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Depth of military strategy?

DeletedUser30441

Hello there.

I've been here a couple months. Not long enough to know everything, long enough to have had a taste of the game and to decide if I want to order the buffet or get some take-out.

My question is this: the plunder side of PVP seems to boil down to attacking with 7 rogues and 1 __________ (champion, ranged or fast unit), and relying on the horribad AI tactical defense to bull through whatever defensive troops and bonuses exist.

Is my brief summary essentially correct? The game is a massive timesink. That's a good thing, that's what we signed up for, i.e. entertainment hours, if there is deep and rich strategy. What I described is not deep and rich strategy. Get rogue encampments, get an alcatraz, pump out rogues, win. I'm skipping some ancillary marginalia, but still. It comes down to this:

1) All of your city preparations and grinding up better defense is insignificant to the pathetic way that the AI treats incoming rogues, so you will always be plundered by a player willing to invest in 3 pieces of infrastructure.
2) the already simplistic rock-paper-scissors interaction between the 'standard' military unit types is more or less wasted development space, because you always want more rogues for offense.

If those are generally true, then they obviate most of the building game and therefore the grind and timesink are ineffectual, and the game is an exercise in frustration.

In what ways am I wrong? Thank you for your time in crafting any replies.
 

DeletedUser26120

That's just the way it works.

You can set up a city defense of mostly heavy units and that's your best shot at doing most damage to the attacker. Later eras you can use champions with high defense, until Arctic Future when other units are better again.

Your only solution is to get a ridiculously high defense, over 300% if you want to stop most plunderers.
 

DeletedUser

That's just the way it works.

You can set up a city defense of mostly heavy units and that's your best shot at doing most damage to the attacker. Later eras you can use champions with high defense, until Arctic Future when other units are better again.

Your only solution is to get a ridiculously high defense, over 300% if you want to stop most plunderers.
The other solutions are to either collect on time, or depend on unplunderable buildings for your goods. Heavy questers rely on rewards from recurring quests involving production buildings for most of their goods. Others, like me, rely mostly on special/event buildings such as the Tribal Square and Oasis, and GBs for our goods. Either one pretty much removes plundering from the equation. They can still attack and get the PvP battle points, but do you no real damage.

And 300% is not ridiculously high. Two of my 3 active cities have over that. I did recently run into a neighbor who had 957% defense boost. Now that is ridiculously high. LOL
 

DeletedUser28970

elostirion,

Thanks for your comments. I think you have "pinned the tail on the donkey". Despite all the nonsense of it there still remains a very small group of players that feel it is their God-given right to attack and plunder using whatever means/manipulation at their disposal ...

... but that the rest of the players in the game have absolutely no right (that works) to actively defend themselves. Period. The oft repeated battle cry of the obsessed plunderer -- worn to a weary death and mouldy as it is -- "Collect on Time" (Huh? Boy, it gets old hearing that nonsense.)

Give me landmines! I wanna blow up a few plunderers!
 

DeletedUser13838

What do you mean by "actively defend"? Do you mean something like "if I'm online I want to move my defending units"? Wouldn't that be ripe for abuse? Or do you mean something different?
 

DeletedUser27889

That is true, but it is also only a small(ish) part of the game. There's a city shield in the tavern and of course the best defense is to just collect on time to prevent plundering, which is just as you say mostly the AI's fault.

The military strategy really comes more into play for GvG and GE when you're the one in the attacking seat. Unlike in some other games when someone breaches your defenses you don't need to rebuild anything, your city isn't decimate etc. They collect 1 production at most from one building and move on.

I'll admit that it is very frustrating when there is virtually nothing you can do to protect your city. Most of the methods out there are little more than slow down smoke and mirrors, someone who might not mind losing some Rogues could get through even the highest defenses. But the shield will protect you from attacks completely and collecting on time brings their window of opportunity down to only as long as it takes you to collect.

For all those saying collect on time is foolproof... No it's not, it takes me about 30 minutes to collect my city in that time someone could plunder.

But all that being said there's a lot more to the game left to enjoy. Getting plundered occasionally is just a frustrating fact of it.
 

