HC Guide

Introduction

This is an introductory guide for people who may wish to be a HC member. There is no way you can ever write a full guide on this which covers every single aspect and every single strategy, but this guide will try and give most things a place somewhere.

INTERNAL AFFAIRS

First thing you need to do in the age is set up a HC. To achieve this 5 greens (or on KnC, at least 2 greens and 5 in headquarters) are required. There is a big difference between HC and HQ. The headquarters are all the people in your country that have level 1 access and have achieved the rank of brigadier or higher (eg, the people that picked your country as their first country in the current age). They have voting rights, they get to vote for both the leader and they get to decide whether people get court -marshalled. In certain instances they may also be asked to vote to give a player level one access to a country if that player is not native to that country. You can compare the HQ as the parliament of a country.

The HC on the other hand can be compared to the government, they execute things. They decide who to ally, who to war and when to train. The HC is appointed by the leader. When the leader gets chosen he can bring in his own crew of merry HC men to help him lead his country.

Once you have established your leader it is advisable to establish the main army and to message all blue ranks and above which city it is located in and encourage people to join. Do not assume people will know this by looking in the castle as they may be new to game. ALWAYS be polite and friendly when encouraging people to join. The secret to a successful country is to make it fun for people to join and they will want to come back again.

Establish an IRC channel for the country and encourage as many people to join there as possible. Make sure all new people are aware of it's existence and that it is the place where they may be able to gain the best advice to their queries.

It may also be advisable for the HC to establish a HC channel and separate delegation of duties from the beginning. It could be modelled on something like this:-

Leader - (oversees whole HC and country actions)

Second in Command (2iC) - ( a person who takes command of the main army when Leader is away or sleeping. It is generally advisable to get somebody from a different time zone to the leader but who is trusted.)

Internal Affairs - (2 people who are responsible for checking that all blue ranks are in the main, making sure people know where IRC channel is, greeting people to country when entering ,answering general questions, notifying troops of when to train and when to war and at what times, general communication).

Foreign Affairs (FA/Diplomacy) - (2 or 3 people who oversee their countries interests in relation to other countries. They are responsible for securing NAP's and allies and war pacts. They may monitor all actions in HC channel and also in allied countries channel. It is their job to also report back to their own HC members what has been agreed upon and if any allies need assistance.)

Strike Force Co-Ordinators - (2 or 3 people who are responsible for co-ordinating the actual war or strike plans for their country. They will monitor enemy main movements, organise strike force leaders, organise strike plans of cities, co-ordinate with other HC members in regards to what is best possible time to strike and make sure that Internal Affairs has conveyed expected strike times to rest of the country.)

Navy (For KNC Only) - (2 or 3 people responsible for all naval attacks, co-ordinating transport for main army, watching weather conditions and advising on best time to travel, monitoring enemy naval fleets movements)

Advisors - (these are generally people who have played the game for several ages and who may be of assistance to HC by offering advice on movements or possible problems. Their role is purely advice and no other active part in HC affairs).

One last thing on establishing your HC. Try to get a span of people who may cover all time zones. Remember that the game is played world wide and it can often be frustrating for people from America , Australia or Asia who do not see any activity because the HC is all from the same time zone. Make sure before you go offline that the new HC person coming online knows war plan and agreements and what is expected of them before leaving.

DIPLOMACY

First thing you need to do is find some allies. It's of course possible to start out without allies, but you might get targeted soon by other alliances cause of the fact you have no backup. Therefore, it is advisable to get a few allies to start with. Don't get too many at first, you might want to be able to expand later. Why? Cause at first it's very hard to determine which countries will be decent allies and which won't. So being able to add some countries later on might prove useful.

The people you don't want to ally but don't want to fight right away should be rewarded with a NAP. A NAP is a Non-Aggression-Pact between your countries. It basically means you'll have a warning when the country you are NAP'ed to will attack you. There is a lot of confusion about NAP's, some people claim a lot of clauses are included in the NAP like the ally-attack clause, others say they aren't. To be safe, make sure to discuss all things you wish to be added into to the NAP when discussing it. It is generally advisable to log ALL discussions in IRC in regards to NAP's or if agreed upon in ingame messages to save all copies of agreements in Word as ingame messages are cleared after a period of time.

