Utopia Kingdoms

[kali o.]

I think if I clearly remembered something obscure that happened over a decade ago on the internet, that would be a better reason to make fun of me.

[Don]

Hey, Sine - I think I have a potential improvement to suggest in your unit type calculations.

All your calculations are based on round-by-round conflict. But units with higher hit points are going to have a better chance of surviving into the second round when attacked, where they'll deal their full damage again.

If a group of Shortbowmen take 180 damage, twelve will die, and that's 180 less damage that will be dealt next round.

But one Light Cavalry that takes 180 damage will survive, and still deal its full 100 damage next round as well, leading to 200 points of damage over the course of the two rounds, plus it can heal back to full. Do you see what I'm saying? (The numbers are against infantry, but the principle is valid in both senses.)

That means that high-HP units would have an advantage in multi-round battles. I wonder if we could make up a statistic to take advantage of that.

Err, just do HP * Unit's Attack Power? It'd give you a rating of the unit's relative ability to dish damage before it dies.

[SineSwiper]

Err, just do HP * Unit's Attack Power? It'd give you a rating of the unit's relative ability to dish damage before it dies.

That's pretty much what I did on the RHP stuff. Besides, HP isn't as important on certain units, like archers and wizards, since they shouldn't be the ones getting hit.

[Mental]

That's true, actually.

[SineSwiper]

Eric, mind if we ally with your clan? We're looking at declaring war with League of Pants.

[Julius Seeker]

Eric, do your people do Alliances? If so, I am wondering if you'd like to form a sort of an aggressive offensive alliance with us. That is; we go into war together to increase firepower against potential victims gaining us free resources (towns as well if we have Orders by then) and experience points.

[SineSwiper]

Heh, double post.

[Julius Seeker]

Wow! Never thought I'd see the day =P

[SineSwiper]

Experimenting with a public Spy Report system. Everybody read that forum post about it. If it works out, I'll make it the law of the land.

[Mental]

So, I'm off and moving. There are a few level 3's near me that only log in once every two days or so, and I am more or less eating their lunches...no walls, no armies, and a well-upgraded storehouse on both of them.

There are a lot of little level 1/2 walls around, so it turns out the main focus of my army is on Longbowmen to knock those down, I have enough to KO a level 2 wall and working up from there. I have some Swordsmen and Light Cavalry to do mop-up, and my leftover Shortbowmen from the quests, and altogether it's working well in simulation and did well in the two actual battles I've had so far as well - very low attrition (yes, even the Swordsmen are doing well, though I haven't attacked anything really challenging yet).

It's interesting, because I was doing some simulations with a variant on the fodder unit technique - I attacked a small castle with a Level 1 Wall and about 20 Swordsman and 100 Shortbowmen. I used the fodder unit technique to keep my main army out of battle until the second round, but it doesn't work quite the same way. When I simulated with only one fodder unit, their army blews through it to the rest of my army quickly...but when I sent one each of the fodder units I'm not using (Pikeman, Maceman, and Axeman), and put only those in the front row, and everyone else in the back, my losses were consistently way, way less than if I had put either a single unit group in the front row OR just had everyone attacking first round. So I attacked that way in the actual march and had really pretty low losses, lower than the other two formations I simulated.

Can anyone figure out why that might be? I read something about how Archers target a group and then groups around it take collateral damage, so is it possible to avoid heavy archer damage by staggering units around that grid, maybe? If that's actually true, then maybe the Archers only targeted one fodder unit group and the other two fodder unit groups "around" it served as some kind of buffer. If not I have no explanation. Could have been the randomness of the hit rolls, but it seemed pretty consistent...

Anyway, I've been raiding to the tune of maybe 3000-4500K of each resource a day for the last two days. I'll hit my Guild tomorrow, so I'm running well, I think.

[Mental]

Anybody else think we should add the signature images to our sigs here while we're playing? (like the one I have, the code for the image link is in the options somewhere) It would give us all an idea of where we're at and what advice to give each other.

[Shrinweck]

I just can't believe with all the random people we've accepted that none of them have joined this forum yet.

Edit: I know my participation has turned bad but I've still been building up what seems important. Definitely have my mages offense fully upgraded, as well

[Eric]

These Heavy Calvalry upgrades are no joke lol.

