Galava

[Tezkat]

Hmm... I don't know how that works, actually. I assume that it will reduce your losses as advertised, though.

Either way, post here if you attack, and when you expect it to land. If you'd prefer to wait, I can send off another big attack in a little over 3 hours that will probably be large enough for a complete wipe this time, but that won't land until morning.

How do you want to split up the plunders/occupations? If you want to end the war automatically, you have to have the last plunder/occupy. Otherwise it will just sit there until he peaces out.

[Darkdragon]

I do want it to end ASAP, so I'll have to do that. I wouldn't mind plundering another (ie. two in total) province as to punish the guy, but its up to you. After all, you're the one (at the moment) whose doing most of the damage.

I can afford to wait until morning because I want to wait for my offencive siege units to finish, but I probably won't be awake at the time. So if I am to attack the first province, it'd be either I send it now and delay several hours until after your main hits in the morning or not at all and focus on the latter three provinces (which I should be able to handle, judging from spy reports updated at 3 hour intervals.)

[Tezkat]

Bleh... my siegeless attack landed. I lost more troops than he did. I'm not gonna do that against large forces again. As predicted, I killed around 30k. 100k left.

I sent off the next big wave. It lands around 8:18 AM EST. I'd say it's virtually a guaranteed wipe unless he's online to dodge. I didn't hold back.

His barriers should be gone by then, too, so attack times will be back down to normal. I don't expect to be online much before afternoon, so feel free to go ahead and finish him off if you're around. Just remember that you'll end up with a dead war if you don't get the last plunder. So if you're going to be online a lot, use the "Ignore" option instead of plundering to leave stuff for me and go for his last province yourself.

When going for the capture on weakly defended province, send four equal waves of at least 5 times whatever he has left defending it. That should ensure that you get the full 25 allegiance with every strike. You don't need siege towers for that. Unless he dodges, he'll have so few troops left that you'll just be wasting them. If he does dodge... well, then you'll have a fun battle to fight, I guess.


EDIT: Yup, he got raped. Since I found time to poke in and send out a few more troops, I've ignored his outer province and left that for you. All his troops got wiped, but his queues are still active, so you should be able to take it with 4 attacks of a few thousand soldiers each.

[Darkdragon]

Since I happen to have the spare stuff, I'd like to know: What is your suggested distribution in siege units?

[Tezkat]

If you're online a lot, have a few Barriers and Outposts as your default defensive units. You don't need very many. In fact, you apparently get the full warning and slowdown effect from a single level 5 unit. (I tested that this weekend, actually.) Swap them out for Tar and Trenches before an attack lands, though. Tar/Trenches is the way to go for defense.

The anti-building weapons are fairly useless under the current mechanics. (And, by corollary, Bricks are pretty worthless, too.) Outside of very long attrition guild wars, all they do is increase your attack time and annoy your opponent.

Currently, I have something like 200 Siege Towers, 100 Tar, 100 Trenches, 10 Barriers, 10 Outposts. 2:1 is a fairly conservative siege:defense ratio intended to fight people closer to my size. If you plan to spend a lot of time fighting weaker players, go heavier on the towers.



The reset is tonight. Spend while you can!!! 

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Already did. I'm all out of cash and resources, barring possibly the odd bit of food...

[Kasarn]

Well, the update has been done...

Today's news:
And in the glorious empire of Seerfir, there was a population boom... a population boom of the sorts that had never been seen before.

Tomorrow's news: SEERFIR DEVASTATED BY FAMINE
Rioting plagues the once serene forests and solemn quarries as people desperately look for anything they can trade for food.
[insert satirical cartoon of people eating wood/stone here]


Assuming a linear increase, my maxed population is going to eat roughly 39k out of my 40k gross income
Meanwhile, soldiers still don't eat much...


edit: it doesn't seem like it's linear...

[Cogidubnus]

I am displeased by the distinct lack of gold in my empire.

That is all.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Interesting numbers.

We'll see how this works out. As it stands, I can increase by about 150 land per update. Which is a bit limiting; I think it'll take me two or three updates to just collect enough resources to build the outstanding builds as-is...

And he ran the update 3 hours earlier than he said he would :-/

[Valynth]

....I sense that this will not end well for those of you with a lot of progression.  After all, now that there's no land cap with progression, you can suddenly get hit by a person who grabbed a lot of land and military just before hitting your prog range allowing them to plow you guys VERY unexpectedly.

Essentially, a person's progression is no longer a good measurement for army effectiveness or production of goods.  Since progression no longer limits production in any shape or form now, I predict that galva's going to see some EXTREMELY uneven fights.  Like boxer vs quadriplegic uneven.

*grabs his land while the getting's good.*

[Kasarn]

Sandro said that the land cap will probably be back.

[Darkdragon]

For the few of you who have large military (that's about 3 to 5 of us) the newest update has greatly increased the amount penalized for going over the new, smaller, limit (which is not written on the finance page). This is a service announcement from someone who has failed to read the extended news post before collecting.

PS: 2x to 4x? Last I checked, I had around 12x of the cap... 

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

One of the nice things about this update is that now, one can set a bunch of explores going, and as each chunk completes, you can build the buildings for it.

Rather than waiting for 50 of each type, as that's a more cost effective method of working (in the old system), you can build one at a time, if you want. Which means that you can explore basically all the time, and only pause (if you so desire) to collect money every 3 days or so...

