to deploy massive armies to try to defeat you. War is all about allegiance management. You can't defeat a defended province without being online several times a day to send multiple waves before the allegiance damage recovers.