Googly - Guide Collection

[DeletedUser]

This thread is merely part of my collection of guides, that I have made public over the past year on the .us forums, for easier access for the .uk community if anybody wishes to benefit from the content.


Thread Content:

Post 2. Approaching Defending - a How To.
Post 3. Defensive Techniques - an Indepth Guide.
Post 4. Tagging - a How To.
Post 5. Leadership for Beginners.
Post 6. PnP advise.

Links directly to each guide are above.

The originals are entirely on the .us forums - I have merely brought them here to benefit people on this forum (having been requested for them to appear on the .uk forums). I hope they are of benefit to some users.

 

[DeletedUser]

Note: Premium is ESSENTIAL for this approach to defending.

I've been going through my computer, and just dug up an old guide I wrote a while back. I've tweaked it a bit before putting it up here

Googly's Approach to Defending​

Most of the people who have played with me and tried to take me down know that I am a strong defender. I wouldn't say I'm great. I would say I am an aggressive conservative. I try to conserve troop losses so that I can take the fight back to the attacker. This is how I approach defending (roughly) - I would reccomend this to newer/inexperienced players more than experienced ones.

So you've just logged in, after a nice long sleep. Unfortunately, some idiots have launched heavily on you, and so you have a tonne of incomings. If you are relatively new to the game, lazy or inexperienced in defending heavy assaults, then this will be of more use to you than anything else.


Step 1. Take a breather.
Go away from the computer for 1-2 minutes - the worst thing you can do is panic and jump right in, as that is when you WILL make mistakes.


Step 2. Look for likely trains.
Go to incoming, order them by village, and look for any villages which have a significantly larger number of incomings than others, and for obvious noble trains. Make a note of these.


Step 3. Alert your tribe.
Post in your tribe forums, alerting people to the fact that you have heavy incomings. In the post, say you are currently trying to work out what is what, and will update the thread as you have gained the information available. The earlier your tribe is warned that you may need help, the earlier they will respond in kind. It is a good idea if your incoming rate is rising, to ask people to send fakes/real nukes at the players hitting you - they will then be likely to slow down/stop sending on you, in order to defend themselves better.


Step 4. Tagging.
NOW begin tagging. An in-depth guide on tagging is viewable here - otherwise, follow this "rush tagging" method. Start with the likely trains first, and then work your way from start to finish. If in doubt, check the last time you were online - if you had no incomings at that point, or had finished tagging up until that point, you will have a rough timeslot they had to send in. Sometimes you can find likely trains are actually cat-trains or fake trains, because you would have been on when the nobles would have had to have been sent.

Ok, so you have just finished tagging your attacks. Some you couldn't due to not knowing when they were sent for sure. This is where attack IDs come in. When sorting incomings, you can sort by attack IDs. You can work out when some of the attacks on you were sent that you could tag, and as such work out a likely time-period the attacks were sent in based on the attack IDs.

I will give an example, as this is quite hard to explain otherwise.

Spoiler: Attack ID example

You have 12 attacks with IDs ranging from 123456789 to 123456999, which you couldn't rename. You were offline from 00:00 ST to 12:00 ST. If they were nobles, they would have to have been sent at let's say 1:00 ST to 3:00 ST (you can work this out from calculating when each time attack would have had to have been sent). If they were rams, they would have to have been sent at around 6:00 to 8:00 ST.

You have 3 trains here in this example. One train has attack IDs around 123456790, one has 123456820, the other around 123456950.


You run a sorting script, and get the attack IDs in order. You notice that the first two trains (the smaller IDs) are next to each other, and there are several attacks between them and the final train. You have tagged these inbetween attacks successfully. So, what do you do? You check when these known ones had to have been launched (which is where using a good tagger comes in handy). You find that the known ones were launched between 04:00 ST and 05:00 ST. Therefore, the 8 attacks before these HAVE to be noble trains as they were sent too early to be ram speed, with the 4 after these being ram-speed attacks as they couldn't have been sent early enough to be Nobles.

Step 5. Begin defending.
So we now have the majority, if not all, of the attacks tagged.
We have a few choices now:
Sniping.
Stacking.
Dodging.
Backtiming.
Pre-Nobling/Recapping

I have spoilered below the pro's and con's of each method, from my point of view. Click here for an in-depth guide on how to do each method.

Spoiler: Methods of defending

I wouldn't recommend backtiming unless you are an experienced defender - you can easily lose nukes on pre-stacked villages if your backtime is going across a large distance. The only time it is worth the risk is on packet worlds, backtiming nobles. This is because killing nobles at home does the enemy a lot more damage than them killing off the nuke(s) does to you.


Dodging should be used when you have a small number of ram-speed attacks that look likely to be fakes at a village. NEVER use offensive troops to stack a village. Always dodge with these where possible. If you lose a wall from a well-hidden nuke amongst fakes, so what? You can still hold a village effectively without a wall. You can't without troops.


