| WildEyes | Thursday, July 16, 2009 - 06:32 am 
1. When & How to use them: You don't. W3C has not devised a useful role for defense divisions/brigades/etc of any kind, despite having been given suggestions.
You can always set up defense units as "mobile forts" to help land defense if you're so inclined, but that is only so useful and, imo, a waste of money/manpower. Put them in your real forts, since normally someone will have to actually attack your forts to win. If you need to clog up an incoming ground invasion spam small blocking units.
2. I use defaults. If I'm airlifting I'll give a dozen or so clicks extra to make sure I don't get the "insufficient supplies" or whatnot message.
3. You can't.
4a. Bases and fleets hold 20,000 active (non-deployed) weapons. How many bases you want is totally up to you, since you can get away with 1 of each kind as long as your weapons are deployed. Each base is one more target you need to garrison, but it's also one more target the enemy needs to destroy (such as with O bases)... and it also spreads out your non-deployed forces so the enemy can't "pop" them as readily, like I talked about earlier.
Loads of bases seems to make the WI tougher as well, but then again.... more targets to defend.
4b. At present you should only have one aircraft carrier, one heli carrier, and one fleet command. This lets you have 60k total navy weapons active at any one time. In case I wasn't clear above, this ensures your weapons will never be destroyed with a "sunk" fleet, because your last carrier (like the last base) can only be damaged 99%. Weapons at a carrier that is sunk will be lost unless it is within range of another carrier where the weapons can be transferred. This is why I like having only one carrier of each kind. It can be "sunk" but I don't lose the weapons.
You can also have multiple fleets, but unless you want to run the risk of losing your weapons if a fleet gets sunk, you must keep them all within the range that arms can be transferred between fleets. It's just easier to have one of each kind and leave it at that.
4c. Eco C3s?
4d. Another cool thing I forgot above... if defenses are down in a navy (either from being destroyed or from lack of ammo - or if they just don't have defenses), you can kill the NFP by attacking defenses with fighters or other NFP.
Also, attack destroyers are useful to have around because not a lot of people stock D. Destroyers; however, if you use A. Destroyers to kill fleet defenses and weapons you need A LOT of torpedoes. |
| WildEyes | Sunday, July 19, 2009 - 04:29 am
I'm glad for the positive attention this guide is getting, and the thanks are very welcome.
I'm down to my last country and CEO, waiting for their time to run out, and I'm setting up the giving away of my coins and what cash I had stored from my countries. There are a few other things I wanted to comment on...
MISSILES: One thing that has always bothered me, and that I didn't emphasize in the guide, is the use of conventional missiles. These missiles are virtually unlimited in range. On LU and KB their range is longer than one end of the map to the other and on FB I never ran into someone out of conv range. Maybe someone from GR or WG can comment if they ever have?
Conventionals are extremely useful, and most players other than long-term vets either don't know about them or don't stock them. Range isn't their only strength either, since they are just as powerful - proportional to their price - as LBCM against population targets. Forts are meh, but forts have always been ammo-eaters.
I know convs are expensive, but with auto-orders there is no excuse not to try and have at least a small stockpile anymore. Order a few dozen a month with your order strats, after a while you will have a few thousand built up. In a pinch, you'll be thankful. I know, I know, they're expensive, but their strength IS proportional to the increased cost.
Also, with LBCM or convs, don't be afraid to attack defense with them. Due to the ammo for both this is pricey, but it may be worth it if it cuts how many batts you lose by 10x.
Finally, there are situations where attacking with less than the full # of batteries available is useful. Just one example: if helis are up but garrisons are not present, you can kill just about any target with 200-300 batteries, and you will lose less to the air D than if you used 1000 batteries. It's one of those odd quirks about the WE, but I'll let you play around with it for yourself. It works with other weapons in certain situations as well, but yeah... you can actually lose less against defenses if you attack with less.
I feel like I didn't do missiles justice in my above guide, but they're rather straightforward. Nevertheless, that is a little more about them.
ABOUT MY DEFENSE:
A lot of people have asked me in the past about my defense and why I use it. As I said in my original post, I went heavy on MIB and kept a solid backbone of AA/DMB. In some countries this meant taking the standard 500/500 aa/dmb and adding 999 MIB (500AA + 999MIB + 500DMB + 2ND = 2001).
The reason is as follows:
This is a garrison that is weak to bombers. It's designed to be weak to bombers, because that's what I want my enemy to have to attack me with. Why do I say this, when I have stated bombers are one of the best weapons in the game right now, and are hands down the best to clear defenses?
Three reasons.
1. I was confident in my ability to keep my interceptors up. 500AA + a solid interceptor response should prevent me from being completely overwhelmed by bombers.
