Dilema: Light Cavalry vs Axemen (Startup)

[DeletedUser]

Great post even though I skimmed it, it's getting late here and getting somewhat tired, I've had to bookmark this page so that I can go back to it. I would like to nit pick your thoughts someday Sasuke, you're from around my original era (W13-18) and I think we may have a lot to discuss, converse may be even debate. Good work and thanks for this Guide.

 

[DeletedUser]

[spoil]

1.) World Settings...

...The most used Guide is LC Rush Guide.

• LC Rush offers us always great farming routes and hauls
• LC Rush offers us fast hauls and strong offenses
• LC Rush offers us eaisest cleaning village while preparing for nobling

[/spoil]

First i would like to address this assumption.

The main points about using LC for farming is:

• LC cut down the time spent farming by half;
  - This is useful because you will get to farms faster, often beating opponents in the morning rush too the closest farm.
  - The LC return sooner so you get to spend the resources quicker and also send them to the next farm to beat the other competition on barb farming in your area.
  - This speed means that you will get more hauls in a day and will be able to spend your hauls more frequently then other ways, meaning you will have a more constant flow of troops in the queue.
  
• LC offers strong offences;
  - This means if you come across and barbs which have been stacked you will be able to put up more of a fight per capita than on a spear and axe system, based on two assumptions. The ratio of axe to spear is less than 3:1 * and that players mostly stack barbs with more swords than spears because they are using their spears for farming while the swords lay idle and they wish to put them to better use.
  
• "LC Rush offers us eaisest cleaning village while preparing for nobling" Not always true;
  - The strongest attack against an enemy is dependent on their defence.
  - Per capita axe are stronger than LC by approximately 23%.
  (N.B. i don't think this should be a factor for the LC rush as i don't see it relevant to a players start up, i.e. i see the time a player gets nobles as a new stage, whereby LC should have been researched long before this stage was reached.)

[spoil]

But there are also settings when I would suggest not to folow LC Rush.

• Slow World Speed (0.5 world speed for example)
• Morale World (Altough it's not that importmatn - but meaning your rushed to LC = you have stables = a lot points = low morale on farms = easier loss of troops)

There are that came on my mind while I was thinking and writting this - maybe I could fine more, but currently I can't.

[/spoil]

I think mattcurr summed up this point near enough to how i would phrase it.

There has been one world that was speed .5, but none the less, the slower the world, the more important farming becomes. Buildings costs do not change, however when you are in a slow world, your income from mines is drastically smaller. Thus in order to build the same buildings you are going to need, to A) Wait longer, and B) Go out further for villages you plan on farming because the villages you are attacking will also not be yielding as many res per hour as they normally would; yet your troops are still moving as quickly as they do in a speed 2 world, so since effectiveness of the troops does not drop but the effectiveness of mines does, the overall lean moves more towards farming. And when farming the easiest way to increase your revenue is through the use of light cavalry.

Point being the slower the world the more necessary it is to rush for LC as the resources will be lower in your village and in your farms, meaning you will have to farm more and go further to do it effectively.


[spoil]

2.) Your Map Location


The Start-up Guide you should chose, should very depend on the Map Location.
Here we include:

Core
Outter-Core
RIM

But those are just basic ones - there also more specific Map locations, which are importmant in this pattern:

Near barbarians villages
Only players surronding you
You are almost alone in your 7x7

CORE - If you land in Core, means your in crowded place with mostly active players surronding you. If you are lucky you could have barbarian near you - but there will be alot players catching that barbarian.
My suggestion is to head for Axemen here - you can create around 20 Spears while reaching Axemen, but they are primary goal for you in the core region. Why?
Axemen are the best offensive unit without a horse - they can easily clear villages in very beginings and they are fast to research = you don't need alot of building to upgrade to get Axemen.
So assure you some Axemen and start cleaning villages + use your additional cca 20 Spears (you can have more ofcourse) to get better Farm Hauls and then go reach LC fast.

