The Golden Path to The Golden Wisdom

Ongoing topic with thoughts coming to mind from Jack Daniels whispers

1. "One should come to matters of war with special attention. It is not only who has more troops, provs, gold,friends or time. One should understand his weak and strong points, as those of his opponents. Knowing your limitation is half of plan. Knowing enemy limitations- is another half. Thus whenever possible try to observe on maps as many wars as possible and draw conclusion from them. With time you will see patterns that emerge from those observations. Matching your opponents skills to a known patterns is a great success, even greater if you know how to counter them. Thus I would advice to do a proxy wars against you intended opponents, without committing full power. Watch, analyze, learn and counter- that is a way of a warrior."

2. As such second topic comes to mind- how much troops send to war. I would advise against sending more than 10% to the proxy wars and more than 50-60% to a offensive war. If you cannot win with half and army then you can be sure that after you commit full force third party will emerge to reap the fruits of your war. In a process you too can lose. Do not wage offensive wars if you are not certain of victory with half of the force. Try to win quickly as enemy is closer to his offices,barracks and factories while your logistic lines are longer. Look for decisive battles with minimal losses to quickly dislodge enemy mech armies.

3. Defensive wars are another topic. In general they indicate you have less troops and resources. While in general you should keep mobile reserve of 30-40 % behind the lines, so you do not finish like Poland in 1939 squeezed by Germany and USSR. This reserve shows also your opponent that he cannot count on the quick victory. I would advise against big battles as you main goal is stalling enemy till he is not able to sustain war any more. You have factories, barracks in place while he has long logistic lines. His morale also goes down with time so there is no point to fight him in first 3-4 days. it does not mean you should not defend- you do not wat him to get possession of forts and factories so leaving garrisons of 10-20 troops in every town is a good way fo denying him of any infrastructure. At the same time you gather your newly produced troops for counter move when his armies will be weak on morale and low on reinforcements. You can be surprised how his power can go 30-40% down during 3-4 days of fighting. There is nor rush. Provinces are not so important as armies. With many provs and 0 armies you cannot continue fight, with 1 prov and many armies- you can still win. Keep it in mind before you go next time to a frontier battle and lose all troops against enemy who could be weaker in 3-4 days.

Post question below if you have any. If answers are not part of future divagations I will answer, otherwise I will ask you for patience.

4. Arty fighting. Hmm apparently easy way to defeat opponents. Dont you agree? We get arts, have more than enemy, do some HNR ( hit and run). Maybe even HNR2 with microjump. But in the end we need to analyze what I wrote above. There are countries that want to win quickly and countries that want to stall conflict waiting for enemy to be slow down and weakened. Now arty is 1.5 att both in range and close combat so it is 25% better than 1 inf 100% morale. Is it much- enough to shell incoming infs and kill them in melee if forces are comparable. Situation changes if we have tanks, HT and Cavs attacking alongside infs.

So in total it is second worst land unit when it comes to dmg. ( I am not counting balloons here :-0)

In speed is second worst only to RGs. Interestingly has same speed as balloons so it is advised to join them.

so what is the solution, how to defeat huge stacks on infs?

first think if you really have to face them. . They are so slow they are slowing down entire enemy stack. Enemy will have to send smaller raiding parties from the main stack ( TABOR) to take ground around. This is you opportunity to hit his raiding parties with your forces without fear of being attacked by arts.

Maintain full control of area around enemy TABOR. Deny his visibility and reinforcements. Deny him free move. This will force him to move even slower as a single stack.

Now some say RGs are good against ARTs- RGs are good against buildings, not units. Plus they are slow and in the end TABOR will catch up with your RGs...

Another limitation for arty based army is it shoots once an hour. It is not as good in eliminating enemy forces as planes which can hit enemy troops every 5-10 minutes ( 6-12 attacks per hour). Take it into consideration when you want to destroy enemy TABOR. Following enemy arts with melee stack from the closest direction minimize casualties to minimum.

