Lessons Learnt from Chronos

This article needs to be read in conjunction with the last one.

Having been beaten by Chronos last weekend I was given the opportunity to fight with them to see what was going on behind the scenes on their side during war.  What was fascinating was for them this was a war where they had less active players and smaller sized players, so actually very similar to the situation we were in last war.  As we did, they started in the lead and slowly lost control of the plunder.

Active Players/Balancing Rosters

Something that they had changed since their war with us was to have a clan specifically dedicated to the war.  There was a sense that this really helped with the organisation and planning of the war, it meant they knew who was there and people were balanced against the opponents more easily.  Unfortunately several people who said they were going to join didn't.  This is something which has been talked about for Dark Moon, so I propose we create “Dark Moon Battlefields” to fight our wars in.

I didn't get to see the whole of the balancing of rosters as this happened in their pal group.  What  I did see was an interesting technique of balancing.  The top 10 attack players stats were added on both sides so see if this was even, this was repeated with the spies.  They then checked the mid range 11-20 then the smaller players to make sure there was an even balance through out the clan. 

Action

• create new clan
• review how we balance clan members

 

Leaks

interestingly when we knew about active war players who were not playing we handled it better.  We were actively trying to pin our own players, they kicked a couple of people without trying to pin, which probably cost them a billion or so.  I was also chatting to them about the folks we considered as leaks, and they said they genuinely hadn't found any leaks.

The good news is, when we communicate we do well with our leaks.  We have also had an offer from the guys at Triumph which we could consider, which is to let them know who is active, but a potential leak and they will hit out of war.  This is possibly something we could organise in house as well.

Action

• Either partner with a clan like Triumph to pin our leaks or have people who are not active in the war specifically tasked with this job.  If they are in cc they can see who needs pinning

 

Communication

Listening - In comparison to us, they are completely drama free. (we had too many voices giving instructions and people were not listening, and not following through with instructions.)  There were 5 clear voices who people listened to and followed. There was a sense that most people were communicating on cc but it was generally emotion free comments, it felt really calm in comparison.  There were only a couple of drama points when I was on and they were resolved really quickly.  Both of these were around when they realised that they were loosing and deciding what to do and whether to forfeit or not.

War shouting -  people shouted out who was hitting them as well as who they hit. This made up the bulk of the communication in cc.

War Admin - For much of the war they did not appear to have a war admin role, however when someone stepped into that role, the war became very co-ordinated (see strategy) and they did start to pull back briefly.  They only did this for an hour, I’m not fully sure why, but the person in that role was working very hard, and they were pinned for the whole time. This person was not only checking pin times, they created a spread sheet, they were also alerting the clan who the next people to pin were.  They were tracking leaks and identified several big problems.  It showed me how effective the war admin role can be.

Action

• Listen, listen, listen
• Identify 4-5 clear leaders
• shout out who  is hitting as well as who has hit you.
• Develop war admin role either active or not (will be much harder if active)

Strategy

I will probably get in trouble for saying this, but I think their war against us gave them a sense they could beat anyone, so initially there was a bit of planning, but not a huge amount.  However when the planning kicked in I saw the following strategies.

• Always keeping the opponents spies pinned, Key job at the beginning of the war, and then the smaller spies kept the huge spies pinned.  So I spent over half the war scout pinning a pure spy, 6.5 half times bigger than me, that got him really fed up but that's another story. Two of us alternated sitting on him half an hour each, then regen.
• They developed spread sheets on loses to seek out leaks
• They developed spreadsheets for pin times and seeing who was active.  They didn't use it in this way, but it could have been used to work out time zones
• Crystalling all together and then pinning top down
• identifying who the active players on the alternate side were and only hitting them as it was easier to make plunder and made the other side pinned so they couldn't win plunder
• Saving up spies for a spy attack, which at that point there were way less Chronos players, it again enabled the bigger players to be pinned.
• Hitting only 12-18 as the big players were too big to hit, but all together we could made the mid players leak
• Sending in the big spy to assa followed by attack players
• There was a lot of morale boosting by the biggest player.  I’ve already talked to Eric about him doing this and he has threatened to put on his cheerleading outfit with its short skirt and dancing around with pom poms.. this might actually be more scary and asks the question why does he have that outfit?

Action

• use some of these strategies in the future
• spend time with other war clans so that we can pick up more strategies

The really interesting thing at the beginning of the war for me was the sense that Chronos really weren’t that much different from us.  All they do better is listen and communicate more effectively.  They have a couple of tricks up their sleeve from their experience of war.  But we lost, as they did, because we were out gunned and out manned.