Now, what is the this ally-attack clause? It's a clause in your NAP that makes it void immediately when the country you are NAP'ed to attacks one of your allies or you attack one of their allies. In general, people say helping out an ally supersedes honouring a NAP. There is a lot more to be said about the ally-attack clause. First of all: which allies are included? Just the ones that you had when you signed the NAP or does it include your future allies as well? As with the entire clause, it's best you agree to this as well when discussing the NAP. If they weren't discussed, always assume the worst possible scenario, cause you never know how the other country feels about it. If there is any confusion always clarify what you mean and make sure the other person understands and accepts this. It is advisable to repeat what has been agreed to before signing off on a NAP.

NOTE: most people assume that the ally-attack clause means that if your country attacks the ally of a country you are napped to, they get to decide whether the NAP will be void because of that or not. This to avoid silly situations where you attack a country's ally just to void your NAP with them.

Last thing you should know about the NAP, when does it end? Usually NAPs are made with a certain time period. This time period generally refers to how long one needs to wait between breaking the NAP and aggressing. The longer this period, the safer you are, but also the longer you'll have to wait till you can attack them.

Suggested time frames for NAP's:

12 Hour NAP - those countries you do not wish to war now but may wish to war next.

24 Hour NAP - those countries which you may border but do not wish to war in the near future as your interests in warring are elsewhere.

48 Hour NAP - those countries which you are co operating with to kill off a mutual enemy even though you are not allied.

WAR PACT - this may be an agreement between two countries to war a common enemy but not actually have an alliance in place. A war pact is a stronger agreement than a NAP as you are working together as a team. It is usually signed along with a 48 Hour NAP upon the the death of the common enemy country.

When NAP'ing and allying always take into account that you need someone to attack. Therefore, don't just NAP or ally everyone around you, since you'll find yourself out of victims to attack. Before going to war with a certain country, make sure you have your bases covered. Try NAP'ing all the countries you'll make borders with during the war before you start it.

Warring

When all the diplomacy is done, you can start a war. War is fun of course, but you can't just run into it blindfolded. Some preparations are in order.

Activity

First thing you need to do is find out whether you have enough people to actually go to war. There is no point in starting a war you can't finish cause there aren't enough fellow countrymen to assist you. To make sure you have enough activity you can ask the people when they'll be online most so you can find the most active time. Furthermore, you should announce when you're going to war, people might be inclined to show up when there is a war going on. Of course the best way to make sure you have the activity to go to war is by being successful in war ;). Last but not least: make sure you're in position with 3 moves before starting a war.

Coordination

Secondly, you need to determine whether you can finish the country you're going to war off on your own or whether you need help. When you need help, check with your allies. When going to war with an ally by your side, it is very important to coordinate attacks. Agree on which cities both will take, agree on times when you will attack and agree on who will drop their main, where they'll do it and when.

Striking

When you know what cities to take and when to do it, there is the question of how to do it? Some basic strategies include the straight line and the circle/wheel attacks.

First you have the straight line, it's a rather simplistic tactic where you just let one of your higher ranked officers do all the strikes and have main follow all the way. When striking like this you'll be least vulnerable. Make sure the strike leader and the leader of the main army know exactly when the hit is going to take place, the main driver should follow the strike force as soon as possible.

The straight line tactic is generally rather slow and requires a lot of MP to pull off. You can only hit one city each tick with this tactic. To do multiple strikes you can use multiple strike leaders. The idea behind the circle/wheel attack is to strike all adjacent cities from 1 center city. Picking these center cities is very important and therein lies a lot of strategy.

When going for a wheel, you first need to find enough officers and high ranking officers to lead strike forces to hit all the cities you want to hit. Always have the lower ranked players do the first strike forces, they'll be able to participate in later strike forces.(eg. VM's take first city, they join FM's to take next city, and all join GM to take last city). To do a wheel, you'll need to have commanding officers with 2 MPs. They need to be able to hit the city and return to the center city after. Always check for people who can't return to the center city on their own. Make taxies for those people to get them back. For this reason it is also very important to check up front. Don't hit a castleless city with people who won't be able to return by themselves.