2. Whether the bombers attacked defenses then attacked target, or just attacked target... it will add up before my WI reaches 0. It's a classic blunt + sponge technique.
3. I'm going to be attacking back and watching my newspapers.
Furthermore,
This garrison nullifies NFP.
This garrison is great for sponging missiles, since it's going to be VERY hard to just shoot through the defenses.... with or without helis the MIB will either make the enemy attack the target twice (causing double casualties), or make them go full bore attacking with the max possible, which will also cause more casualties.
This garrison is still fairly good against ground thanks to the DMB, and the MIB neutralize a lot of mrmb fire. Also, I will be actively defending invading units.
I also have significant confidence in my ability to address anyone who gets close enough to attack with ground, and if YOU can hit me with bombers, then I can hit you back also. A lot of my strategy revolves around just being more deadly than my attacker.
From a defense standpoint, this garrison puts me in the tactical position that I'm most comfortable with, since I can't really be attacked by navies, or by missiles or any kind, unless my defenses get cleared by bombers first. I mean, I *can* be attacked by them, but you get what I'm saying.
A good defense should always force the enemy to attack you in the way you feel best prepared to handle. Also, while navies can still mass defenses, I'd rather ignore & sponge them than take them down outright. Similarly, while I can take out O bases, shooting down 20 O bases at the start of each month can get really expensive, so in that sense this defense has the potential to save me offensive weapons... etc etc...
Other people I know go with something like 800/800 AA/DMB and 299 MIB, or even 999/999... no doubt this is brutal to go up against, but it's just not my style. I don't use it because, while 999 AA would be great if my ints go down, I don't plan on that. If my ints go down then I'm in trouble already. The 999DMB is a good whack, but if you are countering a missile attack the MIB prevent the ability to attack a target directly as easily.
That being said, this is still a good setup, and it may work for you. If you just copy what I say then you haven't really learned anything. 800 or 999 AA is definately the way to go if your country doesn't have strong fed support or if you haven't built up robust interceptor forces. Indeed, ints use up A LOT of training ammo, and it's easier to keep tons of AA from the ammo-use perspective. Learn how to play YOUR game, as long as you learn how to play it well... you have to play it well enough that the opponent also starts playing it... and then you've won.
Just a note about DMB and MIB also... if your DMB are behind MIB, you don't need as many DMB to kill attacking missile batts... because either the offense will be forced into multiple attacks (attacking target) or it will fail to kill as many DMB per round (attacking defense). But remember, MIB do nothing against non-missile units... 500 DMB minimum is needed to stay lethal against a good ground invasion.
A note on ground invasions: DMB or MIB in your LRDs still only act in defense. MIBs will ***not*** defend your tanks if you are *attacking*
Some random notes:
Attack helis are really just expensive drones with slightly longer range. Use drones.
Heavy Armored Vehicles and Heavy Jeeps don't damage anything and they are surprisingly low on the attack order, so they are useless in LRDs (i think i mentioned this already).
Defense divisions, etc, cannot attack.
Use int wings and heli wings, 400 ints or helis each. Don't do this mixed 200/200 wing crap. This ensures ints respond to air attacks and helis respond to ground/missile attacks.
--The entire reason int-wings and helis-wings were introduced as an option in addition to the air defense wing option is because of testing LDI did and reported to Jozi during one of the chats. Air defense wings do not respond based on what is in the wing or what is attacking, they respond based on proximity. Int and Heli wings respond based on the attack. This also makes heli wings vulnerable to the strip that I mentioned, but if you see the strip happening.... do something about it. Or, if you have garrisons strong against missiles that won't let them fire through, it's not critical to stop. Just move in more helis later.
Economic Note:
ECPCs... while I came down on publics in general as not being as profitable as they once were, they're still pretty nice. Just take the econ strategies above and they should be profitable enough...
I mentioned that with CCPCs that you should have 75% tax... This might go without saying, but that means CCPCs don't play well in a mixed economy. You MUST have high taxes to benefit from CCPCs.
ECPCs can work well in mixed economies, and like any enterprise corp, they like low taxes. With ECPCs, if you IPO'd from your country and you have 24.99 in one CEO, 24.98 in your country and another CEO... your country still gets 24.98% of the profits - almost a quarter: this is in addition to the 40% profit payment... so with ECPCs, the profit made does reflect in your country income and manipulating supply contracts for ECPCs (if your country holds shares) will directly cause an increase of income for your country (as opposed to privates where you have to either increase salaries or tax it for grab more of the bottom line). The money from your ECPC shares shows up in your income from dividends in the finance index breakdown. |
