RA Advice?

I've used a start since day 1. I've only used one start, and it's RA. In every game that's allowed a strat, Relentless Attack has been the only one I've ever used, and I'm proud of it. I don't know why people call it noobish, because the game is called atWar, and attacking is more vital than defending. In scenarios like UN or RP, RA is so OP that I'm mystified others don't use it. I've abandoned a lot of games though, because I find myself being on the losing end of a conflict, and I don't think I'm using RA right.

Any advice on what to do with such a strategy?

The best advice in using ra is to not use ra at all

but.. if you're set on using it, walls are your friend, infantry are nerfed on defense so you cant really defend anything so wall everything, prioritise your moves correctly as you much prefer to be attacking than defending. use infantry to expand until youve the income to spam tanks.

theres not really much more to it, its a pretty straightforward strategy.

Defend the tanks with walls to prevent turnblock!

RA on RP? All of the good units are Others, and can get extremely high stats I am surprised you like it.

UN though, I can see it happening I suppose.

The reason RA is not so good is because it has trouble defending. Not gonna go into to much detail because im only rank 5, but this is basically what I know.

Wall all the things. Cities, capitals and your borders.
Be in the offensive ( obviously )

As ive said I dont know that much because im rank 5 and ive played RA, like, once or twice. I would suggest trying to catch your opponent offguard. Moving defences can be a pain unless your playing SM.

Also, if your opponent is about to attack a city, move your tanks near that city, and wall it, so there trapped in and you can take it back.

Sorry to say that it is more beneficial to learn other stratagies. Attacking is not more vital than defending. Having a good attack force is nothing if your opponent has an equal defence force. Not for sure on this one. but, Im pretty sure infantry is cheaper than tanks as well. So your enemy probrably has a decent attack force as well.



- Owl

Don't use RA. Enough said.
The thing is, infantry spamming is WAY better, no matter what.

Scris de Guest, 03.05.2014 at 21:59

Don't use RA. Enough said.
The thing is, infantry spamming is WAY better, no matter what.

including 50k games?

Scris de Brandyjack, 03.05.2014 at 12:14

I don't think I'm using RA right.

That's because there is no right way to use RA. It is a strat that has, in effect, been kept weak purposefully to see who's smart enough to work out it's a bad strategy and switch to using better ones (although no one will admit to this), as well as making the people who do use it weaker as these are the most likely to allyfag (and therefore giving the higher rank a chance of winning).
Since the game creators have barely played the game the community has over time had considerable influence over the development of strats, and this is what has happened.

Scris de Brandyjack, 03.05.2014 at 12:14

attacking is more vital than defending.

This is utterly wrong, for a multitude of reasons, the atwar game mechanics highly favour defending.

Firstly if you play RA you end up loosing cities and then retaking them repeatedly. Each time the city changes hands the income from it is set down to half of the total income, and takes several turns to climb back up to normal income. Contrast this to a player who holds the city all the time, where the income of the city keeps growing. Therefore playing defensively inherently gives you more money.

Secondly defensive players (PD) can wait until they want to attack. They are not pressured or hurried into engaging the opponent, but have the ability to wait until the most auspicious moment for them to advance, making their play style more efficient than an offensive player who has to keep attacking to keep the opponent off balance.

Thirdly you can't stack tanks. leaving them in cites just make them targets for your opponent, who will take out your strike force even if they are a defensive strat because it takes away the need to defend multiple locations. Not stacking means that it's hard to assemble large attacks against large inf stacks. Inf can be stacked easily, as they provide useful defence (that is basically unbreakable with PD) and when the stack is big enough will advance, so in the ends attacking isn't really a problem, especially if you already wasted all your units failing to cause any damage beforehand.

Fourthly RA militia have an increased cost, which is tied directly to upkeep cost. This means that just having militia as RA will take twice as much out your income than a PD player maintaining the same amount of militia. Equally because of the poor cost reduction of RA (see below) the maintenance costs of simply having tanks at the end of a turn are huge.

Fifthly, the weakened defence of your inf allows defensive strats to incur less than the normal damage when attacking, meaning they can attack faster and more regularly. RA cuts your inf defence by 2 (because the city bonus goes) and only increaces attack by 1.

