MAJOR RELEASE 22APR12

Createure wrote: ... you analysis does fail to account for any kind of production time analysis though which is the key factor that really seriously hampers Orcs/Spear based armies. The main point about considering production times is this - advanced resources can be stockpiled for times of war... production time cannot - so while other races can retrain and sustain large armies during times of war using supplies built up in times of peace... spear units and other T1/low-upkeep units cannot. Once an Orc spear army is destroyed it isn't gonna be reappearing for a LONG time in an equivalent upkeep-based strength capacity.

HonoredMule wrote: Blockades have minimal value because any strategic relevance they might have is negated by their very low chance of actually capturing caravans.

I don't think human nature is that easily fooled.  Send your resources in 70 separate shipments and at least 60 of them will get through--more likely ~68 of them.  So unless the occupation is trivially weak, just ignoring it is fine.  And unless there's evidence of incoming thieves, I believe most people would do nothing anyway, not even trying to move resources.

I know plenty of people make a career of it, but thieving is a fool's errand with the cards stacked in the defender's favor no matter how you approach it.  Case in point:  I regularly sell all excess resources above stockpile levels I can consume in roughly one month of constant overdrive production.  My resulting gold stockpiles vastly exceed any amount that thieves or attackers could significantly dent even with several successful strikes.  The attacker, however, is guaranteed to lose 800 thieves to my Runemaster-enhanced rune, and has a strong chance of losing the rest to defensive thieves and any military attacks to wall-enhanced reinforcements.  I'd rather be me any day, and moving resources is the last thing I'd do.

And when I was much smaller?  I didn't have much worth stealing anyway, having to use it all as I acquired it.

Blockading should have been a major asset in alliance conflicts as one could blockade the financial capital's incoming tax vans.  But the chance of capture is still too low and there's no special benefit to having alliance gold anyway so few alliances even collect taxes.  And it should have been a good way to suppress incoming support.  But still...too much gets through and allows besieged cities to rebuild against damages to extend survival time, while the captured basic resources have little value to the blockading party.

Salararius wrote: How about blockade with that annoyingly fast but best on defense scrawny wolf unit and sending in the buffed orc T2 thief unit?

Armies are only as fast as their commander... in this instance it would be no benefit over a standard T1 cav force. Elves win hands down above all else in any instance of 'quick raid' strategies.

Ander wrote: Orcs and elves can afford to keep building defensive units throughout the year at negligible cost, unlike humans or dwarves. The economic advantage they get from this alone is massive.

Oh it's true. There is the ability to constantly produce cheap units that dwarves+humans lack. I guess that is the pay-off from having the strongest offensive units. [Although I guess you could argue elves also have the strongest offensive unit on mountainous terrain - where ALOT of the biggest battles Illy has seen have been fought in the past]

But the elf cheap unit is more than twice as strong as the Orc one and can be produced in exactly the same time-frame. [Or theoretically a shorter time frame - since a range spec city is capable of sustaining greater sov bonuses due to a far lower dependance on clay]

Even if you say Orcs have a big advantage from a cheap unit... elves have twice that advantage.

I still maintain that unit upkeep values should be reflected more closely in their production times... then we would actually start seeing people using all sides of the combat-square rather than the majority of all troops in the game being either Knights or Trueshots.

Createure wrote: In fact I'm tempted to change my usual rant from "Orcs are underpowered" to "Elves are way overpowered".