DeletedUser26154

My question is this: the plunder side of PVP seems to boil down to attacking with 7 rogues and 1

As skewed and totally unbalanced as that seems now, the Rogues are like that for a reason.
At the higher Eras, you'll be happy Rogues are targeted first.
It is bad for A.I. City Defense and I agree a different A.I. set-up is required.
But we all have the same disadvantage, so at least there is no unfairness.

Using the "right" units for City Defense usually means "Making it more costly for attackers to get in".
Unless you have 500% or more Defense, along with a boost to your City Defender's attack.
Then you have to use the right units to handle what is considered to be the best invading troops.
It's almost impossible to have anything close to an Unbeatable Defense unless you sink some serious cash into it.

00b5c93c9d6cd5da9cc52d945a53a719.png

But if you do, it's real sweet.
 

DeletedUser30441

Thanks everyone for the replies.

The problem is fun.

The game is supposed to be fun. Ratios between effort and fun are good things, ratios between anxiety and fun are good things to. But.

I know that the plunderer doesn't take a lot compared to some other base building games, but I don't want to play those games. Logging in to find that someone has taken the cream layer off of my city is just annoying, and I don't want to be annoyed every day.

I'm perfectly happy to spend effort in games. However. The ratio between effort expended to attack and effort expended to defend from attack are way off, which affects those fun of to spending that effort. Defense should cost 2 to 5 times as much as attack, because games like these should be dynamic rather than static, and making turtling too easy would be bad too. But. That's not what we have here. All those watchfires Ardak and others have didn't come easily. In fact they came much much more expensively than the rogue setups. Playing longer under unfun conditions, spending more effort hoping it will eventually be fun, is a problem.

Continuously buying tavern shields isn't a solution, as that further distends the effort ratio.

Setting harvests to 24 hours and logging in the same time every day isn't a solution either. 24 hour productions and goods are less efficient than shorter productions, so if you're using those to cut down on plundering, then you're depriving yourself of more resources than the plunderer would have taken anyway. But the real reason that's not okay is it changes the motivation to log in from having fun to fear of loss. That's not a reason to keep playing.

I appreciate the information about higher eras being slightly different, but rushing by earlier eras to get to less annoying ones isn't fun either, that's another way of saying don't worry about not enjoying the game, hold your breath and it will be better later.

And lastly, "sinking serious cash" into a game would be a reward given to an excellent game, not a bandaid to make a frustrating game acceptable.


TL:DR, I recommend that you don't ever get a degree in game design. It severely reduces your tolerance for bad mechanics, and it makes you strongly prefer to not play games that have them.
 

DeletedUser27889

Why does it take you 30 minutes to collect? Get your goods and high value event buildings first and then worry about the recurring quests.
No goods, It's all RQ's, gather coin mostly then having to spend FP in the middle because you can't collect once you have 100.

*Collect enough to trigger gather coin
*Shuffle through quest back to gather coin
* repete, repete, repete, repete
*Shuffle to spend FP (can't collect more than 100 at a time)
*Load a GB to donate to
* Load a second for the remainder
*Shuffle through to collect coin
*Repete,Repete,Repete,Repete
*Shuffle though to supply RQ, collect and reset
*Pick up all remainders and GBs.
*Shuffle back to spend FP load up GB to donate to.

Not included in city collection but never the less what I do right after- Aid 40 people selectively to maximize DT bonus.

If I hit my timing just right they sometimes stagger but it seems inno time is a fraction off because buildings I know I collected last the previous day will pop up first the second.
And lastly, "sinking serious cash" into a game would be a reward given to an excellent game, not a bandaid to make a frustrating game acceptable.
Most players are pretty successful despite having never spent anything. Watchfires are handed out like candy during the events and there is a watchfire substitute in GE that once you play for just a little while, you have way more than you could use.

There are also two GBs which provide defense all that being said it just slows the plundering down or they figure it's not worth it. I'm not disagreeing with anything you're saying but I do think if you kept playing for a bit you'd see the PvP, plundering side of things is really only a small fraction of the game. It is certainly a flawed one but there is a lot more to the game than that.
 

DeletedUser

No goods, It's all RQ's, gather coin mostly then having to spend FP in the middle because you can't collect once you have 100.