Outter-Core - This place is the best way to start if you're not that expirienced player, but have played already few worlds. This is because it grows more peacefully. While Core players will start smashing and clearing villages, in outter-core you'll still be upgrading your VHQ to 5.
The Social research of TW's Outter-core (which is 85% right) tells me, that players who land there aren't 100% aggresively pointed -> because everyone's watcing actions in Core and every player in outter-core thinkgs "Yes! Nobody will attack me, as they are all thrilled what's going up in Core so they won't pay much attention on rushing to troops".
(This has been examined on some other world where I was playing (W15, W32).)
That's why you can take ANY Guide for Outter-Core's progress.


RIM - RIM is two-edged sword. You must be carefull there. Players who join late, are ussualy the ones who know how to play (and that's not because, it's the best to start at RIM, but because they are just simply to bored to go in action at core) and can suprise quite easily.
Either RIM's can be the most peacefull place, with lots of newbies learning how to play properly OR it can turn out into Devil's Lair of demonic suprises.
I would easily suggest which Guide to follow on RIM, but it a lot heavier to decide - especially nowadays. The reason lays, that expirienced players will mostly use Aliases in games and you can't define if they are good or bad players.
IF YOU COULD know that -> the picking up a start-up Guide would be easy: Axemen = For expirienced players surronding you.
Spears = For noob's surronding you
LC = For lonely location (meaning not many villages surrond you).

[/spoil]

This cannot be used as a general guide because there are too many variables. These variables will come under some of the following (taking from point of view of first few days);

• Proximity to farms (bonus villages and barbs from relocating players)
• Amount of players in your 7x7 (immediate threat) and take into account 15x15 (future threat)
• Activity/growth rate of those players
• Determine history of player (gives you insight into experience of player)
• If you can determine game style... offensive, defensive or mix.
• To a lesser extent, the tribes the players are in. If they are in a premade and you cannot get information it is likely to be an experienced player and if they have other tribe mates close by this could shape you gaming style to cope with attacks or to increase your offence to take them on depending on haul size and troop production.
• I also realise that the concentration of premades are generally denser in the core but they do exist everywhere and you should pick your tactic based on your specific area and not the broad, general areas that are the Cores and rim.

[spoil]

So why not chose both Axemen and Light Cavalry already at start?

It is because of resources.
It depends on your luck, where are you located (lots barbs, lots inactive players, lots noob players) => Yes, then free to go and upgrade both of them.

But if you are surronded with good players, who may even attack you first or succesfully defend themselves = resources won't allow you to do both in EXPECTED QUANTITIES.

That's why I say Axemen always for clearing good players = LC will come after them.

"But Sasuke.., ofcourse I'll research Axemen, I think everyone does that! Why are you pointing out the obivous?"

Mr.X, there's a difference in just researching Axemen or activily recruit them!

People ussualy really do research axemen - but then they train around 20 of them and already going for LC - and this is not the same as Activily recruiting Axemen.

Acitivly recruiting Axemen means that you will over 100+ Axemen, before you get Light Cavalry. But ME, I do even more = I go for around 300 Axemen before touching Light Cavalry (ofcourse I educate Scouts when I have 100 Axemen).

It is NOT because they are better - but because I think that those who have defenses will build more Spearfighters then Swordsmen = And Axemen easily overcome Spears, while LC are having troubles with them (At the beginigs, players ussualy really do recruit spearffighers, because of the lack of Iron for Swordsmen). And I always take the chance, that next to me is an expirienced player which needs to be cleared ASAP + it brings me a lighter future, to not recruit that many additional Axemen, while I'll be reaching Nobles (because I always get atleast 1/2 Nuke on my first noble target).

I still suggest everyone to do LC.

Simply because:

And

(These were made on settings for W42 - that's why LC's Time is more beneficial then on slower worlds)

[/spoil]


This is another area that i think you completely got incorrect.

You talk about the importance of resources and build time but imo. you left out vital details in this equation.

