Strategy: Pure Hawk

[Zephyrus]

Hawks are likely one of your most versatile assets in the game. They can be your key to domination. So could everything else, but hawks have advantages. Hawks are some of the few buildings you can go 100% of. The others being barracks and foragers, but that's a different strategy altogether. If you're reading this, it's because you need a strategy, or perhaps are curious about the inner workings of hawks. I'm not the best at this, but I'll teach the basics.

First, understand that hawks have some distinct advantages and disadvantages.

- Going full huts leaves you very vulnerable.
+ You want to be attacked, and your vulnerability can be played as a strength.
- You have the most resources, and will get sacked.
+ You have access to a variety of ways to stop sacks.
- You are full hawks. Hawks desert. Often.
+ You are land thin mostly. Few get motivation to attack you.
- Your rank is not going to be good.
+ You can fake a bad networth.
- You are seen as a newb, often.
+ You get to prove you're not when you buy out the private market repeatedly.
- Hawking seems not to be too good with troops, except when you make land grabs.
+ You can perform many hawk missions to make up for this.
- You aren't too powerful in army strength.
+ You can loot.

(like everything else, to be continued)

[Ruddertail]

Er, just a note. If you are a decent player, being mistaken for a newb is not necesarily(sp?) a bad thing. People will tend to underestimate you, and think they can push you around. Which is when you murder/poisin/destroy structures, loot a bunch, take a bunch of land with some troops you bought, and then buy out the public market, and watch them fail hoplesley(sp?) when they try to retal...

[Zephyrus]

Protection is simple. I've got the same strategy for protection no matter what I do, and for most strategies, it works well. Take out a max loan. Scout for 25 turns. Rinse. Repeat. When you've used your turns, retire for the day. This is, of course, with your given turns at the start, all 200 of them.

When you've gotten full turns after your original starting turns, it's time to leave protection. Build (as the title of the strategy may imply) 100% huts. That should get you around 3 or 4k of huts. Then, write all of your remaining turns 50 at a time. You shouldn't need to intervene much as you've been building resources while scouting, but if your resources go low, do hawk loot and scout to make up for them. use all 500 turns. Log off now. You're done.

Now, you made yourself free land. Intentionally. Especially at round's start, but quite so as well later on, people will have land greed. You will be hit to about 1/2 of your previous land. Heh. You want this.

Remember, you gain hawks with huts. More huts gain hawks faster and also will net you more runes from various factors. However, costs of missions are not related. They are based on your current land. You just lost land, making missions cheap, but they won't get you any less because you've still gotten the same amount of hawks.

Seize the day. Loot and forage with your hawks, focusing on cash. Food is needed to support your empire. Buy from the pubmarket. Here's the thing. When you hawk forage, you buy food at 21 each. That is, your hawk forage yield is 1/21 of hawk loot. Public market food is often around 15. Imagine the savings. but don't go overboard. You only need enough to feed your hawks. Put your cash into stocks. You are done for another day.

Your runes will last you for a while. During that while, store cash. Don't worry about much else. However, they will run out sooner or later. This is when you make an agressive run.

(to be continued, later today if time and parents allow)

[Zephyrus]

By the time you run out of runes, you should have amassed a few hundred mil food for upkeep and several bil cash in stock. Take about three or four bil off the stock market. Time to make a run of agression. Decide which troop you will use. Hares are always an offensive advantage, but everyone has them and you may be fighting a losing war there. Otters are better for surprise. Mice aren't bad, because remember, you won't pay their upkeep for long and no one has enough mice. Compare prices and buy from the cheaper of pub or pvt market. You need around a mil otters, 1.5 mil hares, or 3 mil mice. Perhaps less even if you've got some good targets. Buy them.

Start attacking with specialized troop attacks. Begin by hitting those around you who have a large amoutn of land. Hit hard. Build huts. As those huts fill, retaliate against any attacks you recieved during your peaceful phase. Troop attack only, though. Message them and let them know you're not a land farm.

