PvP Roles for Small Players

Good afternoon, cannon fodders.

Today we dispel the myth that you need significant account size to be useful on a PvP combat team.

Can a new player really be a PvP asset? Absolutely. Just to be clear, I am not saying that a small account will deliver the same devastating troop strikes as a full 9-city military account. A powerful war machine has a number of roles, and some of those roles can be filled by even a 1-city account. So let's talk about nine useful tasks that can be accomplished by a new military player.

• Recon: 10000-20000 t2 scouts in one city.
• Recon: 2000-3000 t2 spies in one city.
• Harassment diplomats.
• Probe runes.
• Clear runes.
• Support blockades.
• Frontline pin blockades.
• Supply besieged cities via exodus.
• Scavenge battlefields.

Eye on the Ball

Reconnaissance is the first valuable role for a new player. Field commanders always need players with large t2 scout armies to examine enemy cities. A single specialized scout city can allow anyone to peek at enemy troop counts. Alliances are also looking for active research (to pin cities with saboteurs) and unattended piles of loot. A pack of t2 spies, used consistently, can produce valuable information for your comrades.

Diplomatic harassment is another role that can be accomplished at any size. If a city has no assassin defense, even 5-10 t1 assassins will succeed at killing a commander. Sending 5-10 t2 saboteurs can identify running research queues. Many cities lack even basic scout and spy defense. Never underestimate what 10 t2 scouts might uncover. As part of this harassment process, the player sending diplomats can build up a list of runes at enemy cities. Should their alliance attack a particular target, a smaller player can also assist by purposely detonating runes with various inexpensive techniques, particularly the Ward of Destruction.

Block and Tackle

Blockades are another role where smaller players can shine. Most siege plans call for 1-4 large siege camps, and possibly a large static blockade. The blockade hinders the target's ability to prestige build and artificially hold the city above raze population. For all the plains squares around the target, people often send little support blockades. While easily destroyed, these auxiliary blockades will make things more challenging for the defending player. A 10-troop blockade can intercept supplies as effectively as a 10000-troop blockade. Anyone can build and send 10 t1 cavalry to assist with a siege.

Additionally, even tiny blockades can pin targets when supported with large scale troops. A small player with a fresh capture can move that city directly to the front lines and assist with pinning down enemy cities. Many established players are reluctant to move fully built cities, so a smaller player can serve a key role in trapping and destroying the enemy.

Defeat the Block

That same city mobility can help to save besieged allies. When a city comes under siege, typically a competent enemy mirrors the above process: 1-4 big siege camps, at least one big blockade, and many smaller blockades. Buying more time becomes crucial to defeating the sieges. This is especially true of forest sieges where much slower infantry must be dispatched to remove the siege camps. (Should you have a city with adjacent forest tiles? Probably not. But not everyone follows good City Placement procedures.) A small player can move a town direct adjacent to an allied city. By employing thieves or modifying the diplomatic relationship, the besieged player can bypass blockades and take resources directly from the little town. This technique creates a fresh delivery point for the alliance to provide resources to the besieged city, defeating the enemy blockades. Again, this is not something that established players will want to do with a fully built city, but a newer player with a fresh capture can be a major asset in this situation.

You Dropped This, Sir

Scavenging battlefields seems like a minor role, but that isn't necessarily true. Sometimes enemies use large amounts of Vanguard Leather and other valuable gear to attempt siege breaking. Just having 20 cotters in a single city can make harvesting gear much faster. In hostile territory, typically you can only scavenge as long as your siege camps are present, and those will leave when the siege succeeds or fails. Rapidly snatching up all the dropped gear is a useful task, even if it isn't particularly glorious.

The Recon Build

Let's assume for a moment that you have selected the reconnaissance build. How do you get there quickly? A few key components and you should be on your way. Note that you can do this layout using your teleport and a Lightning Build strategy. This is a very aggressive build, but it will get you into the action relatively quickly.

• Consulate 20
• Scout Lookout x2
• Foreign Office [Optional]
• Sov II for Diplomacy

If you teleport and don't want this to be your permanent city build, keep the following technique in mind. You can definitely just construct the resource plots to level 12. For settlement population, all you need is the standard 450, 2000, 5000 thresholds to create 3 auxiliary cotter towns.

These support towns are important. You can run negative basic resources on your main town and ship in the deficit from your support towns. This will allow you to support 20x2 sovereignty for a 200% diplomat building boost on your Consulate 20. It will take about a month to build 20000 t2 scouts with that setup. Your gold burn on the main town will be about -10000/hr for the sovereignty and another -10000/hr for 20000 t2 scouts (assuming 2x Scout Lookout 20). If you are harvesting herbs and minerals with your cotters every day, you should generate twice the gold that you burn. This will help you to pay for your upkeep. If your alliance doesn't just provide supplies directly, you can invest the excess gold there (although if they can't spare saddles and books to get a quality recon player running, you are probably in the wrong PvP alliance).

