Welcome The Templar!

So after my war with the mighty Chaos Actives, http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/hail-chaos-actives.html

I was looking over my defensive force. The strangely hansome Human Light Cavalry, (that I bought from www.sagaunits.com), had a little green bar??



I have NEVER played the Human Light Cavalry in a quest, but surprisingly enought, it killed enough Chaos Active troops to gain a huge 2000 experience!

Well, looky here, its a new way to level troops!

So now whats the best way to level a level 1 Human Light Cavalry? I could get Illian, Kheldara to raid me? Negative they probably won't let me kill any of there troops during the raid.

Enter "the Templars":




First you pick on a mass invite guild. Find a level 12 with a wilderness territory, and RAID him/her. (I did a 3min 50cp raid, and capped as much as I could with my single heavy cav and a behemoth.)

I was a little worried when not-so-scary level 18 Crimson Blood started sending me tells. After checking espionage, he had no willderness, thus no way to come visit, and help level my troops.



Open Season! OMG, about time.

I hated to make him wait, but of course I was in the middle of raiding his guildmate "Shock Ryder" to firmly set the hook. (Shock Ryder a level 22 with a wilderness territory full of level 1s defenders and mana mines).

Here is the QQ post from "Alcore" a Level 12 with a wilderness territory. I raided her for a massive 300 resources.

In the middle of it I tried to show her the post on proper Saga PvP, but she wasn't having any of it.



"The Templar"
ALGONALAND
ALCORE
CRIMSON BLOOD
ATRUS LAND
CALANTHOR
SANCTUM
VANHELSING
DALGRUM
WOODLANDERS
FELWITH
SANTORAN
THE SECRET OF MANA
ATTICAN BETA
UNDESIRABLE ACTS
ANDREI
FILMORE SLIM
PHOENIXIAN
SILVERMOON
SHOCK RYDER
DEDRATS
KNIGHTS OF BUG
STEVENSON
SHOCKERSHANE
SCHETTER

I don't condone anyone that reads this from DISTRACTING the Templar's from raiding me. If you want to raid on them, feel free to do it LATER when they aren't level my defenders.

If any of you Templars come to read this, please read the http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/war-room-part-1-rules-of-war.html

Especially the part on "Opt-In PvP", and "QQing". Don't be like Ancestral, and QQ me in all caps. Make it readable so my readers can understand it better.

What Items to KEEP for your armies?

So after going through alot of quests, you are bound to run into alot of exra weapons/armor in your nation bank.

You can sell everything extra, but are their anything that as a mid-level player that you need to KEEP for later??

For Defending your Territories:

If you are looking to defend your territories, you will need to be able to deal with this unit:



The reason most people use heavy cav for assault is that they are basically immune to tower and keep archer defence due to their passive DR bonus. This above is a level 6 heavy cav with midlevel gear. 42 DR puts him at over 50DR vs archers, and decent hps means he won't be in any trouble. You want troops to harass him.


Anti-Kiting gear:



If you notice above his speed is 11-12 or so. Base 10, but with 8% on two items he moves around 11-12.

You need items on your defenders to be able to chase him around. Anything that can move your speed up high enough so he can't kite you with heavy cav. Make him have to kite you around with other faster units. No reason to make it easy for him.

Also speed items allow your newly spawned defenders to close range with the attackers troops, and cause them to interrupt building captures. A light cav unit works well to interrupt caps. 20+ speed, it rushes to attack anyone nearby, breaking caps.

Thus Suggestion 1: Keep your Speed Items for your slower troop.





Second item I tend to keep is my upper level MORALE based items. As Undead is coming, they have alot of morale debuffing (so I've heard). These items may not help, but I sure don't want to cry that I dumped alot of Intimidation items if they become important.

Suggestion 2: Keep items for your frontline troops that boost morale


Next is ranged units. I personally LOVE my ranged units to break if attacked by melee. Let them run away, they might live longer.

And the Terror suffix is amazing. Massive damage.




Suggestion 3: Keep your Terror ranged weapons as breaking is less important on archers.

This is not how you defend your territories...

So earlier today I talked about how to setup for raiding.