Stacking. If you can get large amounts of support to a village being heavily hit, this is generally (not always, but generally) the best thing to do. Whether this is your defense, or tribal/friend support. It will demoralise the enemy if you can take out their nukes, as they can't do too much. I would generally advise 3 full defensive villages minimum as a stack, as this way the losses you gain will be spread between villages, and on average their nuke losses would outweigh your defensive losses depending on how many defensive villages you can support the target village with.


Sniping. This is the single most valuable technique in defending. In both meanings of the word. Let's cover the first meaning - supporting a village between nobles landing. This is a great way to hold a village with minimal troops needed for a period of time. Eventually if they keep sending nobles you will lose it. However, each time you kill off a bunch of nobles it puts the enemy back several hours. There is nothing nicer than seeing a nuke or a noble go splat.

The second meaning I prefer to call re-capping. This method is the idea of letting yourself lose a village, but retake it straight after.This can be useful for holding villages - particularly if you pre-noble the villages before the enemy's train lands, so that they overnoble. Again, more effective on packet worlds than coin worlds.

The best defenders are the people who can hold on to the majority of their villages with small troop loss on their part. Bear this in mind when defending.

Once you have some experience in defending properly, you will know that it all comes down to judgement calls. Don't worry if you lose a few villages. If the enemy has an Op on you to take 30 of your villages, and only take 6, they will be demoralised. Although you will be pissed off for losing villages, does it matter? No! You have caused the enemy more problems than they wanted, and so you are in a better position to do damage. Plus, you should be able to recap your villages as the walls will be low and you will have known if they were sending support to land after noble trains.


~Googly~


Original Link.

 

[DeletedUser]

Defensive Techniques​

This guide is to explain how to do various methods when defending. For an idea of a full approach to defending, and some explanations of when would be a good idea to use each method, click here. For learning how to Tag incoming attacks quickly & efficiently, click here.

Here, I am going to cover the major defensive techniques. Some of these will come across as stupidly obvious, but I would be surprised if everybody who reads this knows all of this already/does this when defending. I am posting this due to several people asking me how to backtime/snipe after reading my basic defensive guide, and so I have written this up so I don't explain it several times.

Contents

- Dodging
- Backtiming
- Sniping
- Defensive nobling
- Stacking


I will NOT be explaining in this guide when you should use one method over the other as a definitive statement, as each attacker could use that to their advantage if they see you repeating the same methods over and over again. Better to mix it up a bit and use your brain when deciding what method to use.


Dodging.

Spoiler: Dodging

The idea with this method of defendingis to have the least losses you possibly can from incoming attacks. You don't want to give them anything other than troop loss. So, you dodge all your troops by attacking a nearby barb village or supporting a local village. You ALSO dodge all resources. Accept market trades, build up HQ queue and/or troop queues. Ensure that the resource count as the attacks land are as low as possible.

Backtiming.

Spoiler: Backtiming

The idea with this is to dodge an attack on a village, and retaliate by landing a nuke to hit straight after their troops return. The best thing to do for this is to use a good attack tagging script that tells you when the troops return. You then can use TwStats on your world, get the relevant attack planner up and set the landing time to match what it says in the tagged incoming.

I use a different method from some people. Early game I will send 100 axes and 10 cats to hit the rally point of the village I am backtiming, to land 1-2 minutes before the troops return. I will then backtime from the village being hit or another one, or have a tribe mate do it if need be. This lowers the possibility of someone being able to dodge the backtime (usually through getting a report on a nearby village, putting the attack again with all troops in the quickbar and clicking "ok" as the troops arrive back).

Later on, I will send 2-3 nukes to clear potential stacks/weaken them and to take out the rally point. I will then backtime with 2-3 more nukes to ensure clearing as much support as possible and weakening the nuke/clearing it completely.

Sniping.

Spoiler: Sniping

The idea here is to have troops landing to support a village between a nuke/first attack with nobles/cats and the remainder of them, in order to keep the village/prevent major losses through a cat train.

You can do this in 2 ways.
1. Cancelling/Bouncing attacks from the village being hit (can be hard).
2. Sending support from other villages (much easier and more reliable)

I will explain how to do (1) first. You need to first of all check the train gap. Let's make it tough and assume that the village has all troops landing in the same second. The ms times are 070, 170, 270, 370. So, we want to have the village's support returning to the village between 071 and169. So, we attack a nearby barb village. We have to send AFTER the incoming attacks are down to double the cancelling attack time or closer.

We need to send this to land on an even second if the incoming attack is on an even second, odd if it is on an odd second. Send, see if it lands on the right ms. If not, cancel, retry. When you get the right one (will take a few attempts usually), leave it. Work out when you sent it, write down the number. Work out when you need it to return and write it down. You need to cancel the attack that is sent at 50% of the remaining time for the incoming attack to land FROM THE TIME YOU SENT IT. It will then arrive, if you have done it right, in the gap.

