ZOMBIE FORUMS

My squad of commandos are pulling off raids on small clumps of rebels hiding around the countryside. It's obvious that they have too much money, money that would be better spent serving Humanity's cause.

Another has seen the Light and become an officer under my command. Excellent. My forces are still pathetically weak, but stronger than quite a few out there.

Lord Eronarn, may I venture a suggestion?

I intend to train a good many spies in my army. If you desire, send me the order to scout out a potential target so that you won't have to waste your own resources spying.

It will take me a while to develop good spies, however. But when I am able to, you won't ever have to spend your own gold on spies. Think on this.

(OOC: We can communicate via ICQ or Messenger, if you wish)

So, how are your spies coming along, Dom? You do know to upgrade them all at once, not a bit at a time, right? I made the mistake of training them to lvl 6 fiirst, meaning it cost me 411k gold to get them to lvl 107 like they are now, instead of 159k (I think) like it would have if I did them from 1-107 in one go.

I didn't know about that, so I made a spy and upgraded him once. Thank goodness that the next upgrade level is just 2K gold. It's a loss, but at least I don't lose that much gold.

Unfortunately, things are moving rather too slowly for me. I haven't had many clicks so far, so my army is small and I have too little money to train a big bunch of spies. I wanted to go for a stockage, but someone has locked on to me and I'm afraid that if I stockpile too much gold, he'll attack at that moment and waste all my income.

So I decided on an alternate plan. I just got large shields, so my gold is little enough that no one should want to attack me. I plan to stockpile attacks, and then get the $65000 at one go by raiding weaker armies in succession. If I get roughly $5000 per assault, I'll need 13 x 15 attacks. But I'm sure that I'll need far less than that number of attacks, with the income that I earn manually, and with any additional recruits along the way.

After I get that stockage, I can finally relax and slowly train my army of ninjas. With time, all my Lord Eronarn has to do is point a finger, and my spies will scout his enemies right down to the smelliness of their toe rags. Loyalty unto death!

You have much to learn, young padawan :)
First of all, never save up large amounts of money. Once you start getting fairly large amounts, chances are good you'll be robbed. The way to get upgrades is, like you plan, to save up attacks. Next, choose wisely who to attack. Finding people who have probably just made a character and forgot it is easy. Just do random name searches, and you'll often come up with players with 200k plus, sometimes over 300k gold, about 30 soldiers and no defences. Find some of these, save up maybe about 100 attacks, and you can easily get a few hundred thousand gold in one go. My personal record so far was taking 110k gold off one player with 15 attacks. (This was not one of these easy targets, but a player with 5 steeds.) Next: The player list updates every 10 minutes, that means when there are 30, 20 and 10 minutes left until you get a new turn. If you start attacking right after the update, and spend the money before the next update, the list will not show it, so chances are much better of avoiding detection by people looking for rich targets.

Oh, and do not believe that a stockade will make you safe. It will not. I plan to get stronghold and dynamite before starting link pimping and thus actually growing much. Oh, when you start growing, remember that weapons and upgrades count is added to the money when calculating the base for how much gold you get. Thus, a hypothetical player with 2 steeds (no other upgrades) and 100k gold will count as having 460k for calculating how much each of your attack gains you.'
Oh, and if people need spying, I believe my 10 lvl 107 spies can do a reasonably good job, as long as the one to be spied on does not have highly trained spies as well.

Lastly, one little thing more. Whether or not it's actually effective, or rather worth the price, is uncertain. Remember that a attack soldier is 250% as efficient at attack as an all purpose one, and similarily with defence. Thus, having almost half your army trained to each of these will make them more efficient overall, just leave some all-purpose soldiers to die if you take casualties (a-p die before specialized).

Edit: To test my spies, I just sent them on a mission to Sagus (yes, the player with 24k soldiers). He did have a security rating of 22k, but my spies bested him. I think I can conclude that my spies are fairly good at this time, and won't need an upgrade for some time.

Well, I finally managed to get that stockage. Took me a lot less time than I expected, too! Basically, I stopped preying on weaklings half my power and went for players who are about my strength, don't have strong commanders, and have probably forgotten about their characters. These chumps have in excess of 100k gold, and it's only proper that they start filling Lord Eronarn's (and my) coffers. Now I have this plan of simply letting my army grow naturally, instead of pumping it up every chance I get. I'll do random raids with attacks I stockpile, and with the money I plan to solely concentrate on defenses and ninja spies (anyone who attacks me without scouting first will get a nasty surprise, as well as a merciless retaliation). True, I will be still be a target for players with lots of weapons, but with the small amounts of money that I have I hope to present myself as a very unappealing target.

