Finishing your Army Training?

So when do you call a unit "TRAINED?"

ie ready to PvP with.

Obviously if you are playing in end-game PvP, most players will have level 10 troops that they will fight you with. Especially the Beta players.

PvP in most MMO games is a combination of Gear/Skill/ Strategy. You don't want to be completely undergeared vs your opponents, that's where training or leveling your troops is important.

My theory is level 8 is a fine place to stop leveling a troop, and concentrate on a different unit.

The difference between Level 8 and Level 10 is 10% more Defence Rating, 10% more hitpoints, more morale and 10% more attack rating. In terms of numbers here is a level 10 and level 1 Treant

As you can see the Level 10 has many more hps and defence rating, making it live much longer.

Gear still plays an important part, as you can see looking at the same Level 1 Treant with great gear.

So my answer for this is Level 8. A Level 8 troop is good enough to fight with. After you get to level 8, you should move on to other units, and getting gear.

Deck Profiling - Nature CCIE - Part 1

So I promised to profile my working army:

• "Human Heavy Cavalry", - 7 troops


• "Behemoth","2"


• "Armored Behemoth","1"


• "Ballista","5"


• "Trebuchet","3"


• "Green Dragon","3"


• "Wood Giants","10" - 2 troops


• "Treants", - 5 troops


• "Fire Elementals", - 6 troops


• "Earth Elementals", - 2 troops


• "Elven Druids", - 4 troops


• "Elven Longbowmen", - 2 troops


• "Eagle Riders", - 3 troops


• "Lightning Elementals", - 6 troops


• "Elven Bear Riders", - 1 troop


• "Elven Sabretooth Riders", - 2 troops


• "Elven Saboteurs", - 2 troops

Here are my reasoning for this build. I am heavy Elementals with near 6 of each. I love my elementals, and now with the LACK of an anti elemental card in undead they are still very viable as a theme deck.

I don't run more then a full compliment of eagles. My longbowman are only a set of two, and I use primarily for PvE boss kills. I plan on combining Summon Behemoth, Behemoths, and Elven Sabs for heavy Machine kills.

Unlike Illian, I prefer Fire Elementals to Bear Riders. Mostly a theme difference.

Elven Sabertooth Riders are my counter-cappers.

I only have 2 Ballistas that matter, and only 2 Trebs, the rest are 1s and 2s.

With 7 Heavy Cav troops of various levels, I can throw them away if needed.

And 5 sets of Treants. I will probably go to 6 before I'm done, but I'm probably not worried about it for awhile. Treants aren't squishy really, they live along time.

In terms of levels I try to get everything to level 8 for my main army. Anything lower I keep training in PvE.

Gear, I go mainly for speed, and I've enchanted about 10 items or so, using mostly 16%.

With all the Elementals, I go for Wards of Dragon Might and Boar's Tooth Charms. I have most of the Wards done, now finishing the Charms. On Longbowman and Eagles I use Justice like everyone else.

Undead Planning - How many to Collect?

So I read the the previews:

"Tentonhammer.com Has a Preview of six of the ranged units. Featuring the Lich and Death Bringer.
Rpgvault.com is showing off four mounted and two flying units including the Undead Dragon.
Tcgplayer.com is featuring five of the Undead infantry units. ." - https://www.playsaga.com/saga_index.php

For this blog I decided to profile what I would be looking to collect.

Several units do not meet my playstyle. (Although I reserve the right to change my mind multiple times.) If you don't see it listed here, I don't see me using it for my core army.

Here is initially what I'd like to see in a 1000 CP army for PvP.



This give about 925 CP in troops, leaving 75 CP for spells or substitutions.

I obviously am not going as dense in the Wights as I probably would for a 100CP battle, but I tend to try to build towards a 225 CP fight. I personally like the amount of units on the field in 225 vs 100 CP.

I am iffy on fielding Abominations. They are so slow that I doubt they will be worth the CP, but as they are a passive counter troop, we might see us with them vs a Magic army that is heavy summoners.

Obviously I love Diabolists fielding 6 in a army. I love Fire Elementals, and Diabolists are even cooler.

Deck Profiling

I plan on sending out my spies to figure out what people have in terms of armies. What they are keeping in their main army, what they like defending with etc etc. I plan on starting with the Level 35s, then moving on down the list.

Like always I will be using my spies and literally espionaging the entire server. If it make people mad, it's a sacrific for science.

However: If you care to volunteer to be profiled, and want to show off your army, or a subset of units, let me know, and I can arrange an interview.

I am also interested in Wall Designs.

I will be profiling my OWN army first, listing every unit I own, and how I have them setup for raids, just to be fair. (Not that I care about fair.)