Now let's assume it crosses a second. So, 930, 030, 130, 230. We can easily get the returning attack to come back to the village at 000. This is because, when every attack lands on tribalwars, whatever ms the attack lands on, it will return on the second, at 000. As such, we just need to wait for the second attack in the train to be say 30:00 minutes away, and at the same time that i reaches this, launch the attack at a barb village 15:00 minutes away. Hey presto! You've sniped it.


Now to explain (2). All you do is use TwStats attack planner or a Sniping Script, to work out when to send support. Sending in a train is a good idea, as you don't know where the nuke may be in the train. Just send at the correct time, first at cat speed. If you mess it up, cancel. Try again at sword speed. Then again at spear if need be, and if you must, at light cav/hc speed.

Defensive Nobling.

Spoiler: Defensive Nobling

This is my favourite method (I spent a lot of time working to perfect this ingame) which not many people have used that I have fought or played with. The idea is to cause the enemy to waste lots of nobles and a nuke offense trying to take a village, and then you recap it afterwards. Ok, so basically, you pre-noble the village, and clear the offense each time they cap the village, and take the village back straight after.

Far away train? If you are able to pre-noble 20 hours before the incoming lands, follow this. If not, drop straight to the Close By? paragraph. Send 3 nobles 20 hours beforehand to lower the loyalty of the village. Send ANOTHER one, or two if needs be, nearer the time. This is to get the loyalty as close to 20, or under it, as you can, without nobling it yourself. This way, the noble with a nuke will hit it first. Ignore the Close By? paragraph and jump to Offensive Time paragraph.

Close by train? What you need to do is pre-noble with 3 nobles, to land as close as you can before the incoming train. Then do the below.

Offensive Time! What we do here, is time a nuke to land after the first incoming noble. This is the same as sniping - the wall *should* be 0, so you can have 3 attempts. 1 at ram speed, 1 at sword speed and 1 at axe speed. Rams aren't needed if the wall is 0, to clear a single Offensive village.
Also, time 2 1k axe, 500 lc attacks to land between the 2nd, 3rd and 4th nobles. This is to clean the village out, so the nobles will hit the village with no losses, and so are most likely to over-noble a couple more times.

Re-cap! Send 1-2 nobles after this to retake the village immediately. This way you keep the village and have caused a lot of annoyance to the attacker. If they sent support, perhaps time nukes to hit the support as it lands. Easy ODA and cleans out a couple of support villages for 2 weeks or more.

Stacking.

Spoiler: Stacking

In a large war, stacking is a good method of defense. Heavy stacks = major losses for enemy nukes. I took 4 1.5k barbs in the middle of enemy territory on W39, and put a 200k/80k + 60k hc stack in the village. Over 100 nukes lost, and only 1 village cleared and capped so far. The larger the stack, the more troops it takes to clear it, and the less worth it is for the enemy to try and clear it.

A good method for stacking is sending small troopcounts from many villages. Instead of sending 5 full stacks from 5 villages, send 10 half-stacks from 10 villages. The reason being, you can rebuild the losses quicker, and so send support back to that village from the supporting villages much faster.

Original Link.

 

[DeletedUser]

Tagging


I meant to write up a guide to go alongside the Defensive guides I wrote a long while back for the .us forums. However, it slipped my mind until I got a reminder very recently.

As such, here's a guide that hopefully will help you find everything you need to know regarding tagging incomings, no matter how large, at once.

Before reading on, ensure you have completed the following checklist:​

• Download Opera
• Set up a Sort Script in your Quickbar
• Set up a Tagger Script in your Quickbar

To download Opera, click here.
To install Snap Links as an extension, click here.
The Sort Script I use, along with the Tagger Script I use, are both below. Be aware that the Tagger Script may need editing for different world settings, and that with each game update, the scripts are likely to need repair.

I prefer to keep my tagging as short as possible - longer lines tend to slow down defending, and is unnecessary. As such, I only have the unit type, who is attacking, where from, & the send time as part of my tagging method. You can use more/less information, but this is what I consider to be the essentials.