Is this a stable build? Probably not if you teleport and do it overnight. But it will get you into the action quickly, performing useful military tasks during a war, with a minimum of resources and prestige. I would probably pick a 7 food build for a long term scout city, just because at some point your losses will be minimal and gold generation will become the most important factor.

Small Can Be Mighty

Never underestimate the power of a small PvP gamer focusing on a valuable role. Every successful war machine needs recon and support on the battlefield. Logistics might not seem as glorious as fielding big armies, but it can be every bit as important to winning wars.

Misbehave, kill lots of stuff.

<^^^^^^^^||==O    Skint Jagblade

Military City Buildings

Good morning, cannon fodders.

From time to time, I get asked what's inside a military city.

The short answer is: all the typical city infrastructure, plus 2 military buildings, then some other mundane stuff. Most of a military city layout is setting up sufficient basic resource production to support your troop production sovereignty. You specifically try to avoid creating weak points around food production, and leave yourself some flexibility to raise taxes.

For those who prefer the longer version, read on. All structures are level 20 unless otherwise noted. You would be well advised to read the articles on 5/6/7 food military cities, city placement, and basic military cities.

 

Basic Infrastructure

• Warehouse
• Library
• Barracks
• Marketplace
• City Wall

Self explanatory.

• Storehouse [Optional]

I like a Storehouse 20. It's just more convenient to store 891000 basic resources instead of the warehouse-only 658000. Aside from a few Storehouse levels to complete the City Wall 20, it's purely optional.

 

Mischief

• Mage Tower
• Consulate

For Mage Tower, level 20 isn't necessary, but you need magical research completed. Military cities need the Ward of Destruction line, Ward of Intentions line, and you would probably find Blights useful plus the Runemaster's Grounding. At least one of your cities should have the Nature's Bounty geomancy spell to cast on your other towns. That being said, you can often use magic to support siege operations and break hostile spells. Most of my mage towers are 20, with big stockpiles of extra mana. The lowest I'd go is maybe 16, because you still want a significant power multiplier when engaging in magical clashes, and the multiplier is based on mage tower level.

Consulate is similar to Mage Tower. You will want all Diplomacy research completed. Even if you don't build all diplomats in all towns, you will always want a small number of every t1 type in your city to deflect casual pokes and diplomatic spam. Tink wrote a great basic tutorial called Diplomatic Units in Illy (Part I and Part II) that describes how to use diplomats, which by reflection is how they will be used against you as well.

The Consulate level also limits the number of diplomatic missions you can send at a given time. I engage in a lot of diplomatic mischief during wars, so all of my Consulates are 19 or 20.

 

Military Cost Reduction

• 2x military buildings

My article on 5/6/7 builds reviews military buildings in detail. A typical military city will have 2 cost reduction buildings. If armies are large, up to 2.5 (20, 20, 10). For tournament players or long periods of peace, 3 full (20, 20, 20) isn't out of the question. You tend to level up military buildings sequentially. It's a bang-for-buck thing. Each additional building is half as effective as the previous one, but they all consume the same amount of basic resources per level. First one to 18-20, then next one to 18-20, and then third one 1-10. I do keep the third one at 1, just so I don't forget its location in the layout and accidentally build something else in that spot.

 

Basic Resources

• Basic resource plots
• Basic resource boosters
• Kiln
• Stonemason
• Carpentry
• Foundry

Your basic resource profile will determine how much military sovereignty you can support without running negative basics. All basic resource plots are built to 20. The 5/6/7 article describes which booster buildings are needed, and approximately what levels. Each booster is 2% per level, so if you see a (+30%) boost that means the resource booster is at level 15.

 

Filler

• Supply Buildings
• Brewery
• Blacksmith
• Spearmaker
• Fletcher
• Forge
• Common Ground
• Paddock
• Saddlemaker
• Tanner
• Siege Workshop
• Book Binder
• Crafting Buildings
• Other Random Stuff

It doesn't much matter what filler you add to the city. The one rule I have for filler is that it should never compromise your basic resource production in a way that forces you to lower military sovereignty levels.

I generally prefer supply to 20. Brewery, always. Everyone needs beer, especially orcs and elves. Blacksmith, spear maker, forge, fletcher, common ground, all 20. Same reason, you can never have too many swords, chain, plate, bows, cows. What you don't need, you can swap with your allies to get the correct supplies. Humans and elves often want saddles; dwarves consume a lot of swords, chain, plate; orcs and elves always need beer; orcs always want more spears; elves can always use more bows.