This topic will be what NOT to do.

1. First of all don't QQ in-game email.
2. Don't put your level 13 alt with 2 wilderness territories if you can't defend them.
3. Don't leave only 3 armies in your territories if you plan on defending it. 3 armies is a speed bump to anyone coming for a visit.

They raid was not worth it as you can tell, I only got 690ish supplies and 4 shards.

War Room - Part 1 - The RULES of War

We need to talk about War, and warring with your neighbors in Saga.

Firstly. You know you want to fight. Playing Saga to collect lumber is, well, - lame.

Yes the missions are great, yes, but seriously you are here to fight.

First step is admitting it. Next is learning how to do it.

1. PvP is Op-In. This means you have to CHOOSE to fight. You can't be raided unless you go wilderness, you can't go wilderness unless you build a Keep. You can't fight 1v1 unless you start a battle. If you aren't ready to fight then don't go wilderness. The ONLY thing someone can do for you is espionage you. And there is a limit on how many times a day they can espionage you.



2. If you BUILD a wilderness, expect to be raided. However, the raids aren't that bad really.



3. If you store alot of mana shards, then it becomes PROFITABLE to raid you. Raiding cost 5 shards and 1500 god favor. So a level 35 with a full tank of god favor can raid about 4 times without doing quests or donating to the church. They have to make more then 5 shards and about 500 resources to make the raid perceived as SUCCESSFUL.



4. If you make raiding unsuccessful for the raider you will limit the amount of times they WANT to raid you. They will continue to raid you ONLY if they have a personal issue with you. (ie they hate you and want to grief you.)

So how do you make raiding unsuccessful for the raider?

1. Firstly. Spend your shards. Don't hoard them, spend them on enchants.


2. Second. Make sure to have at least 10 mid-level troop units in your territories OR 20 level 1 common armies. If you have decent level troops, level 6+, you can get by with 10 full units. If you use commons, you will want many waves. Troops come out at 5 units at a time. Destroying 5 units takes about 30secs to 1min. Any of those units can interrupt a cap. You want to busy the raider for 5 mins, thus 4 waves of 5 units will work most of the time.


3. You do not NEED to repair anything but lumber/gold/ore/farms. House/mana mines/shrines/etc do not affect your daily production. Let them burn! Your normal build/repair will eventually fix them to full.


4. Bless your hurt building, its CHEAP.

I wanted to go through a couple of PvP definitions:

Going to War Footing:

Going to "war footing" is a concept that is pretty logical, and I figure, lets coin a phrase for it.

• War Footing is where you start a war, and fighting the war is most of your time spend. This involves taking most of your troops out of your main army, and sticking it into your territories. If you raid or level, you move them back into your army, then stick them on defense while you are offline. This also involves increasing your police, and perhaps even dumping your spare production on friends or alts.


• You want to go to war footing when you are getting raided, or when you decide to espionage the entire server.

An even more EXTREME tactic is to delete everything in your territory but mana mines and watchtowers. I will tell you this is VERY unprofitable for the attacker.

Shock Ryder is the first to do it, we now coin it the "Shock Ryder Defense Tactic".

Don't QQ:

QQ is the universal sign for crying or whining. This is QQ:

from - http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/ancestral-not-getting-point.html

I know you might be tempting to QQ, but here's why you don't do it.

1. It shows that PvP made you cry. Seriously why cry about PvP, its supposed to be fun?


2. It makes a pro PvP'r smile.


3. It may get you featured on a Internet website.


4. You won't intimidate a pro PvPr. We get QQd every day. It almost clique


5. The best response to a raid is a raid.


6. See above. QQing can make it personal for the raider. He likes to smile so he raids you to profit on your QQ.

Don't Nut-Cup:

Nutcupping is a PvP term that is somewhat adult in context. If you can't handle the terminology, please close the blog.



Nutcupping is defined as when you need someone else to hold your nuts while you have to urinate. In PvP its where you need a bunch of friends to help you fight someone 1v1.



If you nutcup, then you are admitting that you CAN NOT stand by yourself. You have to hide behind friends. You are afraid to stand by yourself:

"A Knight's Tale Movie Quotes (2001)
You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting. In what world could you possibly beat me?"

