Thought I would post about my experience with war victory, the good the bad and the ugly!
I started Beta stage with the goal to go for war victory. I knew very little about what was needed, other than needing Colorado strips in order to build the trophy hall. I chose to play Monarchy, and stopped research in medieval age in order to have a sufficient army to attack players of a higher age, but have enough army to survive those attacks. You are also able to get stripes from guerilla attacks, but in my experience, the number of stripes obtained this way was far too little in comparison to attacking higher aged players. Maybe an increase to the number of stripes able to be gained this way could be helpful. Although war victory is unlocked in classical age, I find it very hard to get stripes that early on. I would like to suggest being able to build the first level of the hall without stripes. The numbers of trophies needed in the first level of the trophy hall are very high. If we could build the hall, while still in classical, could work on getting some trophies, while getting army ready to attack higher aged players. Maybe to balance the number of stripes, increase the amount needed for the other levels, to compensate for building the first level without any. I obtained the stripes to build the first two levels of my hall from regular attacks, on players of a higher age. With having research off, and getting near the halfway point in the stage, I felt a lot of pressure to get the stripes in order to get the hall up to level 5 as soon as I could. At this point, I dropped from alliance, and pre-arranged attacks on players who were of a higher age, in order to quickly obtain the huge number of stripes required to finish building the hall. In order to then shift my focus on what was needed to fill the hall, as I had never seen what all the trophies were that needed to be obtained.
The Stained Mask Trophy, the description of this trophy is far too vague, in comparison to the other trophies. For performing a large-scale intelligence operation despite noticeable losses (if you are not losing units during espionage missions, try to send smaller squads). If the only way to obtain this trophy, is from spying for structures, that should be included in the description. I have always spied for units in enemies’ towns, so that was my choice of what I was spying for, until devs told me to make sure I was spying for structures. A hint as to what is considered a large-scale intelligence operation would also be helpful.
I absolutely loved attacking for trophies. Was always exciting to see what and how many I was able to get from each attack. For me that part was very motivating :). I noticed along the way, Greek fire/ ballista did not fall into any category of trophy, other than as reinforcement. Since Greek fire are so deadly, seems something worth getting a trophy for, triumphant to have killed them and survived to bring trophies of it home. Maybe they could be added to the siege/destructive trophy? Or its own section as constructs?
I noticed some inconsistencies with certain units/trophies. For naval trophies, seems only brigs/rafts that belong to the player being attacked, counted towards naval trophies. Not sure I understand why it mattered whose brigs they were, if they died, should they not all give a trophy?
For the Fractured crown trophy, not sure if it is a bug or not, but I received a crown when I first hit the fifth town of my target domain, as well as on the last hit that destroyed the fifth town.
I have made a chart of how much, by percentage, I acquired trophies and stripes from pre-arranged attacks.
Level 1 of trophy hall stripes, 0%
Level 2 of trophy hall stripes, 0%
Level 3 of trophy hall stripes, 50 %
Level 4 of trophy hall stripes, 100%
Level 5 of trophy hall stripes, 100%
I did change much of my play style in order to do this victory. I realized about halfway through, that in order to gain all of the trophies needed, within the time frame left, I needed to attack alone. Especially in order to acquire wall trophies. Requiring to destroy 5 levels of a wall, for 1 trophy is much more difficult than one would first think. Quite often, targets walls were only level 4 or less. But attacking with other players, significantly lowers your chances of getting 5 levels of the wall, therefore my solution was to find targets I was able to attack, and survive, alone. A bit of the same problem with towers, but not to the degree of walls, generally far more towers in towns, so more levels available to be destroyed.
I had my research off for about 60% of the stage. I needed to turn off, in order to attack for stripes. Once I reached renaissance and industrial ages, stripes were a lot easier to acquire. Luckily, I turned research off again to remain in industrial age, as stripes are needed for more than just building the trophy hall.
Since this is a war victory, and there are clearly two sides to war. Would like to suggest, the ability to gain trophies from defending. Could possibly encourage some despot vs despot war, as attacking a despot, generally would provoke retaliation.
Finally, I loved the final location. The Dragon was beautiful, very well done! I thought it was great to build towers using stripes to help defeat the dragon. Not sure how many towers would have been enough for the old guy there, but I stopped at 6. My patience had run out by then lol.
I was a bit disappointed that the picture for the location was exactly the same as dragon hoard on the world map. The final dragon is beautiful, maybe have his head as the picture of the location. Would have liked for the acid from the towers being thrown to be a bit more visible. I barely realized that I had defeated the “big boss” when I vanished with Victory. Would have liked to have been able to look at the report from the battle. Possibly take the dragon’s head home as a trophy/reward, and allow the ability to view report of battle, before vanishing to victory.
Overall, this was the most challenging, frustrating and fulfilling accomplishment I have ever done playing TT2, Thank you Devs for this experience!