Now we get to more optional supply buildings. I usually have a paddock 20. If population requirements are tight, this is the last supply building I cut, just because horses are cheap in Centrum. Occasionally I build the saddle maker, tanner, siege workshop. You don't need these in every city, because you can't produce enough cows to supply them all. I have a couple Book Makers, but military cities are often running close to balanced on Research Points, so this building is the lowest supply priority. You can always trade swords or saddles for books.

 

Food

• Farms
• Flourmill
• Nature's Bounty [8%]
• Geomancer's Retreat [Delete]

Build farms and the flourmill to 20, obviously.

I always have excess food production in troop building mode. The reason is the Farm Slide. To keep bigger peacetime armies, as your armies fill out, you want to raise taxes. To accomplish this, you convert military sovereignty to Farmstead and slide up your taxes. Having excess food at low taxes gives you more room to raise taxes to 65-75% without going negative food. This concept is important for managing gold burn in mature military cities.

I want to say a few words about running negative food. Lots of people do it, especially tournament players. One big thief strike can knock out your warehouse, and if you are negative food, your buildings will implode until population is balanced again. Just understand that it's a risk. If you are running negative food (or really any negative basics) in a military city that gets exposed to enemy fire, you should seriously consider a Vault. The Vault will delay population collapse by several hours: 47000 / (negative food). You should have already learned from Discipline Never Sleeps that your odds of spotting an incoming thief attack are quite low. If you are running negative without using a Vault, you are making a calculated roll of the dice.

Cities with considerable excess food are also more resistant to siege damage. Food implosion does happen, especially if a city is cleared of troops and then emptied of resources while under blockade. Your farms, flourmill, and warehouse can take unlucky hits from siege engines. The enemy can deploy sizable thief strikes. If you are running right on the edge of balanced food, with no room to cut taxes and boost food production, then your city is very brittle against siege engines. The only way to push population like that is to have many high-population buildings, and these are inherently unstable themselves. All the population is concentrated in the upper levels, and a few good catapult hits will bring your population crashing down.

For that very reason, I do not recommend using high-population setups that depend on 1-4 Geomancer's Retreats. These buildings will amplify your Nature's Bounty spell up to 22-24% instead of 8%. Just understand that your geomancy spells will be attacked during sieges. The enemy can break your geomancy spell with a Gift of (Basic) magic from any of their cities within 1500 squares. Even if you counter-break from a nearby city, your Geomancer city is the one that will need to recast Nature's Bounty to get the food boost back up to 22-24%. That recast will immediately get hacked down by yet another enemy city. Point being, if an enemy is determined to break your geomancy spell on a city, there is really nothing you can do to prop up that spell. Centralized magic is by definition fragile.

Save the big population cities, amplified food spells, centralized magic, and running negative food for your gold farm. A true PvP city is squat and sturdy, able to take significant punishment without the danger of population implosion. It avoids creating weak points from magical dependency and top-heavy buildings, just like its map location is carefully selected to remove siege-friendly weak points adjacent to the town.

Always remember, cannon fodders: when the rocks start flying, sturdy is sexy.

Misbehave, kill lots of stuff.

<^^^^^^^^||==O    Skint Jagblade

Declaration of Sandbox Freedom

Greetings, cannon fodders.

Since Hathaldir borrowed the framework of the real Declaration of Independence, I was inspired to offer my own pointlessly long recanting of martial philosophy and the rights of Illyriad gamers. Read at your own risk, particularly if you have a tender muggle brain.

WARNING: This article is not the typical Warmongering guide to game mechanics. It is opinionated, political, and based on my own personal perceptions. 

 

A Discourse Most Lengthy

When, in the course of Illyriad gameplay, particular coalitions have risen to power and implemented a noxious stranglehold on the sandbox and the community, it is imperative upon the warriors of the game to act.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That the game of Illyriad is strategic in nature, and that this was fully intended by its designers and developers. That valuable resources and the very fabric of the map will compel alliances into conflict, and that these conflicts will be resolved by politics, by meta-gaming, and sometimes by troops. That these causes and effects are fully intended by the game's creators, planned for and even encouraged, and are not some abberation of unruly alliances. That these ever shifting tides of interaction are not a distraction from the game, but in truth are the very game of Illyriad itself, which we all play to varying degrees.