So how do I stop Nut-Cupping?

So if you are fighting two people, you fight with a friend. You fight a guild, you bring a guild. Zerging is in just bad taste. First how hard is it to kill with a mob behind you. Second can you even count that as victory?



Let me leave with a final case-study reference. Illian raided a guy yesterday that sparked some drama. Guy wants to quit, alot of QQ. Click for a quick read https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6714

Disappearing Undead Faction Packs

I wrote a post back on how many Undead Faction Packs you will need to get a playstock of units for the undead release.
http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/undead-faction-only-booster-packs-how.html

I SO convinced myself this was right that I bought 50 packs!

Now they are DISAPPEARING. This is a common issue, many people are reporting it.

So WATCH out for your boosters, they are turning into REGULAR packs, (which as we know are worthless comparably.

www.sagaunit.com and why we buy card from shops...

When you visit http://www.sagaunits.com/ you might see a banner for this blog site.

I'm really NOT a sponser. (Unless you count buying cards, then well, everyone is a sponser.)

So why do we all buy cards from these guys?

It's my opinion that us card buyers tend to use the following methodology in determining how to acquire cards for units.

1. Can we get it for free from Saga? This drives alot of us to refer friends and making up fan sites. (I still haven't gotten my boosters from building a fan site.)
2. Can we trade our extra cards from boosters for what we want? This only happens if you get a good chase uncommon like raven riders, eagles, treants, gryphons, snipers. And because you get so few good trade bait cards that often you want ALOT for a tradebait card. (An looking at the market most of you want TOO much in trade.)
3. Can we buy the card from the NPC market? This is nice for commons like Heavy Cav. As I have said before, spending 24,000 gold for a full troop of heavy cav is a BARGIN at level 30+. You could play the entire game with 10 units of Heavy Cav and 10 Elven Archer chicks. Illian and Kheldara would kick your butt in PvP, but honestly who beats them anyhow?
4. Finally we come to the card sellers. http://www.sagaunits.com/ and others. If you can't do any of the 1-3 methods, you have now to determine whether it is worth spending paypal money on. And this is based on how much money means to you, and how much you'd rather have that cool unit.

The best thing about Saga is you REALLY DON'T need a big army to play. You can get by leveling and gearing common troops and pretty much do anything you like in the game from PvE to PvP, raiding, espionage, tourneyments, World Conflict etc.

I bet you can even play for free.

• Now that I have EVERY unit for my faction, playing for free would be easy for me. I'd stick with Heavy Cav, Cav Archers, Human Xbow, Elven Archers, Behemoths. I'd have alot of those units and I bet I'd be able to have a blast even without my two favorites, Treants and Lightning Elementals.

But that's because I've already played with all the faction troops. I know I bought my first Treant unit when I watched someone play with them in Stalling Tactics. Playing Coop greatly increases the chance you will spend money on cards. If I were http://www.sagaunits.com/ , I would spend every day running Co-op missions with newbies, playing nothing but expensive units.

• We buy cards from online stores because we think that it will make us BETTER and the game more fun.

Does it? Well yes it really does!

Are they worth it?

• Just depends on how much money you care to spend on online gaming. I personally find gaming cheaper then going out to the movies or other outside fun. So instead of paying $60 in gas, I buy cards. The cost of a Treant units - (20$) is kinda crazy, but my MONTHLY fun budget is no higher playing Saga then going out.

• Sure I'm rationalizing the fact that I spent over 200-300$ with the card sellers. No doubt. But I also had five world of warcraft accounts at $14/month I paid for. I also spent more then $100/month buying DVDs and CDs. It's all just recreational money really.

And if you are looking for a deal, then look for the Undead army when it comes out. The Factional packs will GREATLY reduce the overall card cost for awhile. You will see very cheap uncommons based on what Silverlode is doing to help people collect that army. (Thank you Silverlode!)

Twelve Trial: Part 3

This is the quest people use for farming end-game weapons.

The boss is a boar rider. If you LOS him with flyers he will run away.

