Current Goals

Yeah Col - I was just reading back over the thread and noticed I got the posts wrong - OOPS! sorry about that.

I think what I'm getting out of most of the posts is that we'd like to go a little cautious the first AvA we get into (from scratch that is). I'm down with that. It also takes the pressure off of having to develop a strong partnership out of the gate to enable a possibly more complicated strategy like the one I proposed. Perhaps a first AvA with benign actions can help us find a good alliance or 2 to attempt such a strategy in the future. It'll also let us see how quickly we might be able to lvl 1 or even all 3 camps to lvl 20.

I realize the aggressive camp target scenario may be seen as an exploit of sorts… but we certainly wouldn't be the first or only ones doing it. 

Here's what makes it so attractive though...

In this current AvA and even the one prior. I would target allies for most of my friendly actions like Aid, but when it came to trying to lvl the camps the real challenge seemed to be constantly raising the required credits… so I would barter at the highest lvl camp I could find that corresponded to the one trying to upgrade - friend, neutral, fight camp, barter camp… didn't matter… highest lvl got the best results.

If we farm mats to lvl the camps ahead of time the real challenge will be raising spoils and credits in the camps. Spoils will simply be a matter of everyone focusing on the same ones at the same time and sending out wave after wave of SS. The credits are a little trickier…. we barter… but having another alliance barter with us doubles the rate we fill the coffers with credits.

Sure if we make alliances - they will barter with us…. but it'll be hard to ensure that they barter mainly with us or with the specific camp we are prioritizing to lvl. UNLESS, they have a very good reason to do so…. The aggressive action farm camp… If an alliance let us farm a camp for aggressive action spoils I would be VERY likely to send 1/2 of my waves in barters to that alliance. Especially if the one they want us to barter with lines up with the one we are trying to speed lvl to 20. 

Personally - when I send out Barter waves I'm not looking to win spoils… just earn credits… the spoils are a pleasant by-product but not the point. When doing an aid action (for example) I generally just want the aid spoil.

Also - the question of why have an aggressive action camp if we only target a friendly farm camp? Well - that's how we speed lvl without coming under constant attack… once we've levelled  …. then we start to take aggressive actions as an alliance against enemy targets and such. The proposed strategy is for speed levelling. Once we've levelled its a different ballgame. One I think would be fun to play!

As I said though… flying under the radar with benign actions for the next AvA is cool with me. I think our challenge may be credits for upgrades. I've never experimented with swindle or steal or how those can work to raise credits for a camp. Might be interesting down the road.

Keep up the discussion!!! 

But when time comes - we'll follow the strategy laid out by the officers/leadership… any strategy can work fairly well if everyone is on the same page.

One question: Are we going to give the next AvA a go to see how it is in this new alliance? If so I suppose we can start making those materials??

I don't *have* to do a RI cycle. I have two fealties left to unlock, neither of which affect my ability to breed dragons. I just wanted to open them up to go through another round of building to bump up my power rankings. Guess what I'm saying is that my schedule is flexible. Right now I'm level 316 with 69 CP's. I lost 10 swords during that war with the old alliance so my silver supply is nowhere near what I'd like but by the time the next AvsA rolls around I should have 70 SS's to put towards the camps. I'll also have a bit of materials farmed. I will be light on silver which is a concern. So I'll do it whatever way works best all around. It's a rainy Sunday morning so I'm gonna beat Zepp to the punch and start three threads on Camp building. Perhaps once we see what we need and what we all will have on hand to contribute, our strategy will become a little clearer

To be aggressive, which we all think is fun, we need to be strong, really strong. Look at where we are. The strongest players power wise are 3091, 3240,3327,4731,6717,8890,9319, and 9777. After that it quickly drops to the 20,000 and below where most of us rank. That means 3091 players have built more powerful Characters than anyone of us and they are in the other alliances we face, most our alliance is weaker than 20,000 active players. We no longer have the ability to have our weaker guys fill the camps with cheap cannon fodder to frighten causal alliances away. We are WEAK. We are vulnerable to large attack and due to being booted right after our experiment with aggressive camps last time when we were not ready we are broke. Last phase I went in with over a million silver. I went broke doing repairs lost 12 peerless by the time it was over and you all had to send me barters constantly to buy back my now weaker peerless swords from death. That said I think we can go aggressive and win but we have to be smarter about it. We need a long term plan and outlook. We need to get healthy, wealthy and everyone on the same page. We CANNOT have people picking there own targets and calling down the wrath of our betters on us and ruin all our plans and work. We need ACHIEVABLE goals. At our current strength and skill set our goals should be get 3 camps to lvl 20. That is it. We never have done it. Do not think about winning VP goals. Lets learn to crawl before we sign up for a marathon. In 1066 a bastard son of a minor Norman lord Conquered England, England was weak, like us now, but in time England came to be a Global Empire but you did not get from William to Victoria overnight. We need all players to be active and learn how to conduct battle, how to pick targets act in concert in waves and get everyone Strong we need people to be able to RI and dragon hunt because those make us all STRONGER. We must lift up the weakest among us and by doing so will lift us all. We start by having AID Barter and Spy Camps next time, here is why:
1. Having three camps in the three different disciplines means that we can each build materials at the same time. If we had three battle camps I could only build miltia for one at a time. But if I have all three then I can build militia for Battle camp, Eavesdroppers for Intrigue and Traders for trade camp all at the same time. Building three offensive camps basically cuts our production output per player by 2/3s. So unless we save up for multiple phases to get all the mats to get atleast 2 camps to 20 before we even start we are really hurting ourselves. So until we have 2/3 mats on hand we should not attempt a 3 battle camp region.
2. Aid is our strongest bonus for 10/14 players polled said Aid was there largest bonus, it is who we are as a group, it is not mine, Sabo is mine, but harass is my second and Aid IS my third and they are not that far apart. Aid is one of our areas of strength. And it will be easy for us to get the spoils we need to build and reach our short term goal of lvl 20 camps.
3 Barter is essential, most every top alliance has a Barter Camp, it is how we fund our camps, we are broke we need easy spoils and easy money. This is a no brainer, and everyone likes barters, we will make good allies with this.
4. Spy the reason is simple, we need to see what camps our allies need help in, we need to see where our enemies are weakest and we need to get info on everyone to see how others are playing this game and learn from them. Spy also does not bring a response of attacks like Steal or Sabo.

