'Coming out of protection' strategy

[Orcrist]

First off, I would like to say that I am by no means a grand master or anything like that. I'm pretty good at this game though. So, yesterday I was asked to share my 'coming out of protection strategy', and I decided to share it. It's pretty standard, but quite effective.

SO:

You sign up for the game and start with 200 turns. Change your tax rate to 11%. Scout for 199 turns. This is how you get as much land as possible. DO NOT LEAVE PROTECTION YET!

Now, wait for your 450 turns to load up. Validate your account with that email code. Set your manage army to 100% rats. Survey the ranks above you to find a decent, land fat target.
Take out the biggest loan you can from Cluny's Hut.
Use it to build 50% barracks, 20% foragers, 30% markets, but a few huts as well. Not too many- just like 200 to start filling up your leader base.

You should have a few rats to attack with- do it. Build after every attack, but check how many buildings you can build every turn and make sure it's efficient. It's ok to leave unused land until the next attack. Build only markets, foragers, and huts. I'd say about 25% markets, 25% foragers, 50% huts, unless you are running low on a resource- then just build the one needed.

Once you have enough rats (matter of opinion, but after about 1.5-2 mil, it's good with me), switch to 40 10 40 10, on army management.

With 100-150 turns left, it really depends on how you're doing, stop attacking, and begin to get ready to defend yourself. As a stoat, this is really quite easy. Demolish 1 turn of buildings (barracks, markets, foragers, in that order). Build 1 turn of huts. Use academy to raise leaders over 100 per hut. Once you are about 50-60% huts, academy until you are 175 per hut. Loot and feast to gain resources needed to sustain. Demolish rest of barracks, markets, foragers, and build towers. Buy a few more troops if you want.

I build the towers, because down low it's not worth people's time to try to break you over and over again. They try, fail a few times, and move on. This strategy easily converts to a 100% huts leaders strategy, which is my favorite one.

Hope this helped you all out a little. If anyone else has a different 'leaving protection' strategy, I'd love to hear it.

[Shadow]

im 99% sure if you take out a maxxed loan you get more land from scouting

[wolf bite]

I am 100% sure that how much land you receive is based only on how much land you have now (reducing as you get more land) and any race bonus.

The way to come out of protection is as debatable as whether modern or renaissance art is better. As long as it works for you, then it is fine. Your way does work.

My opinion is that since you get much less land scouting by the end of your 200 turns, that it is better to have less land and a bigger army.  This way the player can jump right over the lower people and attack the middle people on their 201st turn (even if there is a high reach penalty). After two good attacks, with about 16 turns used after healing, you will have more land, more resources, and a much bigger army.

Here is an excerpt from Wolf Bite?s Journal 2.0:




Coming out of protection
There are only four ways that I have found to come out of protection that I feel work, there are many others, but I can?t see them working any better.  For different reasons I have used others, but it is best to stay with these.

Overview
The game does not give enough money or food to start building, let alone support an army.  So the first thing that must be done is to go to the bank and take out a maximum loan.  Then use that money to build mostly markets.  Build everything at once always, so you get the benefit immediately from your land (some games build per turn, others give you all the buildings then uses turns).  As you are scouting, go back to the bank and keep taking out bigger loans because with the increased net worth, your amount you can borrow is continuously increasing.  Watch your balances of army to food and cash so you don?t go bankrupt. Keep doing this and before you get out of protection, you will be able to pay back the loan easily and will be far ahead than if you were trying to use only the cash given to you.  Be careful not to go out of protection too soon.  There will be no land to take, you will be the only target, and you will not have the turns to defend yourself.  Scouting is nearly useless after leaving protection; so don?t give much care about increased race bonus for scouting when picking your race, unless you are going to play the game as HPR (talked about below).

Full Explore
Although many people use this, I find it to be lazy. A person simply scouts all their turns until one turn from coming out of protection, then waits for full turns. The up side is that land gives a lot of net worth so you look big in the beginning and since you have little or no army, you will not have to borrow money from the bank. Then when you do come out of protection, you have a lot of land to build a lot on. Thus, you can build a lot of buildings that give you some power in the game. But the very big down side is that your first few hundred turns out of protection will be used to build and get your army big enough to do anything with. You end up with half as many turns to make your attacks and defend yourself. Unless you are very lucky, people will massively attack you for your land and you will end up weaker then the other methods.