I do him with one pikeman because he's mounted and a stack of "Hold Fasts". I then use a ranged unit with alot of AR to dps him down. Too bad I'm not Machine, hunters would do great on him.

It takes about 5 mins to solo him.





I'll let the picture tell you how good his drop is.

Boar's Tusk drop every 4 kills or so.

I'm sorry I scared your son! - Espionage Part 5

Wow this is kinda sad at the same time as being a little funny.

I hope his son keeps playing!

Ancestral not getting the point...

So one of the Saga players doesn't seem to get it...

First to understand this chain of emails, you need to realize Dawnbringer is Ancestral's alt that he is lowby PvP farmer. He plays level 10-14 players with level 7 troops. (This is a very high troop level for level 10-14, most of his opponents are probably fielding Level 3s.)

Then he attacks me for having a high fake rating. Even though I did a blog on this DAYS ago, with the idea to PROMOTE pvping for fun:

http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/rating-means-nothing-pvp-for-fun.html

Then he asks me to put my "main" on wilderness?? I have 4 wilderness on the CCIE nation. I swapped to Nature after playing it on my girlfriends account. You can CONSIDER my CCIE account my main, and feel free to raid me. You did raid me:

You got a total of 212 mats and 4 shards. (Raids cost 1500 god favor and 5 shards to run)

You guild has done a stack of raids on me, raids I welcome for the fun that ensues!

What's the problem?

I'm confused why you need to QQ?

LOL Elrandor!

Eldaror, I can't come out to play, I'm at work!

Hail the Chaos Actives!

The guild of our friendly neighborhood card seller http://www.sagaunits.com/ came to visit my wilderness territories.

I hope they got the joke for the fact my wilderness territories are defended by not 1 but 3 units of light infantry! :)

I talked to Sagaunits, and I told him that if they felt froggy to JUMP! (I also told him PvP is good for writing blog content :)

Here is the list of the mighty Chaos Actives:

TOWNSHIP OF REDFORD - so far raided me
RAGNORK
AZZAMEAE
JUDENIA
BLUHOTEYES BROTHEL
CHINCHILLA LAND
KALTHAX
DAWNBRINGER - I raided him
SAGAUNITSCOM - sold me lots of units
DARKRAGE
SHALLOW
HOLYKNIGHTS
JUDEA
LUSTERMERE - raided me
TREVORIA - raided me, I raided him back
GILMAR - raided me
ODINGARD
GUMMI
ANCESTRAL - espionaged me
TACONIA - raided me
KANDE

All I have to say is "Avast YOU fiend" :)

Oi! Swiper no swiping! - Espionage Part 3

I got returned visited today.

• After espionaging 600 people and getting success only 200 times, (successes don't tell the victim who hit them), out of 400 only 13 felt froggy enough to jump.

Thats a 4% froggy ratio.

• The only two nations that got froggy that have wilderness are Ancestral and Tortal.
• Ancestral of course being a level 35 nation who spends all day playing on his level 12 alt Dawnbringer spamming "Level 12 looking for pvp with 14 or lower". Of course I've been told he has leveled up a couple rank 10 troops on his level 12 nation so if you fight him, he fields all Level 10s.
• Whatever floats your boat.
• Tortal is a level 19 with a single wilderness.

Poor guy, seems like he just started.
Well I only started a month ago, and he DID felt froggy:

My raid didn't pay my costs in going to visit him. 143 gold, 92 wood, 147 stone and 159 food.

6 shards, it cost 5 to go play.

Kheldara says if you raid 5000 times you get a statue in the center of your town. - 4999 to go!

Espionaging - Part 2 - Profitable? Nope

• So I ended up espionaging about 592 Nations.


• Yes I really did copy and paste in almost 600 nation names.


• It cost me over 80,000 gold. I am very serious about my testing.

Here are the results:

1. On average even including the 31% bonus's from the University, I was hitting at about 1 in 4 for successes.


2. I would get on average about 220 supplies from a success.


3. It cost 600 gold for 4 attempts, so overall espionage costs the espionager more then the espionagee. This is even disregarding police, because I avoided espionaging people that most likely had police setup.

