Land Whoring Tips & Tricks

Many people have asked me advice on what they should do and prepare for because they want to make their kingdoms into war whore kingdoms. Well, to answer all of their questions at the same time, I’ve decided to make up an entire guide which will include almost everything you need to know about how to become a successful war whore kingdom. Keep in mind that this is MY guide, and MY way of doing things. These methods work for me, but they might not necessarily work for you. Also, this isn’t the only way to become a good war whore kingdom, nor is it the easiest way, it is simply “a” way to do it.

What exactly is a war whore kingdom?

A war whore kingdom is a kingdom that organizes itself to fight as many wars as fast as possible, and most often winning those wars. Their priority is usually wins, total number of wars, honor, or a combination of any of these. Compared to the other styles of play, war whore kingdoms are fairly difficult. They require players to be active, alert, good, and fast. Players receive little time and luxury to explore or build up in peace, and rather, have to rush their defences, and push themselves as fast as possible. This style of play is not recommended for new players, nor is it for everyone. It is meant for those who like to live on the edge and in the fast lane, and those who want to test their limits. Personally, I think it’s the most enjoyable way to play the game as it pushes you to the limits, and forces you to play as a team member and not a loner.

What are the requirements to become a good war whore kingdom?

To make a good war whore kingdom, you need dedicated players who can cooperate, coordinate, and listen to orders well. Even with the best players, if they cannot be coordinated, then being a war whore kingdom is difficult. Similarly, you could have average players, but if you can coordinate them well, then they can be superior players. One of the most important things you need is a dedicated monarch. A monarch who plays for the sake of the kingdom and not for him/herself is required. All of the players also need to focus on the good of the kingdom, and not their own self interests. This prevents people from just honor raping and not doing much damage, and also for following orders, because if the monarch gives you an order to follow, you follow what is best for the kingdom, and the monarch tells you to do what is best for the kingdom, you will do what the monarch tells you to do. This system requires obedient players, and no corruption. It is often difficult to first get going, but once you have it set, it flows smoothly. The job of the monarch is much heavier in a war whore kingdom than normal kingdoms, unless you appoint other players to share responsibility. One person should be responsible for helping coordinate everyone’s attacks and assaults to assure that you have proper coordination. Cooperation is required from the members to make sure that orders are followed.

What races/personalities should you have?

The best races for war whore kingdoms are undead and faeries. This could change according to any game changes at the beginning of the age, but currently, these two races are the best. It is a good idea to try and have a balanced number of each race. 12 undeads, 13 faeries, or vice versa would work well. For personalities, the only attacker personalities you should bother using for a war whore kingdom are Sage, or War Hero. Sage are “ok” but are really not needed. The best war whore personality is War Hero. You automatically get lots of honor from your wars, and War Hero helps you to make optimal use of the honor that you get. Not only does it make your attacks better, but your income, population, etc. Some people say the General personality is also good, but the War Hero is better than the General personality for the reasons: Don’t bother using conquest. You don’t get honor for it, and the gains aren’t anything great either. If you’re in a war, you will have access to conquest anyway if you really need it. Second, once you are baron war hero, you have already made up the offence bonus that you receive as a general, plus your bonuses affect more than just attacks. War Hero also gives you +30% honor gains from attacking! The ONLY real advantage that the general personality has is that you can make a total of 5 attacks over 4 attacks. But that really isn’t worth sacrificing war hero.

For t/ms, rogues are a must, and having a couple mystics is also good. However, rogues take priority over mystics because of ops like assassinate wizards (AW) and enhanced nightstrikes. T/ms should be either one of these personalities, and nothing else. You do not want to have “attacker/thief” or “attacker/mage” strats. Each player should be specific to his/her area of strength. This is because you can’t be really good in all fields, thus you have to pick one, either attacker or t/m. Also, you don’t want to be just a thief, or just a mage. You want to utilize both your mana and stealth, thus being a t/m. You can be better at one over the other, but you should be capable in both. Attackers will also be required to have some magic and thieving capabilities so that they can hurt those occasional people who have no thief or magic defence.

What kind of building strategies should you use?