Axe requirements:

• Village HQ level 5 753 689 585
• Barracks level 1 200 170 90
• Smithy level 2 497 409 542
• Research costs: 700 840 820
• Total Cost => 2,150 2,108 2,037

Light Cavalry requirements:

• Village HQ level 10 3,145 3,012 2,445
• Barracks level 5 1,674 1,480 753
• Smithy level 5 1,841 1,551 2,008
• Stable level 3 1,039 940 1,001
• Research costs: 2,200 2,400 2,000
• Total Cost => 9,899 9,383 8,207

That leads to a difference of 7,749 7,275 and 6,170 before any units are even made. Which equates to a difference of 129 extra axe by not researching LC and when you factor in the time taken to build all of those buildings the gap grows even wider.

Other points to note is that sticking with the axe will give you lower points as all you will need to build are the resources, farm and warehouse which will give a much slower points gain. Meaning morale will take less of an effect, players around you will underestimate you(possibly even easing off on troop production) and bigger players might even suffer morale against you even though you have similar size armies.


Conclusion:

But the benefits of LC listed above means that you have to find the break even point, i.e. the point at which the LCs benefit outweighs the cost/ the point that you can constantly keep axe in production while building the necessary buildings.

They not only make you grow faster once you have them but they are a stepping stone onto the next level of warfare which is rams and catapults. These units are crucial in early game for bashing morale and making players quit as well as taking out threats with wasp attacks which is about the most fun thing to do in the game.

So it is up to the player to asses their own situation and adapt accordingly given the guidance and experience of others.

Final point
Adaptability >>> Experience

 

[DeletedUser]

1.)
I don't get your resource's for LC and Axe requirements?


Because you must get that building lvls ANYWAY - now or later. More importmant is time needed to get those Units - and that's all what I said in my first post, you just posted in in other words.


+

The list you wrote for "
This cannot be used as a general guide because there are too many variables. These variables will come under some of the following (taking from point of view of first few days);"

Is just the same as I talked about entirely through-out my post. Did you read my post anyway?
Or just swang through?


2.) And still LC is General Guide - because it's used more by players. Like I gave you an example:


Nike is general for sports wear. But there is also adidas, puma etc.

LC is general for TW. But there are also Axemen, Spears farmins etc.


3.) Mattcur and you also forgot that you aren't the only players playing at that speed (talking about 0.5 low speed servers)! Others play there too, so that's why I would go for Axemen - to make me farms sooner - and I will be comfortable, because I know that others may rush for LC, as I assume from your posts - but you will have to wait another day or two, to get your LC; why I might already knock on your villages doors with Axemen.

 

[mattcurr]

3.) Mattcur and you also forgot that you aren't the only players playing at that speed (talking about 0.5 low speed servers)! Others play there too, so that's why I would go for Axemen - to make me farms sooner - and I will be comfortable, because I know that others may rush for LC, as I assume from your posts - but you will have to wait another day or two, to get your LC; why I might already knock on your villages doors with Axemen.

I think this further exemplifies my point that you lack an understanding of the strategy. Most people cannot lc rush, they fail at, I would say 99% of players that attempt it fail, the point of lc rushing is to get lc before bp ends... Thus you increase your farming power before you can clear anyone.

However for those who are not active enough to pull that off I would still suggest lc rushing, except you will be doing it at a slow rate, lc rushing is not about making farms it is about utilizing the farms that exist to their fullest. Through the use of 1 or 2 lc you can keep 100 or 200 lc going even in the early stages of the world when villages are small. Sure by skipping axe I will not get the initial bonus of clearing a village and getting those first res, but also, there is a large possibility that the person clearing wont get those res if the defending player chooses to spend those res so he cant get them. And in both situations the attacker is having a cost, if you do not give yourself that cost, and instead steal farms, by letting others clear them with your increased lc count you will be able to more effectively farm others farms than the people who created them. Thus in the long term, ie a few days you will recieve the larger benifit of having the farm, where as the other person is the one that is bearing the cost of the farm.

Hopefully I cleared up proper lc rushing a bit for you.

Btw it has happened where I lc rushed and someone tried to clear me after bp ended, suffice to say I was number one in that world for quite some time. It didnt work.

