The Forest of Fear, Knaglan Alliance in free-for-all

http://www.4shared.com/file/Fway-vPz/User_Map_replay.html

My little brother (9 years old) wanted to play a game against me. He made a 4-player map, and the settings were changed so that each player gets 5 gold a turn, on top of villages.

Due to map design, I started in an inhospitable icy hell, where most of my units moved at a crawl and had lousy defense (except for snowy forests and snowy mountains, where I had defense, but still moved at a crawl). I first moved over to the border, since I knew there were lovely mountains there, and my dwarves would like them. Then I didn't have to fight in snow. Since it was a local game, my little brother saw this, and immediately attacked me, since I looked to be more of a threat. he has a semi-successful battle against me before he called it off to fight on his southern border. By which I mean I didn't attack his drakes for a turn, and then he decided to attack me again because I was "right there". Hmm...

I then fought him a bit, and he decided to actually go and fight the southern battle.

So I stockpiled dwarves on the border there, eventually threatening his leader so he would stay peaceful. Meanwhile, I used my income to build lots of griffins and attack over the ice and the river to down south, taking two villages and farming the northerners for experience.

Eventually I figured I had a good enough position on him that I would win any fight we fought, and I started stealing villages with my griffin. He recruited units to man the flat hexes next to the mountains, and then we went to war a bit after that.

I won the battle, naturally, and claimed his villages. I then sent my trapper around to the keep nearer to the battle, but wound up with so much gold by the time I got there, that I wound up recruiting griffins anyway.

Lots of griffins. SO MANY griffins. I was swarming the enemy units with griffins. I had more griffins than I knew what to do with.

And really, once you have that many griffins, there's not much that's going to stop you. Not a bunch of northerners anyway.

I drew their leader out, and swarmed him with griffin masters. It only took three.

(I recruited 25 griffins that game, I lost 2 normal griffins, and two griffin masters. By the end of the game I was making 63 gold a turn. That's 2.625 Griffins a turn, worth of cash. I didn't really care about losses at that point.)

Den of Onis, Loyalists versus MysteryExclamation's Drakes

http://www.4shared.com/file/Ba5v6PPy/2p_-_Den_of_Onis_replay.html

Okay, this battle went less than well for me, and I'm not exactly sure where I went wrong. No huge strategic flaws, though I probably should have recruited more Bowmen. I don't know, though. I'm never comfortable with having the same alignment as my enemy, even though that happens a third of the time. (Or a sixth, actually, since I prefer not to play mirrors, as I don't get to enjoy the differences between the races when that happens.)

I've been trying to get into the habit of using more fencers, so I recruited one instead of cavalry this game. Figured it was better in closer quarters. However, I still don't understand how to use them. I did fine that the skirmish was really amusing in that I could walk past people to corner them, as I did with the glider. I should keep note of being able to use them for mobile ZOC. The main thing I hear is for them to slip behind lines and finish off wounded units, then be able to slip back. This seems dubious to me. Also wouldn't work against drakes (wounded saurians, maybe). Other things I have been told include using it for harassing villages. I was going to do that, but then I ran into the glider, and hunted it instead.

Spearmen do, of course, work wonders against drakes, particularly fighters. However, I felt I had to keep them on the offensive, to avoid Burners coming in, and attacking them despite their little spear attack. I probably should have figured out ways to keep them on good terrain, though.

I am a fan of gathering experience on my units. However, this is hard against Drakes, as each Drake is built like a tank, and resists things that are not Pierce or Arcane. Except for Clashers, which resist things that are not Arcane. At least they don't dodge well?

I recruited a mage to burn out skirmishers. Magic works around their high defense, and they are a little bit weak to it to boot. However, I lost my mage (20 gold!) to some funky business. If I had more troops, I could have protected it.

In the end, I lost to economy problems. I did manage to finish off ME's wave, but there were Clashers coming up the Den, and all I had was a Red Mage (who deals fire damage, which is wholly ineffective against drakes) and a heavily wounded Spearman, who was three experience away from leveling up, due to all his failed attacks against that level 2. Seriously, he should not have missed 6 attacks in a row. That's just sad.

In other news, Cavalry is not that great against Drakes. I tend to use cavalry against Northerners, both in Horseman and Cavalry variants because they are resistant to blade, and weak to pierce, something that the Northies only can deal from two fragile units. In the Drake's case, the Drakes themselves are resistant to blade, and the expensive horseman is too much at risk from getting skewered. The Drake Clasher has the third most powerful melee attack in the game (After the Horseman's charge, and Wose) and during the day can deal a full 36 damage to a Horseman. Worse (in my opinion) are the Saurian Skirmishers, who can use their titular skirmisher to simply wander behind lines and use their pierce attack to skewer the hapless Horseman. Horsemen get wounded. They charge, their opponent deals double damage... even an Bowman's 4-2 attack turns into a 8-2 attack, the same as, say, a fencer (Well, actually a little different, but ignore that). Horsemen get wounded a lot. While doubling both your attack and your enemy's attack pays dividends whenever you have more attack power than them, it's still going to hurt you, and then there's always going to be a Skirmisher driving a spear up your horse.

At the end, I felt my only option was to gamble on level up my units. I had lost so many villages that I couldn't recruit much at all, and if I just played normally ME would grind me into dust, slowly but surely. However, a streak of bad luck kept me from getting the Pikeman I was dreaming of...

And so I wound up all losing and stuff. Sad cookies. (And the internet died and killed the game, but I don't think there was much chance of me winning then.)

