Directives 15.7.2007

[Shendemiar]

Don't neglect Defence at any isle. 3000 spears should be minimum. Every isle should have some stoners, small warships, and small merchants as well. Versatility!

It's the cheap isles that makes people want to make war.

Have more than 1 isle capable of building Catapults. Should be more like 100% of your isles.

Build all the buildings even if you don't need them. If and when we are defending, its much better to have MH lvl 20 than 10.

Lot of alliances want to kill us. Listen to the moods of the world as you talk to people.

[Harlequin]

On .UK did you guys reach a "safe point" regarding defence? B y this I mean that once an islad had for example 10k spears it was genrally safe from all but the most determined player. Or, did you continue to build, build, build? I seem to remember Frei mentioning that 7k spears seemed to ward off most attackers?

[2kcastle]

At the moment im going for 6k spears on an isle before i switch to training archers, obviously if someone really wants to they can clear 6k but i'd have to really upset someone before they felt that strongly about it. as more and more people get bigger fleets and more catapults i'll up the number of spears to reflect that.

ADDED: I should have said before that this is on .com because i dont play .uk anymore

[eproxy]

On the same lines as what 2kcastle said;

There are two types of attackers.

A). Those whom want to poach isles, these guys almost always go for the easy isles and will hit few 'big' targets. Like 2kcastles says around 6k would deter these guys on IKUK; more is just a bonus.

B). Those whom attack during 'war'; these are the guy, which like us, are driven by something more than cheap isles. No amount of defence will deter them, or in alot of cases stop them. These people will take the 'easy' and 'hard' isles indiscriminantly. Having alot of spearmen is a bonus only in that it will kill more enemy units.

Type B enemies on IKUK weren't too common but here on IK.com people seem to have more reason to fight, more honour you might say. Type A enemies make up the mob of IK, the 60%+ of players who are here for an easy time and don't mind stealing from the poor and giving to themselves. It should be noted that Type A's and B's rarely fight their own kind, they fight each other and usually as a result of A offending against B. Type A enemies also make up the poachers during wars, the ones who try to get cheap isles whilst two titans engage in a futile battle.

Interestingly enough this was the state of my IKUK account after waring with Grover, in the end I lost around 5k LWS but this data was taken a while after I'd taken some isles.


I removed the co-ordinates for various reasons, not that it would deter the dedicated searcher.
Most of it should be self explanatory but some of the extra number mightn't make sense if you don't know how they're generated.
And for the record these isles are nothing compared to others out there, I believe it's TomTBS has some awesome isles :)

[Natmus]

shendemiar said:

Don't neglect Defence at any isle. 3000 spears should be minimum. Every isle should have some stoners, small warships, and small merchants as well. Versatility!

I respectfully disagree. Having defenses on all isles will only leave all isles understrength. Instead, I have gone for monster fleets on some isles, and leave the resource isles buil up as little as possible. That means NO wall and NO barracks. Anyone stealing that isle will have great trouble mounting any kind of defenses on it, except if they are shipped in. And I will be sure to have a monster isle nearby with a colony ship or plenty of cats to either retake or level the isle.

With that in mind, I doubt anyone will consider it worth the bother to steal my resource isle.

It's the cheap isles that makes people want to make war.

To me it's the overbuilt and undermilitarised accounts that tempt people.

Have more than 1 isle capable of building Catapults. Should be more like 100% of your isles.

Errr... Strong NO! Considering the enourmous cost to build up first the lab to lvl 15, and then researching cats, I think it's only worth doing in around one in 5 of your isles. These cat isles can then be fed with resources from the other 4 in 5 isles to produce cats 24/7 and then redistribute them to other isles as needed.

Much more efficient in my opinion. Takes a bit more time and clicking to ferry around resources, of course, but that's the price for ingame efficiency.

Build all the buildings even if you don't need them. If and when we are defending, its much better to have MH lvl 20 than 10.

Better yet to spend the cash on troops instead of main house. Not even my original main has MH at level 20.

Lot of alliances want to kill us. Listen to the moods of the world as you talk to people.

Actually, I don't think that many people wants to kill us. Remember Aspen, and how he wanted us to join him against DIGG. Many players may want to bring DIGG down, but most think that the only way to do so is to get US to join in against them. WHich is unlikely, but it's the only way. So they will want to butter us up and try to create division between us and DIGG.

[Arminius]

I mostly agree with Mads. As I can't be bothered to do any clicking and have XXL, all my isles are fortified. But they all have barracks level 20 and produce spears 24/7. My standard isle has level 20 MH (a bit wasteful, perhaps), wall, tower, barracks, gold and lumber, level 1 lab (apart from a few cat producing isles), harbour 10 (for LWS), stones 15, storehouse 15.