Like I got Crossbowmen to 10/10 effortlessly, Heavy Calvalry has me pausing and like "Wait a tick!"

[KluYa]

It's interesting, because I was doing some simulations with a variant on the fodder unit technique - I attacked a small castle with a Level 1 Wall and about 20 Swordsman and 100 Shortbowmen. I used the fodder unit technique to keep my main army out of battle until the second round, but it doesn't work quite the same way. When I simulated with only one fodder unit, their army blews through it to the rest of my army quickly...but when I sent one each of the fodder units I'm not using (Pikeman, Maceman, and Axeman), and put only those in the front row, and everyone else in the back, my losses were consistently way, way less than if I had put either a single unit group in the front row OR just had everyone attacking first round. So I attacked that way in the actual march and had really pretty low losses, lower than the other two formations I simulated.

Can anyone figure out why that might be? I read something about how Archers target a group and then groups around it take collateral damage, so is it possible to avoid heavy archer damage by staggering units around that grid, maybe? If that's actually true, then maybe the Archers only targeted one fodder unit group and the other two fodder unit groups "around" it served as some kind of buffer. If not I have no explanation. Could have been the randomness of the hit rolls, but it seemed pretty consistent...

Yeah I'm going to assume you have longbowmen in row 4. Every round of battle, they'll get a free shot at anything in the first row of the defender. The longer it takes your target to eliminate the first row of your force, the more damage your army of longbowmen will inflict while your main forces are protected before the rows move up and your clean up crew goes to work.

Anyway, I've been raiding to the tune of maybe 3000-4500K of each resource a day for the last two days. I'll hit my Guild tomorrow, so I'm running well, I think.

Raiding as much as you can is the secret behind progressing quickly in this game. At times, as much as 75-80% of my income comes from looting kingdoms. This is my most recent hit:

A battle has occurred, in which you have taken part.
Take a look at the report.
Stolen Resources:
Gold: 9550
Iron 9550
Wood 9550
Food 9550
Place of battle: [xxx:xx]
Your Side: Attacker
Winner: Attacker

[KluYa]

By the way, it seems there's a max of 500 heavy cavalry units allowed for a kingdom. I'm now a sad panda.

[Eric]

By the way, it seems there's a max of 500 heavy cavalry units allowed for a kingdom. I'm now a sad panda.

That's good to know, gives me a target to go for.

If the same is true for light cavalry/cavalry archers, there's actually a point to maxing them out I guess.

[Eric]

Raiding as much as you can is the secret behind progressing quickly in this game. At times, as much as 75-80% of my income comes from looting kingdoms. This is my most recent hit:

A battle has occurred, in which you have taken part.
Take a look at the report.
Stolen Resources:
Gold: 9550
Iron 9550
Wood 9550
Food 9550
Place of battle: [xxx:xx]
Your Side: Attacker
Winner: Attacker

How long was that guy inactive?

[KluYa]

How long was that guy inactive?

About 17 hours. It broke my recent streak of someone coming online about 120 seconds before my march hits them. Nothing irritates me more.

[KluYa]

Anybody else think we should add the signature images to our sigs here while we're playing? (like the one I have, the code for the image link is in the options somewhere) It would give us all an idea of where we're at and what advice to give each other.

My castle profile is top secret. If I was ever located, I'd never be able to disagree with anyone on this message board or risk being razed to the ground by your entire clan. =p

[Eric]

How long was that guy inactive?

About 17 hours. It broke my recent streak of someone coming online about 120 seconds before my march hits them. Nothing irritates me more.

Yeah I've had that happen to me often as well. My clanmate got attacked by somebody and was asking me to retail, but the travel time was like 6 hours, there's no way he wouldn't login right before my army got there lol.

[Mental]

Raiding as much as you can is the secret behind progressing quickly in this game. At times, as much as 75-80% of my income comes from looting kingdoms.

Yes indeed. I got up to about 5K yesterday with my raids, so that's sweet for someone still working up to a guild, and I've got enough Longbowmen now that I can take down the smaller walls and still turn a profit on the attack.

