A Challenge, and tryouts

Shadow · September 19, 2008, 02:30:58 PM

I have a challenge for everyone in the game: play next turbo round on the defensive. Bring back the way RWL used to be played, with clans that had severe retal policies if their members were attacked more than 6 times for land, and players in the top 10 who were all unbreakable to anyone outside of it. RWL was so much funner back in the day when nobody knew what they were doing and land grabs were a big deal.

I know defense is difficult. I know defensive strategies for both indy and leaders that I will gladly share with anyone who cares to ask and have some fun with me in the coming rounds. Clans are a big plus to defense, with 40% troop sharing it's possible to double your army if everyone in your clan keeps a decent one.

Defense is hard, but if people work together, it's not impossible. This round I achieved a defensive ratio of over 200 as a rat, while holding an armyy worth 400mil net, and nobody who broke me did so without losing at least 500k of the troop they attacked with. If I had had clan members with similar armies, we would have been untouchable except to many many suicides. That's how RWL should be played, and that's what I (and many others, although they always just say it and never do anything) want.

People don't seem to realize how much of a benefit defense really is. For a leaderer, starting your run with 45k land instead of 20k is such a massive boost to productivity that you won't believe it until you've done it. Same for indy - if you can be earning large amount of troops and resources during your attack phase, your run could be as much as 30 or 40% more productive, depending on your usual land amount to start out. If (god forbid) you manage to go between runs without being broken at all, the possibilities are endless, and the thing that makes the difference between an average player defending and an unbreakable solo emperor is ONE unbroken run if you know how to take advantage of the situation (again, I can teach you that if you need it)

My challenge is this: maintain a 20% or greater successful defense rating next round. If you do, you get admission to Watchtower, a defensive based clan starting next round if the setup permits, for as long as you care to stay a member. The person with the highest defensive rating gets the positions of power in the clan. Anyone is welcome to try out for it.

While you are in Watchtower, you must:

maintain a well rounded army of all 4 troop types and leaders, no matter what strategy you run (I can help you with this)
keep troop sharing on
share resources as needed between clan mates in the interest of keeping everyone's armies in good shape (which in turn gives you a 40% boost)

All skill levels are welcome, as long as they keep the 20% defense rating. For anyone falling a bit short or needing help with defense strateies, I will try (time permitting) to run a learning defensive clan called Wall, which will be used to get up to snuff for Watchtower.

Let's bring back the old days of RWL

Anyone interested?

windhound · September 19, 2008, 03:14:27 PM

Defense may be easier for an indier

I play with leaders and I've gotten to where I keep zero standing army. I just buy a few million troops to make my run, then sell the back after I'm done taking land. The profits with minimal upkeep are more impressive. It also means faster, safer runs as you dont have to watch your resource drain as carefully.
Yep, its disappointing to signin to find 4/5's of your land gone on a daily basis... but there's benefits. A full-out leader strat revolves around losing about a third of your land. Dropping is possible, but not really ideal.
I've found Fox a good solution to this. Most people, even your allies *cough*, will forget whats shown isnt your real net... and if they think they cant attack you w/o desertions, they wont.

To keep a proper defense you need a good team of two or preferably three people, thus you can swap armies around so you can run lighter. Finding someone reliable to run with is hard, especially if you run sporadically yourself.

I've run a good solo defence before with Nero on reg. It made for painful, time consuming, careful runs. But I managed. 100% for two weeks, still at 50% by reg reset.

What I think would be fun is to use Gorak's QMT (?) plan and make attack limits per horde. If you can only attack 25 times a run you're going to think about who you attack instead of flailing about and slamming everyone you can break... and people will have to be smarter with their land, as they wont beable to gather as much of it. Maybe take away war status for a round to force people to abide by it. Clans would still be useful for sending aid, ally, and general grouping of players.

Shadow · September 19, 2008, 03:25:39 PM

Possible the best race for leadering a defensive army is Marten - it has ridiculously low merc prices and make a ton of cash for very little loyalty. The only problem is that you run out of loyalty after a few runs and cant make enough cash BUT if you manage to hold yor land and add to it bit by bit now only will your ratio climb to the point that you dont need to drop, but you will make enough loyalty to keep the army. Marketing troops at the start of the run and pulling at the end (keep two sets at different prices s you alwyas have one pullable) and you can keep a pretty good defense. You can also demo to 175 leaders/hut and instead of dropping land, build camps and get mercs for even cheaper.

Solo, defense with leaders is MUCH harder than with indy, but in a clan specifically designed for defense, leaders actually have the advantage I think.

Defensive leader strats are a bit more difficult than defensive indy, but they are possible, and very effective. Me and Snare locked land using a similar strat a while ago but inactivity got the better of us. The cathc is that you have to keep your lan in order to get enough loyalty to keep the army going every run. Which is basically the whole point of that strat.