 

[DeletedUser]

I don't get your resource's for LC and Axe requirements?


Because you must get that building lvls ANYWAY - now or later. More importmant is time needed to get those Units - and that's all what I said in my first post, you just posted in in other words.

It highlights the differences to be able to build the unit before you have any of either so you can see that LC takes a huge drain on resources and time before you even start building them in comparison with axe. I proposed that the individual make his mind up at what point it becomes more beneficial to him to take the hit on time and resources to go after LC.

The list you wrote for "
This cannot be used as a general guide because there are too many variables. These variables will come under some of the following (taking from point of view of first few days);"

Is just the same as I talked about entirely through-out my post. Did you read my post anyway?
Or just swang through?

I did read it, and i read it 2 times after that. Did you read it?

The Start-up Guide you should chose, should very depend on the Map Location.

In your guide you generalise about the main areas or cores and rim as you refer to it. I say that it is more important to take your position on the points i have laid out and forget about where you are on the map as the only thing that matters to you is who is surrounding you. Not who you think should surround you.

2.) And still LC is General Guide - because it's used more by players. Like I gave you an example:

Yes i realise that it is a general guide but you failed to pick out the main reasons LC are used and why people rush for them. You mentioned points like;

LC Rush offers us always great farming routes and hauls
LC Rush offers us fast hauls and strong offenses
LC Rush offers us eaisest cleaning village while preparing for nobling

Where i say;
[spoil]LC cut down the time spent farming by half;
- This is useful because you will get to farms faster, often beating opponents in the morning rush too the closest farm.
- The LC return sooner so you get to spend the resources quicker and also send them to the next farm to beat the other competition on barb farming in your area.
- This speed means that you will get more hauls in a day and will be able to spend your hauls more frequently then other ways, meaning you will have a more constant flow of troops in the queue.
LC offers strong offences;
- This means if you come across and barbs which have been stacked you will be able to put up more of a fight per capita than on a spear and axe system, based on two assumptions. The ratio of axe to spear is less than 3:1 * and that players mostly stack barbs with more swords than spears because they are using their spears for farming while the swords lay idle and they wish to put them to better use.
"LC Rush offers us eaisest cleaning village while preparing for nobling" Not always true;
- The strongest attack against an enemy is dependent on their defence.
- Per capita axe are stronger than LC by approximately 23%.
(N.B. i don't think this should be a factor for the LC rush as i don't see it relevant to a players start up, i.e. i see the time a player gets nobles as a new stage, whereby LC should have been researched long before this stage was reached.)[/spoil]

I mention the main points and then explain why it is so important and why it works. I also addressed the issue of axe/spears in reference to power and meant to go back to that at the end but forgot. Where i put the * i was going to put a footnote saying that the haul for the axe - spear combination of equal power to the LC would be 55 where it is 80 for the LC so to compensate you can add more spears to the ratio making it closer to 2:1 or 1:1 which will end up giving a smaller haul still and will also be weaker in attack in comparison to LC.

3.) Mattcur and you also forgot that you aren't the only players playing at that speed (talking about 0.5 low speed servers)! Others play there too, so that's why I would go for Axemen - to make me farms sooner - and I will be comfortable, because I know that others may rush for LC, as I assume from your posts - but you will have to wait another day or two, to get your LC; why I might already knock on your villages doors with Axemen.

First off an experienced player won't be affected in any way by axe attacking their village. If anything it will slow your growth down while i keep growing. I will also be closer to catapults than you so i can cripple you even with a weaker army. You also have to note that the time for travelling will be 36 minutes per field both ways compared to the LCs 20, which means 72 minutes until you see your haul where i get it in 40 minutes, it is a few fields away which would increase the time between hauls by a massive amount and i will be able to outgrow you twice as fast while you could be waiting hours to get your troops back.

 

[DeletedUser]

Final point
Adaptability >>> Experience

Just want to make a comment on this. I agree, but it is not as big of a gap in my opinion. Due to the fact that experience tends to make one better at knowing when and how to adapt.