I should have my Guild by the end of the day, I think. So I can keep raiding on level one and two walls for a day or two while working up to a legitimate 500pop army with Longbowmen and Light Cavalry, I don't see a reason to use any more shortbowmen, attrition is tooooo high. I might just try to tech right up to Arcanists when I get the Guild, because Warmages are crap unless you have a lot of them, and it doesn't seem worth it considering that I'm going to have to start fighting people around my level soon if I want to master my area.

What's nice to see is that I'm pulling ahead of people around me. I was level 5 when a lot of others were 8-10, and now I'm 11 and they're still 8-10, so if I keep it up I'll be in good shape to do well. Seems like a level 8 wall helps when the highest level around you is 13 and your storehouse doesn't go about 4K...so that was very good advice from you all.

[Mental]

Anybody else think we should add the signature images to our sigs here while we're playing? (like the one I have, the code for the image link is in the options somewhere) It would give us all an idea of where we're at and what advice to give each other.

My castle profile is top secret. If I was ever located, I'd never be able to disagree with anyone on this message board or risk being razed to the ground by your entire clan. =p

It doesn't show your location, silly goose, just the name.

But I suppose theoretically someone could scour the entire map until you were found, then waste all of their resources trying to take down your megalithic army full of doomslayers....yeah, too risky. Better keep a lid on that one.

[SineSwiper]

Ummm, you can search for people by name. And your name is already public.

Anyway, SBM are still useful because they are so damn cheap. If you're worried about them getting damaged, then don't pick fights where they die. (You should be blowing away the army in one round in most cases.) If you need that 500 pop, SBM are the best way to fill that gap.

[kali o.]

My most recent hit involved me sending all my light cav to farm the wrong inactive (ie: one with a wall). I'm very proud of my stupidity

[KluYa]

Ummm, you can search for people by name. And your name is already public.

Hush you. You'll ruin everything! *applies fake mustache and side steps nonchalantly toward the kitchen window*

My most recent hit involved me sending all my light cav to farm the wrong inactive (ie: one with a wall). I'm very proud of my stupidity

I lost maybe a third of my force a few days ago by selecting the wrong formation for my march (titled WALL ONLY) and not realizing it. We're awesome.

What's nice to see is that I'm pulling ahead of people around me. I was level 5 when a lot of others were 8-10, and now I'm 11 and they're still 8-10, so if I keep it up I'll be in good shape to do well. Seems like a level 8 wall helps when the highest level around you is 13 and your storehouse doesn't go about 4K...so that was very good advice from you all.

You've done well, young padawan. You'll want to up your store house soon but it's low priority if there's no risk of maxing anything out. You can continue to upgrade resource buildings until then. Start training a whack of crossbowmen when you are able to, and tech them in the training grounds (specifically, their attack).

Good idea regarding the arcanists - just skip the WMs for now. Doing that allowed me to get a jump on players who were trying to train them as soon as they became available (only to have them wiped out defending against a raid lol). I still don't know if I'll ever bother adding them, but I probably will. Someday.

Once your wall is say level 10, drop it way down on your upgrade priority. The usefulness of a wall sharply diminishes as armies grow and wizards become common.

[Mental]

It's level 9. I don't think I need to upgrade it anymore, unless all my neighbors start messing with me, and they haven't done a thing since those two days I was inactive. And really, past 9 or 10, it seems useless to spend thousands of resources for 750 more points of defense, particularly since I know from listening to you that it's not uncommon for high-level players to turn walls into butter in the first round.

(watch me log in right now and find out i got ganked)

Had to step out today so I won't be able to do as much raiding, but I'll have my guild by the end of the day.

Sine, I think I'm just going to use Quickwalkers to boost my army, they're just about as cheap and won't be useless once I get Arcanists and HC. They're useless in battle but whatever, I assume they still count towards the cap?

By the way, Scout level 3 makes this game a LOT more fun. It literally only takes three minutes to spy on a next-door neighbor, I highly recommend everyone pump Scout to 3 if they haven't already.

[KluYa]

QWs count toward the 500 population minimum of non wizards, like any other unit. Training a QW uses 2 population, so 250 of them will meet the minimum requirement.

[Mental]

Indeed. They don't have as much carry, but people around here aren't sitting on a pile of resources, plus I'm going to need a huge spy buildup in order to start cracking some of the level 8-10 nuts around here instead of just farming the lowbies and making their lives miserable.

