1. On this point I agree, though I don't think its 4 barbs - that number seems a little too high. I saw some of the math before but kind of forgot about it. But the point in general still holds true. If taking barbs is the goal to delay a world getting to 80% - its pointless. Just slows down everything.
for barbs it is kind of accurate, to reach a 80% advantage in villages, you have to own 4 villages for every 1 village other top 10 tribes have. This means that every barb other top10 tribes take, adds 1 village to the total villages in the top10, which increases the villages the top tribe needs by 0.8 villages, however, when they take a barb, it also adds 1 village to the total villages, so increases their villages by 1, but also increases their required villages by 0.8, so each barb gets them 0.2 villages closer to the target, so you need 4 barbs to make up for the 0.8 villages increase to the required number due to other tribes taking a barb. Thats a very convoluted way of describing the math, so let me know if you want me to put up some examples to prove my point.
On the other hand taking another top10 tribes village increases their village count by 1, but does not increase the required villages number, so they are better off taking those instead of barbs. thus why the claim of their needing to take 4 villages to make up for other tribes taking 1 barb is completely false.
]
2. Yes most of the benefits are not realized immediately. I rashly generalized - its only really useful if you take barbs in safe back line provinces and use it for a purely troop recruiting perspective. In time it will develop to be a useful village but its also a net gain in terms of recruitable troops per hour. That benefit is realized immediately. It might be only swords or spears, but it is something. With relocation that can be moved to a more frontline village where the defense can be distributed more efficiently. There is not much incentive for an attacking to noble a random barb you took for troop recruiting purposes - you don't really need to protect it if its got nothing valuable. However, this does cost a noble/conquest slot - so again, its only really useful IF you genuinely haven't got better options to noble. Further, you say that taking an enemy villa cost offense, which is true. But what if you are unable to nuke efficiently? If all you had was 3 nuke vs a minimum 30k/30k/30k stack, what can you do? It would be heavily efficient to throw around those offense because the rebuild times are deeply lopsided. Of course new villas are better on day 1, but sometimes you can't really get them. The reality is if that someone is attacking you with 1) a significant villa advantage 2) they are better than you, you will be unable to really get villas off them unless they make mistakes or you get tribe assistance - and that's not easy relative to taking safe barbs in the back line and developing them. My comment does not mean to take barbs wherever and whenever. What I should have said is that they should be taken given enough time to make them useful/use of them. I place a large emphasize on villa location and strategic nobling (rather than what is being nobled). Its essential to have a fast pipeline for relocation so that frontline villas are always full 30 farm, being useful offensively or defensively.
Alot there. First, taking barbs in safe zones, I agree, but when tribes start trying to barb-munch, there are usually very few safe zones, and by the time the villages are built up, the lines have moved, and often what was once safe is no longer safe before its at peak capacity.
Second, net gain in recruitment, yes this may be realised immediately, however the barracks are often low level, so recruiting slower than taking another village, and they can only recruit the slowest units to recruit, so you have to invest resources into upgrading the barracks. Compared to taking a player village, its a net loss. Its a gain compared to what you had, but a loss compared to what you could have. Now there are situations where thats not nessacarily true, and while I am the kind of guy who strongly advises against taking barbs, I also recognise that sometimes doing so is the best option. However a tribe policy of taking barbs is never the best option, taking barbs should be the exception to the rule, not the rule itself.
Third, nuking a 30k/30k/30k stack, what can I do? easy, attack one of the 4 villages left empty by supplying that stack. Again, not always practical, but if your enemy has the defense to stack every village in range with that much troops, then your tribemates should be able to move, if all villages in range of your entire tribe have that much troops, then either the enemy have simply overwhelmed you, and there are nobody else hitting them elsewhere, in which case a long jump is my reccomendation, or the enemy have little to no offense, so you can lose all your nukes, and have time to rebuild, defense does not take villages, so your not overly threatened, and you have the upper hand.
3. Again, a very common thing to do and I agree mostly. Fortressing/locking up a province is something I generally encourage on key frontline provinces. The two points I wanna get at is this - yes, it is true that hypothetically removing barbs limits your farming potential and so on and someone without such constraints have better resource generation. But practically, I've found once you hit above 100+, 200+ villa counts, the amount of people with time to farm all those villas and farm them efficiently exponentially dwindles. Those are very rare cases in practice. It is weaker IF the enemies equivalent is able to farm what you are unable to farm but that is a big IF. Secondly, I hear you on the point about builds per unit time. Yes the math checks out and you are correct with the faster offense to defense build times. HC is for sure the way to go and you won't have that if you noble a random barb. However, in practice, I don't think build times are that relevant. Firstly, with relocation, there is no build you have to follow in any villa - you can mix and match always. Beyond that, I just don't think it matters. Because you have a choice in what to attack and what to defend. If a given trade is a 1:1 loss and you are defense, just don't take the trade [if you can, i.e. sniping, etc.]. Build times are important if you assume the vast majority of attacks/defense are equal trades. But they rarely are equal. Sometimes you catch nukes off guard and undefended, sometimes you noble a villa with all its defense out and they die. All sort of things can happen. What's more important is minimizing the chances of those events happening (i.e, increase your average speed of response). What I mean by that is ensuring your villas are distributed as such that they are not isolated and you are able to support the villas in a reasonable time frame relative to your opponent's closest noble train. That's the reason pure HC is just better - not because of the build times but because there are many situations where they just can be of use (as oppose to standard s/s/a), even though their pure defense efficiency is less. It doesn't matter if you have a full s/s/a def stack if it can't reach something getting trained in 2 hours but you might have 500 HC that can (and even if this 500 HC can't kill a nuke, it can still snipe a train). I do concede that its hard to get barbs to barracks 21 for HC - they are usually more useful for pumping out useful offense rather than defense.