Here are the Nations I successfully hit.

See below on the left for the screenshot of the attempts. As you can see most are very minor successes.

Kheldara told me tonight that espionage was draining, and it was better to go raid and "Fill your Chariots with loot".

I have to agree with him...

Espionage! Part 1 - Are Pirates or Ninjas Better?

So I espionage today until I ran out of time. I hit about 30 people with my 150 gold investment.

Who paid off?

All these guys gave me money and resources.

If you are looking to make a little bit of profit, and ALOT of drama, feel free to try the espionage lottery game:

Here is your list to start from:

http://www.playsaga.com/guilds.php

Start off copy and pasting random player name into the espionage steal screen.

You pay 150 gold for your spies, sometimes you get the money back sometimes not.

There is also a cap on the number of attempts you can do on a single player per day. I can usually get 2 off successfully then the rest are failures.

Your university espionage trains help as well.

The one thing to remember is there is an artifical cap on certain players because their nations might be semi AFK or inactive. If you see a failure:

This doesn't mean their police caught you, (unlikely as most people don't field police), but instead the nation might be inactive and protected by the mighty Monk.

Drama Incoming:

• If you DO care to do a bit of espionage, be aware of the return trip. I call it people getting "Froggy".
• The froggy response to an espionage is either return espionage or raids. I personally plan on keeping a list of froggy nations here on the blog, for return response. In fact responding to an espionage attempt is a great way to be profiled and identified for army size and depth.
• Obviously there will be people bigger and meaner. Or there is the fear of the zerg response. As long as it's fun, why not do it. My response the bigger meaner people is find other bigger meaner people to help fight. Or just to get bigger and meaner. It's a video game, lets have some fun.
• Espionage is a good way to make money and resources. For a measily 150 gold I have occasional doubled my money in resources.

• Stay tuned here at sagathoughts.blogspot.com to see what happens next, or as I espionage even more people to find out the frogs.
• Oh, and what is better a pirate or a ninja? Vikings count as pirates, so it seems like pirates are better...
  

Tourneyments

http://playsaga.blogspot.com/2008/07/testing-tournaments.html

So the developers seem like they are close to releasing tourneyments. Which is very needed for end-game players.

Also as a meta-gamer, we can hopefully see alot of the PvP bugs get fixed quickly when the tourneyments become part of the scene. Considering my gates are STILL bugged, we'll see. :)

Life Infusion's Blog - Top 5 content writers:

So I love reading content in Saga. There are so many thing I don't yet know, so like people that write stuff for me to read:

1. Life Infusion. He wrote about 6 blogs today, all about one paragraph in length. http://community.teamcovenant.com/?q=blog/8 - Life Infusion is pretty funny, I interviewed him the other day, without realizing he was stuck at Nation level 25. I figured from as much as he wrote that he MUST have been 35 for months. Nope, he admittedly hates to grind. Anyway, please read his stuff, it's all good, both on the new teamcov site, and on the forums.
2. Illian. This guy is extremely knowledgeable, and seems to post all good information. He happens to be the best video maker, (or only video maker), in saga, so we all look forward to his new films. If you want to know whats going on, listen to Illian.
3. Kheldara. Best Raid info I ever found here: http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/06/kheldara-interview-raiding-and.html
4. TwonsterMonster. New fresh market content is good: http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/new-market-guide.html
5. Sauron. This guy is impossible to track down for an interview online. He ignores every message I send him. However with that all said and done, he does spam post as his "NightmareLord" forum poster. After Illian, he is one of the most talkative forum posters, although often he is quick to attack Saga, which as a player, I feel is counterintuitive.
6. Monk. He doesn't count in my list because his job is Saga, but his content is excellent. Of course he knows a little more about the game after all. http://monkscorner.wordpress.com/

In summary, I do enjoy other's writings, if you want me to list your writing over here at sagathoughts let me know, I will happily link your RSS.