Armoury-wise, I find that bang-for-buck, getting steeds is the most economical choice, because steeds are 2.4 times the cost of broadswords, while offering 3x the power. Defense-wise, chainmail is slightly more than 2x the price of shields, while offering exactly 2x the defense (so get shields). As for prices supposedly fluctuating, I haven't seen any prices go up or down in the past week.

Siege weapons, of course, offer the best economic value of them all, defense or offense.

Frankly, I find it humourous that all I have in my armour is ONE shortsword, though my forces have long shields. I keep imagining that the one guy with the sword is the squad leader, who leads the charge with a bunch of long shielded buddies behind him, and then when they reach the enemy they start pummelling them with their fists. And when raiders come, my men throw rocks and sling stones from the battlements, irritating the invaders enough so that they'll leave. When I start getting steeds I wonder how will my men attack from horseback with their bare hands (maybe they use hadokens?), but I'm sure their l33+ ninja skillz will reveal a way to them.

In other news:
-Out of Lord Eronarn's massive commission of 2 officers, I am clearly better than his other lieutenant. *elitist sniff*

-BigMac has betrayed me and defected! <i>Et tu, Big Mac??!</i>

-As of today, the 3rd of April, I have officially suffered my first casualty in the war of liberating Chaos for freedom-loving Humans everywhere. His name was Abunai, an excellent squad leader who had held the Shortsword of Leadership for so long that the swordmaker's initials were permanently imprinted into the palm of his hand (think Raiders of the Lost Ark, except without the burning). He perished during a routine raid into the stronghold of Elven rebels, when a ranger shoved his arm down his throat and dropped a grenade into his stomach. Abunai, we will never forget your courage, and your sacrifice.

Well, I now have my stronghold, my dynamite, some steeds and shields and relatively l33t spies. I guess it's time to start pimping my link like a 1$ postwhore.

What the...? I sent in a team of spies with training 21 at a guy whose base level is 'camp' and I fail, losing 2 spies in the process?

I attack a complete pushover, and not only do I lose 6 men, but I only gain 30000 gold?

Hmm. Something very random is going on here.

Lately I've been using single (1) attacks on some of the board members, just to test their strength, and if needed, then informing them where they need to tighten up.

Your * soldiers attack causing 80266 damage!

Dominic Hokage's army counterattacks!

Dominic Hokage's * soldiers counter-attack causing 35760 damage!

You really need to work on defense, Dominic.

For one thing, I don't check in every day. I lost over 200000 gold in the 4 days that I've been away... :D That's going to change, though.

i forgot about mine 4 a while now i have 1340 attack turns and loads of money, you'd think i'd have less

Your * soldiers attack causing 98103 damage!

Immanio's army counterattacks!

Immanio's * soldiers counter-attack causing 44275 damage!

You too, Immanio. Having a good offense is all well and nice, but it sucks if you're raiding a bunch of places, raking in the gold, and some ass steals it all. Defend, defend, defend!

It seems the less damage they do in counterattack, the less gold you can steal from them..
i get four times as much gold attacking people twice my strength than attacking weak people that have more money...

First post after a week of absence. Gah, I'll never get up to date on the forums *dreads entering the Unrelated forum*.
Anyway:
1: When you send spies, there's always a big random factor involved. Even with überleet spies, you could end up with a result of 0, getting caught by anything except camp-no soldiers on defense-no spies.
2: Seeing as how defense is more than twice as expensive as offence (steed is 240 gold per attack point, chainmail is 500), many people don't care very much at all about defense. There will always be someone with better attack than your defense around. Get used to being robbed of anything you save up over time, taking lots at once and spending it at once. Me, I'm buying chainmails as well as steeds, but the high cost means defense is increasing far more slowly than attack. The most i hoard before spening is about 200k, for steed or 4 chainmails, which usually takes me 10-20 attack turns on my regular targets, 6-10 attacks or so. Besides, I usually attack when there's less than 1500 players on, far less lag.
3: I don't know whether less resistance=less gold. What is certain is the more equipment your target has (which often means more defense bonus, and a harder fight), the more you take.

OMG HAX!

I attacked one of these guys and now the entire constituency is raping me. :( Help. I die for Aiu- URK!

7210 / 3900.

Neko-elf.

-H-Kat

I guess I probably shouldn't be telling my bonuses to everyone, but...
201 soldiers
Attack/Defend bonus: 34035 / 25390
And about 350 attack turns

*Slow clapping*

Wow. That's devious.

I play for 1/2 hour a day, every other day...

-H-Kat
Fucking bustedy-ass computer....