Wei must be eliminated.

I feel as long as there are 2 fronts to fight we will never win. In my honest opinion i believe if we push north for wei, while still holding those territories that border our capital, we can split the land.
And create a more stable foot-hold on our territory. Push north and let Shu spread there lands too far for them to protect it all. Then we make strong efforts to gut Shu down the middle and destroy them from within. As it stands SoV is holding dominance in Shu, and Eternity, in wei, is in shambles.
We need to take out wei while we have the chance to gain more lands. Otherwise Shu will hold everything but what we manage to hold onto. Which may not be much. I believe we should do what is best for wu, and territory is what we need at this time.

The more land we have the thinner we spread ourselves out atm.

We need to silence the Lamb, We have seen that Shu is more preoccupied with other things then helping there clainnies, they come asking us for help with stuff there legion should be helping with.

Valemorah thinks she has control of her WeiShui Sheep, it's not going to last. Wei will realize soon enough the Shu mentality when they get back stabbed like Wu did! Remember when they where supposedly working with us? we where asked to put Shu on PvP protection then 5 minutes later Shu was attacking us!

And with all that Hades puts into this game you think they want to be 2nd best to SoV and take orders from Valemorah?

Right now I like the idea of out smarting them, Shu and Wei will turn on each other soon! But we need to learn and remember! we thought that Shu had a major break down within it's legions, they played there bluff and it worked for now.

Once those few little brain cells kick in on the Wei side and they realize they are being played, they won't follow Valemorah's orders anymore.

Use this analogy to think of Shu and Wei...[The Lion King]... Shu (Valemorah) is like Scar, and Wei are the hyenas... We seen how that worked! that is the relationship between Shu and Wei.

Thats not necessarily true Torchy, getting land =/= thinly spread forces. Here's my logic:

Taking land should be a strategic decision, not a "let's do it because we can". The latter is a major failing on the current Shu strategy. You spread your resources thinly when you expand your military front against a given enemy. Let me repeat that again you must spread resources thinner when your front (ie. contiguous enemy territories) are increased due to the land you took.

This is why we got owned SO BADLY last week. The land we took increase our contiguous front at a 1:3 ratio. We should never be extending ourselves past a 1:2 without explicit cause.

Now, going forward - what does this mean?

First of all this game is all about dominion. It's what gives you the advantage in state wars even before we take into account number or respective power of the players. If you win a bid to attack the territory you bidded FROM cannot be counter attacked in that round. Therefore, the best defense in this game is a smart offense.

Second of all, it's about REACTING - not pre-empting. If an enemy states swarms 1-2 particular territories and its obvious which territories they will attack based upon their placement - we must react with smart legion/territory placement. You can easily stop an entire attack plan by two well placed territorial and attack choices (assuming you win the bid).

This means that when we pick territories and plan, we must consider what areas will:

1) Bait the opposing nation to swarm, at the expense of them choosing a larger attacking front - thus making their plans easier to read and our reaction simpler.

2) Maintain contiguous gains to a 1:1 ratio. This means that when we plan on taking a territory we should not be opening ourselves up to 2 more enemy territories. If you are having a tough time understanding this concept, think "Surround and Collapse". We first surround, THEN we move inward. We need to consider what new territories can attack our gains as well as what territories now get shielded by extending our borders. A particularly smart idea is to take lands that border both Wei and Shu.

3) Larger emphasis on dominion. Mistakes will happen and the cleanest way of dealing with them is brute forcing dominion. This is our "get out of jail free card".

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This post was not intended to imply that our leaders are currently NOT doing these things. I'm just trying to communicate what I see to be the basics of good strategy given the rules of the game.

I understand Sam, Nice post!!!

"Surround and Collapse" this is basically what Shu/Wei have done to Wu.

At first I watched them close around us leaving only 3 territories that couldn't be attacked, Crypt explained the same thing you did about offensive out bidding so it didn't seem so grim

I just didn't think it was the best time to attempt to gain territory.

Good, good. Glad it makes sense!

Like if you take us attacking Chai Sang - it makes a lot of sense. It exemplifies that 1:1 "front" ratio I mentioned in the previous post.

If you look at the map, from Guiying we can get attacked by 2 Shu territories - Chang Sha and Chai Sang. If you take Chai Sang, then we can get attacked by two other territories - Chang Sha (Shu) and Jiang Xia (Wei). That's actually better since its very unlikely Wei will attack from there.

Thus, its a 1:0 trade, so completely in our favor.