again, alot there,
First, having 100+ villages people dont farm, I agree, but if you have that many villages, you really shouldnt be in a position where you need to fortress a province. players fortressing a province usually start with 20-30 when they start, and end up with 60-70 tops when they finish, most of which are in that province. If you are meaning that the enemy dont farm, then again it is true, but when they outnumber you in villages they can afford not to, you cant.
Second, build times are irrelevant. False, totally and completely false. You are outnumbered (only reason to fortress as mentioned earlier), you need to produce enough troops so that your losses are comparable to your enemies
in total production timenot in total numbers. a 1:1 loss ratio, when you are building say HC out of 5 villages, while the enemy is building say MA out of 10 villages, you cant keep up.they can just keep hitting. Third, Dodging and Sniping, gives you more time, but eventually the enemy starts sending a nuke with each noble, you cant dodge or snipe that, so that who reason is out the window as far as I am concerned, sure you can start prenobling, but then they just send larger gaps between nukes, and all these tactics are high level, most players that get encouraged to barb-munch or fortress simply dont have the skill to pull that off for very long, if at all.
Fourth, barbs more useful for offense than defense, agree, but if you are pushing offense that much, and arent desperate for defense, then you shouldnt need to be fortressing, you can much easier move into the next province through a barb for faith, then your fortress is a liability not an asset, it completely undermines the whole point of setting up a fortress province.
1. I can see situations where per village army strength that matter - but I think it only matters on the frontline villas. Taking barbs in the back-line will lower this figure but can improve your front line per village army strength (where frankly, most people concentrate their attacks on). I know hitting back-lines and such is a thing but like its pretty rare to see it successfully executed. Secondly, the point about taking enemies villa is true but begins with the assumption you are able to trade efficiently and take their villas. I'm not sure Peak in particular can given how they are outnumbered.
2. I agree mostly. I didn't really think of this because in my mind I'd only imagine people taking barbs in back-line provinces where this kind of "at-risk" problem won't happen. Hence, I didn't really consider this to be a argument against it.
3. Again, the point is true but you shouldn't be taking barbs where this sort of situation can happen.
My statement makes a lot of assumption which I didn't say. Mainly is that you can't just take any random barbs and have it be a net benefits. Location matters, a lot, as it dictates the sort of response your enemies can do (and whether are able to get advantages because of it).
I'm also haven't considered this as extensively as I did. I've not really been in this sort of situations. My perspectives are mainly from someone who is never in these sort of defensive positions - I am always the one that outnumbers my opponents. I will do stuff like take 10 barbs in a province next door and rush 30 farm on them and acad so I can run ops with multiple, <4 hour trains - so that probably bias my views a bit.
Your point do stands though. The fact I typed out all this basically prove its probably not the easiest thing to do lol
for all three points, see my first point to the first quote in this message.
1. additionally, being outnumbered does not mean you cant trade efficiently, only that its more work. I was in this position in en 37/8 (i forget which), but much later, I was in a minor tribe, rank 3 or 4, when the top tribe had almost reached victory conditions. I put a lot of effort into timed assaults, and was taking entire provinces with the loss of 3-4 nukes. Its not quick, it takes alot of time and effort to set up, but it is rather easy, especially if you can find a weak link around you, not all players in the winning tribe are higly skilled, and if they merged-to-win, then usually very few are skilled, so there is usually someone around you that will give you villages for good trades if you are willing to put the work in.
This whole discussion is on the wisdom of a losing tribe barb-munching. Your arguements are great, however for the most part they dont apply to a losing tribe. They mostly can be used for tribes at a stalemate, but not in the situations where tribes adopt policies of barb-munching.
Again, there are definately times where taking a barb or ten is a wise course of action, and sometimes (though rare) it is wise for a losing player to take barbs. It is possible that there is even a time when it is wise for a losing tribe to take lots of barbs, however if there is, the number of times where it is unwise far outnumbers it. Therfore I pulled you up on the comment that "Its the best and easiest course of action to take when F.G has a ridiculously overwhelming advantage by merging to win" - it is almost always not the best, and while it is easy, it's easy in the same sense that it is easy to lose the game.