For attackers, your building strats should have max barracks (25%). You need to be able to hit hard, and hit fast. If you are an attacker or any race other than undead, you should also run hospitals, at least 15%. Combat losses will pile up on you if you do not reduce them with hospitals, and the hospitals also help with plague and restoring your population when you lose some to fireballs and kidnapping. Barracks is the only main requirement, and hospitals if you are not undead. The rest of your strat is whatever you want it to be.

T/ms should also run a strong strat, but not the usual “defensive” t/m strat. You want to have a very strong offence, and be able to hurt them harder than they can hurt you and before they can hurt you. This means that you should avoid running watchtowers (WT). Your tpa should be high enough that you don’t need WT to protect you, plus, if you are faery, you have Clear Sight. But in the case that you are being mass targeted by hard ops like AW, then you might want to temporarily make WT just for added defence if you find that you don’t have enough. But generally, WT are out of the strat. Banks are also out of the strat. As a t/m, you want to max your sciences as fast as possible, and then run a 40% schools strat and around 100% utilization. Your income will be high enough without needing banks, and it’s unlikely to get stolen since you should have good thief defence. If you are a rogue, you might also want to run some thieves dens to lower the thief losses. T/m strats are pretty optional, but it’s best to run a strat to give you more offensive power than defensive power.

Guide to picking good war targets and getting the war

Especially after you win a few wars, you will find that people will avoid wars with you. If you are going solely for wars and wins, then this wouldn't exactly be a positive situation from you. Basically, what you want to do is make sure you have a peace block so that they cannot peace you at all. Once they peace you, there is NO way to start the war, even if they start attacking you. For the kingdom that declared peace, their hostility meter will no longer increase, thus, the war cannot start. If you threaten them with "another kingdom will declare on you" they could take that as a threat of gangbanging, and most likely will call in friends and alliances for assistance. It is best to leave 1 on 1 wars at the 1 on 1 level, and not start a huge world war.

Now, when they can't peace you, but they are still not willing to fight back, then what you do is hammer on one of their big provinces...or do something to get one of their dangerous provinces really pissed off. You could mass AW or just drop them a ton of acres, etc. What you also want to do is try to find those players who could be "newbies". Newbies are easier to crack than veteran players, so you bash on the newbies for awhile, and then you send them taunting messages. Not insulting, but taunting. Here are some sample messages that I've sent before to taunt:

• "Whoa, sucks to be you :P"
• "Well, I just noticed you dropped quite a bit...too bad you can't do anything about it. Hahaha"
• "Haha, this is like walking through the front door, and robbing a house clean...the home owners don't do anything."

As you can see, none of these messages aren't insulting, but they are taunting, and that is the effect you want to develop. You want them to get pissed off enough so that they attack you in blind rage. Hopefully that would start the war.

Of course, you have to be prepared for outside interference. With you basically "feeding" on them, they might call in assistance, especially if you declare on someone smaller than yourself.

But the best way to get a war is to declare on someone bigger, and more powerful than you. It is less likely that they will peace with you unless they are really scared of you, in which case, you use the above tactics.

Strategies to increase your chances of winning a war

Now, one strategy that many people overlook is that of gaining acres during hostility. If you wish to win a war, it is best NOT to gain acres during hostility. What you do is let your opponent take your acres during the hostility, and you take it back during the war. Why should you get landfat off of acres that do not count towards the war meter? You get less honor, and also just lose your troops from combat losses. Instead, attackers should use only plunders, massacres and learn attacks. Don’t even raze them during the hostility because that just makes them less landfat, and you want them to be as landfat as possible when the war starts. This enables your kingdom to get some big hits right off the start, which will throw the war meter in your favour. Even if the war is even from there on, you will have the advantage because of that initial surge of acres. Not only that, but they will lose tons of honor. Not only because it is now a war, but also because they are bigger than you. But only do this if you know that your hostility is going to go to war. If they are not fighting back, and your hostility will most likely not go to war, then it is better to just take what you can during the hostility, but be careful to leave after, because if they start the war, they could turn the situation around in your face. Another strategy is the nightmare/nightstrike combo. Get one or more of your t/ms to mass nightmare one of their big guys, especially after he’s attacked, and then let your attackers walk through his/her lands. If you had that target AWed earlier, that will make the spells much easier. If you get two or 3 t/ms to spend all of their mana nightmaring, and all of their stealth nightstriking a guy, he will lose a lot of defence, and will be very easy to bring down. Bringing down big players can also have a psychological effect on the opponents as well. Some people will succumb to despair if they see one of their prime players fall into the dust so easily, or it could have the opposite effect, and they could make rash decisions in their blind rage. So either way, it could turn to your advantage. Winning wars isn’t just about the physical aspect, but the psychological one too :) Keep in mind that it is important to hit hard and fast, so that means that you want to get your attackers to be able to attack again the moment their armies come back. And t/ms should keep on track with screwing over their kingdom.

