Playing from a Colonized position

[japanpimp]

I am Bruticus of Age II server Na4, alliance Rome.
I was colonized early in the game and have learned to play from that position. I now have a larger army than most Age II players with the ability to expand far beyond a player who is not colonized. I now believe that playing Age II from a colonized position is the best approach. This will serve a guide on how to play Evony Age II from a colonized position.

First thing to understand is that if you want to play from this position, you are basically going to allow your cities to be colonized by anyone, even a player with 5k archers. However, try to get them colonized by a strong player. The stronger the better.

Second thing to understand is that towards the end game of Age II, many many historicals will be owned by enemies, traitors and players who were ONCE friendly or team members. This means even if you are not colonized by a player, the historical can still draft from you. So learning to protect yourself against drafting of troops and heros is critical.

Playing from this position is for players who:
A) Want to build a massive army and conserve troops for more important targets like level 12-16 Historicals and possibly even 0,0 (Atlantis).. and not worry about burning troops fighting off colonization attempts or trying to uprise on a Suzerain.
B) Do not want to worry about defending their cities (defense) and focus strictly on offense.

1. DO NOT waste resources building wall defenses. Use all resources for troops and leveling up your research and buildings. Keep wall defenses at 0.

2. Make all of your cities optimal for troop production. All cities will be troop factories plain and simple. Get your title up so you have 10 city slots. Keep one or two open for conquering a NPC or a Historical.

3. Do not worry about feeding your troops, that will be another players job. Just make sure that your cities produce enough resources per hour so you can keep training troops in batches. Always train the same number in each batch so all cities finish training troops about the same time.

4. Assign a few players in your alliance to build a bunch of cities with nothing but farms and lv10 lakes and agriculture research to lv10, a lv9 relief station and a lv9 embassy. And of course cottages and maybe a barrack or two. Rally spot and that's about it. No beacon tower, no Inn, No market, no Stable. Obviously TownHall to lv9/10. The rest of the city will be warehouses with food set to 100% and the rest set to 0. These cities will be known as "storage" cities.

5. As you train troops, garrison them in the storage cities. As more are trained, recall from the storage cities, consolidate and send them back to garrison. That way you will conserve embassy slots.

6. When you want to level up heros, recall some troops from storage, hit some NPC's, then send them back. Also, send your heros with troops to garrison. That way your heros will be protected too. Garrisoned troops and heros cannot be drafted.

7. Storage city gates must be closed at all times and never opened. No defenses needed in storage cities.

8. Your gates must be closed at all times.

So basically your cities will be ghost towns but still producing troops. Let's call them "ghost factories". With this setup you can build troops to your hearts desire and use them to cap historicals or kill off enemy troops in a historical. The only limiting factor is time. You can only build as many as time will allow. You will not need to worry about not having enough food to build since troops will never be in your cities.
When you are colonized you can still attack NPC's, Historicals, Historicals owned by others, etc... The only thing you cannot do is colonize other players DIRECTLY. But yes, you can cap a historical, which means you can draft from players by way of the historical, so you can indeed colonize others by way of the capped historical.

The storage cities can hold 100k troops of any kind per embassy level. 100k ballistas, 100k Rams, 100k Catapults, 100k Cataphracts, etc... With a level 9 embassy it can hold 900k troops. Will garrisoned troops die if no food in storage city? So far, no. I have had over 800k archers in 1 storage city for 2 weeks with 0 food in all storage cities and nothing happened. Pretty much endless storage. And by playing Age II the way I just described, you can keep making troops and not worry about food for troop production. The only limit is 2 things, time and your rally spot. You can only send out a max of 1 million troops per city to garrison. However, that is of any troop type. So do not put 1 million warriors in a storage city, that would be a waste. Put the troops that cost and eat the most in the storage cities.

[japanpimp]

Any comments? And problems with my system? 44 views and nobody has anything to say?

[Gringo]

why not just capture level 10 npcs for your storage towns, and what's the benefit of warehouses in Age II?

[japanpimp]

Yeah, if other players capped 10s for storage that would be good.
Warehouses in age 2... um, at first I thought they were pointless.
Then I thought, ok, they may serve a purpose.
If you build one city with a load of warehouses and put food storage at 100%. So you can move a bunch of troops into that city for a SHORT TIME just before a massive offensive, use Vestas Blessing to reduce troop upkeep by 50%, then be able to send loads and loads of waves from that one city to your target. But most of the time your "offensive dispatch city" will be empty just building up food reserves for 30 days or so while you build troops in other cities for another offensive.