Further, we state now and forever for the permanent record, that the vitality of the game has been badly decayed by the stranglehold of particular Elgean alliances, exercised over the whole of their continent. That these old and corrupt alliances dominate tournaments, the main annual activity for many noble alliances, by crude and unsavory means. That the players of these offending alliances achieve their battlefield power, not through the clever management of resources, but rather through the collection and maintenance of several permasats each, often in repulsive excess of the game's published multiaccounting limits. Further, that these alliances have cluttered the map with their permasats, occupying prime real estate with dead accounts at the expense of truly active newcomers.

We allege that these alliances have, by accumulating detritus of a thousand departed players, fostered the growth of grief play and harassment over their digital debris. That they have maintained accounts long dead through the use of interminable holding sieges, blocking hundreds of excellent settlement locations across the map, to the benefit of a priveleged few.

That these decrepit confederations have plotted to destroy those who opposed them by treacherous means, have pushed an agenda of annihilation, have overwhelmed the weak using sheer size as a means of intimidation. That they have, in Elgea, crushed healthy PvP that includes both vigorous fighting and easy terms of surrender, and sought to impose such suffocation upon the Broken Lands. That their leaders have demanded that their players fight at fatal odds, while risking none of their own cities, purely for the sake of pride and politics.

We resist their portrayal of alliance size as the only relevant virtue, over activity or contribution to the game. We deny the validity of alliances who push an agenda of global domination and lawmaking, with the express intention of depriving a voice to small, new, and nimble alliances.

We allege that these alliances occupy prime resources, as if first occupation alone is justification for permanent ownership. That these alliances own a disproportionate amount of valuable rare resources by using permasats to occupy them. Worse still, that these players often decline to harvest the valuable resources in their possession, when newer players might use them profitably. That these alliances have crashed the trade markets by relying on permasats for supplies instead of upon commerce.

We express our outrage that these alliances have repeatedly accused their opponents in slanderous terms, when they have been afforded dignified discussion.

We allege that these alliances have abused the status of training alliance, once honored as a neutral service to the whole community, as a means of sheltering their permasats, possessing mines, herbs, and prime locations under false protection, and breeding malcontent by harboring players of ill will who neither seek training nor provide it to new players.

Of greatest offense to us is that these alliances have opposed the formation of true countries, occupied by their sovereign occupants, who are granted real citizenship in their own homeland. They have maliciously slandered the honorable efforts to establish these countries, the natural constructs of a geography-based game. They have made false and repeated claims against these new nations, of hysterical nature, not for the true interests of the community, but rather as a means to preserve their ability to insinuate hostile cities into the heart of alliances who would be free of harmful interlopers. We assert that breaching the borders of our sovereign countries is an act of infiltration and war, which has been used in previous conflicts with these very same treacherous alliances, often to destructive effect.

Therefore, we set forth the following principles, and call upon the able warriors of Illyriad to set them in motion upon the glorious map:

1. That where alliances have gathered in such strength as to declare their homelands, that these boundaries should be respected as a sovereign nation, or else opposed upon the field of battle.
2. That condemnation should be issued against all alliances who rely upon large rosters of departed accounts to supply gold, supply armament, occupy valuable resources, and otherwise deprive the active player base of excellent city locations.
3. That especial outrage be heaped upon the leaders of alliances engaged in war, who compel their own players to fight, when they themselves sit back safely from the battlefields and risk nothing from their own accounts.
4. That all alliances have the right for their voices to be heard, not merely based on bulk or age, but on the basis of their vitality, activity, and interesting endeavors.
5. That the abuse of training alliance status should be met with lethal force, when players are found to have misused that privelege.
6. That combat be viewed as an acceptable means of conflict resolution in disagreements, without the perpetual cycle of escalation, or calls for pile-on tactics.
7. That alliances owning valuable rare resources accept the possibility of conflict over those resources, including the notion that infrequently-harvested resources would be better used by newer, more active players.
8. That the practice of holding sieges be reviewed, and that accounts on constant life support should have their sieges broken so those dead accounts are finally allowed to expire from the map.
9. That tournaments should be decided by the activity and excellence of the combatants in battle, and not by the outrageous abuse of permasats by the perennial winners.

In light of these tenets, we prevail upon the Illyriad community to embrace the strategic nature of this game, including the potential for conflict, the shifting possession of precious resources, and the establishment of real countries governed by their sovereign inhabitants. We denounce the idea that this game should be ruled by a select few, chosen by no other virtue than their ability to accumulate dead accounts in violation of the rules, who would govern this game and all its rewards to the intentional exclusion of the small, the active, and the new. It is to their defeat, and to a newly revitalized Illyriad, to which we pledge our swords, our prowess, and our treasured honor.

 

And With That...

To all good cannon fodders, I have only this to say:

Misbehave. Kill lots of stuff.

<^^^^^^^^||==O    Skint Jagblade