Methods to get them to surrender

There always comes the dilemma of "How do I get them to surrender!?" Well, you could be lucky, and war with a monarch who genuinely cares about the rest of his kingdom, and seeing them losing, will allow himself a loss to save his kingdom. But more likely, you're gonna get a stubborn monarch who is more concerned about a number on a record than he is about saving his kingdom. What do you do in these circumstances? Here are a few methods that I have used this age, and found to be very successful.

1. Intimidation
   • This is the first method you should use, but it is also the least likely to work. But you should still give it a shot. With this, basically you tell their monarch the situation of the war, and the end results. Here is a sample message that I usually send.

 "Well, as you can see, we are clearly winning, so as I outlined in my original message to you, I would like you to surrender. Please do not think that I will simply walk away when we are winning, because I won't, so if you refuse to surrender, it will only hurt you and your kingdom. In the end, you WILL surrender, it's just a matter of how much of your kingdom will be left when you do, and that is only something that YOU can control. Choose wisely. Good day!"

Of course, intimidation becomes easier as the more wins you get, especially if you have a perfect record, because then you can just point to your record and say "Well, that's what everyone else said, but they surrendered in the end." etc.

I also like to "bluff" sometimes to cause them to surrender. I send their monarch a message like this:

 "Don't you DARE surrender! My kingdom is having way too much fun ripping your kingdom to shreds, and we're reaping a lot of acres and honor. Besides, I don't particularly like not having control of when the war ends."

This can have some funny results :)

1. • Player Killing (PKing)

This is the easiest method, and most widely used. Now the reason I find player killing acceptable in this circumstance, and not for what happened with Autobot City is that the opponent is able to STOP the PKing at any time! They can just surrender, and it's over! But with the situation I was in, we couldn't escape them, thus, we couldn't stop their PKing. That I find unacceptable. You should only PK when the opponent has the ability to stop it, should they choose to. At least, this is how I view it.

Most people think PKing the monarch is the way to go, but honestly, only a newbie monarch would surrender as soon as they started to take the heat. Any other monarch wouldn't really care that much about what is happening to him/her. So who do you hit? Well, the best choices are to pick those provinces who look to be "the best" in the kingdom at something. Whether it's the best attacker, best t/m, highest acres, highest honor, etc. Choose someone like that, and start hammering them. You don't even have to kill them, just drop them a ton. Yo can do several provinces at the same time doing it this way.

3) Spies

You can get spies in the opponent kingdom, and this is usually easiest to get if you are bashing on a newbie who can't take the heat. I've occassionally had newbies message me saying "Please stop hurting me! I'll be a spy for you if you stop hurting me please!" While you have to judge the situation to see if you can trust the spy or not, you can work it to your choice. Use the spy to find out what's in the forums, and what the kingdom is talking about. You might find a weak point or something like that to help you get your surrender.

4) Civil War

This is my personal favorite method. Starting a civil war. This age, I started 5 civil wars to get the wins that I needed from them :) After you've bashed people around a bit, and again, the newbies are the most easily swayed in this method, you send everyone except the monarch a message similiar to this:

"Well, it appears that your monarch does not care for your kingdom. He is willing to sacrifice his kingdom for the sake of his pride. Instead of surrendering to us and ending this peacefully, he chooses to resist the surrender, and thus put your kingdom in further danger. I hope your next monarch is one who cares for his kingdom, and not just for himself. Good day to you."

