a few thoughts on optimal strategy

[Ascent]

Quick note regarding military ambulances, mine cost $84,000, no valor. Did you mean another unit?

You are right, it is not a valor unit, but it has the desired properties for a defense only unit - tiny attack and great defense therefore good value and easy to keep away from fights. The military ambulance is perfect in fact because while stacking them up with cash I am saving the valor for MLRS.

Another thing I do is making sure that I obtain units which are appropriate for my level... i.e.: stealth frigates and super hornets would certainly give a great boost to my A/D but are overkill and expensive to lose because I have no meatshields for them.

For example, I look at my stats and then buy a unit... Then I look at the stats again. If the unit purchased does not increase my stats that means that my unit strength avarage is higher than that unit's stats... therefore no sense getting it. If it adds to my stats but only little (2-4 points) I may get them as meatshields. If it adds around 10 points or so I will use that unit to raise the stats. If it adds way too much (over 15 points) I can't protect it with meatshileds anymore. { these point values are valid for my current level only, i.e.: military ambulances add around 11 points to my defense each which means my avarage defense unit strength is 7-8 points now}

[Deskjockey]

I personally don't see the point to trying to prevent the loss of every single one of your valor units, especially now that funzio introduced the ranking system that, potentially, can net you tens of thousands of valor points if you reach the highest rank. Also, remember that you get valor points for every PvP attack or raid you do. I think it's better to get loads of meat shields to act as cannon fodder in defense of your valor units when you attack. This works most of the time (but not all, I'll readily admit). And, contrary to what you seem to think, meat shields don't need to be close to Your average attack density to work. For the longest time my meat shields were the desert leaders from the first map, which had an attack score of 1, but they did an excellent job of sacrificing the self to protect my 140 SH with their ridiculously high stats (by comparison). The trick was to have 300 or so desert leaders engaged in each battle.

In addition, there is another flaw in your plan--military ambulances are not valor units, they are cash units. The MLRS is the only valor nit that is biased toward defense instead of attack, so you'll have to concentrate on that one. That said, it's also one of the higher-casualty valor units, so you will still lose some while defending (although not nearly as many as when attacking).

[JohnnyR]

Beside the main goal of protecting high valor units, I think the idea of meat shields being of decent stats is more to keep defense units from entering battle than anything. You need meat shields to protect SHs and SFs, but their stats don't matter so much in this goal. Preventing Sea Scouts, Military Ambulances, Global Hawk Drones from entering battle is intermediate to end game strategy, however, and in this case higher stats definitely are important. This is why snipers are really great at keeping every intermediate defense unit out of the attack group, other than that-stats are simply to keep density up. Also, I find it is difficult to overwhelm the opponent if there are 300 low grade meat shields, however the higher the stat, the more powerful and easier time to find opponents to raid, attack, and destroy, lol. If there is any sort of defense strategy going on, meat shields play a large part in protecting it.

[Deskjockey]

Johnny--I agree with you fully on the need to use meat shields that don't dilute your army density and exluding defensive units from attacks. I phased out my desert leaders around level 40 or so, once I started building up enough higher-stat units to ramp up my army's density and also began buying units intended only for defensive purposes. Now I rely on ATs and Minisubs as meat shields (also have about 300 of them combined) and will soon (probably within a couple of weeks) begin buying tons of SEALS to replace them, as I'm no longer very keen on the XP I get from farming meat shields.

I just think that Ascent's viewpoint on density and meat shields is not correct, and the logic he uses to evaluate his purchases (as well as the math), according to his second post, is flawed. There is no such thing as having a unit that has stats that are "too high" for your level or "too high" to be defended by meat shields. The way he goes about calculating density and deciding which units to buy also is not entirely correct. Not seeing a change in your attack/defense stats after buying a unit doesn't mean that your unit strength average is higher than the unit that you bought--your A/D stats are not averages, they are totals. In this case, it means that the unit you bought is either too weak to make it past the cutoff for your army (say the lowest unit you bring into battle has an attack score of 10 and the one you bought has an attack score of 8, for example--in this case, your attack average could easily be 15 but you could have bought a unit with an attack score of 12 and still seen your attack score go up) or that it tied with your lowest scoring unit and therefore didn't raise the over attack score.

To get your exact army density, take your attack score and divide it by the number of units you take into battle (same goes for your defense density). On a practical level, denity gives you Seoul information regarding how efficiently you are using the finite number of attack/defense slots you have to go into battle, but Ascent is neither calculating it right not using it the way it should be used.

[JohnnyR]

Gotcha DJ, you are completely correct in regards to the math and fuzzy logic there.