This way we can garrison 2/3rds of our command points in camp and 1/3 in adventures to gather resources and rebuild our banks. Before we go to aggressive camps again we need have millions in silver and enough mats to speed build camps on hand. If we stick to AID Barter and Spy we can quickly build these camps to 20 and then after that we can save for NEXT phase.
My goals for the next phase are the following: have 100% contribution, have on average 20-30 sworn swords per member garrisoned in our three camps, this will be hard to do and if folks are RI (which I suggest they do since this is a training/rebuilding phase for us) We may not make it , get three camps to lvl 20 and to get everyone on the same page about the order of battle. Where we stand rank wise is not important because we are rebuilding/ restocking.

We will get stronger, we will be attacked by others and will get more than our share of aggressive battles even in a peace camp mode I PROMISE you!! We will have plenty of fighting to do, but if we do it wisely by choosing our battles and diplomacy wisely I think we can have a great time and success even with AID SPY Barter camps till we get strong/rich enough for Aggressive camps. We will get there!! But we need to prove our alliance in battle and train them up on tactics before we have another SandSnakes situation and we get discouraged.
I suggest during next phase 1 we open 3 regions, Iron Islands, Crownlands and Riverlands. We build AID Spy and Barter Camps in each and see which area is the weakest once attack phase opens. When it does we close the camps in the other 2 regions offer them as farms to our allies in those regions and then work on the region we can have the most success in.

Ric this was a much better way of stating what I was trying to say. We are strong hut we need to get everyone strong at the same time. My only two cents is to only open one or two regions, not three. Mostly because I'd like to get each region to three 10's and I don't think we can do three. I could be wrong and if we finish early open a third but I'd rather see us open one region, get it to ten, and then open another. But that's just my two cents, great post otherwise.

One thing we need to test out is how sending out aid or barters returns VP and spoils. I think tre said he didn't care about the spoils with his barters and I think that's a mistake. We need to find the sweet spot between gaining VP and spoils. With barters I don't think we need to send out to the strongest alliances, with the lower tier everything costs less. We need to find a weaker alliance where we WIN the sorties we send out. Finding that sweet spot is the key. Same with aid, sending aid to strong players gets you no where. They have higher defenses and you win less, we need to maximize spoils and wins. If we come in say tenth in the crownlands next phase we should find the 20th ranked team or 25th and test this out.

And cristan and others RIing sorry if it sounded like I was saying to not RI, actually I think everyone should RI to at least open all the fealties. I'd rather spend a few phases with everyone RIing and guys like myself facilitating that, then sitting where we are. Getting us all maxed out should be our short term goal. I'd rather spend the prestige to make that easier too.

Ric's post is why I sent him a Raven this morning. He has a very practical alliance first approach, which is why having him as our Field General is a very good fit. I asked him to outline realistic goals for us currently, after reading over what everyone was debating in the post. We will make a quick read summary of his post as our current goals and post it on its own clean thread. Thank you everybody.

Ric,

I think you are dead on in many ways. I agree that at the moment our goal should be to try and build 3 lvl 20 camps. You're absolutely correct that worrying about VP and such is a bit premature at this point. Also the rebuilding and restocking.

And I think part of why many of us… well I should only speak for myself…. part of why I was interested in following you guys after this AvA in Direwolves was because the random players hitting alliances willy nilly was killing us. It would be a lot of fun to participate in a well coordinated AvA. Whatever the strategy may be… well coordinated, focused, with the goal of getting our camps to lvl 20. I think that's a great goal to shoot for out of the gate.

Alex - just to clarify my point about barters… I only meant that I didn't care about the spoils because I usually had an over abundance of them. From the sheer numbers I was sending out to get credits for upgrades I would usually have 50-75 spoils waiting for the next upgrade. In this AvA the barter camp would almost immediately fill the barter spoils once the new lvl opened. Just because of the sheer numbers required to earn enough credits to lvl a camp. So even in a low success rate (which provided higher credits) I still had tonnes of barter spoils. Also - very few of my SS specialize in trader or specifically barter… and its also my lowest stat overall.. so personally my success rate wasn't going to be great regardless of the lvl of camp I sent them to. And yet I still had LOTS of barter spoils.

Lvl 3 camps to 20
all be on the same page

I'm in!