For those people who don't know what's going on, this lets them know about the situation. Veteran players who support the monarch will either start to question their loyalty, or will just continue to blindly support the monarch. Newbies are most likely to just go along with the dissension and start disrupting the kingdom. Provinces will most likely start voting for a surrender, especially those who are taking the hardest hits. If you have a spy from the above methods, you can find out those people who are crying the most for a surrender, and you can send them messages like this:

"Well, I have found out that you wish for your monarch to surrender. If you support the surrender, I can have my kingdom stop assaults on you, but I would like you to help get the surrender, and I can tell you what sorts of things you might need to do to get that surrender. Keep in touch with me. Good day to you!"

This gets them on your side, and adds to the allies that you have, thus, you now have planted the seeds of a civil war, now all you have to do is spark the flame. Get your kingdom to weaken their monarch, and tell your spies to start attacking their own monarch. Those provinces who support the monarch and those who are just indifferent will become confused at the chaos going on, and if they succeed in killing off the monarch, they can elect a new one, and surrender. Quite devastating, but effective. Just remember that it was their monarch's fault for not surrendering when he should have, and he got what was coming to him :) That's how I justify my cruel actions. Another thing is that since their monarch takes a few intra-kingdom hits, if he dies, he won't be able to restart back in his kingdom because of those intra-kingdom hits :) hahaha

One thing to note is that the civil war strategy is not very effective against organized kingdoms since they are more trusting of each other, and thus, it is difficult to create doubt and resentment.

Attacker guide for hostility/war

Basically, attackers want to try and coordinate with t/ms. T/ms weaken the target, attackers move in for the acres. During hostility, if you know that it will go to war, avoid taking acres, and instead, do massacre, plunder or learn attacks. Massacre is really good because it kills off a lot of defence, along with peasants, wizards and thieves. Plunder is good if the target has a lot of stockpiled resources, and learn is only good in the beginning of the age when your science levels are low, and a few thousand points make a big difference.

During the war, avoid using conquest. Low acre gain and no honor. Not worth it unless you have no other targets to break. Wars are won by the amount of acres you nail. So make sure that you fight hard and fast to gain the upper hand.

Thief/mage guide for hostility/war

Now, I will talk about what t/ms should do:

FOR HOSTILITY!!

• In the start of hostility, t/ms, your PRIORITY should be to get information (CBs, SoM) on everyone! If you have this information, you can better plan who to target and such.

• Second, using the information you've gotten, find those people with lots of runes, and steal them! Quickly deprive them of their runes, so they cannot retaliate with spells right away, and it gives YOU the opportunity to cast spells on THEM! Now, although you will do this first, you must constantly check your opponents throughout the hostility and war for runes, and take them before they can use them!

• Third, go to the attackers and starve them! Try to do the following ops and spells on EACH attacker:

• • Steal as much food as you can.
  • Cast Vermin
  • Cast drought
  • Cast explosions (to lower aid sent and received)
  • Torch farms (especially if you have a LOT of thieves)

• Fourth, hinder the t/ms with ops and spells like "sabotage wizards" and "expose thieves". If you are a rogue, you can also assassinate wizards.

• Fifth, stealing gold during hostility/war is never VERY beneficial, as there are many other much more preferable ops to be done, however, if you or the kingdom really does need gold, then you are permitted to do some gold stealing, but only if the target has a lot of gold. And only if you are able to steal a lot of gold per op. More preferable to stealing gold is to cast Fool's Gold on those people who have stockpiled money. This will prevent money from being sent as aid to others who need it, and also prevent them from using it for themselves. Also, greed and riots are good to add on too if you want to hinder their income.

Now, this is all you should need to do during the hostility. If you do this correctly, you should NOT need to starve them heavily during the war, and instead can concentrate now on lowering their utilization. When you lower their utilization, it will make their farms less effective as well, so it will promote their starving.

FOR WAR!!!

• First, you should drop their utilization by using spells and ops like: (Although this worked last age, not sure how it will work with regards to happiness.)

• • Fireball
  • Kidnapping
  • Meteor Shower

• • • This will basically screw them over. If they are starving right now (which they should be) then this will practically take most people out of the war, if not make them almost useless. But keep in mind...ALMOST useless :)

• Second, destroy their military. Do this by using ops and spells like:

• • Nightstrike (especially rogues and especially if they have stockpiled soldiers)
  • Nightmares

• • • Now, with regards to nightmares, if you are going to do them, or are asked to, make sure that you do LOTS of them! At LEAST +5 nightmares. Otherwise, they aren't very effective if only a few are done. If you can team up with an attacker or a few attackers who will hit the target after one or more t/ms have nightmared him/her, then it will be even more effective.