Finally, the boosts given by RA are tiny when you compare to the cost. Let me explain:
The cost reduction of RA tanks is from 110 to 100. This is a percentage reduction of 8%. Let's compare % reductions for a few more strats
RA tanks - 8%
PD inf - 17%
PD militia - 33%
SM bombers - 18%
SM airtrans - 36%
NC destroyers - 32%
NC transports - 22%
NC submarines - 25%
DS helicopters - 35%
MoS marines - 26%
MoS stealth planes - 33%
MoS submarines - 20%
GW marines - 53%
Imp tanks - 25%
Imp inf - 50%
GC tanks - 8%
HW marines - 60%

In addition:
PD inf give + 2/3 defence
PD militia give + 2 defence
SM bombers give +2 attack
NC destroyers give +3 attack
GC tanks give +1 hp
MoS marines give +1 attack
MoS stealth planes give +2 attack
MoS submarines give +2 attack
DS helicopters give +2 attack
RA tanks give +1 attack

So how hard is RA now?
Yes the other strats have their weaknesses, but RA gives just +1 attack for the smallest preportional cost reduction, probably the smallest boost of any strat.

Oh yes, and where RA inf get -2 defence PD tanks get only -1 attack.

Scris de Brandyjack, 03.05.2014 at 12:14

In scenarios like UN or RP

Cost isn't a problem because no real strategy is involved, so lots of RA's weaknesses are not so apparent, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. Play any experienced player to find out.

Do you still want to use RA?

Scris de EndsOfInvention, 04.05.2014 at 08:35

Scris de Brandyjack, 03.05.2014 at 12:14

I don't think I'm using RA right.

That's because there is no right way to use RA. It is a strat that has, in effect, been kept weak purposefully to see who's smart enough to work out it's a bad strategy and switch to using better ones (although no one will admit to this), as well as making the people who do use it weaker as these are the most likely to allyfag (and therefore giving the higher rank a chance of winning).
Since the game creators have barely played the game the community has over time had considerable influence over the development of strats, and this is what has happened.

Scris de Brandyjack, 03.05.2014 at 12:14

attacking is more vital than defending.

This is utterly wrong, for a multitude of reasons, the atwar game mechanics highly favour defending.

Firstly if you play RA you end up loosing cities and then retaking them repeatedly. Each time the city changes hands the income from it is set down to half of the total income, and takes several turns to climb back up to normal income. Contrast this to a player who holds the city all the time, where the income of the city keeps growing. Therefore playing defensively inherently gives you more money.

Secondly defensive players (PD) can wait until they want to attack. They are not pressured or hurried into engaging the opponent, but have the ability to wait until the most auspicious moment for them to advance, making their play style more efficient than an offensive player who has to keep attacking to keep the opponent off balance.

Thirdly you can't stack tanks. leaving them in cites just make them targets for your opponent, who will take out your strike force even if they are a defensive strat because it takes away the need to defend multiple locations. Not stacking means that it's hard to assemble large attacks against large inf stacks. Inf can be stacked easily, as they provide useful defence (that is basically unbreakable with PD) and when the stack is big enough will advance, so in the ends attacking isn't really a problem, especially if you already wasted all your units failing to cause any damage beforehand.

Fourthly RA militia have an increased cost, which is tied directly to upkeep cost. This means that just having militia as RA will take twice as much out your income than a PD player maintaining the same amount of militia. Equally because of the poor cost reduction of RA (see below) the maintenance costs of simply having tanks at the end of a turn are huge.

Fifthly, the weakened defence of your inf allows defensive strats to incur less than the normal damage when attacking, meaning they can attack faster and more regularly. RA cuts your inf defence by 2 (because the city bonus goes) and only increaces attack by 1.

Finally, the boosts given by RA are tiny when you compare to the cost. Let me explain:
The cost reduction of RA tanks is from 110 to 100. This is a percentage reduction of 8%. Let's compare % reductions for a few more strats
RA tanks - 8%
PD inf - 17%
PD militia - 33%
SM bombers - 18%
SM airtrans - 36%
NC destroyers - 32%
NC transports - 22%
NC submarines - 25%
DS helicopters - 35%
MoS marines - 26%
MoS stealth planes - 33%
MoS submarines - 20%
GW marines - 53%
Imp tanks - 25%
Imp inf - 50%
GC tanks - 8%
HW marines - 60%

In addition:
PD inf give + 2/3 defence
PD militia give + 2 defence
SM bombers give +2 attack
NC destroyers give +3 attack
GC tanks give +1 hp
MoS marines give +1 attack
MoS stealth planes give +2 attack
MoS submarines give +2 attack
DS helicopters give +2 attack
RA tanks give +1 attack

So how hard is RA now?
Yes the other strats have their weaknesses, but RA gives just +1 attack for the smallest preportional cost reduction, probably the smallest boost of any strat.