Slight variation: since the MX war I also have 2 isles at 1000 points.

Everything runs on schedule, so I don't need to worry about maintenance, except if I want to build a colo ship.

I have 4 clusters, o1, o12, o23, 034, and each cluster has between 1 and 2 level 20 harbours (depending on overall size), so that I can re-take any isle should it be taken. Each cluster also has a cat producer.

After E|S attacking me I have decided I need some stoner reserves as well, but haven't found a satisfactory solution. Maybe I'll buy some in

[eproxy]

I'm going for a slightly different approach; I have two main area, oceans 1 and 5. In ocean 1 I'm keeping my streamlined isles at low scores (but large armies ofc), whilst in the latter ocean I'm building everything to 1000 points.

Ocean 1 has a single Coloship producer per ~4 isles. As for Catapults you needn't do much research for them on your own isles since alot of enemy isles already have it done (~30%). That with the 5 I already had makes a nice tidy number of isles capable of building Cats.

As for stoners there are two routes you can take, a relatively large amount of Stoners compared to SF or the opposite (which is more common). I've always found it useful to have 1k stoners per isle but to group them on the larger isles (1 per 'group' of isles).

[digital]

I have 3.5 groups (one random Isle in ocean 12). All my 05 isles are coloship able and the first 4 are can produce cats ready for my suicide into eproxy

My O33 and O24 Isles are being set up to produce Coloships so that if war does occur I can expand into those oceans as well. I believe someone else in Luxor is doing this as well.

My O4 isles are producing a mixture of stonies and spears, the supply the majority of my O5 isles with stoners.

[Shendemiar]

natmus said:

I respectfully disagree. Having defenses on all isles will only leave all isles understrength. Instead, I have gone for monster fleets on some isles, and leave the resource isles buil up as little as possible. That means NO wall and NO barracks. Anyone stealing that isle will have great trouble mounting any kind of defenses on it, except if they are shipped in. And I will be sure to have a monster isle nearby with a colony ship or plenty of cats to either retake or level the isle.

With that in mind, I doubt anyone will consider it worth the bother to steal my resource isle.

A fair strategy i agree, but would you recommend it to just anyone? I would not. Thats for those who can handle it in the peacetime and in the wartime. For the rest, lots of spears, they will defend your isles even when you are not online. And it will show on the spyreports as well.

natmus said:

Errr... Strong NO! Considering the enourmous cost to build up first the lab to lvl 15, and then researching cats, I think it's only worth doing in around one in 5 of your isles. These cat isles can then be fed with resources from the other 4 in 5 isles to produce cats 24/7 and then redistribute them to other isles as needed.

Much more efficient in my opinion. Takes a bit more time and clicking to ferry around resources, of course, but that's the price for ingame efficiency.

Again, yes, yours work, if you can handle it. However most of us can't bother to send all the transports day after day. Again i would recommend the easier, yet more uneffective, for most of us. Maybe 100% of CAT capable isles is exaggeration, but in my books rather too much than too few.

natmus said:

Better yet to spend the cash on troops instead of main house. Not even my original main has MH at level 20.

I think lot of people just see the alliance score. Thats what they look when they estimate their next target. At wartime they check how much score some alliance loses or gains. It's the easiest (yet the stupidest) and thus most used indicator. And the scores are made of the few last levels of any building. This game is at least as much about the morals (in which the scores play big part) than the actual warfare.

It's like the stockmarket. It's not about what companies are good, it's what other people think are good.




(EDIT: Typos)
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[Arminius]

So, when we're at war next time, Mads just builds up some of his main houses, and hey presto, instant score increase for Morkin.

[SkulkrinBait]

Personally I'm going to build spears on all islands 24/7 and never stop. I have one in four islands as hubs which get fed resources from those just building spears, so I can build stoners, spears and archers 24/7 using the XXL effect and LWS 24/7 too. So I should have 5 strong fleets for the next war, assuming it isn't for a few months.

I've a few "spare" islands producing cats and spare resources for colony ships.

[mmupatton]

THIS thread is THE thread to read!

I am an amateur compared to some of you guys/gals, and despite the obvious disagreements, I know feel inspired towards my future build-up. Too late to do a full Natmus on my islands (unless I colonise another 284 islands, of course) but I am definitely going to think about what you have written here, everyone.

Thanks

[eproxy]

I still find it amusing that people still have such different opinions on whats 'best' to build. Thats the good thing about this game, its simple yet with lots of different methods of playing and factors to take account of.

[Shendemiar]

Best is different for everybody. And as an alliance, its a strength to have different type of accounts.

My initial post was not meant to be "This is what you must do" or "This is best way to play" but more like "This is what you could do (if you can't figure it out by yourself)"






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[eproxy]

You must transport catapults to 1:14:12!!