Another thing is using speed against TABORS. They are to slow to react - you can easily bypass them and tap into enemy territory with your fast melee stacks taking down his double provinces, factories, forts, line of communication. Even better if you have hidden force on another side of enemy country or secret ally who can use distance to his advantage, Before TABOR will withdraw and reach new defensive position it will take days or even weeks ( 500 maps) . Thus I would opt fo surrounding and controlling area around TABOR blocking all reinforcements and ways of quick escape.

If we have opportunity we should use natural barriers like sea, narrow peninsulas , lakes to corner enemy like in the pic below where I would like to pin down enemy against Russian arctic sea. The broader attack - the better chance of success as enemy will not be able to send fast units from two northern stacks to secure withdrawal route.

It could turn out that enemy arts will have to withdraw from south Italy to North Italy- that is a good spot to shower them a little with some BBSes and RGs from safe location. But the best way to kill arts is still bombers. Have you ever seen arts attacking planes? 25 speed on home territory, 8.75 speed on enemy territory against 144 speed for bombers and 216 for fighters ( any territory). It is respectively 17 and 25 difference in speed . You can sit you bombers in a town that enemy wants to attack with his TABOR and keep bombing his arts. Enemy will probably use split - so keep switching target into main stack. I believe you have around 15-30 sec to switch targets. But please be present during bombing because if you hit 1 inf runner your bombers will come back home and wait like a sitting ducks for enemy arts. You are offline- you better stop attacking and withdraw to a new position. Anyway - before enemy gets to a shooting distance and will try to destroy airfield you will have couple of bombing runs. Be active, switch targets and get some of his troops killed. 50 bombers can kill around 100-400 infs in one bombing depending on a stack composition. So even if you have o withdraw you will still cause significant dmg to enemy. Keep some fighters to kill incoming ACs and secure bombardment area with a patrol.

That said we move to another way of killing arts. If you encircle them and deny them any movement - start gathering your stack around together with planes. Cavs, tanks ht and inf will decimate enemy TABOR and will pin down enemy TABOR denying him possibility to do HNR or splitting from bomber runs. Approach enemy from the fastest direction and keep smaller forces around to make sure he will not break down from encirclement by sending ACs and cavs around. Fighters are tend to be the best to take down enemy raiding parties.

And a final advise. There are accounts in that game that are active 24h per day. You can be sure they are breaking TOS and RULES but still we have to defeat them . Way to do that is easy. HNR guys have 1 shoot per hour. They are ok fighting 1-2 fronts. But.. when multiple smaller nations descend upon them from various directions there is no way they will time their HNR properly on all those fronts. 5++ fronts means basically death to any country. I myself faced one 15 fronts - but I used airforce and melee, so story was different. Creating multiple small armies we disrupt enemy focus. Arts cannot be quickly thrown around. Small agile forces should infiltrate enemy area avoiding any kind of battle. Aim is to destroy economic base of enemy not army. So you attack when town are poorly defended or empty. You withdraw if you see enemy force rushing to intercept you. Enemy goal will be to destroy ASAP all those tiny forces. You deny him that by denying fight. Sometimes you will run into enemy force of similar size- we can BLOCKADE it by standing in front of it but avoiding battle. Enemy does not really want to attack as forces are similar but he does not want to leave town to you either. Blockading his forces here allows operational space for you other comrades. Stay close but avoid battle - you do not want enemy to get into battle with you as you are already winning and waiting longer only benefits you and allies.

There are God of War out there who are able to use 20-50 armies at the same time to overwhelm bigger opponents with mobility. They basically do what allies would do, small attacks all around the place, but with their own forces. It s good to keep those Gods on your side.

now I will go more into details about splitting, overwhelming , blockading in other articles but for now remember that HNR player is just lvl 1 player- very easy to kill if you know how to do it.

GL HF

How to wage war in a safe manner.

Now you know how to fight smaller opponents and bigger opponents. You also know what to use to achieve a goal. What you do not know is - when to attack.