*Collect enough to trigger gather coin
*Shuffle through quest back to gather coin
* repete, repete, repete, repete
*Shuffle to spend FP (can't collect more than 100 at a time)
*Load a GB to donate to
* Load a second for the remainder
*Shuffle through to collect coin
*Repete,Repete,Repete,Repete
*Shuffle though to supply RQ, collect and reset
*Pick up all remainders and GBs.
*Shuffle back to spend FP load up GB to donate to.
THIS is why I would never go all in on HQS. I've got better things to do with my life than spend 30+ minutes a day doing what now takes me less than 5 minutes.
 

DeletedUser26154

*Collect enough to trigger gather coin
*Shuffle through quest back to gather coin
* repete, repete, repete, repete
*Shuffle to spend FP (can't collect more than 100 at a time)
*Load a GB to donate to
* Load a second for the remainder
*Shuffle through to collect coin
*Repete,Repete,Repete,Repete
*Shuffle though to supply RQ, collect and reset
*Pick up all remainders and GBs.
*Shuffle back to spend FP load up GB to donate to.

It takes about that long too, because I also do Recurring Quests as I collect.
About 20 minutes if I'm at my Computer.
A bit longer of I'm on my Mobile.
I do the same thing except Forge Point swaps.

dc8699052000260a54cc1798c4bf17ad.png

I contribute to my own G.B.s and the Arc Players claim the 5 Contributor spots.
 

DeletedUser27889

THIS is why I would never go all in on HQS. I've got better things to do with my life than spend 30+ minutes a day doing what now takes me less than 5 minutes.
It can certainly be annoying at times. Though I never really subscribed to the ridged HQS. I focused on FP production so these were buildings I was going to have anyway, I just utilize the collect coin quest over and over so the buildings not only produce the FP but also goods, medals and FP packs as well.

I know many people really like the multi production buildings, but for me I like anything that offers up the FP + the coin. Coins when gathered together with SMB + Chateau and collect coin quest really add up to a lot of extra goodies. CR has his way and it's certainly worked well for a lot of people but I think spamming gather coin instead of supply production can be more useful and flexible for how someone can set up their city.

With supplies being one of the rewards once I'm done collecting or sometimes in between I'll do the unbirthday quest over and over until I bring my supplies down to a set number.

I'd say a good day is about 80 goods, 3 5 FP packs and about 500 medals (Ina), with only a lvl 5 SMB and lvl 7 Chat. It's a time suck for sure but for me at least I feel it's worth it.

@elostirion Sorry I veered your thread OT
 

DeletedUser26965

Hello there.

I've been here a couple months. Not long enough to know everything, long enough to have had a taste of the game and to decide if I want to order the buffet or get some take-out.

My question is this: the plunder side of PVP seems to boil down to attacking with 7 rogues and 1 __________ (champion, ranged or fast unit), and relying on the horribad AI tactical defense to bull through whatever defensive troops and bonuses exist.

Is my brief summary essentially correct? The game is a massive timesink. That's a good thing, that's what we signed up for, i.e. entertainment hours, if there is deep and rich strategy. What I described is not deep and rich strategy. Get rogue encampments, get an alcatraz, pump out rogues, win. I'm skipping some ancillary marginalia, but still. It comes down to this:

1) All of your city preparations and grinding up better defense is insignificant to the pathetic way that the AI treats incoming rogues, so you will always be plundered by a player willing to invest in 3 pieces of infrastructure.
2) the already simplistic rock-paper-scissors interaction between the 'standard' military unit types is more or less wasted development space, because you always want more rogues for offense.

If those are generally true, then they obviate most of the building game and therefore the grind and timesink are ineffectual, and the game is an exercise in frustration.

In what ways am I wrong? Thank you for your time in crafting any replies.
To me the most challenging "deep and rich strategy" is GvG in respects to all the craziness that goes along with it. It's the grand purpose of the game if you ask me. The goal is to be the baddest GvG'er you can and all your city building efforts, research efforts, fighting experience, resources, relations, politics etc. will be to that end. Or you can GE or play spinny wheel or something. While the 1/7Rogue tactic can help a bit along the way in that it's a minor aspect. PvP however I think that's all there is to it sometimes.:p
 
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