Spoiler: Scripts

1. Sort Script.

javascript:    /* === CUSTOMIZABLE === */  var vScript={  URLs:[  'http://crosstrigger.com/tw/v7/sort_rh.js',  'http://taktimer.net/scripts/dales/sort_rh.js'  ],  id:'fnOverviewSorter',  config:{},  action:function(){win[vScript.id](vScript.config);},  runOnce:true  };      /* === GENERIC === */  vScript.name='Launcher';  vScript.author={name:'dalesmckay',contact:'dalesmckay@gmail.com'};  vScript.version='1.00';  vScript.timeoutMS=3000;  vScript.debugEnabled=true;    var win=(window.frames.length>0)?window.main:window;  win.$(win.document).ready(function(){  function fnDebugLog(msg){if(!vScript.debugEnabled){return;}win.$('body').append(msg);}    var isLoaded=false;  var ii=0;    function fnEmbedScript(){  if(isLoaded){  return;  }    if(ii>=vScript.URLs.length){  fnDebugLog('<span style="color:red;">(Fail)</span><br/><span style="color:red;"><B>ERROR: </B>No available hosts.<br/><br/>');  return;  }    fnDebugLog(((ii>0)?'<span style="color:red;">(Fail)</span><br/>':'')+'<B>Load: </B>'+vScript.URLs[ii]+' ... ');    win.$.getScript(  vScript.URLs[ii]+'?'+Math.round(Math.random()*1000000),  function(){  if(isLoaded){  return;  }    isLoaded=true;  fnDebugLog('<span style="color:green;">(OK)</span><br/>');  fnDebugLog('<span style="color:blue;">Executing...</span><br/><br/>');  win.setTimeout(function(a,b){vScript.action();},200);  }  );    ii++;    if(!isLoaded){  win.setTimeout(function(a,b){fnEmbedScript();},vScript.timeoutMS);  }  }    if(win[vScript.id]){  if(!vScript.runOnce){  fnDebugLog('<span style="color:blue;">Executing...</span><br/><br/>');  vScript.action();  }  }  else{  fnDebugLog('<span style="color:blue;text-decoration:underline;">'+vScript.author.name+' - '+vScript.name+' v'+vScript.version+'</span><br/>');  fnEmbedScript();  }  });    void(0);

2. Tagger Script.

javascript:c='{unit} {player} {coords} {sent}';p=['Scout','LC','HC','Axe','Sword','Ram','***Noble***'];function V(){return 1;}window.onerror=V;function Z(){d=(window.frames.length>0)?window.main.document:document;aid=d.getElementById('editInput').parentNode.innerHTML.match(/id\=(\d+)/)[1];function J(e){vv=e.match(/\d+\|\d+/g);return (vv?vv[vv.length-1].match(/((\d+)\|(\d+))/):null);}function K(e){f=parseInt(e,10);return(f>9?f:'0'+f);}function L(g,e){return g.getElementsByTagName(e);}function N(g){return g.innerHTML;}function M(g){return N(L(g,'a')[0]);}function O(){return k.insertRow(E++);}function W(f){return B.insertCell(f);}function P(g,e){g.innerHTML=e;return g;}function X(e){C=B.appendChild(d.createElement('th'));return P(C,e);}function Y(f){return K(f/U)+':'+K(f%(U)/T )+':'+K(f%T);}U=3600;T=60;R='table';S='width';s=L(document,R);for(j=0;j<s.length;j++){s[j].removeAttribute(S);if(s[j].className=='main'){s=L(L(s[j],'tbody')[0],R);break;}}D=0;for(j=0;j<s.length;j++){s[j].removeAttribute(S);if(s[j].className='vis'){k=s[j];if(t=k.rows){D=t.length;break;}}}for(E=0;E<D;E++){l=t[E];m=(u=l.cells)?u.length:0;if(m){u[m-1].colSpan=5-m;if(N(u[0])=='Arrival:'){Q=new Date(N(u[1]).replace(/<.*/i,''));}else{if(N(u[0])=='Arrival in:'){v=N(u[1]).match(/\d+/ig);}}if(E==1){G=M(u[2]);}if(E==2){w=J(M(u[1]));}if(E==4){x=J(M(u[1]));}}}y=v[0]*U+v[1]*T+v[2]*1;n=w[2]-x[2];o=w[3]-x[3];F=Math.sqrt(n*n+o*o);H=F.toFixed(2);E=D-2;s=L(k,'input');i=s[1];h=s[0];h.size=T;B=O();P(W(0),'Distance:').colSpan=2;P(W(1),H+' Fields').colSpan=2;B=O();X('Unit');X('Sent');X('Duration');X('Name to');c=c.replace(/\{coords\}/i,w[1]).replace(/\{distance\}/i,H).replace(/\{player\}/i,G);for(j in p){z=Math.round([8.99999999928,9.999999998,11.0000000011,18.0000000005,21.9999999993,29.9999999976,34.9999999993][j]*T*F);A=z-y;if(A>0){I=Y(z);B=O();P(W(0),p[j]);P(W(1),A<T&&'just now'||A<U&&Math.floor(A/T)+' mins ago'||Y(A)+' ago');P(W(2),I);C=W(3);q=C.appendChild(i.cloneNode(1));r=C.appendChild(h.cloneNode(1));r.id='I'+j;r.value=c.replace(/\{duration\}/i,I).replace(/\{sent\}/i,new Date(Q.valueOf()-z*1000).toLocaleString().replace(/.\d{4}/i,'').replace(/(\w{3})\w*/i,'$1')).replace(/\{return\}/i,new Date(Q.valueOf()+z*1000).toString().replace(/\w+\s*/i,'').replace(/(\d*:\d*:\d*)(.*)/i,'$1')).replace(/\{unit\}/i,p[j]).replace(/\{attack_id\}/i,aid);q.onmousedown=new Function('h.value=d.getElementById(\'I'+j+'\').value;');}}}Z();

You are now fully set to tag to your heart's content. So, let's cover the method used. This method can be used from 1 to 1.000.000 incoming attacks, so do not worry about the number of incoming.