Oh yes, and where RA inf get -2 defence PD tanks get only -1 attack.

Scris de Brandyjack, 03.05.2014 at 12:14

In scenarios like UN or RP

Cost isn't a problem because no real strategy is involved, so lots of RA's weaknesses are not so apparent, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. Play any experienced player to find out.

Do you still want to use RA?

After all that, not really. But it's the only strat I've ever used. I don't think I can adapt to another this late.

As someone who used RA, don't use it.

Scris de Brandyjack, 04.05.2014 at 09:25

After all that, not really. But it's the only strat I've ever used. I don't think I can adapt to another this late.

it's easy, i played RA until i was rank 5

No worries, Rex. You're rank 5; you aren't very late at all to learn other strategies. I'm rank 8 and I'm still trying to learn more MoS.

Anyway, I highly, highly recommend Perfect Defense for just about any starting cash below 50k. If you have spare reinforcements, it's actually BETTER at attacking than RA. Once you take a city, with PD you can defend it very easily, considering how PD inf in a city have a ridiculous 9 defense. Even if you have few infantry, the militia the city gives you will get 2 extra defense. I'm not sure what premium you have, but a general also boosts inf stacks far more than tank stacks; due to costs, an inf stack gets twice as much bonus damage and twice as much bonus defense as a tank stack.

PD does have one problem -- how slow it is -- but smart usage of sea transports can extend range a great deal for a moderate price. Range is basically PD's only downside, considering the incredibly strong, very cheap units it mainly uses. Why would you have a 9/5 tank when you can have two infantry -- for a slightly higher or slightly lower price, depends on upgrades -- that are 8/14? Or if they're in a city or wall, even 8/18? No contest, really.

I see you like to play RA and that will probably change over time when you realize it's main problem is in mid and late-game, when your atk advantage will mean nothing against bigger stacks. Anyway, there are a few things you can do to compensate that, so keep in mind:

- RA will be better in high cash games. I recommend you play it only in 25k and 50k games, otherwise you will run out of money before your allies, who can outexpand you pretty easily.
- Build as many walls as the turn time allow you to. Your defense status is one of the weakest in AW, so you will want to avoid stacking troops to defend. Instead, try to build walls even on secondary cities and at key spots, like peninsulas.
- Use your range to your advantage. RA tanks have a special status that make them special, and that is not it's atk, but it's range. If you ca, try to calculate the maximum distance you will need to reach a target one turn before you make your movement, so you will be able to reach your enemy, but he won't reach your tanks, avoiding turnblocks or, even worse, a total anihilation of your tanks due to it's poor defense.
- Aim for the richest, not the biggest. Choose to expand to countries that have more income, even if it has low population. You will soon realize your problem is not with the number of troops you can build, but the money needed to do so.
- Be aggressive since the start. Your best chance to win the game is to start with a massive expansion and go for enemies capital since turn 2. Strategies like PD, GW and IMP will only become stronger compared to you while the game continue, but they need a time to build that strenght, so attack as soon as possible.

RA isn't really OP, it might seem like that, but it really isn't. In fact, RA is the last strategy I'd choose unless I'm playing UN or Ancient World. Well, there are other strategies for UN that are better, but you know what I mean. I suggest that you use another strategy instead.
Also, the only strategies that work on RP are Blitzkrieg, Iron First and Imperialist so using RA just makes your normal inf. weak.
But if you're going to play with RA anyway, I believe that the posts above helped you, but I'll write a few tips:
- Expand fast, take over rich countries.
- Don't waste too many tanks on neutrals.
- Make A LOT of walls, I suggest that you wall EVERY city you have.
- Wall your tank stacks.
- Don't defend with inf. instead, use your tanks to retake your cities.
- Keep on advancing, no matter what.

I hope I helped you, at least that's how I play RA. But, to be honest, I almost never use RA. You're better off using GW or MoS, also, PD is an awesome strategy.

In rp, go GW and only recruit secondary defence