Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2016 9:54 am
Actually the point of the "Pro-Peace" guide isn't to say that War Clans are actively bad.
The point of the original guide is that you want to avoid being aggressive early on, because as you noted in item #2 your enemies will tend to attack you a lot during the Fire Season. Taking a War clan, I feel, tends to encourage early aggression when you should be defensive during this period. I am also not a fan of raiding during Storm time in the early game - because there are events that can cause the raid to fail badly which can leave you crippled on top of the farming problems.
Also, I would note that the bigger Fyrd tends to be a relatively weak advantage in comparison to blessings. As I noted in the original guide, rushing Fyrdwomen for Vinga essentially doubles your Fyrd troop count for defense, while Humakt can double your Thanes. This tends to far offset the additional Fyrd you get for being a war clan.
In short, you can totally win being a War Clan. However, to survive the early game crunch you're going to want to leverage more on blessings for defense whatever type of clan you pick; and I wouldn't risk too many early raids either. The priority in the first couple of years is really survival and to build up your capabilities (mostly in terms of blessings, trade surplus, and cow count) until you reach a state where you're essentially self-sustaining and unassailable. At that point you can pretty much pursue any kind of clan that you want.
The point of the original guide is that you want to avoid being aggressive early on, because as you noted in item #2 your enemies will tend to attack you a lot during the Fire Season. Taking a War clan, I feel, tends to encourage early aggression when you should be defensive during this period. I am also not a fan of raiding during Storm time in the early game - because there are events that can cause the raid to fail badly which can leave you crippled on top of the farming problems.
Also, I would note that the bigger Fyrd tends to be a relatively weak advantage in comparison to blessings. As I noted in the original guide, rushing Fyrdwomen for Vinga essentially doubles your Fyrd troop count for defense, while Humakt can double your Thanes. This tends to far offset the additional Fyrd you get for being a war clan.
In short, you can totally win being a War Clan. However, to survive the early game crunch you're going to want to leverage more on blessings for defense whatever type of clan you pick; and I wouldn't risk too many early raids either. The priority in the first couple of years is really survival and to build up your capabilities (mostly in terms of blessings, trade surplus, and cow count) until you reach a state where you're essentially self-sustaining and unassailable. At that point you can pretty much pursue any kind of clan that you want.