King's Age

[Viin]

Anyone else having trouble loggin in?  I cant get in unless I use my activation link.

No problems here.

[WayAbvPar]

Invitations sent.

I am loading up on Templars for defense. As soon as I have the resources I will upgrade the hideout as well. It was a spy mission- what does that do? I haven't had time to read up much on the mechanics yet 

[Ghambit]

I got lucky and got put right next to an abandoned settlement.  Im cranking out squires to pillage.
Must we have a residence and a count in order to take over a settlement (abandoned or not)?
Do you see the requirements for such things??  They're insane. 
What's the point in warring if the material need to take over something is so high?

[WayAbvPar]

I think you can raid it for resources with any troops, but I am not sure about taking over.

[Ghambit]

I think you can raid it for resources with any troops, but I am not sure about taking over.

u need a residence and a count, and the mats needed are ridiculous

[WayAbvPar]

Gave everyone who has joined thus far invite rights, so let's get some more warm bodies in here.

[Kageru]

Scouting mission tells them what you have in your town. So I assume buildings, troops and resources. You can defend against them by building twice as many spies.

They've designed the rules to make it harder to spread your empire quickly. Both capturing villages and moving resources takes infrastructure and you can't merge or gift armies. Though once you are established sending a "nuke" including overwhelming forces and a count followed by 4 waves of counts at 1 second intervals gives you a pretty much instant capture of a city. The balance against this being that you can't attack someone 1/20th of your size.

Also off the forums the count that actually captures the city is consumed and the count dies if you lose more than 50% of the army in the attack. Each count who reaches the town captures it by 20-35% and the capture rate reduces at 1% an hour. They can also use the siege weaponry to destroy your city wall as part of the attack.

There do seem to be a surprisingly large number of not abandoned but not developed towns though. Not sure why. Lots of people signing up and then thinking better of it?

Lastly I wonder if we should look at our distribution and consider re-rolling while it's still early. At the moment with some of us having 7 days travel between us there's very little we can do to support each other. Though I guess you get to restart anyway if you do get rolled.

[Ghambit]

Re-rolling would be wise so we could all pick the same zone direction.  
Grebo should've given more info. than just "whee."  Like, which direction he chose to build in.  

Then again, I've only got 350pts., so I have little to lose except this juicy abandoned settlement next to me.

[Kageru]

The map (or maybe just the non premium one) sort of sucks for getting a strategic view.

Below is our distribution with the number of towns in blocks of 20 "fields". Note that even though WayAbvPar and I are neighbours it's still 3:50 to move a squire from one to the other. The rest of you are all many days of travel away. And given a duke can only travel a maximum of 70 fields there's real limits of moving far from your start position.

Of course the other alternative is we just go for it and the people who get rolled by hostile neighbours use that opportunity to re-start closer.


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[Ghambit]

Y'know.  The main reason I play this game is because there's a building queue.  If it didnt have that I'd put it down.

[Kageru]

It would be even nicer if you could queue stuff to build when resources are available.

[Tannhauser]

I'm willing to reroll.  There are a couple of superpowers close to me and that makes me 

[Viin]

I'm already at 1200 points, but I could reroll... I have no idea how to find you guys on the map or tell where I am, so umm yeah.

[Ghambit]

We dont all have to reroll, only the folks who are in the boonies alone and/or w/o a lot of points.  If you go by the diagram, it looks like most folks are in the NW corner.  So I guess if you're in the NW corner you're fine... otherwise reroll.  (a shame, I have a really nice spot in the NE)

Really though, with travel times the way they are.  It almost makes no difference if we're all in the same zone or not... especially since it's still a random draw even though you pick the zone.  Could be right next to someone and it's still 3 hrs.   

[Kageru]

I logged in a bit ago and saw an attack incoming on WayAbvPar (the little banners under the windows on the towers at the side of the display roll down to indicate an incoming attack). It had 40 minutes till arrival and was launched from a 4k point castle. Just vanished though, so maybe was aborted en-route?