HPR
If you are going for strictly a food based, non-violent strategy, then you will concentrate on foragers. About 90% foragers, 9% markets, and 1% tents should work fine.  You can adjust the amounts as you gain land from scouting if you find yourself running low on money.  Leader huts are not that important because it is very unlikely that early in the game anyone will have leaders to poison you.  Even if they have enough, you will not be making attacks when you come out of protection so there is no need to fear retaliation so early in the game.  When you get ?fat? with food, worry more about building huts to get leaders that will protect it.

Leaders
Sometimes dismantling your enemies early may be more important than your own growth.  Even a normal Leader strategy starts with an army beginning.  So this is only used to damage others that may be a threat.  Few people can afford to build huts early in the game and still fight with armies.  Further, they don?t have the turns to fill up their huts after the fast land gain.  You can use this to defend against some very aggressive players that will try to take control early in the game, but their leader ratio will be very low.  By building about 15% foragers, 20% markets and a few worker tents, the rest in huts (or whatever term is used for where your Mages/Wizards live) will pick your leaders up fast.  As you are scouting and building, you should be getting sufficient cash and food to support your turns. Keep a close eye on your food as Leaders eat a lot. As you get bigger and have resources, build only huts.  Then when you do come out of protection, your leaders should be able to pull even the highest player down.  Build mostly huts on that land as you keep leader attacking him.  Don?t care about defenses because you know they will take all the land back since you can?t defend the land.  It is better to not use all your turns at once, but play several times a day, damaging them each time they try to make a run for it.  If you take too much land, someone will come and take all your land and become a bigger problem. So take down one person and wait to be attacked.  After you have been attacked, your leader to land ratio will be even higher to take the next person.  This only works when the highest player does not have too much land that they can build enough huts to defend.  So plan on using this only a week to damage your enemies, then switch to a different strategy. Hopefully you are playing with a team that will be thankful for you keeping the competition down and send you the funds to get back on your feet.

Most Used and Best
All other strategies start with this one.  Change your army management to 100% of one army, which you picked to be your fighting army.  Sell off all the armies you can to the mercenaries since you can buy more later and the ones you have now will just be eating your food. Scout 25 times, build mostly foragers and markets. You will want to get your food and money high for later.  Keep doing this until you have a good supply of resources.  After using more then half of your turns, start building barracks.  Keep with the 25 scout and then build until you about to come out of protection.  Watch your food and money to see if you will build more foragers or markets. You will now have a large attacking army (and the resources to support them) that can break at least most of the players.  With the gained land you could even take the top players.  Even if you plan to use a Leader strategy, This sets you up for a easy switch over.  It is very easy to switch from this strategy to any other.

--------------------------------------------------

For new people, we are suggesting they use this one to come out of protection right now. I agree that it is not the best, but will work with all races and easy.

http://landingzone.x10hosting.com/rwlg/redwallguide.php



Wolf Bite

[Gen. Volkov]

This is probably a bad strategy, but it works decently for me. I move up the ranks fairly quickly, even if I'm not quite the rocket others are. So here's my "Coming out of Protection" strategy. First, scout 199 turns. Doesn't matter what race, I do that the same every time. Wait for 450, and start building. One can actually build most of your land with just the money gained from scouting. I build mostly huts, and about 500 markets. That allows me to build more huts. In fact, once you have that 500 markets, the money you gain while using turns to build gives you enough to build the rest of your land, so I just build everything else as huts. After I have everything built, I earn loyalty for about 100 turns, then demolish the markets and build them as huts, and earn loyalty down to 200 turns left. Then I loot/goldmine for the rest of the turns and buy an army. I actually do not attack my first run out of protection. That first run, I get my leader ratio up, then make some cash and food, and buy an army. The next run I start in on my normal game strategy. I do have other strategies, but those are in special situations when it's necessary to rocket up the ranks quickly.

[wolf bite]

Interesting talk. I am going to start 2 test accounts on turbo and use 199 turns in full scout and also use the new suggested beginner tutorial. Then post them there.


Wolf Bite

[wolf bite]

I ran a little test on this. I made 2 accounts. They are both Painted Ones, so no bonuses. I did not change the tax rate, take out any loans, or sell off un-need armies.

Test 2 - 5,131 Land - $3,611,885 NW
Test 3 - 7,135 land - $4,555,686 NW

The account Test 2 I used the beginner coming out of protection (which is not great, but is simple and tutorial) which we are recommending for people new to the game. In the tutorial we don?t get into teaching about loans yet.  Also, normally I would have changed the army status to be a masser (all one type of army) but I did not for this example.