[Mental]

It's funny, I can tell who actually put some time and thought into kingdom development early on and who just ran the quests.

The quest-runners all have the same 200 bowmen-5 swordsmen army, a tiny-ass wall, 1000 spare population from building up the homes to level 10, and no real army upgrades to speak of. I swear, it's like the quests are designed to produce an easily farmed province by the end. I wonder if they did that on purpose, since a lot people probably quit after the quests are done and their coins run out and they get ganked once or twice.

The people who actually put some thought into it have bigger walls, more resource producers, less resources on hand, and different armies that actually make attacking them cost something.

Obviously, one of the two groups gets ganked a little bit more. I swear, I'm raiding every single kingdom in group 1 at least once or twice a day, and group 2 gets a pass.

The Wall is king until about level 12, it seems.

[SineSwiper]

Yeah, but the SBM can actually attack. Hell, I still have my 100 or so SBM left, and I haven't made any in a long time. Still have a 20 or so LBM, too. The back row NEVER gets touched.

Seriously, we're talking about 55 units of resources here. The second cheapest is Pikemen at 125. They have respectable cost/dmg ratio numbers, too.

[Mental]

I dunno man...I'm not getting into too many "real" battles. Mostly I'm cracking open just-completed-the-quests people with the 200/5 army and the level 1-2 wall in prep to start farming them, or I'm farming inactives.

I haven't needed to really get into a scrap with anybody serious yet, and against the puddly stuff, my Swordsmen have far less attrition than the Shortbowmen, which saves me resources.

My Light Cavalry are almost always out raiding inactives without walls and bringing in far more than they would tagging along with an infantry army, especially since I hit Scout 3 and they started going the speed of light.

So, I'm bypassing the Shortbowmen really. Too much attrition, and the other big thing is, they take too long to train for the power they provide.

I'm bottlenecking on time to build, not resources, right now, mostly due to effective raiding. (Especially with Cavalry - I can usually hit an inactive with them and literally be back in ten or fifteen minutes with enough to train a Light Cavalry or a few Longbowmen. )

So it makes more sense to get a Longbowman instead, or pump it into my Training Grounds/Barracks/Stables/my sweet, sweet Guild which is upping as we speak.

That's one reason I haven't gotten to your spy spreadsheet - by the time I'm even thinking about doing it, my cavalry are back from another raid with some resources and need to be sent out again.

[Mental]

"Do you want to build the Guild at level 1? "

Yes, goddamn straight I do.

[SineSwiper]

I didn't know this until I started to put two and two together, but the resources listed on spy reports includes the resources you can't grab (since they are guarded by the guard station). So, pay attention to the guard station level to see if you can hoard the resources or not. (Note that some races, like mine, allow you to steal 25% of the guarded resources.)

[Mental]

I do pay attention to that, in fact. I never send more to a province than the carrying capacity of the raid, unless I need to crack a wall.

As a result, I often end up sending two cavalry raids out at the same time, and I'm hoping to spreadraid a lot more...I could be doing five simultaneous cavalry raids of inactives at once, and I should be. At level 3 Scout, like I said, cavalry raids of inactives literally take half an hour or less.

[SineSwiper]

Just got lv3 Scout as well. It's pretty nice. Should have leveled it before. I've found (a bit late) the main traits you should max are:

Merchant
Sage
Scout
Archer
(maybe) Mystic

Defender should also be in there somewhere.

EDIT: Holy shit, the lv15 rituals are awesome! Just got 11000 iron from one. Of course, I don't know what the hell to do with that now.

[Mental]

Marketplace?

I took two points in Sage first, three in Merchant second, and three in Scout third. I'm rollin'.

[Mental]

By the way - something I figured out, though I'm not high level enough to use it yet - if you expect to win a really epic battle and have cavalry to spare, send out a light cavalry scavenge crew that's timed to scavenge the battlefield about a minute after you get there.

Send it out before you win - there's no risk since it's a scavenge mission, and not only does it get you potentially major scavenge booty, but it also prevents anyone in the area from knowing you just cracked someone open and that they're ripe for farming, leaving you in a better position to keep eating their dinner for awhile.

There have been a few scavenge fields around me with about 2000k resources today. If I'd won that battle, I'd hate to have left that isht lying around.