[WayAbvPar]

No it came through. 100 crusaders and 50 black knights vs my 13 Templars and 14 Berserkers. I killed one crusader.

[Viin]

Hmm I guess the attacks don't stay in the Alliance pages, bummer you can't keep that history at the Alliance level.

[Musashi]

Has anyone found a better description of what the buildings do?  The building help is pretty pointless, as it just regurgitates the blurb in the game.  The blurb of course, is pretty useless.

[Kageru]

There's some FAQ's on buildings and units on the forums. They're pretty straightforward. The alchemists lab seems really useless though allowing you to spend resources to buy one use of some premium features.

The attack is interesting in terms of what constitutes a mid-level attack force. No real way any of us could survive that, though both templars and berserkers are very weak defenders against cavalry. My forces would have been able to kill a couple more of them but it still would have resulted in 100% of my army dieing. Need more archers.

[gryeyes]

Ok i think im the 1 SW of kageru and WayAb. Someone sent a tentative attack against me (40 squires) whom i slaughtered without a loss. Should i reroll or am i close enough? The maps sucks massive ass.

[Ghambit]

I'm not rerollin at this point; i've got it too cushy here.  Maybe down the road if things dont work out.
I've got donkeys/market up so maybe when things get movin we can work up some trade.

[Kageru]

Yeah, I reckon only re-roll if / when you get steam rolled. You can't select your starting position with any precision anyway and the travel times are nuts.

I was thinking that may explain all the 50 point settlements around though. People make an account, start a castle and if it's not near their allies just make a new account.

The building phase is pretty slow going. Pumping resources into some troops and upgrading resources but it's going to take a while to get anywhere, and there's not much you can do while you wait for more resources.

[gryeyes]

Are moving troops visible on the map? And who is Sirpetergriffin? Hes the only ally remotely close to me.

[Musashi]

I've found the templar zerg very useful to just queue attacks on adjacent noob settlements, pillaging whatever you can as often as you check up on your settlement.  It helps with resource gathering immensely.  The noob towns closest to me ran out of stuff to steal a couple days ago, though, so now I'm finding I have to go farther afield.

Of course this also helps slow down any would-be noob adversaries, but I'm not even sure most of them are even still playing.

[Kageru]

I just use squires. They move faster and carry more. Plus apparently some people "spike" the abandoned towns by re-inforcing them with troops leading to farmers getting a nasty surprise. Thankfully resources do regenerate as I've been happily pillaging a local abandoned town.

[Ghambit]

I've just been pillaging with squires at 100/stop at an abandoned town right next to me.  I should probably start attacking the newbs though to thin the herd around here; starting to get crowded.
Otherwise, I'm thinking about going the Helm's Deep strat and hiding behind my high walls.

How effective are the walls?

[gryeyes]

4 of my templars killed 44 squires with 2 losses. I believe my wall was at level 2-3.

[Ghambit]

4 of my templars killed 44 squires with 2 losses. I believe my wall was at level 2-3.

 

Walls it is.

[Musashi]

Squires are weak weak weak vs Templar.

[Kageru]

Yeah, 1 templar = 6 squires even before you consider walls. Building town walls doesn't seem terribly resource intensive either, though the build times are massive. My next level is 9.5 hours to build.

[Ghambit]

Yeah, 1 templar = 6 squires even before you consider walls. Building town walls doesn't seem terribly resource intensive either, though the build times are massive. My next level is 9.5 hours to build.

Does not building up your castle reduce build times?

[gryeyes]

yes, level 8 wall took 1.5hrs with a castle level of 8.

[Kageru]

My castle is still level 1 since I'm limited more by resources than build times.

[gryeyes]

Ahhh i was under the impression castle level also decreased cost of other buildings. And it appears that i was mistaken.  . Resource gathering is so slow in this game i just ramped up my warehouse/walls/resource nodes. So i could ignore the game for a few days while my stores max out.

[Ghambit]

It's only slow if you dont upgrade your nodes.  Actually, I find it fast enough and largely dependant on the size of your warehouse.  You're pretty much forced into upgrading your warehouse if you ever hope to open up any new settlements.