... although at present, you'll find you collect more if you collect more often, since the growth will only show up after each collection; 3 * a is less than a + (a + b) + (a + b +c)... although this is counter-weighted by the lowering in food income as the population get hungry...

[Darkdragon]

Is it just me, or is there definably an uptrend in the prices of wood, stone and food? Has gold deflated in value?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I think it's a temporary change.

Remember, the land cap increased, so everyone is on a land splurge. Which takes gold and food, and lesser amounts of the other two for building.

I expect things to even out after a couple more weeks, once everyone maxes out the extra land.

[Darkdragon]

This person, space station, in Galava today applied to DMFA guild. I'd like to ask if anyone here happens to be the person in question, and if there isn't, what we are to do with this guy.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I'd drop him a note asking him why he wants to join, and to introduce himself on the forum...

[Tezkat]

His reply...

i just wanted an active guild, small, not over-regulated and over-organized. and people that are used to war, im used to being the only guy with a standing army while my buddies are gettin beat up 

Should we let him in? Judging from his war history, he's quite an active raider, and he's got skills. Can't help thinking that he might be a better fit for Thugz or KONG, but he'd certainly beef up our military capabilities.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

You may want to point out that the bigger parties in our roster might fit, but there's at least one (me!) who's a beatnik...

YMMV, IOW...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I have a query, and sort of an offer, for Cogidubnus, Ganurath, and Valynth.

fisherman has bought 58 more levels of prog off me, for 250k apiece. If you guys are willing to pass that across to him, I'll purchase random materials off you to the value specified. All you have to do is let me know when and what to buy off you, to put the money in your direction.

If you're still willing, there's a few other folks I owe some prog to, and prog for me is ~730k/level, at current market rates (15/22/103 w/s/f) so I'm happy to cough up to get you guys sorted.

Plus you get a build boost from the cash. If you're interested...

[James StarRunner]

...I've been sucked in. XD

[Darkdragon]

You're initiated.

Please look at the Galava Guide. Most of it still stands, but there have been a few changes, notably in numbers. Its best not to trust the numbers (as they are mostly outdated) but many principles still stand. A few noteworthy changes, off the top of my head:

• Land prices and building structures are now static and work on diminishing returns
• Solider "soft cap" in place. I personally have over 10 times the soft cap amount and still turn a small profit, so I can vouch for its ineffectiveness.

If you have any questions, I'm sure one of us would answer it. Or check the Galava Wiki.

[James StarRunner]

Ya, I'm probably going to restart. Lack of food sucks (dumb tundra).

Oh crap... I can't yet.

[Darkdragon]

Tundra is actually extremely useful later for its Blood Ice - I know I'd like an extra Tundra province for its Blood Ice because it's rather difficult to obtain.

I'd also send you some food, but I'll have to wait until I can collect because I spent all of it on my raving army which just sits there.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Hold off on that. The first two or three updates, you're losing hand over fist.

If you need, you can put up some trivial amount of resources on the market at obscene rates, notify us, and we'll fork out large sums of money for you.

eg, I currently have somewhere around 30 million in spare change lying about, not counting the further 7.5 floating about in the progression bucket. Coughing up a half would be barely noticeable for me, whereas for you, it'd make a big difference.

And this is just one of the interesting ways guild members can make your day go faster. ;-]

[James StarRunner]

Ok, put nearly all the wood I have left in the market.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

And gone.

... 30? Man, I remember those days. Wow. ;-]

[Darkdragon]

James, can I ask you to co-operate in this idea I have?

You may or may not have noticed, you won't get attacked because you have no war slots. I would like to ask:

1. If you can change into war mode anyways, because at higher progression one gets an economic penalty for being in peace mode;

2. If you can, can you send spies to other people well out of the range of war declaration, since if I remember correctly, one needs to be in war mode to obtain spy data and if you can, it might be a good investment to invest in an intelligence-gathering department.

I ask of this because as of right now, it is only possible to send one spy every three hours, and this is far too time-consuming if one needs to find suitable targets quickly.

You should also consider if you want to play in war mode, where a large army would be mandatory, (Like Tezkat, Kasarn and myself) or in peace mode, which would be more suited to those who at the moment, have large amounts of food-based provinces (like llearch). I'm telling you this now because a large army needs to be built starting now - id est, the earlier the better.

[James StarRunner]

What is the range of war declaration? Also, would you like me to look at unaligned people, or those in guilds?

[Darkdragon]

There are actually two war deceleration ranges, but on a normal basis, you should be able to attack any one between twice and half as much progression as you do. For details, you would have to consult this page where you can also change your war stance.

I'm not sure if you have no war slots, but when you get them, there will be a bar divided into four sections colour-coded red, yellow or green. Any empire with their progression range listed in the areas marked red is out of war declaration zone; any empire with their progression in the yellow section you can declare war on, but they would get a defensive advantage.

From my experience with finding people to raid, it doesn't actually matter that much what guild the other person is in. (Except West Side Thug Unit (Thugz) -  We have a NAP with them) You need to send something like five times the amount of troops the defender has to wipe the defence clean, and even that would suffer high causalities. What, in my opinion, matters much more is when an empire was last active - one can tell at a glance by looking at what colour diamond is next to their ruler name: A green diamond means within five minutes ago, yellow means within 30 minutes, orange means within the last two hours, blue means within the last 24 hours, and black means inactive. It is usually better to go for the ones without a diamond (id est over 24 hours but not inactive, as you cannot attack inactives)

I hope I've answered your question somewhere in that block of text.