To facilitate these kind of attacks you can make 0mp attacks. With 0mp attacks only the strike leader will move, all the others will stay in the center city. To make 0mp attacks you can burn moves. There are a few tricks to get rid of unwanted moves. First: you have an officer run from one city to another and make sure when he gets back to the center city he has no moves left. Afterwards he can make an army and give everyone in it 2IC. Since the moves of the 2IC will be changed if the 2IC has more moves than the one giving it, everyone will end up with 0 moves. You can of course just have the burner made before the run and run around to burn the MPs, but in that case you must make sure the officer burning the moves has more moves than the people in his burner. Burning also keeps you relatively safe, when doing pure 0mp-strike you'll always have everybody in the same city as your main. When deciding which cities to use a center, you should keep terrains in mind as well. It might be interesting to have your center city on favorable terrain, since you'll be there for a bit and don't want to be caught by surprise on bad terrain.

A variant on the simple wheel is the wheel with sidestep. You hit a city with a high ranked player, set up a new strike force with a lower ranked player, do a hit on a city outside of the reach of the wheel, hit it, taxi people back to the city you came from and have the higher ranked officer taxi everyone back to the center of the wheel, where the main was waiting all the time.

When trying to cross lots of castleless villages it might be interesting to just split up strike forces instead of trying to have everyone participate in all strike forces.

When dealing with those castleless cities, a tactic where you move into a castleless city before the tick and hitting right after the tick might prove interesting as well. This will make sure everyone moves with you into the castle city behind the castleless city with you.

Terrains

Which brings us to the subject of terrains. Always try and make sure you are on favorable terrain. When defending, try to lure the attacker to terrain where you have the upper hand. This will both be advantageous for PvP as for a possible main drop after.

Maindropping and rebuilding

There are a few things you need to take into account before dropping a main. First of all, make sure you have an escape route ready if something goes wrong. Also make sure you can actually get out right after the fight. Failing a main vs main and staying might prove disastrous for your officers. When you do a main vs main and fail, get out of there as fast as you can. This implies that you shouldn't do a main vs main when you don't have enough MPs to actually run. It is also generally a bad idea to drop a main on a castleless city. The main can not reform in that city as there is no castle and it can be confusing for people coming back online to try and work out which city the main is rebuilding in.

A second important part: make sure that when you hit a main, no other enemy mains are nearby. The last thing you want is win a main vs main and have to watch all your officers get ripped apart in PvP by a fully healthy enemy.

When dropping a main, try and take the terrain you're on into account, try hitting the enemy when they move into a bad terrain for them (and a good one for you). When bordering a main make sure you yourself are in a terrain your country likes. It makes it harder for the enemy to PvP your offline officers.

Before dropping check where the capital of the country you are dropping on is. It's generally a bad idea to drop on a main when it'll be bounced next door. When this would happen, you might want to consider a 0mp main vs main. Merging the entire main into the next-to-one highest rank and let him take them for a walk, merge back into the highest rank who stayed and hit. The highest rank will move, putting him next to the capital, but all the others will have a one city buffer.

When doing a successful drop and living after, you'll need to rebuild. Since you won, this means you'll be far from the capital. Always make sure you have a decent way for people to get from the capital to your main. A system of chain taxies might be nice. A chain taxi is a taxi that can get very far in just one tick. Just use different ranks to pull this off. Put the lower ranked player in the capital gathering people, then put a higher ranked taxi in a city 3 mps from the capital, and so forth till you reach the city you’re rebuilding in. When it's time to get the taxis in, just have the first taxi move towards the 2nd, merge in, have the 2nd one move and so on.

End

That's it so far, more might be added later. There are probably a whole lot of things you should know that aren't include (yet)), but well try and find those out yourselves for now ;)

Thanks

To Smiling for reviewing and adding some of her own ideas tp this guide.

To CaseCls and Smiling for giving me my first real HC experience in age 6.

To all other people I've served with in HCs over the ages.