Best answer is - do not attack an let others attack for you. Joining as a third, fourth or fifth party gives you benefit of using all vulnerabilities of all sides engaged. it is sometimes better to join a war and help your would-be target repel stronger attacker. I tend to support AI nations as they are no danger to me and allow me to wage proxy wars. Fighting in lands of allies is also a good idea. Remember one thing- you need to have province with airfield next to a front-line if you want to use planes. if enemy GM bombs your allied airfields your planes will be sitting ducks. Never/ever trust allies to maintain airfields- always take it personally.

now you know that having troops on the ships keeps their morale high- this is the best way to preserve morale of expeditionary forces on seas/lakes. You deploy hem when needed. But you can also establish ring of military bases around the globe ire. in Suez, Gibraltar, Panama, Singapore,English Channel, Bering Strait and Akaba Strait to have most important crossings under control. Keep planes there to monitor movement of subs. Plus they will allow to keep morale of your troops high.

Using bases and fleets to keep expeditionary forces in top morale launch proxy wars around the world influencing outcome of wars the way you want it. Sometimes just presence of your troops marching at enemy border is enough to force him to sign peace treaty with your ally or country you want to save.

As there are two ways of winning the map.

1.Most of people goes for rapid expansion and conquering everything and everyone. If you keep momentum - you are sure to win. If you lose momentum - well it would twice as hard to win especially if you lost all offensive army.

2.Second is controlling map and stopping expansion of potential opponents while supporting progress of your allies. Focus on small but powerful army of mechs. get barracks lvl 1 everywhere and when the time comes open your barracks to spit out infs and cavs in milllions. Control map gamestyle is best suited for people of lvl 2 and higher as if led by diplomatic leaders it will lead to creation of farmland ( coalition of farms of equal size) easy to pick up by skilled player one by one. And as none of farmland members is big enough to stop pro-player outcome is rather easy to foreseen.

You will meet a lot of farmland leaders with no skills whatsoever how to lead such a coalition. Beware of false leaders as they will be your downfall. We have a saying here : if someone is good in talking, he is useless in fighting. And that is true for 99% of players as some fighters learned also diplomatic skills.

So having that in mind you follow you agenda let it be gameplay 1 or gameplay 2.

How you decide when to join. Well - it is easy - if you can dispatch 25-40 % of your armies and win it is worth your consideration because even losing this portion of your army does not lead to disaster and you can still continue game to top 3. So always remember not to commit more than half of your forces and even in defensive war keep huge portion of army in reserve for possible opportunities like counterattack, conquering rich neighbour or defending for backstabbing vultures. I believe 50-60 % involvement in defensive war should be max while you keep 40-50% of army free to operate under you initiative. As in defensive war you are mostly forced to respond to enemy advance and his initiative. To win it is always good to have some freedom for your own initiative this is why we need our Strategic Reserves ( check operation Uranus)

someone once asked how to win wars: prepare a lot of resources, a lot of reserves, gather intel and save a lot of real time. play on minimum activity all time. When the time come use all those reserves to your advantage. Make sure you can increase your activity 10-30 times as you will need it to conduct critical strikes

play inactive role when you are online to fool your opponent

use joint movement orders when you are afk to confuse opponent even further

let him think he has advantage and unleash all stored time, army and resource reserves when he is most vulnerable

tricking opponent into thinking they are well prepared for a war is your best advantage as it is mostly too late for them to change strategy when they started to attack. While on another hand you had enough time to prepare counterstrike and needed resources.

Controlling provs during the war

As good as it is to conquer provinces and keep them it is at the same time destroying your offensive power and taking away initiative from you if you are offensive player putting emphasis on the rapid movement and deployment.

every garrison has to be around 10+ troops strong to hold town for sure. Those troops are not available to you and stay way behind main army . They will also lose a lot of morale.

We all know only certain number of provinces will rebel and switch sides and numbers are low. I believe that around 5- 10% of them will flip sides only.

So why to bother? As it could be good idea to leave garrisons next to neutral countries where provinces allow you to keep provinces necessary for transport of reinforcements, other provinces can go to neutral countries as this weakens your enemy and strengthens you. You may ask- how is straightens me? Provinces does not belong to your opponent any more, it would be hard for him to get it back even if he defeats your army and most obvious- you do not pay upkeep for that unproductive province. Below certain morale level provinces are eating more than they are producing- please refer to spreadsheet : Compiled Numbers:Temporary.