How To Tag.

Go to the Incoming Overview ingame. Make sure you are not in a specific group of villages.
Next, press F4. This will make the Panels Bar appear.

If you cannot see this button in the Panels Bar, click the "Plus button", and then select Links.
Click the Links button (pictured above).



Ok, now comes the clever part.
You should see a side bar on the left-hand side with a search box. Type "Attack" in to this. You will end up with a result like this:

Ok. Click and drag slightly off of the Top "Attack", and go down to however many incomings you want to tag, and shift+click on that one to select all. Right-click, and choose "Open all in a background tab".
Note: I would personally never recommend more than 200 in one go, for fear of your Opera crashing. It depends on how strong your computer and internet are - some can only handle 50, others can handle 1000+.

Ok, so you now have a bunch of untagged attacks in your Opera window, all in a bunch of tabs. I would suggest that at this point, you turn on "enable single-key shortcuts" in the Opera preferences relating to Shortcuts, to make this very fast.

Go through each incoming attack pressing 2. Click on your tagging script and then on the attack it must be. If you are active, it should be fairly easy to spot when you were last online, and when the attack therefore must have been sent after. You can use this idea to work out whether an attack is Ram speed or Noble speed, if you are otherwise unsure.

If you are not convinced that you can tag an attack correctly, LEAVE IT OUT FOR NOW. We can use Attack IDs shortly after tagging the remainder.

Ok, so now you've hopefully, within a very short space of time, accurately tagged some/most/all incoming attacks, & can begin defending. If you're completely done tagging, feel free to stop here!


.....


HOWEVER, if you have some attacks that still need to be properly tagged, then we will now use Attack IDs to work out the next ones. So, let's get rid of the tabs. Go to the first tab (with the Incoming Overview), right click on the tab and choose "Close all but Active". You now have 1 tab left open.

Ok, so we now have used one of our two scripts, but have yet to use the second. This is how we will sort by Attack ID. Refresh the overview, and you will find that the incomings you have tagged are now nicely marked. Click the "Sort Script", and you will see a large table appear.

So, click on the down arrow next to Attack ID in the new table that has appeared. They are now sorted in numerical order, newest down to oldest. The earlier the Attack ID, the earlier it was sent (ie, the attacks were sent in this order).

You can see in the above image, that I have failed to tag one attack. However, having Sorted them in to order, I can see that these were all sent in quick succession. As such, I know that the attack was sent by the shown player, between 21:13:33 and 21:14:20 on the 10th of November.. The Attack IDs confirm this:

30849566
30849564 - UNKNOWN ATTACK
30849561

Now, as I know what time (roughly) the incoming was sent between, I can now go back and check when the attack would have had to have been sent. In this case, the only possible option, owing to such a narrow window and the long-range attack, could be a Ram speed attack. And so I can now tag that correctly.

This is just an example. The further out an attack is sent from, the easier it is to use Attack IDs. The closer an attack is sent from, the closer you will need your Attack ID times, in order to work out the definite type of incoming.


Basically, for Attack IDs, you merely need to work out:

1) Do you have a specific time period it could have been sent between (ie, 14:00 and 19:00).
2) What types of attacks could have been sent from the village between those times.
3) If more than one option, look at how close the Attack ID is to either end.

If you have 5037 as one Attack ID, for an attack sent at 14:00, and another at 5872 for 19:00, with the unknown incoming having Attack ID of 5718, it is fairly simple to assume that the attack was sent much closer to 19:00 than 14:00, and so it's more likely to be the troop type that would have been sent at that period of time, as opposed to an earlier one.


I hope this guide helps clear up some ideas regarding how to Tag. This should be a method used alongside the following guides:
Approaching Defending: A How To.
Defensive Techniques.


Tagging is a necessary requirement in order to defend effectively. However, Tagging alone will not save you villages.


~Googly~

Original Link.

 

[DeletedUser]

Leadership for Beginners​

Contents

- Recruiting
- Leadership Structure
- Bonding
- Activity
- Diplomacy
- War
- Respect
- Identity

Before I begin, I wish to highlight comments from two leaders who I have a lot of respect for.

Don't lead, its not worth the time and effort and it'll just piss you off - Pervis
leading sucks - Mattcurr

These two leaders have led tribes who have had a success I don't believe I would be able to achieve. I am including these here so that you will think hard before reading on. Do you REALLY want to devote your time, effort and sanity in to leading a tribe? If you don't, stop reading here as leading is not for you.