[Hellstorm]

I disagree that your nation boost only holds up for the first two attacks, and that you are just free meat after two fend offs. The Nation boost is a permanent boost. The weird part is that similar stats attacker and defender will often just go back and forth, win lose win lose etc. there are many unknown factors never revealed to us, so it's hard to draw a clear strategy on that. Also important to know that for raiding totally different rules apply than for attacking. Somebody with lower stats will always be able to raid your buildings but unable to beat you in a fight.
The ambulances are a great cheap way to build a strong defense, one should have ambulances as the lowest defense unit in stock. After I have replaced my last 100 global drones I'll be all ambulances as the weakest defense unit, with 350 allies. That makes a huge difference, even most of the strong gold player with more allies can't crack that, along with a lvl 9 composite.

[Ascent]

Thank you for your comments You guys are right on the details, I should have used better terms to describe my thoughts. Yes, the "avarages" word is totally wrong. The value I named as avarage in fact is simply the cutoff line below which units do not make the cut for the attacking force.

Since I am above level 100 I can take 2000 units to fight and use 2000 units for defense.

My goal is to maximize the density of both of these forces, but in a way that they are independent from each other. I want to use valor for the defense army and cash for the attack force.

To shield the defense army (meaning those 2000 units that will be in play) my weakest attack unit will have to have a higher attack value than any of my defense units'.

When I was talking about the meat shields' having not too much points over my cutoff line (weakest units which will make the cut) I think it is obvious why:

- If what I buy does not change the A/D stats displayed under my profile, that means I buying **** that will not be in play (falls outside the 2000 strongest units). So it is a waste.

- If what I buy increase the stats by a lot, that means I am buying strong units which will likely be expensive. The more expensive a unit is the less bang it gives for a buck. So I am trying to be miserly in paying the least cash/stat which will still give me an increase.

- If what I buy increases by a moderate amount, that means I am replacing the weakest units within those who do make the cut (fall within the 2000 limit) with the units I am purchasing. These I call the meat shields.

Meatshields have to make the cut otherwise they do not play and thus can't prtect the premium units, which we all have one way or another. I too bought quite a few super hornets which I am not eager to lose... and we all have loot units from battles as well as events, which are high in value.

So basically what I am doing is gradually upgrading from weaker cash meatshields to stronger ones (as I can now afford more expensive ones) thus increasing the density of my attack force.

On the other side, I am increasing the density of my defense by getting the ambulances, and later the MLRS to have the maximum density out of obtainable units... but in a way that my attack losses would never compromise my defense strength as the two armies are entirely separate. My attack forces will never play defense and vice versa.

As to wether the rankings game will actually be profitable as far as getting Valors we should do the math. I am using snipers and SEALs as meatshields right now. Every single battle I lose as minimum 2 snipers, and maximum 2 snipers and 2 SEALs or subs. That means I am paying about 40,000 - 60,000 cash on avarage for each bullet fired.

If you add up the total valors you could possibly win via the ranking game, it comes to about: 80,000 valor points.

Someone did the math on this forum, that to reach the 19,000,000 rank points you need to attack 200,000 times.

Using my current expenditure rate (and we are lowballing here) it will cost me 2,000,000,000 two billion cash to earn a measly 80,000 valor points (if I only lose one sniper per fight)

80,000 valor would pay for 53 elite ops jets for a 5,300 attack and 3445 defense value in total.

2 billion cash would buy me 555 Stealth bombers for a 27,750 attack and 8,880 defense value.

I say **** ranking valor

[Ascent]

I disagree that your nation boost only holds up for the first two attacks

I was talking about the "defense skill points" not nation boosts.

As to raiding, I haven't spent much thought on that yet besides noticing, that yes, I can raid people I can't beat.

How to defend against raids? I don't.

I collect the money in time... and if I am late, then I made a nice gift for someone

[Hellstorm]

You have the right strategy for sure. That is exactly what I am pursuing. Density for both, attack and defense units. And like you I shifted to the mlrs as my strong defense core, now it will be my goal to equip my attack army with at least higher stats than the mslr's due to their high casualty in attacks. That however takes forever. What I'm actually working on right now is the density of my defense army, so I can calmly lay back and build up attack.

[Ascent]

I have a dream
I have a dream of having 2000 MLRS and 2000 Demolitions as my army

Now let's see how much it will cost me:

2000 x 300 = 600,000 valor for the MLRS
2000 x 200,000 = 400,000,000 for the Demolitions

I currently have 86,000 valor saved up, so I am 15% there
I make about 15 million a day so it would take 26 days to get there

What would be the stats?

2000 x 20 = 40,000 attack
2000 x 37 = 74,000 defense

Currently I have no MLRS and no Demolitions and still have to do 4 upgrades each to be able to buy them.

My stats are: Level 103 Attack 17651 Defense 34850 (with level 1 boost buildings and level 4 composite and about 1200 ambulances)

My hourly income is $560,026

Let's see what can be done in 30 days

see you then...