And yes, if I put a bullseye on your head, wear it with pride. If you feel froggy then jump.

Example City Walls for Free Build

After many attempts and serveral mistakes, here is what I am sticking with for my wall on my Nature nation.

Here are some of the constaints I went with in my build.

• I wanted to use all 100 of the wall segments. This is alot, so I divided it into an outer wall perimeter and an inter castle protecting my storehouses.
• I wanted to use the nature borders of my city map to stop ground units. As you can tell, I use the moat and the river to stop ground attackers.
• I wanted to go as close the perimeter of my lands as possible. Nature is a ranged army, to have treants, longbowmen and Ballistas defending my walls would be a nice defense.
• I wanted to space my gates to have sally points for counterattackes with mounted unit.
• I wanted to defend as many buildings inside my walls as possible. I got at least 1 shrine defended, so no shrine rushing

Anyway, enough talk, check out the video.

Ironforge and the True whatever guilds...

With all the patch notes going on, this was something I until later.

In other games there were alot of guilds that recruited new players. When those players get better at the game they naturally move on and go into other guilds that are at a higher level.

I think the same applies for Ironforge's guild. The only high level player I have seen in that set of four guilds is Ironforge and Silvermoon. The rest are causal players thatlgo in infrequently.

About a month ago, Illian and Kheldara raided Ironforge to the point where he put in a harassment ticket into Silverlode. Harassment of a level 35 by raiding and espionage is not harassment as he soon found out.

At one time I was on of his many guilds. As a new player I wanted to test the resource sharing, which is pretty weak when most players contribute less the 30 resources a day. After hitting about level 20, I dropped out and recently formed my own guild, which resource sharing was FAR from the reason to join.

I think anyone really plans on raiding Ironforge again right now. The walls patch is still going in, getting mines that are walled up is a tactic I don't think we have figured out yet.

As Jonathan Coulton put it, "The voices that control me, from inside my head say I shouldn't kill you. - yet."

Thoughts about building with free build:

So there will be a patch fixing some of the wall placement freebuild bugs in about an hour from now.

I had some early recommendations to anyone planning their territory defenses using free-build.

• The first thing is to decide how you want to build. Concentrated or distributed.
• If you want to concentrate in an area and tower it up, you are defending mostly against lower level players. Towers have less effect, in fact low effect against end-game raiders. However, this is good as there are alot of low level raiders.
• Distributed works better against an end-gamer player. You make him have to spread out his troops and grab multiple caps before running out of time. Harass him with lots of troops to kill, he might miss buildings or spread out where his dps is lower.
• If you distribute the only building to worry about are mana mines and storehouses. Keep those 8 builds as far apart from each other as possible. Stick a tower in shooting range of each of those buildings.
• Everything else you can stick where ever. I like to make house subdivisions that mess with the raiders pathing, but that's optional.
• If you have a mana mine point far away from the rest, you may want to think about ignoring it, and walling it up.
• Ignore your gold mines/ore/lumber, these are secondary importance to a raider. Just make sure NONE can be capped at once. Nothing should be next to each other in range of a single troop cap.
• You Keep is a 9th tower, but it's range is SHORT. Remember this.
• The hills and mountains are pathing LOS. If you stick your storehouse on a mountain, you can stick other buildings around it to make it harder to cap from each direction. There will always be a way to cap it, but the raider my have to move his capping troops a couple times to find the right spot.
  

Undead rundown. New newsletter.

https://www.playsaga.com/newsletter/



My video is about one of the new quests showing 3 of the new units.

My comments about three new units?
- Abomination - Didn't I see this in Plaguelands in World of Warcraft?
- Undead Archers - bowman with wings? Insect bowmen?
- Necromancers - they look like trolls from WoW as well.

Hell, I hate to knock them, but not sexy enough for me. Watch the video, who is sexier, my elementals or the undead?

Here are the direct links to the sites with the new previews:

http://pc.ign.com/objects/877/877653.html will preview the four cavalry and two airborne undead units, including the deadly Forsaken Dragon.
http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/185 will preview the ranged undead contingent, lead by the Liches, commanders of the Undead forces.
http://www.tcgplayer.com/games/Overview.asp?ID=232 will have the melee troops, who like to get up close and personal, featuring the Abomination, the most gruesome creature to ever leave our studio.

A few Unit changes: h.cav nerfed

"HUMAN HEAVY CAVALRY" - DEFRATING 29 > 28, MAXDAMAGE 23 > 21

Nerf! This should reduce the end-game DR from around 70 maxd to about 65. That's needed as we all know.