Recruiting.

Spoiler: Recruting

When recruiting, you need to focus on ISA. This stands for Intelligence, Skill, Activity. Of the 3, activity and intelligence should prioritize above skill. Skill can be picked up through useful guides, and experience. You can't force people to be active or intelligent, and so you should be careful when recruiting as such.

The best thing to do, is contact those of whom you would like to have in a tribe with you. Explain your (true) ingame ability, your (true) leadership ability, provide twstats links where possible to help you out. get talking to them, and get to know them. A good tribe should start with a good, communicative base of members. If they are immature, that isn't necessarily a problem. So long as you are friendly to them and they are intelligent enough to learn how to play, and can write in reasonably good english, they are still good members to have. If you don't understand why, then you haven't got the intelligence required for becoming a decent, successful leader.

Don't recruit everybody who asks to join purely to bolster members. Use TribalWarsMap and TwStats to do strategic recruiting and look at where your local tribes are. Try to avoid recruiting players who are so close to your members that they disrupt each other's farming, and also bear in mind that if you recruit players too far away, they can't be helpful supporting your members or you supporting them when in need, and as such could struggle unless they are quite skilled players. Recruitment is a continuous process throughout the time you run the tribe. If you see an opportunity to get a couple of members (through a war target, soloing players or from small local tribes), it is generally worth pursuing. You can always feel them out and get to know them before deciding whether or not recruit them!

Leadership Structure.

Spoiler: Leadership Structure

This is the hardest thing to get right. If you are very active, you can do everything yourself. Recruitment. Diplomacy. War planning. Internal management. However, I would recommend that you don't do this. Other than a few of the more famed leaders, most haven't taken on the whole leadership on their own, as it is too time consuming and you can easily lose the fun of the game.

I would recommend the following. Always handle recruitment yourself. This is the least time consuming, and you then stay fully in the loop with what is going on. If there is a friendly, clever person in the tribe who is trustable, they can quite easily be turned in to a good diplomat. The key here is a good relation between tribes, and advance planning between you and your diplomat. Keep them 100% in the loop of your intentions regarding recruitment and tribe policies, and where you intend to head the tribe. The diplomat should be given relatively a free reign once they know where the tribe is heading in the future - don't try to involve yourself too much in the diplomacy of the tribe, as it can disrupt the diplomat's work and even ruin it. Just keep them updating you and send friendly messages to tribe leaders around you for good relations.

I would also recommend that you have somebody who can be listed as the person to contact in case of a problem with another member internally, or a noble claim dispute or some other internal affair. Usually anybody can do this sort of role, without much experience. They just need to be unbiased and diplomatic when talking to the people involved.

With regards to leadership style, this depends solely on your style as a player. You may prefer to be a dictator (this is what I do - it works well for me). You may prefer a council. Bear in mind the following: the larger a council, the longer the time for decisions to be made. However, people do not always like a dictatorship until they see it working well. I've lost control of a tribe I lead quite recently due to one person wanting power and not being given it, and managing to split the tribe because of it. I salvaged the situation and we took out the majority of the deserters, but it did a lot more internal damage than I would have liked.

Bonding.

Spoiler: Bonding

Every tribe needs its members to bond. Make a fun internal forum, perhaps make an IRC/skype room. Keep in constant contact with all your members (if you are friendly to them you can keep their loyalty without any problem, and so spies are much less likely to be in your fold). Just be a nice person to them all - even if you are telling them off, don't be harsh or rude, or angry. It is better to be diplomatic and explain the reasons for why you are telling them not to do something again, or that they have to take a certain punishment for their actions, than to be aggressive about it.

Activity.

Spoiler: Activity

Activity is crucial in any tribe. Low activity means easy targets for your enemies.
I would recommend early on dismissing members who go inactive. Once people begin to get past 4-5 villages in the tribe, I would recommend keeping people who have been offline for 3 or more days, scouting them out and nobling them whilst they are still in the tribe. This way the villages stay under control of the tribe, and you aren't likely to lose the villages to other tribes unless it is during a war. There is no right way to keep people inactive in a tribe. Getting them to enjoy themselves is a good method, though it doesn't always work. Keeping your forum neat and tidy is also sensible as some older players prefer to easily find the useful information. Having the tribe sitting each other as a regular occurrence is also a good idea. Trying to keep all accounts active is one of the hardest things leadership ever have to do, from my experience.

Diplomacy.

Spoiler: Diplomacy

This is entirely down to each leadership, their styles and the situation of their area and their world, so I will keep this short.

Be polite and friendly, and honest, to all leaders. Regardless of whether you do or don't want diplomacy with them. Try to get a good relationship with each leader of tribes you see lasting any length of time, and keep it that way. Don't give away too much information on your tribe, although you also shouldn't lie.