 

[DeletedUser]

Here is one of the better threads on Experience Vs Adaptibility by .Optimus Prime./Kebabe8.

[spoil]

Note: What you are about to read is not a spam post/thread and is rather long so those with a short attention span, turn your e-heads away now and click off this thread :icon_eek:

Yesterday and today, since I made the Skype chat convo, I've realised how much people value/use the term "Experience(d)" as an excuse as to why they're different from other tribes/players. Therefore I decided to spark up a discussion that I did on W28/W25 and see how opinions would differ on this new type of world as due the such settings, relying on experience Imo wont work(Imo = In my opinion)lol

Moving onto the purpose/1st part of this thread, Experience Vs Adaptibility. It has come to my attention(yet again :icon_eek that many people, both on this and pretty much every single world rely on experience as almost a "threat"(So many uses of 1 word :icon_redface to scare and in some cases "brag".

Experience:

Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event. The history of the word experience aligns it closely with the concept of experiment.


Adaptibility:

Adjusts planned work by gathering relevant information and applying critical thinking to address multiple demands and competing priorities in a changing environment. So in simpler words, it's the ability to change (or be changed) to fit changed circumstances.


So, what seperates the two? Which is more important? What would you rather have? What do they show?

As my great ex/mentor PP(Purple Predator, Not Premium Points :icon_eek said before, the thing that seperates an avergage player from the better player is Situational Awareness. Does experience only make you play on a world that you are accustomed too or does it make you adapt?

In my opinion experience(Over 500k-1 million) on another world only shows you have standard knowledge. You can play up to millions without getting into any real fights. Joining a dominant continent tribe at the start, once that fails, join the new largest and continue having no real threats in your area with the ability to challenge you for your villages. Experience doesn't mean you can launch of several nukes from different villages in a very short amount of time. It doesn't show you have the ability to snipe 1 second noble trains. Nor does it show you know what you're doing.

The majority of these, what you classify as "elite"/"legends" haven't played a world upto 1 million points. Yet they show a clear consistency in achieving a top 20 spot on any world they play. Surely this is a result of acquiring the quality; adaptability instead of experience?

Again Imo, Adaptability is the better quality to possess. It shows you have the ability to adapt to any given situation and any variables which can be different on any/every world you play. Examples are, relying more on resource camps and less on farming when you have no greys in your 13x13 incomparison to having 15 greys in your 13x13 which obviously makes you switch your style of play to a more actively farming style and pushing for LC early on.

Now, moving onto the second part; World 30 Settings. Here I'll attempt to discuss/go through the settings of the world and add and explain anything I can as to the purpose, what it'll encourage, my general views on it etc. So let's start by taking a look at these settings and I'll address them 1 by 1:

Speed: 1 - Pretty slow. Will give those with less time to play Tw in general an option of playing. Inevitably increases the density of the world. However, the slow setting has also restricted some of the more "experienced"/"better" players from playing it as they can't bare such slow pace gaming.

Unit Speed: 1 - Pretty much same as above. Not too fast. Farming takes hours usually. Especially when using several farming parties early world which include spears with swords. Very depressing.

Morale is based on points and time. - There's simply 1 way to explain this so I'll C&P what popped up in the general section of the forum. Credit goes to Vladivar:

Assuming that it is the same as the time based morale on some of the closed worlds (like w6), it will mean that say you have 3 people:

A - joined the world on day 1 and grew to 500k points
B - joined the world on day 1 and grew to 50k points
C - joined the world late and grew to 50k points

Now on purely points based morale, A attacks either B or C and suffers the same morale penalty. On points and time based morale, the morale percentage of A attacking B would be higher than the morale percentage of A attacking C.

So basically, the points give a certain morale penalty but then time is factored in so that a small player who has been on the world longer than a similar sized small player will have less of a morale penalty to attack.