"HUMAN LIGHT CAVALRY" - DEFRATING 20 > 22, "DETERMINATION - UNIT GAINS +50% AR, +100% DAMAGE, AND -20% DR FOR 20 SECONDS. COOLDOWN: 90 SECONDS." "DETERMINATION - UNIT GAINS +50% AR, +100% DAMAGE VS. RANGED UNITS FOR 30 SECONDS. COOLDOWN: 90 SECONDS."

"HUMAN LIGHT INFANTRY" - "HOLD THE LINE - UNIT GAINS +30% DR FOR 30 SECONDS. COOLDOWN: 90 SECONDS." > "HOLD THE LINE - FRIENDLY UNITS IN TARGET RADIUS (20M) GAIN +2% DR PER LIGHT INFANTRY FOR 30 SECONDS. COOLDOWN: 90 SECONDS."

Alot of great changes for using L.Cav and L.Inf in quests, but nothing like I'd like for defending my territories, as the AI doesn't use specials for territory defense currently.


All summon spells warmup and cooldown timers reduced.

-Yeah this is nice. Free elementals in the beginning, then ditch the spell.

http://www.towerofevil.com/livefiles/patchnotes/patchnotes.html

On Request! Raid on Karma Good Or Bad

So if you check the comments section of my previous post http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6435071171440404091&postID=5553832416058726992&isPopup=true, you will find that Karma Good Or Bad has requested open season on his single wilderness territory.

He wants to be raided.



My video is editted a little make it faster.

In the guise of science, I hit him twice this morning. Here is my review Karma, of your territory defenses.

1. Alot of high level common troops like cav archers, and light cav, and human archers. Most were higher levels which is good, but as you can tell from my video, my elementals are good at facing those types of troops.
2. Illian in his PvP Nature guide: http://www.sagaunits.com/sagaguide/naturepvp.html has completely disregarded Fire Elementals in 1v1 PvP, but I think they shine in raiding. Its a fireball that can capture a building. (As you will see in the video)
3. Your territory was nicely split out, no stack of storehouses in any one area. You make me run around the board which is good.
4. Kheldara http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/06/kheldara-interview-raiding-and.html recommends killing any resource node that you don't have near a watch tower. You want the attacker to eat tower arrows while holding off your troops.
5. If you note I tend to try to tank with my fire elementals while my lightning elementals caps behind them. This combo is good for capping because spreading out troops too much is bad in raids.

List of recommendations:

• Up your speed on your defenders. You want them to charge so I have to fight many at once. Speed gear, weapons and armor. If you can have me fighting 3 common armies at once, thats better then killing one at a time.
• Don't use anything slower then 12 speed. Just don't do it.
• More heavy cav. 25,000 gold for 12 is a great deal.
• Dragons are GREAT defenders. Hella easy to level to 7 or 8, and they have none of the pathing issues many troops have. The raider HAS to stop to cap something, and when he does, the dragon is annoying. If you were Light, white dragons are a CHEAP way to annoy people on raids.

Anyway good job Karma! Hopefully others will raid you too, and level your troops for you.

New Units for Undead, from the patch today

New Units:
abomination
arbalister
archer
bonewagon
bone_horse
deathbringer
diabolist
forsakenrider
forsaken_dragon
forsaken_warrior
humongous
lich
necromancer raider
reaper
undead_knight
wight

Who's excited?

Economic Rating

So I faked my way to the front page of the "Overall" rating. (I have an artificially raised Military rating based on leveling using PvP. People called it faking. whatever...)

I've been sitting at #11 for a couple days, just trying to figure out what affects the economic rating. I asked one of the saga guys in /help, but he didn't know how it worked.

My Economic rating was 1250 yesterday, and 1350 today. The only difference is I left some cash laying in my nation bank. I normally offload it daily to alts or spend on walls, but I have about 10,000 gold left from doing some quests. Walls don't seem to do anything, I upgraded to full reenforced without any change in rating.

So maybe a full level Rank 3 university is worth 1250 rating. And amassing resources gives rating too.

So assuming that 10,000 gold is equal to 100 rating points that would put Twonstermonster at about 900,000 resources? That's not alot, considering you can easily make over 8,000 gold for a single quest run. That would mean farming a 10 min run 100 times, I could catch up to his rating? Thats only 16 hours, basically a weekend of steady play.

Maybe it has a diministing return as you grow your cash. Ancestral bragged that he had 2,000,000 of each resource on an alt, but that would mean that if he had 6,000,000 resources, that would put his alt economic rating at 60,000 rating, even higher then TM. I assume he was exaggerating, 6,000,000 resources seem like alot not to spend. I tend to buy a unit of heavy cav every time I free up 25,000 gold.

I assume a diministing return, if anyone has any idea leave me a comment.

How many units is too many?