After using all of your troops, dispose of them. Private market, followed by the seppuku mission.

Write out your remaining turns, looting and foraging with hawks only to keep everything from falling below zero and costing you losses.

[ohmyjapan16]

Nice guide, but I still don't get the public/private market situation.

[Ruddertail]

One thing I would do differently, store your troops on the public market, or, if you're in a clan, the clan market. This way, you won't have to buy more on the bazzar every time you need them. Store them at these prices. Mice: $1,000, Squirrels: $2,000, Hares: $3,000, Otters: $4,000. This way, if they are bought, the it will be at a profit. Selling on the bazzar gives you a loss.

ohmyjapan16, what don't you understand about the public and private market/bazzar bit?

[ohmyjapan16]

How you use them with the hawk strategy.

One more thing: I tried it before and my question is if you are supposed to be negative in food and income.

[Ruddertail]

Yes, you are supposed to be in the red. In a hawk strat, you don't build markets of farms, so you produce very little food and cash...

Could you elaborate? Do you mean what you do with the market/bazzar, or how you are able to use them, or what?

[Fresh Water Fighters]

What does the seppuku mission do???

[ohmyjapan16]

Yes, you are supposed to be in the red. In a hawk strat, you don't build markets of farms, so you produce very little food and cash...

Could you elaborate? Do you mean what you do with the market/bazzar, or how you are able to use them, or what?

Yea like how you use them effectively when buying/selling troops.

[ohmyjapan16]

What does the seppuku mission do???

Kills all your troops, I believe all workers and some hawks.

[Ruddertail]

Well, when you run a hawk strat, your only building is huts. Because of this, you produce no troops, forcing you to buy them. When buying, it is best to buy at the lowest price possible. Your bazzar will normaly have the lowest price around, but not always. When hawk strating, you don't want to have many troops around except when attacking for land.

After you have made your attacks to get land, I advise selling your troops on the public or clan market. After a time period, you can recall your troops from the market at a loss, between 15 - 30%. (I think. It might be 10 - 30% I can't remember, which is bad, because the varying losses idea was mine.) How much you lose depends on your networth. The higher your net, the greater your losses when withdrawing your troops... When selling your troops on the market, you will always have them avalible, providing they aren't bought. You can insure this by charging rediculusly high prices. If you sell them at the bazzar, and then have to buy them back again, you are incuring a monetary loss, plus the troops and hawks you would lose using seppaku if you follow what Zeph suggested. Another benifit of selling troops on the market is that your bazzar doesn't have an unlimeted suply of troops. You can empty it, and it takes time to refill. If your troos are on the market, you don't normaly have to wory about it...

Did that help any?

[ohmyjapan16]

Yes it did very much, thank you. Now another question is are you making land grabs so you can build more huts? And when you're running a hawk strat do you ever get the land and maintain it or do you always sell your troops?

[Urran Voh]

What I do is start out building 20% Markets and Foragers, then 75% Huts. The last 5% is Barracks for now. Then after I gain around 10 -15K acres, I destroy all Barracks and reduce Markets and Foragers to 5% and 95% is Huts. Then I buy around 200K Hares to attack and gain land with. Then I build all Huts. When I have 200 turns left, I either Trade or Write for 50 turns to gain Loyalty, then use Hawk Loot until I run out of Loyalty. Then I buy out the Bazaar until my next run. On my next run, I sell the most of each troop I can (except Hares, keep about 40% of the ones you have) on the Bazaar to make at least some of the money back. Then I sell the rest on the Pub or Clan Market. Then I just attack with my Hares or Hawks (only if you have to have the land) and build Huts and run turns to gain loyalty and hawk loot and buy the troops for the next run.

I've made a bigger army faster using this than I could running Juggernaut. I like it a lot . You should be in Southsward since your Hawks get a +15% bonus there.

[ohmyjapan16]

Yay I get it! Thanks guys. One more thing: when you sell on the pub. market, do you get the money when they go on the market or when somebody buys them?