New Market Guide

TwonsterMonster wrote a new guide that hit the www.sagaunit.com site today.

http://www.sagaunits.com/sagaguide/resources/SagaUnitsMarketGuide.doc

I wanted to cross-post it because it was a very good guide, yet I still had some comments on it:

1. Firstly, gathering gold for high level players is pretty easy. I can easily gather up 20k gold anytime I like in about 20mins max. And I'm only 31, so I'm sure I can even find easier ways later on.
2. Because a high level player can gather gold and mats, they can easily buy the cards from the newbies's boosters. However, the newbies (that NEED the cards) can't trade for what they need because the high level players all scoop it up. This seems a silly system.
3. I have many troops. And now that I am high level, I can easily trade for even MORE troops. ?? This seems backwards.
4. The market is plain PAINFUL for finding units you like. I think I'd rather listen to trade channel, then deal with the market. And I have more success in the trade channel.
5. The problem with the market is that the only troops you can get good deal on is the common troops that you can buy from the NPC vendor.
6. All the uncommons are priced cheaper on card sites.
7. For example you buy a common heavy cav for 2000 gold. This means in 20 mins I can farm gold for 10 cav. 10 cav cost about 5$ on the card sites. Buying from the NPC is cheaper. I happily trade 20,000 gold for almost a unit of heavy cav.
8. Buying a Treant costs 5$ on a the card sites. On the market the Treant is usually traded for 2 dark raven riders or 2 other 6 CP flyers. They sell for 4$/card on the card sites. And considering the booster pack rate is about 1 in 20 packs, boosters won't get the tradebait anyway.

Illian put it best, "Unless buying undead faction packs, boosters aren't worth buying. I buy all my singles online."

Yeah me too.

Wards and Farming for Treasure from ex-broken heroics

So my 31 Nation army has alot of troops that use Elemental Wards for Armor.

Treants, Elementals, Cherbus, Dragons, etc.

Many of these troops are good in PvP, so one of the best thing you can do for your PvP troops is to get them great items.



THE best place to get Wards for your troops is the crazy spawn at Twelve Trials part 2.



This quest basically spawns hellish numbers of dragons, every one you kill, you get 2 more. With mostly level 10 troops you will live a very short time. With a friend and level 10 troops you MAY be able to kill 12 or so of the dragons before wiping, but good luck.




The ITEM you are farming for is a Ward of Dragon Might. If you get this item consider yourself successful with the mission. This has about a 1 in 10 chance of dropping, so you will have to try multiple times. (This USED to be bugged and it dropped every time, but it's been fixed for two weeks. I wasn't 30 when it was bugged, I am taking this out of conversations.)

This is what the mission looks like when started.

Notice one of the dragons is a different color then the rest of them? Wow, what does that mean??

You will get ALOT of the boobie-prizes for this. They are nice, but not as good as Dragon Might.

Good Luck Farming!

Peasants Happiness?

Peasants are useful creatures. They hang around town, and are easily moved from job to job.

However, how do you keep them happy? It's a pretty simple formula once you understand it:

• Base: Everyone gets 75 for this.

• Taxes: This is really the easiest way to deal with temporary peasant issues. Lower taxes, and like good republicians, they get happier. I like money, so I always leave this at +3 or 4 gold/peasant.

• Housing: You need 58 houses for your peasants. Once you have them you are done and you get the 5 happiness. Anything less you take a penalty.

• Food: All you have to do is have enough on the nation screen for them to eat. Anything less you get them unhappy.

• Espionage: This is important in case you are getting enemies attacking you through espionage. But as espionage is capped at only a couple successes per day per unhappy nation, this shouldn't be a problem for your happiness unless you piss off the entire server.

• Combat: At first I din't understand how this worked, but now I figure it out. Every time you lose a battle this goes down. Any time you SURRENDER this goes down by about -.3, to a maximum of -30 happiness. If you lose ALOT, you should do some low level quests until you recover. It isn't hard to raise up. It maxs out at +20 for winning alot in succession.

• Total: Anything BELOW 90 happiness you peasants stop reproducing at +4.00 Population growth. You will also lose peasants slowly as they leave for a better city. Stay above 90, and you are fine. Anything over 90 really DOESN'T MATTER. At once point I left my happiness at 140, and it did nothing for me.