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HonoredMule
Postmaster General
Joined: 05 Mar 2010
Location: Canada
Status: Offline
Points: 1650
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Posted: 24 May 2012 at 15:21 |
Blockades have minimal value because any strategic relevance they might have is negated by their very low chance of actually capturing caravans.
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"Apparently, quoting me is a 'thing' now." - HonoredMule
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Ander
Postmaster General
Joined: 24 Apr 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 1269
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Posted: 24 May 2012 at 17:36 |
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.
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While in the time of war, orcs need not build spearmen. The deathpacks are second in strength only against humans by a narrow margin of 10%.
Kobolds are 28% stronger in attack, 50% stronger in defense against archers, 9% stronger in defense against pikes and infantry, than the human militiamen. And they don't cost leather armour.
Orcs can send 40,000 kobolds for an initial attack and expect to kill 10,000 human cavalry. 40,000 kobolds cost pittance as compared to 40,000 militiamen or 10,000 knights. 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.
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Rill
Postmaster General
Player Council - Geographer
Joined: 17 Jun 2011
Location: California
Status: Offline
Points: 7078
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Posted: 24 May 2012 at 17:55 |
Where are you getting the scrawny wolves?
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Salararius
Postmaster
Joined: 26 Sep 2011
Location: USA
Status: Offline
Points: 519
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Posted: 24 May 2012 at 18:49 |
HonoredMule wrote:
Blockades have minimal value because any strategic relevance they might have is negated by their very low chance of actually capturing caravans.
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Um, low isn't zero. The chance of success has to be balance against the cost of success. If the player being blockaded is moving tons of stuff around (to avoid thieves) he's going to be a lot more worried about that "low chance" because of the cost (lots of adv resources stolen or intercepted). It's the same reason millions of people play the lottery and get insurance on electronics. People worry about "low chances/high cost/gain" events all the time and will pay to avoid them or seek them out. The trick for the orc is to get people to pay too much to avoid too little.
When is there no strategic relevance in leveraging human nature?
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Salararius
Postmaster
Joined: 26 Sep 2011
Location: USA
Status: Offline
Points: 519
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Posted: 24 May 2012 at 18:50 |
Rill wrote:
Where are you getting the scrawny wolves? |
I'm not an orc but I think it's a unit they receive for quests...? I looked it up in Honored Mules wiki:.
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HonoredMule
Postmaster General
Joined: 05 Mar 2010
Location: Canada
Status: Offline
Points: 1650
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Posted: 24 May 2012 at 19:40 |
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.
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"Apparently, quoting me is a 'thing' now." - HonoredMule
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Rill
Postmaster General
Player Council - Geographer
Joined: 17 Jun 2011
Location: California
Status: Offline
Points: 7078
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Posted: 24 May 2012 at 19:54 |
Salararius wrote:
Rill wrote:
Where are you getting the scrawny wolves? |
I'm not an orc but I think it's a unit they receive for quests...? I looked it up in Honored Mules wiki:.
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My point was more than you'd have to play for decades to get enough scrawny wolves to make a decent blockade force. I doubt anyone has substantially more than 1000 of them, although I'd be interested to hear who does (you don't have to tell me specifically, just tell me you "know of a player who" and I'll decide whether you're being sincere.
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Createure
Postmaster General
Joined: 07 Apr 2010
Location: uk
Status: Offline
Points: 1191
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Posted: 24 May 2012 at 20:44 |
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.
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Createure
Postmaster General
Joined: 07 Apr 2010
Location: uk
Status: Offline
Points: 1191
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Posted: 24 May 2012 at 20:46 |
In fact I'm tempted to change my usual rant from "Orcs are underpowered" to "Elves are way overpowered".
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Rill
Postmaster General
Player Council - Geographer
Joined: 17 Jun 2011
Location: California
Status: Offline
Points: 7078
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Posted: 24 May 2012 at 20:50 |
Createure wrote:
In fact I'm tempted to change my usual rant from "Orcs are underpowered" to "Elves are way overpowered".
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There's a solution to that ... the humans, orcs and dwarves could get together and wipe out all elves. Then as new elf players started we could kill em right after they get out of protection. It wouldn't matter if they were overpowered because there wouldn't be any of them.
/me looks around nervously to see if Kumomoto is reading this.
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