The Anarchic Kingdom: Attack Strategies

Friday, 26th January 2024

We've already looked at the merits of how many baronies to attack in a turn: none, one or multiple. But after the first turn, the baronies are no longer identical in size and resources, and the choice of who to attack becomes more interesting.

If attacking a single barony, there are three strategies I can think of. Attack the biggest barony, attack those just ahead of you in the rankings, or punch down and attack those who are behind you. There are merits and caveats to each one.

A successful attack will net a percentage of the target barony's land, so attacking the biggest barony has the advantage that they have lots of land for the taking, and probably lots of gold too. The down side is that they'll probably have lots of castles defending, and possibly lots of footmen kept back for the same purpose. In a multiplayer game the barony might be controlled by a human too, in which case you have to worry about revenge.

Attacking the barony just ahead of you in the rankings is a better strategy in my opinion. They will still have more land than you. But their military force will hopefully not be that much bigger than yours, so you can hope to take quite a big slice of that land. A string of successful attacks against slightly larger baronies tends to result in gradually climbing your way up the rankings. This may not be good enough later in the game, where a desperate attack against the biggest player becomes more tempting.

Attacking the barony just behind you in the rankings will probably net you less land, but also with less risk: their smaller military force will probably not cause you as many military losses, leaving you with more knights and footmen to use in subsequent attacks. If you're attacking multiple baronies in a turn, then attacking those smaller than you is definitely recommended.

The choice of how many knights to send in an attack also gives room for strategy. Towards the end of the game, especially in December, it is tempting to send all of your knights in a single attack, in the hope of capturing the most land. But early in the game this has a disadvantage too. If you suffer heavy losses that you cannot afford to replace, you leave yourself short of an attack force for the next turn.

There's also the choice of whether to keep footmen back for defence or send them with the knights in an attack. It is the footmen who loot gold while the knights concentrate on winning glory. There's also the issue of keeping footmen for future turns, although that's less cut and dried than it is for knights, because footmen can be lost both in attack and in defence.

Also to consider is the number of castles you have defending your barony; if you have proportionally more castles than your opponents, then you can leave much of your defence to them and risk sending more footmen out in attack. I generally send out half my knights and half my footmen in attacks, unless I am doing something particularly daring or desperate.

In the next and final article I'll talk about how things change as we approach December.