How much can you change your setup without changing how much you're fa (in General)

Open question. I made a couple of equipping errors today (one was equipping a Tulwar instead of my VB, the other was putting my seeker arrows on my exbow tank), and it didn't have much of an effect on the people who beat me anyway or the ones I was losing to.

Makes me think that most of my strategy tweaking really is just ephemeral work on the periphery. At most 2 or 3 of my 25 favs list characters will get altered by strategy tweaks - the rest are the same.

Any thoughts? Does this invalidate our minor tweaks?

Back when I first bought a base elbow, I immediately started using it instead of my 1.5mil compound, and it made no difference at all in the outcome of my fights. I thought the difference in damage would have been pretty significant. I see the same thing happen whenever I use a smaller weapon when my good ones are being forged.

Another example: I've just hired an enchanter, and I thought I'd move my equipment around to see what happened. My most powerful minion is my mage, who normally uses a ToE - I tried moving that to the new enchanter, and again, it made no difference in my fights, even though my mage was killed much sooner. So now I can use a CoI on my mage to increase my damage, though, you guessed it, it makes no difference in the outcome of the fights.

I don't know how much, but awhile ago I unlearned my AS and put it all into AMF. Pretty drastic, right? It changed the results I was getting marginally. However I did shortly before that add GA to my strategy and I actually did see a large improvement with that addition. It could just be the nature of the spells that account for this, though.

I just untrained my smallest character and made him a baby heavy tank (fairly small change)... i added 2 people i was drawing previously, and caused very occational draws with Al while he farms me... its was about as good as i could hope for, though i'm still not beating the other pesky FB/DM teams nor have any of the six people that were farming me before stopped farming me now.

Seeker arrows make a HUGE difference for folks with walls and big mages. I definitely saw a dramatic shift in results when seekers were equipped vs. unequipped on those I fought.

The key to making seekers work is to have a spell that backlashes the mage, like GA of AMF. Even if the seekers do not take the mage out, the backlash in combination will.

There are also some spells that target specific strategies. I can just about guarantee that if you unlearn a big DM spell you will start losing against defensive enchantment teams you beat before. Likewise, unlearning a big AMF will cause a big shift vs. multiiple mage teams like The First.

Sorry to state the obvious, but I couldn't resist.

Yeah, of all the items in the game, I'd say that seekers have by far the highest pay off in terms of net worth. They're cheap, relatively common, and can make a large difference in the outcome of battles.

about your observation that minor tweaks dont change much of anything, i offer this:
1) who do you have on your fightlist? people who you only beat by a tiny hair - or do you have people that you can beat even if one day they happened to spend more BA than you...?
2) Who do you think the people farming you have on their fightlists?

3)The nature of CB is such that all strats depend heavily on scale - no matter how devastating one strat is agianst a particular other one, if the XP is not in the same order of magnitude, then it will lose no matter what.

I know this sounds cynical...but i do totally agree with you - sometimes it feels like nothing makes a difference. But next time you make a tweak, fight upper than you were before, see if you find someone new for you list. It'll make it worthwhile : )

Yes, I do concentrate on the top of my fight list and keep an eye on the people that just recently passed me (El Cid is an example of someone who I can no longer beat but I'm still close). And most that farm me are way beyond my reach, but some are not (people who occasionally lose on challenging me). And since my tank is a ToA / Jig specialist (maximum dexterity, focus on strength drain and not damage), I had expected more difference when losing the exbow (due to equipping arrows).

Of course since most of my targets and attackers are clan members, I would assume they are as active as me if not more, so we're all rising in PR together.

Thanks all for your comments. I do remember a massive fight list change when I switched from DM to AMF, and a smaller change when moving from SMTOE to more minions.