• Third, if any of their t/ms are hurting us, you have to kill them. Kill them by doing ops like assassinate wizards, bribe thieves, sabotage wizards and expose thieves. Remember to always keep stealing runes whenever you can! And if your magic is not strong enough to be effective casting, then send the runes to someone who is!

• Now, this is basically everything that needs to be done. Other things that you can do, I will outline certain circumstances in which they are effective:

• • Propaganda - Only use this if you can send a LOT of thieves. And I mean like +10k thieves. So none of you should be doing propaganda anytime soon. Yes, I know it helps you, but it's more or less a "playing for myself" op until you can send a lot of thieves. Then when you start converting like 200 elites in a single op, THAT is when this becomes powerful :)
  • Tornadoes - On BIG provinces, when their building costs are high, doing MASS tornadoes can be very effective. But since this spell is expensive, it's more preferable to make sure you've cut their utilization first before you bother with tornadoes. This spell can also work well with screwing their income.
  • Landlust - If you need acres, ONLY do this on BIG provinces! Otherwise, you get like 4 acres per spell...it's even worse then paradise then! If you use this spell on BIG provinces, then you can get +20 acres per spell, and THEN this spell is effective in also helping shift the war meter in our favor.

Playing for yourself vs. Playing for the kingdom

This excerpt is from a post I made to my kingdom with regards to playing for themselves. I didn’t have time to type this all out again, so I will just re-post what I told them.

Now, I want to briefly discuss "playing for yourself"...and this is information everyone can benefit from.

In this kingdom, I expect everyone to "play for the team" and NOT to "play for themselves". Sure, it's OK to choose to hit one guy over another because you'll get more acres, or more honor, or things like that, but when instead of razing a dangerous person like you are told to, you make a landgrab for meaningless acres, and when it would have been MORE beneficial to the kingdom for you to have made that raze, THAT is when you are playing for yourself.

Basically, when you do an action, and you know that your actions will hurt or hinder the rest of the kingdom, that is playing for yourself. Do not do this, friends. It's not good for you, and it is not good for the whole kingdom.

Take my example from last age. Although I didn't entirely "play for myself" I didn't stay small either and regardless of everyone else's size, I just grew quickly. Can you all recall what happened to me in the last few weeks of the age? I got gangbanged hard. In the end, that is the result of playing for yourself. Sure, you might become huge or big or powerful, but in the end, you will stick out, and be a target for everyone.

It's very easy to understand how playing for yourself works with attacking, but is it so easy to see with t/ms? Not as easy to see, and that is why it happens often.

Playing for yourself as a t/m means when you do meaningless ops that do not hurt your opponent and are only meant for you to gain honor. Such ops are like propaganda with 500 thieves, or assassinate wizards on an attacker who has barely any wizards, etc.

Yes I know, ops like stealing food, stealing runes, kidnaping, etc don't provide much honor, but think of it this way. It is better to gain honor slowly and steadily than it is to gain it in a big jump, and then lose it all just as quickly. "Easy come, easy go."

How do you lose it quickly? Well, your meaningless ops don't hinder the opponent, and then they attack you and you lose all of the honor that you had gained, and your opponents are still not hurt. Only YOU are! So not only does playing for yourself hurt you in the long run, it hurts the rest of the kingdom. This is a team game and we need to work together to become powerful! Especially since almost all of you are newbies.

There is an exception to this rule, but a very slight exception, and even though it's an exception, it really shouldn't be. Experienced players can "play for themselves" and get away with a lot for quite awhile, but again, usually in the end, they "get theirs". The only provinces in this kingdom that I could expect to "play for themselves" and do well would be myself, and Ohayou Urusai. Both of us have been playing Utopia since the beta, and know this game like the back of our hands. However, I still refuse to play for myself, and I promote team playing. Why? Mainly because I set anexample, and I want you all to follow my example.

During our hostility, instead of making a landgrab, I went for a plunder, and then used that money towards the dragon. THAT is an example of playing for the team! Did my actions directly help my province? No. But "indirectly", it helped not only MY province, but EVERYONE else in the kingdom! That is what team play is all about!