So collecting units and training, equiping, building units is part of the end-game at 35.

There are other end-games, but that is the one I'm stuck on right this second.

So how many units is enough?

• Above are my six lightning elementals: Probably the best counter unit in the game for Nature.
• Eats up so many different type of troops. If you wear chain/plate, you are in trouble if these are nearby.
• And being a 6 CP troop they last along time doing near max damage.
• They aren't infantry or mounted, or machine, so until an anti-elemental card comes out, their counter is Heavy Cav, which they have a good chance of swapping damage with.
  
  
  
  Obviously to farm certain missions for gold or items I can get by with a very few number of each unit. There also is a cap on units, 1050 CP for 5 armies so 5250 CP.
  
  Twonstermonter recently noted in Conflict that he had "24 eagles". Or six units. Assuming one unit per each of his four wilderness, that leaves 2 in his main army, unless he cycles them in.
  
  I spend alot of time cycling troops in to try to find the optimum unit composition for each mission. Or if one levels, to bring in a lower level troop for exp.
  
  Six units of your favorite types seems like a good number for complete overkill. Even in a giant 225 CP PvP game, you probably won't have the CP to cycle more then 6 of any one type. You are limited to 3 on the deck at one time, so that's 3 more in spare.
  
  
• Above are my six Fire Elementals: Easy to level up with a AE, and easy to gear with twelve trials. http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/wards-and-farming-for-treasure-from-ex.html
• Get a nice Ward of Dragon Might on one, and a charm from the boar, they can be a good screen for your Lightning Elementals.
  
  
  
  
  Which leads me to wonder if I can play with only the all 6 CP elementals? Treants/Fire/Lightning?
  
  

  I never liked those nasty elves anyway.

Illian's PvP Guide up!!

http://www.sagaunits.com/sagaguide/naturepvp.html
All his SECRETS revealed. For only $19.99. (Ok it's really free.)

If you DON'T check this out, you are wasting your time on the Internet. just FYI.

Especially if you are Nature.

Hey I won something!

I won packs for writing about Saga!



Thanks to Zach and all the good folks at Team Covenant for hosting the contest. They are OBSESSED about creating content. I think half the player base is writing for them over there. If you don't know about their store and their articles, check out http://teamcovenant.com/

Check out Life Infusion's blog, you should, he's obsessed with math: http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/life-infusions-blog-top-5-content.html

If only he'd get to 35.

Here's my Winning! article:

http://saga.teamcovenant.com/?p=84

Twelve Trials 3 - Boar Video

So I already wrote up my 12 trials strategy. .

http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/twelve-trial-part-3.html

But here's the video. I figure I wanted to try the whole video thing, and see how it all looked.

(Yeah, really small I know.) I guess I'll Youtube if I have something that matters.

Slobbiok REFUSED to spend his Saga winnings on hookers and blow!

Slobbiok took some time tonight to try to explain to me why rating was still important and useful.

I of course believe rating means nothing until Tourneyments are active:
http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/rating-means-nothing-pvp-for-fun.html

Slobbiok seems like a nice guy and after all he did get a heroic named after him for his Beta activities.

I normally would edit this and write this up, but man its a Sunday and I'm LAZY.

Just to spark your interest here are some of the good parts:

• Slobbiok plays Saga 100% free.
• Slobbiok is LOOKING FOR SOME DARK ELF BOWMAN.
• Slobbiok believes that if you are a mid-level player with all level 10 troops, that he can BEAT you with level 1 troops.
• www.sagaunits.com is sponsering him in tourneyments. (use coupon code CCIE5 for 5% off at www.sagaunits.com)
• Guildwars are still bugged as Slobbiok proved yesterday.
• Slobbiok goes to bed at 4:34pm PST or 7:34PM EST. Wow, can you say EARLY??

GG, thanks Slobbiok for the ninja interview.

Leveling in Saga 1-35

I hit 35 today.

I started playing Saga May 30, 2008. Its now July 13th, so that puts me 1-35 in about a month and 1/2.

I'm sure my undead army will go much quicker.

Here's how I did it.

• 1-9 - Basic newby quests. Using one or more Heavy Cav units and some ranged.
• 10-26 - PvP'd fought my girlfriends account for 10% experience bonus. See - http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/rating-means-nothing-pvp-for-fun.html - for more info. Also ran alot of Stalling Tactics Heroics.
• 26-35 - Mithril Mines. See - http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/who-loves-mithril-mines-everyone.html - for more info. Sometimes solo with kite/fireballs, alot Coop to level troops. Co-op this is a great mission for getting exp for different troops.

It's simply that easy. You need no more then 400-600 or so CP of total units to go 1-35.