[Woldere]

Decent guide, but LVL9 Relief Station? :P

[ImTheMan]

I'm still missing the point of warehouses with no plunder, this game still allows you to store as much food as you like without thinking about capacity limits.

[scythe]

Unfortunately you are using secondary illegal accounts as storage cities Bruticus. You USED to use your alliance mates, but they got bored feeding YOUR army and gaining nothing from the deal, that is why they left.
Using the flaws in Age2 to keep a ghost army is a valid tactic, if a labourous tactic and not exactly much fun, as you are basically a Sim city farmer for months until you think you can take a historical.

I would admire Vengence for its tactics for taking lv.12s, using teamwork, or our host who took one by himself, using your resources and drafts to aid him.

[scythe]

I'm still missing the point of warehouses with no plunder, this game still allows you to store as much food as you like without thinking about capacity limits.

Agree, warehouses, especially multiple ones are useless outside of a historical, and even then only really for raising the STockpike tech, which I have heard raises the limits of resources you can store in your city (from normal resource growth not from npc additions which is limitless). Thats the TECH not the warehouses.
Bruticus I believe has not understood this, but thats hardly surprising. A player proud of a warehouse city in age2 is not one I would ask advise from.

Learning to fight from the worst possible position is what legendary warriors do.

Warriors who died may do this, warriors intent on victory AVOID the worst possible position and put the enemies in that position. Tell me some famous heroes who liked being hopelessly outgunned or overwhelmed. These kind of situations are the LAST time you hear from those kind of leaders.

[japanpimp]

Unfortunately you are using secondary illegal accounts as storage cities Bruticus. You USED to use your alliance mates, but they got bored feeding YOUR army and gaining nothing from the deal, that is why they left.
Using the flaws in Age2 to keep a ghost army is a valid tactic, if a labourous tactic and not exactly much fun, as you are basically a Sim city farmer for months until you think you can take a historical.

I would admire Vengence for its tactics for taking lv.12s, using teamwork, or our host who took one by himself, using your resources and drafts to aid him.

Hold on a second, don't start throwing out accusations because I came up with a system that outsmarts the whole drafting thing which players WILL need to do when more historicals start getting captured and drafting from others.
I know full well that secondary accounts are not allowed and Evony will shut down players that do it. I even tell all people who who play not to do it. Why risk losing months and months of hard work? Evony can easily look into this and know that these accounts are legit players. They came in, setup and job was done.

Now, give me props for coming up with the ghost army system. Stop the hate. Give props to my idea.

[japanpimp]

@Woldere: Well, I was just throwing stuff out there. I am sure players will customize my ghost army system. Relief station, lol, yeah, maybe pointless, unless it helps troops return faster. I dunno.

@ImTheMan: Well, I am a engineer by trade. I design processes and systems. So I was just thinking, "Hey, storage cities need storage." So warehouses made sense to me. Maybe they are not needed. I dunno. I think it is too early to know exactly what we will need 6 months from now as Age II develops. Nobody knows how the middle and end game will play out. So I was just designing a system and putting things together that seem to make sense to me.

@scythe: Say a member of your alliance caps a couple of 12's and a 14 deep in "your" territory. They reinforce it for 2 months with hordes of troops. Then that player deflects to another alliance or turns on yours. Uh, oh.... now they start drafting from all of your cities. All the cities you have 50k ballistas and 400k archers and 50k rams in. And the 12's and 14's they capped help the other alliance get a foothold in "your" area. I bet you money that it will happen someday. And when it happens I bet you will use my system or a variation of it to protect your troops and heros from getting drafted by the historical. Or say a sister alliance turns on yours. Same deal. You will be scrambling to protect your troops and heros from drafting. So, don't hate, appreciate.

I just bypassed all that and said, "you know what, let me just play Age II as if I am always in a colonized position. It will save me drama in the future." So I designed a system that counters almost everything harmful that a Suzerain can do to me. So at this point, a Suzerain is just my bodyguard, a layer of defense to my cities. And all I pay the Suzerain is 10% of my production. A great deal if you ask me. And you know what, I burn no troops fighting every ego centric player who wants to colonize me. Why burn troops and time doing that? When you play from uncolonized cities it is like constantly trying to fight off mesquitoes. Mesquitoes uprise, mesquitoes try to colonize you... forget it. I have other things I want to do beside fight mesquito battles.