Alliances: 1-2 alliances are valuable. More can be risky in case your allies turn on each other. You should be 100% honest with your allies and open about your diplomacy to them (share who you have NAPs with, allies with etc).

NAPs: These can be used for 2-3 reasons. The 1st reason is to build a foundation of trust for a future alliance. The second is to avoid a war with the tribe until the right moment for you (sometimes this is more of a temporary-alliance, if you are warring another tribe together). The third is to use as a meat-shield so that another tribe which is a potential threat to you can't get help.

War.

Spoiler: War

Again, not too much to say.
Read guides. Post them in guide sections in your tribe's forums. Have a tactic planned in advance. Plan ahead. Use allies where possible. Recruit a couple of their members if you think it could benefit you. Landing times are valuable if you are hitting a single player heavily, or a large area heavily. Hiding attacks in between fakes is also smart.

Cat-waves are also very useful, but are not used enough generally to have a good impact.

Just see what your tribe appears to be best at. Co-ordination is a key, as is sharing noble claims - if you undernoble, you should mail the nearest player and suggest they send a noble to quickly cap the village. Teamwork on this scale is what wins a war.

Respect.

Spoiler: Respect

Treat everybody with respect, and you get respected for it. Be careful on External forums. Unless you wish to be like me and provoke wars/manipulate to cause conflicts, don't troll on the externals. Post very carefully, and only when you have to. Avoid spamming where possible. Depends on your character as a leader really. I have seen a good duke flame everybody on the forum and be majorly arrogant, purely to get all local tribes trying to attack his tribe.

Identity.

Spoiler: Identity

Be proud of your tribe and its identity. Get a nice COA to match your chosen tag and name. Make sure the tag and name are connected where possible.

You should then spend a good amount of time (sometimes 3-4 hours) crafting a decent profile. It could be 1-2 lines. It *should* have a name in bb-codes of who to contact. Recruitment and Diplomacy are "no-no"s in my opinion. Even putting up who to speak to about that isn't really a good idea, as having 1 account filter everything is the easiest way to keep on top of running a tribe, in my experience. Avoid ASCII swords, or any of those "Cna uoY RaeD HTiS?" copy-pastes.

Just try to make your tribe look professional - you will get respect for it.

That's pretty much everything I have to say. Just develop the style that you find suits you best, and see what happens. That really is the best advise I can give you.

Original Link.

 

[DeletedUser]

PnP Advise.
​

Part 1: What is PnP, and the Do's and Don'ts.

Spoiler: Part 1

So today, I was thinking about what is PnP?


As anybody reading this should know, PnP means Politics 'n' Propaganda. But that doesn't really cover all that the PnP forums do.


I was thinking a lot about this earlier, and as a result came up with what I will try to convey in the next paragraph. PnP forums are used for declarations to get the public on side with their declarations. This is where I want to focus later, but not today. The majority of it is discussion threads. Good PnP is where a post of real intelligence, thought and logic is used, in a manner that best suits the posters interests. Bad PnP, is one which does the opposite. Any post on the PnP forums adds up to people's opinion of you. If you make continual quality posts, the community in general respects you for it (excluding the odd flamers). If you make continual inflammatory posts, or just spamming and trolling without posting anything with any real thought, you not only get treated in the same manner, but also lose respect for you.

Respect is pivotal in the forums. If you are known for making genuinely interesting posts and people like it, you can get away with the odd attempt at flaming someone and the community at large will just agree with you, as they just see you as someone they normally agree with, or respect. If you are known for doing nothing but flaming, then when you do make good points it gets glossed over because of your history.



In my eyes, there are very few people who understand just how much PnPs can affect you ingame.



And so, I guess my point for this "update", is that you need to approach PnP forums with an attitude that suits your goals, and then post accordingly.


I'll do a quick example:

A war has broken out between tribe X, and tribe Y. You don't like tribe Y. You want to war them. But you like tribe X.

A member of tribe X has just posted this: "I just capped a village off of you, stop crying LOLNOOB".


Now, reading this, everybody who sees it thinks less of that player and tribe X. However, because you like tribe X, it is in your interests to make a post after him that achieves two things:
1) Avoids people flaming him and tribe X
2) Makes tribe Y look bad and turns the focus of discussion back on to them


What bad PnP would be, is where you reply with "That's incredibly childish; you think it's worth posting about nobling 1 village?" It is a valid point, definitely. But, it not only doesn't help you put a bad light on the tribe you dislike, but it puts a bad light on the tribe you like, and could cause them to start having issues with you.

I've made a small list of Dos and Don'ts for PnPing in general. It is purely as something of personal opinion and interest, but I would welcome any discussion on the content of this.