[SineSwiper]

Yeah, I just did that with one battle, using the tempo option. My scavenge team was too fast, so I got them to a slower speed, and they were 3 minutes apart from the attack army.

Eric, I just extended a peace offer to your clan.

[Mental]

Hey, Tess...I just sent you 1000 gold because it would go to waste if I didn't use it.

I don't have a huge store house, and I'm building Arcanists now, so I'm about to buy resources for the wood and I'm sitting on piles of extra resources with no merchants left to put up offers because they're all offering 1000 of something already.

I also asked for your princess' hand in marriage, because why the hell not. I'm sending the dowry, right?

If I have so many resources coming in that I can't spend it all, does this mean I'm winning yet?

(It actually means that I need to pump my lumber mill again, but such things do not make for epic tales of battle.)

[KluYa]

Glad to see you've come around regarding light cavalry Drew. I ~still~ train them, although I should probably switch over to cavalry archers soon.

Just as a heads up about iron ore since Sine was mentioning it, it becomes highly abundant before long and you won't know what to do with it all half the time. Arcanists require a lot of wood and food to train and heavy cavalry more gold than anything else. Archers don't use much iron to train nor do most of the TG upgrades (because no one ever techs infantry). You'll often be stuck with surplus iron unless you've just upgraded your gold mine. Around my area, the marketplace is offering iron almost exclusively and nobody's asking for any in return. For this reason, you can get away with focusing more on your other resource buildings to better balance your income. I produce twice as much gold and food as I do iron, and if I ever needed a little extra iron for whatever reason then again there's no shortage of iron offers in the marketplace here from people who are begging to have it taken off their hands.

Regarding master sage, there are worse things to do I suppose with 3 skill points than an extra 9.1% experience, as long as you don't mind spending the coins later on to redistribute those points. I've seen some number crunching done on this and the extra exp doesn't mean nearly as much to a kingdom as a lot of people first expected. Gaining levels, other than becoming unable to attack smaller kingdoms and allowing yourself to be attacked by larger ones, doesn't do too much except award skill points, so after a few million points of experience you can safely put those points to better use because spending 3 skill points to try and earn back 1 or possibly 2 skill points at most is kind of lol.

[Mental]

1. There is a misconception I want to clear up. When I was talking about Infantry not being useless, I had just started playing and was using the terminology in the sense that when you click on upgrades, for instance, you see Infantry, Cavalry, and Mystics, and nothing for Archers. So I was including Archers in that terminology - it's somewhat inconsistent throughout the game. I had assumed you all meant to skip everything from the Barracks, and just go for Cavalry, which obviously isn't the way to be.

Somehow, that got twisted around to mean that I was going to have an "infantry-based" army, which was never on the agenda. I had always planned to have Cavalry, the only thing I really said IIRC is that I wasn't going to bypass infantry entirely. And my infantry, as distinct from archers, have not been useless. They're very helpful IMO at the beginning for cracking open the inevitable 200/5 shortbow/swordsman army with the level 1 or 2 wall without suffering much attrition - and the reason that's good, even though the cost of the Swordsmen I was losing was somewhat close to the Shortbowmen I would have lost instead (though still not as high), is because you save training time on the Swordsmen as opposed to the Shortbowmen. Like I said, I'm training constantly, and I would have lost out on quite a bit of carrying capacity and raiding potential if I'd had to wait for a lot of Shortbowmen to train or pump my Barracks for extra speed.

Obviously, I have Crossbowmen and Arcanists now, so my Infantry have become useful mostly as just strawmen for your rank-manipulating strat.

2. I dispute your assertion that experience doesn't matter. The most important reason is that in the end, your experience is your score (AFAIK), and your clan ranking is based on everyone's experience. So even if skills development is not crucial, the score is.

Also, it got me to Scout 3 more quickly, and Scout 3 basically doubles your raiding potential.

3. I agree, Iron is useless later, and Wood is always out of stock. So I have my lumbermill pumped way past my farms and goldmine, and my iron mine is far behind.

