Developing a hammer

I just started developing my shiny new 15c, and I'm trying to decide how to work things out.

I took over a Teuton "hammer" on s2, and I learned a lot from his mistakes. For example, he developed the hammer from his capital. This is fine for mid-game, but in late-game, you want your hammer developed *next* to your capital and stored in the capital (which should be a cropper), because a capital cannot have a great stable or great barracks, which are necessary for endgame production, when resources are plentiful and time is scarce.

My plan is to put a village next to my cropper capital. This village will produce my troops, and the cropper will store and feed the troops. However, I won't be able to build this support village for another 2-3 weeks (depending on how much I party).

Does anyone have any advice? I know a lot of you are developing hammers from the cropper capitals themselves. Why did you decide to do this, despite the great barracks problem? Do you plan on switching production to a nearby village with great barracks later?

What you did is the right thing not to build your hammer in your capital, BUT, beware of that someone may conquer your hammer as it's not the capital, if you can defend it will then build the hammer in a village adjacent to your cropper capital.

Again this is my humble openion, but this is the way that many experienced players do.

Calculations of resources needed for 24/7 production:

Level 20 barracks, 2k*4 /hr for swords
Level 20 stable, 2.3k*4 /hr for TT
Level 20 stable, 3.3k*4 /hr for haed

Basically, 4 villages to support 24/7 production of both. 3 villages will support level 17 production (72.9% as many troop production), or 2 villages to support level 14 production (~53%).

ok well also in your hammer village u are going to have 3 cheifs...

thus u will have a lvl 20 palace thus making it harder to eb conquered.

u will also have like 6 granarsy thus being able to support HUGE amounts of troops! lol

in therory u should have ALOT of def troops in your capital Thus having alot of troops to defned your vilalges and plus u will have 4 to 5 other villages in the area u should be able to field quite a large def force of your own =D haha

and ya im done ranting =P

DMN

I don't think you should store your defensive troops in your cropper....unless you have like a 2k crop production but most cases than not, that doesn't happen.

I say train and keep your defensive troops in all your other "regular" villages. This way, when you have say 4 other villages...each of them has 200 spears trained, that's 800 spears ready for duty when they need to be called.

You see, defensive troops don't have to be trained i nthe same village to do mass damage, when they are all reinforced together, it is the same as if they were trained in the same village. The opposite is for offensive...that's why you want to use your cropper for training offensive units, not defensive.

As troop counts get larger and larger, feeding troops that are not trained in the capital gets harder and harder. 10k crop deficit requires some care, and I just can't imagine dealing with 50k crop deficit, let alone 100k or 200k, or 500k like the WW mega-hammers.

Some people get dumb lucky... consider this... server7 just restarted and I thought I would try out Teuton, having never done so before. Didn't work out well - I'm just not suited with my schedule to keeping such a hands-on approach. So I deleted and restared as a Gaul - just for fun... imagine my surprise when I find myself further out in a lazy, farm-filled area and within about 6 -8 squares of my starter village is a 15 cropper with three, 50% crop oasis' right by it... talk about a dream come true... that has such crazy potential... I'm not straying from that area at all.

As to huge WW mega-hammers, I've never created one. I can't imagine running -500k crop ... but I think with that 15 cropper on s7 with the three 50% crop oasis' in its range, I may have to give it a try... too bad there wasn't anything like that near us on s8...

Theres alot of different ways to do it, and it really depends on your independent situation in the game.

If you have 2 15c croppers nearby then by all means you can make one a capital for storage and a 2nd running GB and GS.

But sometimes you just cant.

Having said that, iv played on a server where 1 player has dominated completely, had 10+ more villages than everyone, his hammer being triple the size of any other on the server. And then hes lost his cropper with his capital due to good planning by 2 players.
Goodbye 80k axes and 20k Tk's. After that village got chiefed the player literally lost everything.

So really you just have to analyze your current situation and decide what would work best for you.

ok..about cap or non cap...i am going to narrate a very true experience which is not so old... iam currently plying s2..where in the NE quad hostilities broke out quite early between PM and the polish(PAN)...now some where about a week back a PM spy who commanded a huge Roman hammer(2nd biggest in PAN)..decided to break ranks and started hitting PAN capitals...now throughout the server there were reports of a mega hammer being trained in a PAN non cap village....now the player training the hammer had a trainer artifact for better part of the time since conquering it from the natars...the spy hit that village with about 12-14 waves and cunningly inserted 5 chieves between the waves...the village was chiefed and a supposed great hammer lost...

The player Exe? ;-)

yes ...