Do

• Think about what you are posting
• Think about the effect your post will have
• Consider what goals you and your tribe have
• Consider your relationship with the person/tribe you are commenting on
• Consider whether your post will damage your reputation or build to it

Don't

• Post without thought as to the consequences of your post
• Talk badly to/about tribes and players you want to keep friendly
• Post childish comments
• Post without adding a new view, logical argument or building on previous discussion
• Flame for the sake of it

All actions you take, have a consequence. Not only ingame, but on the forum too. Perhaps more so, as more people are able to see your mistakes on a public forum than within the safety of your tribe.

_________________________________________________


Part 2: How to write PnPs.

Spoiler: Part 2

I've found that, certainly over the past 1-2 years, people tend to focus on trying to put in what they see as amusing pictures, as the main point of the declaration. However, the idea of a declaration thread is to make your tribe look good, and to have everybody supporting your tribe over the enemy tribe. And so, although using a tonne of pictures may look "cool", it doesn't do the job, and the moment people comment on the PnP quality, they will be heavily negative on the whole.

It is worth considering multiple different things before deciding on how to go about a PnP:

1. Why are you going to war?
2. Do you have any reports you can use to back up your declaration to show you are already on top?
3. What is the name of your and their tribe/the tag?
4. Is there any imaginative way of declaring on this tribe (ie, being unique)?
5. How do you want to be seen?

I'd generally say that, the best PnPs are the ones that aren't moaning about what another tribe has done to cause you to war them, and insulting them, but being straight to the point, interesting as a read and not trying to be abusive. I'd also suggest steering completely clear of the "NOOB" "LOL" ROFL" "FAIL" comments. A single one of those, makes you look immature, & completely discredits the rest of the PnP.

There are multiple PnPs of outstanding quality - as of yet, I have not seen any fantastic (or even relatively good) ones on the .us forums, but that is partially because this server is so young still. So, it is up to *you* to make the declaration that sets the standard for all future .us tribes to look to in their own declarations. You want class. You want charisma. You want personality. You want the world to look at it and just think "that is too awesome for words".

Take all that on board, and write in a way to achieve the goal you want to achieve.

I look forward to reading your masterpieces!

_________________________________________________

Part 3: Examples of PnPs, and how they were written.

Spoiler: Part 3

PnP no.1

Spoiler: PnP 1

The first of these declarations, is a declaration of the tribe {I}, named Infection, on a tribe called ~EPIC~. Most players would think "Epic, I'll just say Epic Fail a few times and try to be funny". However, that would be a pretty crap PnP. So, I looked at the broader meaning of the word. The fabled Homer, of Ancient Greece, was renowned for writing incredibly famous Epics. The Iliad and the Odyssey being two examples. Being well educated in the story of the Iliad, I chose to go down that route (although a simple wikipedia search would be enough for you to know the story). So, I had the theme - taking the story of the Iliad, and seeing if my version of the reasons for declaring fit in to a part of the story.

I quickly found, that if I merely switched around the order of skype conversations, I could fit the chain of events perfectly in to the plot, using the idea of Agamemnon refusing to give back Achilles' trophy girl, as a simile to a cross-nobling incident with refusals for it to be given back. The player involved, who wanted revenge on Agamemnon, I referred to as Achilles - the PnP after this essentially wrote itself. Using a bit of imagination and making full use of the skype quotation evidence, I had ended up in re-writing part of the story of the Iliad to include a disease that wants revenge, whilst staying true to the story I was using to go alongside the declaration.

I am sure anybody who reads it would agree, the declaration is a much higher quality declaration than any of the picture thread declarations that get put up. And the tribe I posted on behalf of, came out looking fantastic - not least because the enemy tribe was forced to disband after being refused a merge request in to Infection, just 10 days in to the war.

PnP no.2

Spoiler: PnP 2

The second of these declarations, is a declaration from a tribe ~PT~, on TheLaw. Now, there was no real reason to declare war, as it was at our fault entirely - reasons for which are not important. So, we merely decided that "TheLaw" could be gone in to in two ways. 1) as a police sort of idea, or 2) as a judge sort of idea. There was a mass-recruiting family tribe using the police force theme at that time in the world, and so it was deemed best for myself and DEiiTY to compose a PnP together where he was a Judge, and he was condemning me for "Breaking TheLaw" - which is what we intended to do by declaring.

This PnP has less reasons given for the declaration, but more entertainment and a generally amusing story - although the public reaction was seen to not understand the concept of "breaking the law" as a title, and so it seems the declaration wasn't clear enough. The style and intellect put in to that PnP was of a standard that I have not seen replicated in any subsequent PnPs on that particular world. The fact that it was relating to two lesser important tribes who most of the world knew very little about, also made it a less interesting read for many forum viewers.

Summary

Those two examples should give a good idea of how you can just use your imagination, even from something as small as a tribe or player name, as the entire theme for your declaration. Giving a declaration a theme gives it flare. Giving a declaration style as opposed to heavily-ladled pictures, gives it a whole new dimension. Style and flare, makes for a strong PnP.

Hope this helps!

All the PnP comments can be found in a Player Journal thread, here.