So I would not to worry to much about provinces- your main goal should be destruction of enemy economical base by using scorched earth strategy and trying to take control of factories. Rest does not matter . I had wars where I haven't scratched enemy army but I destroyed his economical base circumnavigating between his big stacks. Such a big army will not last long without grain and oil....

But lets take into consideration we would like to invest in those taken provinces. There is no point in leaving garrisons. All you have to do is to leave 1 inf next to a town. Even if province will rebel it will be empty and easy to take by your 1 trooper + you will get daily resource production from that province for capturing it. Not bad, not bad at all.

I sometimes use that strategy with AIs. Take a town, then withdraw. Spend resources. AI takes back province , get almost no resources from that as at 25% morale province is not producing to much. You can always hide resources too on the market or in constructions. Then you come back when a town is empty once more. I believe I will have to write separate article about farming AIs . Generally resources free of charge straight into your storage.

Precision strike

(How to use ranged units to the maximum)

most of you noticed situations where 50+ arts, Lcs, Rgs or BSes is not able to kill 1-2 infs.

This is due to a battle engine randomness which can give you dmg 0. We call it factor X tho everyone in Bytro refuses to acknowledge existence of that. Nevertheless 0 dmg is possible and you do not want your 50 Bses to waste a shot. So waht do we do?

We use Last Stand Mechanic which allows smaller units to deal more dmg and at the same time take less dmg. You move your BS' stack forward and divide from it single BS every couple of seconds shooting at enemy. Eventually one of your first 5 BSes will kill those 1-2 infs or whatever is there. This will leave you with 45+ BSes ready to shoot something else. To make sure nothing will merge you keep all troops swimming but swimming to different directions or at different speeds ( you can add infs to slow down those 1 BS). Anyway - when you destroy obstacle it is good idea to merge all units which used shoot but keep them separate from the main stack that is still ready to fire.

Goal here is to save salvo of most of units for more interesting/ more juicy target that lie behind obstacle. Using precision strike can allow us to destroy multiple obstacle which are left by running away enemy stack. You need some skills, calculations, time, patience and mouse to do precision strike but it is worth it. Is it shown in use in one of my videos and how much it can help to destroy enemy plan of retreat.

I hope this was informative to you

see you in the next one topic

Going Tall vs Going Wide

pro centuries going wide ( rush, quick expansion, conquering everything that is within your reach) was valid strategy in bytro games

lately, because of popularity update, going wide is very problematic because bots keep attacking you

there is a way to counter it - surround yourself with friend pack and be insulated from AIs invading your country

you surround yourself with 2-3 layers of allies.

This gives you quite good protection and a lot of shared maps which raise ofc your popularity amongst AI nations as they see you as a safe bet

not sure if this is still the case but couple of months ago you were able to join any map with unlimited number of friends . The biggest friednpack i have seen was counting around 50 accounts on 500 map ( 10% of all accounts on that map)

That strategy is valid if you have a lot of allies but there is counter strategy called going tall

going tall has some disadvantages : you are easy target for gold spies , spy destroying infrastructure , limited number of provinces which you need to protect by any cost but

at the same time it takes less time to manage and not to many people see you as a threat

stick to your friends, help in wars, build mostly mech units with barracks and workshop closed but ready to spawn infantry and cavs any time, stockpile resources . If you manage t correctly and wars will be declared upon you will keep high popularity and high military power

I would advise annoying the bigger players on map so they declare war on you . That way you get bonus popularity from being attacked plus a lot of provinces to be conquered

most of big guys have no skills in fighting except HNR and unlimited activity. Those players will do poorly against coordinate attack of couple of tall empires which are much smaller but better managed. As long as big blob will have to split his defenses he will not be able to win a war. Focus on guerilla warfare and avoid big battles. Follow Thrawn's doctrine

Good speed

couple shorts:

1. if someone is big but never fights with active humans 1 vs 1 - you can be sure he will be an easy target for conquest

2. if someone is using HNR and hopping for attrition war - avoid his main armies and flank him whenever you can moving sometimes between his armies. Sometimes taking down his factories and double provs is enough.