And come on - am i the only one who thinks that massing food for a round is incredibly boring? This is challenging, interesting, and to be good at it you have to continuously adapt to the changing circumstances. Trying to defend land is possibly the best way to learn the ins and outs of this game.

windhound · September 19, 2008, 03:46:38 PM

Massing food is boring?
Depends on who you ask. I havnt played a round to win it in ages. I play to hang about, poke people, watch other people play and plot, and to assist when asked. Massing food is a quick, very simple, reliable way for me to keep up with the middle-range players. I can make a full run in under two min.
I've also sent out some aid this round, probably closing in on 200 bil cash and maybe 5 bil food to random people.
Oddly, only two players said thanks... so eh.

The Lady Shael · September 19, 2008, 04:43:28 PM

I'd like to point out my sister (Companion Cube) has the highest defense ratio in Turbo right now (besides a newbie at the bottom). =) She's leadering this round too.

Shade · September 19, 2008, 04:51:34 PM

Quote from: Shadow on September 19, 2008, 02:30:58 PM
My challenge is this: maintain a 20% or greater successful defense rating next round. If you do, you get admission to Watchtower, a defensive based clan starting next round if the setup permits, for as long as you care to stay a member. The person with the highest defensive rating gets the positions of power in the clan. Anyone is welcome to try out for it.

Love the idea....but must you use my/Snare's clan name? Watchtower is ours >.<

Holby · September 20, 2008, 02:03:08 AM

That's wicked, Shadow. I am definitely in!

Shadow · September 20, 2008, 12:05:06 PM

Nice

Watchtower was a clan I made on FAF a few months ago, and the name fits the theme well.

Haydee · September 20, 2008, 12:12:42 PM

Quote from: The Lady Shael on September 19, 2008, 04:43:28 PM
I'd like to point out my sister (Companion Cube) has the highest defense ratio in Turbo right now (besides a newbie at the bottom). =) She's leadering this round too.

Awww... now everybody knows who I am. D:

This sounds interesting. I'll see what I can do next round. ^_^
Running a defensive strategy was actually pretty fun for me; the only downside was that I never got my net very high.

Shadow · September 20, 2008, 12:19:31 PM

We'll see what we can do about getting you both defense and net next round.

General recruitment will start when the candidate has 50 defenses, 10 of which were successfull defended, and after that people will be put into roles and positions that best suit the overall defensive abilities of both themselves and the rest of the clan. We will need both leaderers and indiers for sure.

If you lose your 20% rating you have a week to get it back up (with the full support of the clan and as uch advice from myslef and others that you want), so don't worry about dropping temporarily as long as the effort is there.

Saladin · September 20, 2008, 06:00:27 PM

In response to this, someone should make a very offensively minded clan designed to crush Shadow's.

Shadow · September 20, 2008, 06:05:38 PM

Think you're good enough for that banner Saladin? Defensive strats by consequence also have excellent offense, which you will learn if you decide to join me. Or go against me. A purely offensive clan will always be wide open to any attack from a defensive clan, but a defensive clan will only be open if the attackers are more skil;ed than the defenders. If I do my job right, the math gives the defendder's a hefty advatage.

Good luck my friend.

CobyCopper · September 21, 2008, 02:47:32 PM

Quote from: Saladin on September 20, 2008, 06:00:27 PM
In response to this, someone should make a very offensively minded clan designed to crush Shadow's.

I'll aid anyone willing with knowledge. University is becoming more and more hectic--expected of course. But contact me on Reg and I'll funnel knowledge and strategies into playing offensively, just to see if Shadow's defensive techniques will be of any use. Perhaps a competition is in order: offense versus defense. Pure leader strategies will have an upper hand against defensive leader and indy strats, though I am very much prepared myself to launch into a defensive Stoat strategy.

Saladin · September 21, 2008, 06:30:44 PM

Quote from: Shadow on September 20, 2008, 06:05:38 PM
Think you're good enough for that banner Saladin? Defensive strats by consequence also have excellent offense, which you will learn if you decide to join me. Or go against me. A purely offensive clan will always be wide open to any attack from a defensive clan, but a defensive clan will only be open if the attackers are more skil;ed than the defenders. If I do my job right, the math gives the defendder's a hefty advatage.

Good luck my friend.

I was not suggesting I would lead this clan, as I recognize you could easily destroy me. No, I was recommending a veteran lead this clan.

Shadow · September 21, 2008, 08:19:23 PM

Knowledge will be freely shared in the clan. I am trying to bring defense back, which means that I will be freely sharing all my strategies and experience with defense. I expect everyone who takes part to do the same.

The thing to think about is this: defensive strategies will ALWAYS crush offesnive strats. Offesnive strats means monostacking, which means wide open troop holes in most troop types that can easily be exploited by the defender, who will have a powerful attacking amry in all 5 types. True, the attacker will be able to break (maybe, if the clan troop sharing is working even monostacking might fall short), but I think that with a good team of people working together to develop mor effective ways of defending, the attacking side will have a hard time keeping up. The math is on the side of the defender, which is odd considering how few people actually do it.