I think some of our analysis has been focusing too much on sheer power. It's really the ability to make multiple raids successfully and build up an army efficiently that increases resources per day, and so every bit of training time and every lost unit makes a big difference. I haven't been in a huge cataclysmic battle yet where I needed every scrap of power I could muster, but I have been in plenty of tiny ones where the goal is to minimize attrition, and I've done that...since my original Shortbowmen got lost/ganked I haven't suffered more than maybe three or four dozen lost units in the course of raiding for many times their worth in resources.

Anyway, I just had my first major bunker-bust against a level 9 wall, with only 6 Arcanists in my Legion of Somewhat Moderate Damage (as opposed to your Legion of Doom), to the tune of grabbing about 8k in resources, with a total of 1 Axeman and 1 Pikeman lost. That strawman strat is the best thing you've come up with, it's probably tripled my resouce intake.

One thing I want to mention is that you don't need to have enough power to bring down the wall in one shot. Walls, unlike units, can only hit a single group at a time, so if you use a single Infantry strawman of each of the four groups, you can get four rounds of wall-smashing in before the rest of your army gets exposed to risk. Hence why I just took down a 6750 strength wall with only 6 Arcanists and about 160 Longbow/Crossbowmen. And I plan to milk that shit for all it is worth.

[Mental]

Also, something to think about:

Battle experience seems to be based on the TOTAL number of troops killed, both yours and theirs, as opposed to how "well" you actually do, or whatnot. When I run simulations, the experience rewards are way higher when my virtual army gets the shit ganked out of it than when it doesn't.

So, if someone wanted to translate resources into experience (since, like I said, experience seems to be equivalent to score for clanranks), one could train up a bunch of cheapass infantry expressly for the purpose of getting ganked. I'm guessing one would probably want to do this later on in the game, when one has already built up enough Crossbowmen so that the infantry training didn't take away from buildup time.

[KluYa]

I may have misinterpreted your earlier remarks about light cavalry. The following comment is what led me to wonder just how much LC you were actually going to train.

Elves get Wizards at +10%, I believe. So I think I'll forego the cavalry and work up to a slow but bunker-busting army.

I responded to this by detailing some of their virtues and preaching their overall usefulness, and then you replied to me with the following quote.

The problem with light cavalry, Klu, is that I'm surrounded by stronger kingdoms that are literally right next door to me, and there isn't much worth raiding in the cavalry-ish range. March time's not going to be a big deal, what will be a big deal is trying to get myself up to the point where I can compete successfully with these castles who have a head start of eight or nine levels on me.

You didn't seem to believe that march time is a big deal or that you'd be able to do much raiding with them. I might have been reading too much into your words however. In any case, all's well that ends well... heh.

About master sage again, I didn't say that experience doesn't matter, I'm just letting you guys know that the difference between advanced sage and master sage matters far less at high levels than at low ones. You're right, you'll be a bit higher on the ranking, but in terms of actually helping your kingdom... well... it doesn't. And it didn't get you to scout 3 more quickly because it takes the same amount of skill points to master scout as it does sage. By the time you had sage mastered you could have already had scout mastered instead. =p

I'm not even saying it's better to master scout before sage (although for anyone who can log in semi regularly it almost certainly is) I'm just throwing something out there to think about that perhaps hasn't really been considered yet. I'll try and dig up those numbers I mentioned and post them here.

One thing I want to mention is that you don't need to have enough power to bring down the wall in one shot. Walls, unlike units, can only hit a single group at a time, so if you use a single Infantry strawman of each of the four groups, you can get four rounds of wall-smashing in before the rest of your army gets exposed to risk. Hence why I just took down a 6750 strength wall with only 6 Arcanists and about 160 Longbow/Crossbowmen. And I plan to milk that shit for all it is worth.

Yeah. This is exactly what I was saying when you were wondering why you weren't sustaining as many casualties when more fodder units were in the first row. Just goes to show that walls aren't all they're cracked up to be except in the very beginning. I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere about walls being all cracked up.

[KluYa]

Also, something to think about:

Battle experience seems to be based on the TOTAL number of troops killed, both yours and theirs, as opposed to how "well" you actually do, or whatnot. When I run simulations, the experience rewards are way higher when my virtual army gets the shit ganked out of it than when it doesn't.