Loris River, Loyalists versus MysteryExclamation's Northerners

http://www.4shared.com/file/IBPJx2-F/4p_-_Loris_River_replay.html

This battle took place on the Loris River map, which is actually built for 4 players (with two teams, one in each corner). I tried to do it for 2-player, just me and MysteryExclamation ("ME").

When I started, I realized this map was a bit big. I sent off two spearmen to grab things in the northern part of the map, with... some success. My main interest, however, was to rush down to ME's base and start harassing her immediately. With luck, she would pick a fight with me with the front-line close to her base. Since it's a square map with us in either corner, some villages are quite out of the way.

I had a good success with my Horseman-Cavalry tag-team. I had picked the two of them because the Loyalist Cavalry has 20% resistance to blade, and 30% to impact - only orcish archers and goblin spearmen can hit their 20% weakness to pierce. Plus they were fast, which was the point of this whole endeavor. I killed a bunch of people, and did pretty well in the south. I was gradually driven back, but on that front I got a Lancer, and had killed a good deal of her units.

On the topside, my idea of grabbing everything with the spear-men seemed kind of silly. The map is wide, but it's not incredibly long. I got into a continuous fight with ME's units up there, doing so-so. Nothing special.

The Lancer I got in the southern campaign was... fun. It naturally deals 12-3 damage, which is not bad, but then it charges, so whenever it attacks both in and the enemy deal double damage. So it's basically 24-3. During the day, that goes up to 30-3 damage. That's right, he can deal up to 90 damage in a turn, and can one-hit anything with less than 30 life.

He killed a unit almost every turn. Watch his spree in the replay. He just wanders around sticking his lance in anything that comes his way. Bad-ass. I prefer Lancers to Knights for multiplayer because while a Lancer is more likely to die, he will probably kill more units in his short life than a Knight will an entire game.

Of course, this also means that other units get less experience, right? In a campaign, this is fairly important. However in multi-player, killing a few units means that your level 1 units will both survive better, and have a better chance of ganging up on the remaining enemy units. I think it's fair, though having your level 1s deal the finishing blow is generally preferable.

After a fairly even battle on both fronts, I started to win a bit in the southern front, and eager to grab villages (I was below-half of the villages most of the game) I went and grabbed a bunch.

...silly me. As it turns out ME had a decent-sized assault-force ready, and picked off my units the same way I like to pick off her units. I was still massively ahead in terms of kills, but this had narrowed things a lot.

My plan at this point was to lose (or at least only mildly threaten) the lower area, and focus on wiping out the northern area, where I was on the verge of winning (I had done a bit of imbalance, sending more troops there when it looked like I was winning on the southern area). The next day, I was going to wipe over that side of the map, then cut downwards between ME's keep and her troops in the field.

This would have been a feint, of course. The Lancer (who had been sent back for repairs at this point) would be riding a route that kept him out of enemy sight-range. He's got a speed of 10, so he can do that pretty well. One the battle was drawn to between ME's leader and the rest of her troops, I would have the Lancer run in out of sight range and lance her leader.

Troll has 55 health and a 20% resistance to pierce. A day-time blow with the lancer would deal 24 damage. More importantly, her troll leader has 40% defence in a castle. I had a 64.8% chance to hit at least twice, with a 21% chance to kill her leader out-right. If I only hit twice, then I would use another horseman (84% chance to hit once and kill) or any other unit I could get there - possibly fencers (82% chance to kill) to deal the last 7 damage.

Otherwise, it would just be a big battle where I could reclaim the villages of the south back while my units did their best to take equal amounts of northerners with them. The units to support them would be streaming in through the lower continent, and taking the villages as they go (slowing the first re-enforcements to create a proper "wave", not just a stream of attackers).

By the time the reinforcements came in, I would control the vast majority of the villages on the map, and be able to send in enough troops to at least keep MysteryExclamation from re-expanding, and then eventually crush her. Unless she fought to keep the southern continent, in which case I would have a very good chance of ganking her leader in the meantime.

Of course, then ME went to get fitted for a corset, and since she had forgotten to keep her computer plugged in, it ran out of battery and died. Which killed the game. Thus the replay ends half-way.

Lame.

Other general notes: Starting with 100 gold meant that I didn't have many units at the start. Neither of us did, which made Loris River very, very big. This emptiness is what made my cavalry tactics very potent. However, starting with 200 gold (as if we each were two players) might be overall better. It would certainly make for an epic fight.

I also did an over-all bad job of xp-management during this fight. I let a lot of experienced units die. (Plus the pseudo-loss from Soddreoc killing everyone. He kills 9 units in the game, 3 to become a lancer, and 6 afterwards. I'm not sad about his performance.)

There's an interesting problem with having to claim land on a map like this. I often lose units to going and grabbing villages. I should be more carefully about this.

Anyway, enjoy the replay. If you have questions about particular decisions on my (Aelaris's) part, feel free to ask.

What's What

Woo! A new blog! Again!

I made a new folder to archive all my Wesnoth Replays, and it occurred to me that I had little idea what happened in these games. So I thought to myself, hey, I should annotate them! Then I decided that this would be too much effort, so I'd only annotate the games I play in the future.

But then... why have all the annotations rusting in a folder, when I could share them with everyone?

So here's the place to share. Whenever I play a game, then afterwards I'm going to post it up here with a (primarily strategic) summary of what happened. Probably short little things.

People who are following me in other blogs might notice things have gone quiet. This is because I'm back on the Seraph-Inn forums, and so I use the "Complain" and "Anti-Complain" threads there, rather than expressing myself here. This blog hopefully will not have competition like that.

I may make a few posts on strategy, or general Wesnoth ponderings.