janitorialduties wrote:

kevlargolem wrote:@vext

I assume thats a Domination game?

I guarantee it was the Cold War game, rules being you wait ten days for your specialists to build up, then actually start. A very niche fan made game mode.

Yes. Very insane. I think I gave him 3 of his 5 tycoons. It's pretty dumb, seemed like a good idea at the start.

Tycoons don't scare me one bit. I used to think they were fun—the loss of a smuggler hurts too much though for me to think they're worth it. Kings are the only thing I really fear. One can be producing loads of drillers but that doesn't necessarily mean that the drillers are next to you and are going to be a threat. Combatting 2 or more kings is downright gruesome.

King vs. Tycoon is a tough comparison to make as being things you fear, because King's role is largely offensive, while Tycoon's role is largely defensive.

You don't fear a defense... unless that defense is also your target.

But for the sake of comparing them, I'd say Tycoon is better overall because while it leans defensive, it's also useful for offense. While the King is VERY strong on offense, he's actually (usually) a liability on defense.

kevlargolem wrote:
You don't fear a defense... unless that defense is also your target.

When I say, "scare" I more mean, "How the fuck am I going to deal with this?" Dealing with a defensive tycoon is more manageable to me than figuring out how to curb a king or two with a couple mega subz coming at ya.

Surviving an attack against someone who has tycoon might be easier than surviving an attack against someone with King. However, consider that you need to then counter-attack as just stopping the attack isnt a win. As a whole I'd much rather deal with a King than a Tycoon. The effect of the tycoon is just so constant and without weakness.

It can be fun if they are already close to cap. When someone takes a tycoon all I do is target their gens. They are stuck producing useless drillers on the other side of their empire until I lower their cap number to deal with it.

Being a player who spams tycoons (as many of you will know), I'd like to say something about them vs kings:

Firstly, I'm very surprised to see the king being compared to the tycoon (or other promoted specialists). What this shows us is that higher-rated players tend to think more deeply about the effects of a specialist. The King's effect is probably the most obvious out of all, which is probably a reason why lower-rated players stack them a lot. They even look different in the way that all outposts lose their shields, probably creating some psychological effect. In higher-rated play, many people go for other stacks, and even those with kings (even up to 4) are usually not too much of a problem.

Secondly, the tycoon pretty much increases your 'potential' and recovery. Many lower-rated players underestimate the power of the tycoon because it doesn't 'seem' to do that much. Once you reach your cap, what do you do? Actually, that is something you need to learn and to master: How to manage your drillers in an efficient way. Being in many games where I have had tycoon stacks, I find that they are extremely useful for diplomacy, as you can gift them to your allies. MoEs and tinkerers are a good choice, but I tend to stay away from MoEs because they decrease your driller production by an absolute amount of about 16%, which is almost a waste of a tycoon when you're on your 4th one. Sometimes, you need to recognize situations where you just have to wait and play it out. No attacking, just defending. As many other players have said, tycoons are both good at attacking and defending, while kingmakers lack a suitable defense of their outposts.

Thirdly, I have been in tycoon vs king situations. So my way of looking at them is this: for every tycoon, it increases your production by half of your original production. So, if you don't reach your cap, you have 1.5 times as many drillers as everyone else being produced. For every king, it effectively increases your production and your cap by 1 third, but having a king stack also means you have no shields. Against kingmakers, a strategy is to defend and counter-attack only when necessary. Since you recover lost drillers so quickly, it doesn't really matter to you that you lost more drillers than your opponent. While they are still building up their next attack, you can easily recover and even launch a few counter attacks if you've defended well (defending well: you'll have to have to gather your specialists together while defending, it's a characteristic of having a tycoon stack). And, I almost always have at least twice as much production as the kingmaker.

Lastly, most of the time I'm actually allies with the kingmakers. I just ask them if they want to work together, and offer them my drillers to get their trust. Since I produce so much I gift it to them, where it does twice the damage (or something like that) than if I were to use it. Its a great stack combination, kings and tycoons. Its a really great way of making allies, if you gift drillers to them. But in the end, if its just you vs your ally, I've found that tycoons often provide a great foundation for strength, and that other things are simply more useful when you have tycoons than when you have kings (e.g. generals destroy a value of usually about 20 drillers for the kingmaker, while it only destroys 10 for you. And then there's the fact that you have shields on your outposts, etc.

4 Tycoons... you guys and your domination mode

That is a good point though about the diplomatic effect of king vs. tycoon. King negotiates from a position of weakness (please dont backstab me even though Id be a REAL easy target for you). Tycoon negotiates from a position of strength AND incentive (yeah, I'm not afriad of you attacking me. My factory will build its own defense, beating down your attack on the very first wave. ALSO if you don't attack me and stay loyal, I'll gift you drills because I have so many I dont know what to do with them all).

kevlargolem wrote:4 Tycoons... you guys and your domination mode [/i].

4? I have 7!