3. Fleet save: Take a second breath, withdraw troops to safe locations , add targets to create impression of activity and make a chain of moves that will result in troops being in precise positions where yo uwant them to be when you come back online

4. If you press an attack make sure not to overextend.. Do not get to far away from you logistic lines, make sure you scouted area around with spies, planes and cars. Only when sure where strong and weak spots are- renew attack.

5. If you go to war , make sure to have plenty of ress and money. Also do not use whole army as you will not have a bargain chip in peace talks . You will become easy target for backstabbing without secondary army and reinforcements located in multiple rendezvous points.

6. If you can- create conditions in which Bots and others will fight your wars. No point in wasting your real time if someone else is happy to do the job for you. As long as you have your army - you are in the game even without ress and provs. Keep it safe , especially mechs, by any means as this is the only leverage you have in that game.

Quote from Rayy07

What if we're about to lose our capital?

that probably means you made big mistakes and you will have to sacrifice a lot of troops to protect capital

As troops are more valuable than provs and capital, it is worth checking how many provinces you have left - if no too many then there is no point protecting capital

if many like hundreds, then probably you want to mvoe it somewhere else while protecting existing one till relocation is complete

worst case- you can GM new capital or trade it to your friend to avoid penalties

another golden idea that could help you become better players

as you know most of players are afraid to fight 1-1 as they are not sure of their skills. They are right- you always are weak in fighting inf you do not fight. Only way to change it is to fight , even if you lose . That is experience that will carry on to the next map while winning without a single, proper war or battle give you now carryover to the next map.

So how to get about the topic. Best idea would be to read what is available in forum , reddit, watch ytubes and maybe play test map with friends where you set up password so noone random can join. This way you will ensure no random players will be hurt. Test what you learnt, write down additional questions, as k in yt,reddit, forum.

Second step is fighting on maps. Even if you do not have to fight because you are winning anyway it would be good to have at least 1 war against opponent same size and army as you. This will give you estimation how good you are.

Another good tip is to ally with veteran players as you can learn way more playing alongside them that against them. There is common misconception that veteran players do not play with newbies. This is ofc propaganda of weak players who want all map focus their efforts on destroying veteran players. Veteran players in many cases are also looking for partners in that see of newbie players. Some are even looking to recruit people to their alliances like Boot Brigade. So before you give shared maps and coalition to completely random newbies who want you to fight veteran players - ask yourself what is there for you in that silly deal. I always have 3-6 empty spaces in my coalition, it only depends on you if you want to join or not. I have not lost 500 maps by backstabbing allies, but by protecting them to the last soldier.

Another thing you would like to try is playing alliance games , maybe alliance tournaments which are faster and shorter than regular maps. This will give you general idea how your whole team communicates and work together. Coordination and timing are the hardest skills to master but with time you will get it and you will choose leader- someone who can write the plan of map and coordinate efforts of whole team towards finishing that plan.

In the end , after 600 maps, 12 000 wars and over 100 000 large scale battles you will become God of War like me and will be able to play your own games on completely new rules. You will weaken yourself on maps to allow other grows bigger and stronger than you so you can check if you can win with 2 times, 5,10 or 15 times bigger opponents and armies. It is possible with current mechanic. You will ie limit yourself to 500 provinces on 500 map and control all other players with less than 10% of map provinces. Newest case study suggest you can use 300 provinces to achieve full control of 500 map so it is less than 6 % of provinces. Maybe do not use any diplomacy like me to weaken yourself even more. Maybe even take afk for 1,2 weeks of 40 days as I often do in such a maps. This lessens tensions on maps and allows other to go about their business . I found Map Mesopotamia best place to practise such a weaken position. You have initial 10 provinces that cannot be conquered. You build your base their and army and whenever you want to fight or test your skills you go out of your lair and fight . When fighting is over you withdraw to 10 initial provinces. never tried- you should

I hope this was helpful and will allow many of you become real fighters as we lack those in bytro games. Metagamers , simcity and diplomatic talkers take over and every player with fighter instincts is worth 10 of them. If you think you have predisposition to be a fighter contact my recruitment office or me personally on map and we will put it to the test.

Buddha out