Paladins are active WITH Items - This brings the element of luck into the game. Depending on how lucky you are(I'm the unluckiest no-life on TW)icon_cry, this could mean the difference between a win and a lose in battle between an opponent. If your opponent goes heavy swords and you luckily get the LC weapon, you'll minimize losses aswell as winning the battle, taking you a shorter time to re-build the nuke fully etc (like dominoes, it goes on). Same reasoning with the other weapons. Opposite scenario with the defensive weapons, could mean the difference of you defending the attack successfully or not.

So, what are the additional bonus items added/replaced to the usual ones?

New Bonus Items:

Paracelsus' Longsword:
Increases the offensive fighting power of your Swordsmen by 40% and their defensive fighting power by 30%.
Thorgard's Battle Axe:
Increases the offensive fighting power of your Axemen by 40% and their defensive fighting power by 30%.
Carol's morning star:
Increases the damage caused by rams by 100%. Additionally, the wall will be more damaged during the first phase
Aletheia's Bonfire:
Increases the damage by catapults by 100%. Additionally, the defence of catapults increases by 1000%.

What ammuses me most out of these weapons is Aletheia's Bonfire. As the church settings restrict your final troop space to 9k-12k, people will be using different village builds aswell as different defences. 1 Defence which will be popular/on offer is the Catapult defence. The type you use can vary from 1.125k - 1.5k to 2.5k Spears, 500 HC, 50 Scouts, 500 Cats sometimes adding more cats, less HC vice versa. Although these D's wont be as strong as a 20k D, you need to adapt and make the best of what you've got aka 9-12k farm/troop space.

Bonus Villages are active - Will increase non-player nobling. However, normal "against nobling grey" players may consider this in-order to create a cluster due to the new feature; the Church. This is also made up for in the new types of bonus villages added which vary from 30% of all resource types to 50% recruitment faster in stables as you may want to work out a D and O for those villages especially so you can have a D/O nuke finished at roughly the same time(efficent and fast).

Barbarians do grow up to 1500 Points. - Not much really. Will be better farming to a certain extent in-comparison to non-growing barb worlds. Will lower the amount of late in-game grey ennoblements creating more warfare.

Gold Coins + Simple Research - Newb settings. Imo the new features/current settings of W30 bring enough strategy and will consume more then enough time so this doesn't really bother me.

Tribe Limit: 60 - I like alot. It'll create difficult decisions to be made in-regards to how many continents tribes wish to dominate based on ability, time and will. Will tribes aim to dominate 1 continent with 60 or 2 continents with 30 each? Will they split it up to a 20:40 ratio depending on quality of players or quality of competition. 1 core continent and 1 rim continent or 2 core? 1 wrong decision could inevitably lead to failure.

Church is active - Without doubt the most interesting/best feature of W30. This brings alot of logic and strategy into the game it's very under-estimated. Early world we wont have much to do with it but later on you will. There's so much enabled with this feature. Disguising your church villages with the non-church villages, building O's or D's in them? Nobling 10 greys in your 7x7 to create a cluster? What do you do? Your initial guess is as good as mine until we bring the logic and stats into it


Hope you enjoyed.

Optimus Prime
Leader of T*F

[/spoil]


This is what i am referring to with the comment you picked out. Obviously this world isn't as diverse as the settings on world 30, but the same principles apply.

 

[DeletedUser]

Here is one of the better threads on Experience Vs Adaptibility by .Optimus Prime./Kebabe8.

[spoil][/spoil]


This is what i am referring to with the comment you picked out. Obviously this world isn't as diverse as the settings on world 30, but the same principles apply.

I wasnt trying to argue experience is better than adaptability, merely that pure adaptability wont help much if you dont know how, when or what to adapt from and to. This is usually what experience brings.


I can assure you though I am well aware of the difference, as I have attempted although never finished creating a guide or rubric to create a semi standard definition of judging a players talent/ability after seeing too many players claim to be good just because they have been playing since world 1.

 

[DeletedUser]

I wasn't trying to discredit you or argue against you either, i was just trying to show how i came to that conclusion, nothing more.

 

[domusdei]

\m/

 

[master of the rangers]

Thread necromancer