Quick Retreat

skigglez

Seems like basically everyone defends with QR when out of protection - curious if there's any stats on what the real percentage of attacks defended with QR vs not is? How does the 50% reduced chance to win factor into the battle? I've seen many defends with QR on so not sure how it all works.

Vesuvan

skigglez I can’t tell you specifically how it works, but I can tell you I’ve successfully fended off several attacks on QR (also MC’s), with plenty of troops left to retal and win right away if I catch it quick enough. Not sure how good of a Strat it is if you can’t check your KD often though.

Blahblah

yeah it works to well. cant afford to run 2gh per acre or more thus any attacks will be retaled right away and lost when people are sending 75% and the enemy is retaining 40% of their troops. it seems to be a 100% necessary strat.

skigglez

Blahblah
There needs to be more of a downside built into defending with QR - most times you're going to fail your defense anyways because you're only defending with 80ish% of your army, so the 50% reduced chance to win isn't relevant. I know people have defended attacks with QR, but I'm talking generally. That combined with 1:1 MC and you have a significant amount of your troops remaining and you just full send retal and most of the time win. If the QR strat is to essentially concede the attack to limit troop loss, maybe there needs to be increased losses of land/buildings/peasants or something. Conceptually that makes sense - your army runs away so you give up more shit to the attackers. At least that way people would actually be making a choice when using QR instead of being essentially obligated to because of how much of a benefit it currently provides.

Vesuvan

skigglez I think you have a good point…maybe if you choose QR you lose an extra 15-20% of land and buildings, that way the attacker at least still gains something from their victory. As things are now it definitely has worked out to my advantage more often than not when I’m the defender, I always get my castle back if I full send immediately, and usually I even end up with a little more land than had originally lost.

skigglez

Vesuvan
Just by nature of quickly retreating your army from battle, it makes complete sense that you would be exposed to losing additional stuff when being invaded. I just want there to be an actual con to picking the strat, right now there isn't one. From what I've been seeing it's just a cycle of defending on QR and full send retal, both attacks go through, and it comes out relatively even for castles/land/troops. But one party is intentionally choosing a strategy to turtle to protect their army, where the other is taking initiative on the attack. Seems to me that the person choosing to turtle should lose out on the exchange for land - the tradeoff being they lost less troops than if they didn't pick QR.

Zown

skigglez
I feel that there is a deeper issue with the gameplay loop than simply providing people who want to play defensively with a means to do so. Troops are insanely expensive, and it takes a while to rebuild fully. QR makes sense. Save as many as you can while defending, let the MC heal as much as it can, and retaliate with as much as you can on a real strategy that counters the race you are fighting. Still has the potential to fail when kingdoms team up on you, are a kingdom that is too big attacks you. However, defending against these with a real strategy opens you to way worse consequences. Not only are you guaranteed to lose basically a large number of units that cost a ton to replace, but you get no protection and leave you completely open for teammates to attack your kingdom. Now you still lose and have to replace basically everything with zero chance to counterattack two different kingdoms (that are probably both higher in KS than you). If you do not have teammates of your own who are able to fight back for you, then you have zero outplay potential. I don't think QR is the problem; I think the problem is that QR is the only good defensive strategy. I think everyone loves attacking, building the kingdom, and teamwork. Defending and growing feeling so hard or pointless, I think, is more of the issue. Being able to get attacked endlessly before you get a chance to retaliate feels wrong. Kingdoms that full send and not using TS feels like it should be pushishable, which is what the QR is doing.

Cora

Zown I have to admit that I have never seen the strats as all attacking except for QR being the only defending strat…I usually picture them working as the strat describes whether you are attacking or defending, but now that you mention it, I can see that POV. Do you have any suggestions for another type of defensive strategy?

skigglez

Zown
My point is that most of the other strats have some sort of downside built in - QR does not. That's why I was originally asking the devs to see what % of attacks are defended with QR on. You have the benefit of not losing as many troops as you normally would defending - great upside. Needs to be paired with a downside that will make people have to make an actual choice - right now there is no choice, they just use QR always. Yes troops are expensive, but this round there is a ton of resource bloat, so if you aren't able to effectively manage your kingdom as well as others you should fall behind. Choices you make in managing your kingdom should have consequences - running MCs means less troops die but you will have slower rebuild times and less resource production. Supposed to be a strategy game where if one person makes more informed choices they should beat out those that don't. Right now for defending there isn't any strategic choice - it's just throw on QR and full send retal. This is my experience from seeing a ton of attacks/retals in the top 30 - it's an issue. Not saying it needs to be addressed this round, but something that needs to be looked at in the future for sure.

Zown

Cora
I don't think there is any. Like Skigglez is saying, I think it is the best way to play defensively right now. It sounds weird, but successfully defending attacks is actually bad. You might be able to discourage a few people here and there, but over time, you are going to get overwhelmed, and it takes way too long to build troops back to properly outplay everyone trying to attack you. Team play is the only real answer.

skigglez
I am agreeing with everything you are saying. And I suspect the same thing you are, that the top kingdoms have realized this is the safest way to play. I don't think QR is the problem, though. Giving races more access to magic and creating more offensive magic, on top of making units recharge a little quicker, is probably the answer. Everyone loves fighting. Giving more ways to do that is probably the best thing. Right now, it takes like 30-50 hours to fully recharge your military, which can cost millions of gold. I agree that the resources are pretty generous and easy to play around with. But when you factor in schools and wizards, it starts getting harder to do. I think the magic system in the game has a chance to give a lot of unique play styles; however, currently, it does not. I think it is mostly used to boost resources, so you can just stack more army. I think the game would be a lot more fun if all races had an easier time using magic and units could recharge quicker, so people can fight more, and maybe put a defensive protection on successful defenses. A strategy rework would be nice too, so you can actually pick strats and unit ratios to best counter the people you are fighting. Instead of QR, create a retreat threshold that each kingdom can set, so if they want to save 80% of their units, they can, or if they want to fight to the death like Sparta, they can set 0%. And I don't know if the game actually uses rounds in the battle calculations, but if it does, I would find a way to introduce more rounds in fighting so each phase of the battle has a chance to be conducted. It would allow for more strategic play and not be so stompy in one or two rounds.

Strider

Cora. Create a strategy that counters QR.

Attacker troops return 6 hours sooner. If defending kingdom is not on QR when using the offensive counter, attacking kingdom offense does 80% of normal damage.

Cora

Zown rounds in each battle? It does have phases. I’m sure you’re already aware of the long range, short range, then melee. What rounds do you mean? Edit: I reread your comment. Sounds complicated 😂

Vesuvan

Zown I’m almost positive I remember a similar problem in old Thardferr (defending on QR then immediately retaling), so they tested out giving a small amount of pro if you lost over a certain threshold of troops on defense to encourage use of other strats and discourage army kills… pretty sure it was only like 6-8 ticks or something like that, or was it all a fever dream? Anyway, I definitely think a certain amount of pro after a successful defend but heavy troop loss could be an effective way to encourage different styles of defense beyond the current QR trend, as well as discourage so many full send (or close to it) attacks.

Muh Dude

Can confirm. Successfully defending is ALMOST as bad as failing an attack. It's better to lose the first hit and get your retal. It's almost, but not entirely, impossible to get any retals off if you defend an attack and they have a friend follow.

skigglez

Muh Dude
yup seems like the best and most utilized strategy is sit with QR on and lose, retain a lot of troops, and full send retal. With rare exceptions.