So, if someone wanted to translate resources into experience (since, like I said, experience seems to be equivalent to score for clanranks), one could train up a bunch of cheapass infantry expressly for the purpose of getting ganked. I'm guessing one would probably want to do this later on in the game, when one has already built up enough Crossbowmen so that the infantry training didn't take away from buildup time.

This idea's been thought of but the way experience is awarded during a battle doesn't allow for this kind of exploit. The precise way in which experience is earned during an attack is explained in the help pages of the game (which are well worth a read IMO) and I'll paste that section here.

After a battle, the experience gained is based on the life of the killed units. However it will be a percentage of this unit life, based on the population losses of the players in that battle. If both players have lost at least 35% of their population, they gain 100% of the life of the killed units as experience. If one of the players (no matter who won or lost the battle) has lost less than 33.5% of his population, both players will receive just part of the experience. This percentage will be estimated in the following way: % population lost multiplied by 3. Using this system, if a player wins a battle without any losses, they will receive 0 xp.

For example - if one of the players lost 33% of his population and the other lost all of it, both players get 33 * 3 = 99% from the experience. If that player had lost 20% of the population, both would've got 20 * 3 = 60% of the experience. This calculation will always use the percentage population lost of the player who lost least population. For example, if one of the players lost 20% and the other 60%, the experience will be calculated with the first value - 20%.

In other words, you only get experience for the health of what you've killed, and that's if both players lose over a third of their forces each. Most of one's experience will come from upgrading buildings, and eventually from training military also. Ideally, less than 1% of your total experience will come from battle, because you shouldn't be sustaining any real losses whatsoever to pull in resources (other than a fodder unit here and there). The game's combat system could really use a lot of work.

[Mental]

You didn't seem to believe that march time is a big deal or that you'd be able to do much raiding with them. I might have been reading too much into your words however. In any case, all's well that ends well... heh.

True enough.

About master sage again, I didn't say that experience doesn't matter, I'm just letting you guys know that the difference between advanced sage and master sage matters far less at high levels than at low ones. You're right, you'll be a bit higher on the ranking, but in terms of actually helping your kingdom... well... it doesn't. And it didn't get you to scout 3 more quickly because it takes the same amount of skill points to master scout as it does sage. By the time you had sage mastered you could have already had scout mastered instead. =p

I'm not even saying it's better to master scout before sage (although for anyone who can log in semi regularly it almost certainly is) I'm just throwing something out there to think about that perhaps hasn't really been considered yet. I'll try and dig up those numbers I mentioned and post them here.

I didn't master Sage...I only took two points in it. The third level is, as you said, past the point of diminishing returns.

I suppose I could have indeed gotten Scout 3 slightly faster if I'd only taken one point in it, but it's more or less a wash by now. I still do think, however, that at least one point in Sage early on (preferably at Level 2 where nothing else except Merchant is really useful) is probably a good thing.

Yeah. This is exactly what I was saying when you were wondering why you weren't sustaining as many casualties when more fodder units were in the first row. Just goes to show that walls aren't all they're cracked up to be except in the very beginning. I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere about walls being all cracked up.

ba-dum-bum kssh!

[Mental]

This idea's been thought of but the way experience is awarded during a battle doesn't allow for this kind of exploit. The precise way in which experience is earned during an attack is explained in the help pages of the game (which are well worth a read IMO) and I'll paste that section here.

After a battle, the experience gained is based on the life of the killed units. However it will be a percentage of this unit life, based on the population losses of the players in that battle. If both players have lost at least 35% of their population, they gain 100% of the life of the killed units as experience. If one of the players (no matter who won or lost the battle) has lost less than 33.5% of his population, both players will receive just part of the experience. This percentage will be estimated in the following way: % population lost multiplied by 3. Using this system, if a player wins a battle without any losses, they will receive 0 xp.

For example - if one of the players lost 33% of his population and the other lost all of it, both players get 33 * 3 = 99% from the experience. If that player had lost 20% of the population, both would've got 20 * 3 = 60% of the experience. This calculation will always use the percentage population lost of the player who lost least population. For example, if one of the players lost 20% and the other 60%, the experience will be calculated with the first value - 20%.