Scout 25 turns
Construct 150 markets
Construct 200 markets
Construct 500 markets
Scout 25 turns
Construct 700 foragers
Scout 25 times
Construct 1,000 Barracks and 200 Huts
Scout 25 times
Construct all your unused land into Barracks
Scout turns until 199 turns have been used *with this race, 13 turns were left over to scout*

Test 2 (#60)
Workers 21,405
Acres 5,131
Cash $34,558,709
Food 7,374,012
Loyalty18,760
Networth $3,611,885
Race Painted One
Rats 193,651
Weasels 96,810
Stoats 48,427
Skiffs 32,278
Leaders 6,660

Markets: 855
Tents: 20
Barracks: 3,007
Camps: 5
Huts: 200
Foragers: 715
Towers: 0
Citys: 0
Unused Acres: 329


Then I did a full scout on account test 3.

Test 3 (#61)
Workers 60,694
Acres 7,135
Cash $11,584,963
Food 4,615,042
Loyalty 500
Networth $4,555,686
Race Painted One
Rats 100
Weasels 15
Stoats 10
Skiffs 0
Leaders 0

Markets: 5
Tents: 20
Barracks: 0
Camps: 5
Huts: 0
Foragers: 15
Towers: 0
Citys: 0
Unused Acres: 7,090


As you can see, the different in land is only 2,000. A few attacks will make up the difference. But account test 2 has all its land built, resources, and a lot of army. Had Account 2 been set to all rats, for example, he would have had about 750,000 rats, and easily enough to gain that 2,000 land by hitting a mid level account.

Test 2 scouted for a total of 113 turns and ended with 5,131 land, an average per turn scout of 43.19
Test 3 scouted for a total of 199 turns and ended with 7,135 land, an average per turn scout of 34.59

Not only how much more power Test 2 would have, but also what must be calculated is that since the cost to build is based on net worth, and the net worth of the all scouting Test 3 is higher, they will now be paying $22,787,000 to build their 7,000 land (which will require a loan). Thus Test 2 is that much more ahead by not needing to spend that money but only will eventually need to build on 2,000 to be equal in land with Test 3 at a cost of about $6,000,000. Thus Test 2 is ahead by an additional $18,787,000. Even further is that it will take Test 3 64 turns to build that land.  Test 2 will come out fighting and will need to gain that 2,000 land that Test 3 is ahead of him, but the gaining and building of that land will be about 30 turns. Thus is 30 turns ahead.

Sure, with Test 3 a person can then set up their full account the way they want from scratch, this may be easier. It is all a matter of opinion.



Wolf Bite
Edit:
Added some extra math in.
Note to pippin, I know I double posted. As Staff posting information about the game, we can bump topics.

[Alazar is Back]

Edit:
Added some extra math in.
Note to pippin, I know I double posted. As Staff posting information about the game, we can bump topics.

HAHAHAHAHA that is hilarious! Has he said something to you about it before??? lol

[pippin the mighty]

ok, whys it different for admins?

[wolf bite]

How can you ask that when I went out of my way to add that to the topic so you would not ask? (note: this question is Not meant to be answered with more off topic spam)

Besides, we are gods!  We have the biggest STARS next to our names and can give ourselves any titles we want. Thus post count does not matter. We, the staff, are here to guide and monitor the forums. Sometimes in that guiding, we need to bring attention to some topics.

Now, Back to topic. Do not post on anything but the working of accounts when in protection.


Wolf Bite
(Admin Duties)
Edit: typo

[Percy]

This is generally how I set myself up in protection.

Set army management to 100% one troop
Scout 50 turns
Borrow max loan from Cluny's Hut
Build 25% markets, 60% barracks, 15% foragers - This always changes, sometimes I go a higher percentage foragers so I don't run out later
Scout 20 turns
Build accordingly to stay in green.
Keep scouting and building until 199 turns used.

[windhound]

(wolf)
I am 100% sure that how much land you receive is based only on how much land you have now (reducing as you get more land) and any race bonus.

http://blackbirdfly.no-ip.org/rwl/rwl.php?action=help&section=land
olde guide says
Scouting Strategically
    You get more land per turn scouting when you have a lower networth. If you take out a loan, and then scout, you will get more land. Repay the debt when you are done.
but it also says
Equation for Land Gained
    (1 / (CurrentLand * .00022 + .25)) * 20 * RacialBonus * LocationBonus

so.  um.  yeah.