In other words, you only get experience for the health of what you've killed, and that's if both players lose over a third of their forces each. Most of one's experience will come from upgrading buildings, and eventually from training military also. Ideally, less than 1% of your total experience will come from battle, because you shouldn't be sustaining any real losses whatsoever to pull in resources (other than a fodder unit here and there). The game's combat system could really use a lot of work.

I don't think it works quite that way. I have been reading the help pages - missed that particular section - but I think they are referring to TOTAL units killed on both sides, not just what you kill.

Seriously, I ran some simulation where I barely lost a thing, and they lost everything and of course there was next to no experience gain. Then I ran one where I lost a bunch of shit, and the experience gain was massive. So something doesn't wash here.

[KluYa]

I suppose I could have indeed gotten Scout 3 slightly faster if I'd only taken one point in it, but it's more or less a wash by now. I still do think, however, that at least one point in Sage early on (preferably at Level 2 where nothing else except Merchant is really useful) is probably a good thing.

While we're on the subject of skill points, it should be noted that because it takes 3 points to progress one level in a skill if you're already advanced, and just 1 point to progress in a skill you're uneducated in, there is more value in training a number of different skills to level 1 or 2 instead of training a single skill or pair of skills to level 2 or 3 with the same number of points. This is probably a given but worth mentioning anyway I suppose - just in case. 3 skill points could take you from advanced to master mystic (increasing your damage from wizards by 8.3%), or add 20% to archer damage AND add 20% to cavalry damage AND add 10% to every unit's health... if those skills are not yet trained.

In spite of this, mastering the merchant skill early is very important IMO, and scout is another highly important skill as well.

Seriously, I ran some simulation where I barely lost a thing, and they lost everything and of course there was next to no experience gain. Then I ran one where I lost a bunch of shit, and the experience gain was massive. So something doesn't wash here.

This description appears to be in line with what the help page describes. I'll run some sims myself though and try and find out for sure if anything's not jiving. Not that I think training suicide infantry is a viable method of gaining experience if every single building in the game is not already maxed out, but I'm curious if there's yet another aspect of this game that isn't working the way it's supposed to be working.

[Mental]

Scout and Merchant are important to master, the others not so much.

As far as the battle system goes, there are a number of things I'm curious about.

Wall damage doesn't "carry over" to the next group if they wipe one out. I would GUESS based on my simulations, however, that unit damage does. It might be calculated per-entity, which is to say, if a single unit wipes out a group, the damage doesn't carry over, but if a group wipes out a group, then the "left over" units in the first group can attack the next one past that...but I'm not sure.

Also, somewhere in the help on Archers it notes that they deal a certain amount of "splash" damage (my word, not theirs) to nearby units. So I wonder if staggering units helps defend against archer damage; I've been looking into that a bit with no conclusive results.

Finally, it's worth noting that Wizards have a serious advantage in multi-round battles, because they're hard to kill and even a highly wounded Wizard attacks first next round...which is why I'm still looking to build up a serious Arcanist contingent. There are a lot of level 8-10s near me with midsize walls and that seems to be about the right area for them to do their work.

The only thing I'm really curious about on that level is, again, how carryover damage works, because if Arcanist damage does not carry over, there's a decent reason to train up to Stormcallers and Fireslingers more quickly, even though their damage sucks, so that one can wipe out more units before they get a chance to strike.

Then again, they take a hell of a lot of tech, are expensive as hell, and their damage REALLY sucks, so I'm thinking they're maybe just for use in larger kingdoms to try to wipe out building levels, even then though it seems that if you shatter someone's army you don't need or want to do that because you don't want to chance hitting the resource producers for farming.

I have to look into how Noblemen work and see if there's any reason that Stormcallers and Fireslingers actually help that.

[Mental]

Thinking about it more, I think Stormcallers/Fireslingers would probably be best used for breaking down someone who keeps sending out their army so you can't break it in half.

Still, if the 0.03%/0.05% is anything other than a typo, that's so low as to make them useless to anyone except Dark Elves with Grand Magi (who I really wish I had picked, from everything I can tell, Elf Lords are WORTHLESS). That means if you have 100 Fireslingers - which costs you something like 80000 gold - you have a three percent chance to break a building.

THAT is a game balance problem. That is more or less worthless.

[Eric]

What level are your production buildings Klu? My Gold Mine & Farm are at 22, Lumbermill @ 21, Iron @ 20.