The Freelands, Drakes versus MysteryExclamation's Knalgans

Woo! Drakes! I like drakes!

I started this game off on a relatively lousy note - I saw an Ulfserker on a village, and my Drake Fighter could fly over to him. The chance to kill him was about 70% or so. I figured that 17 gold worth of Drake was worth risking against 19 gold worth of crazed short-guy. But then he died, badly, and I couldn't even finish off the Ulfserker. (This is like... on my third turn. I figured she would start screening better once other units caught up.)

So that was disappointing. Night fell after that, so I mostly retreated, but I did send out my scout to distract people on the north-west. Only the gryphon could get to it in one turn, but it managed to hit twice, which was annoying. I recruited night troops, since ME had gotten close enough for me to use them right away. I then jumped Poacher with Saurians - Saurians might be annoyingly fragile to most things, but they do have 20% resist to pierce and to arcane. I didn't mind a few arrows, and the melee attack was pathetic too. He died.

I also sent up a saurian to distract the fighter and the thief who were coming down the middle, hitting the thief while he was on flat terrain. Not so great. And the dwarf hits twice and kills him. Boo! Hiss! I do get some measure of recompense when I saw his thunderer leave the mountain and miss a saurian. He had a sixty-percent chance to kill there, but I figured she wouldn't do it, because the thunderer would definitely die the next turn, and a thunderer costs more than an Augur. Him missing and also exposing himself was delicious. He did hit the other Augur when I attacked him the next turn, but the other augur had enough health not to die right away. More importantly, I finished him off with the Skirmisher, because he was on 30% terrain, not 60% terrain. That's a clean +75% damage.

Since ME couldn't see that side now, I snuck my Clasher up that way. I was rewarded when an unprotected Ulfserker wandered into view. 99.3% chance to kill, anyone? On the other side, ME attacked my castle, killing a skirmisher with good luck. This is me on the losing side. My retaliation killed the dwarf, but couldn't finish off the (now highly experienced) Thief. I did level the Skirmisher, though. (ME said it didn't count, because it was only a saurian.)

Her retaliation was a bit worse than expected - the poacher and the gryphon hit my scout, as expected, but the gryphon hit twice and killed the poor thing. This broke my screening, and let the Ulfserker do its thing on my drake burner. Burners are expensive!

I really did want to kill that experienced Thief, and lo! I happened to have a level 2 skimisher with move 8 (The lizard runs like a horse...). I also had a clasher, which paired up nicely with the ulfserker, and my leader chopped the poacher to 1 HP, and then I finished it with a Augur.

ME recruited 2 guardsmen during this time. I don't like guardsmen. They are obscenely tough, but they don't really fight back. I'd rather have a unit that will make my opponent pay in blood for overcoming the position, not just one that holds it for a while, but eventually dies, dealing minimal damage. There are merits to the guardsmen, but... well, I kept this in mind.

Embarassingly, the thief and the gyrphon were able to kill the level 2 ambusher, partly because the gryphon hit twice. Silly double-hitting gryphon! And the gryphon also leveled up. Choke on a pluot, but I'm not going to let him get away with that. (Particularly since it had it's back to the wall, one of the few cases where cornering is made easy. However (killing the thief with the clasher), I could only do this by blocking with a saurian Augur and my leader. The Augur was high experience, but the Gryphon Master would have to hit twice to kill it... and if he didn't, it would level up, letting my kill the Gryphon easier.

Yeah. Hit twice. Good grief, Gryphon, every time you attack, you seem to double-hit.

The plan was to hurt him with the leader, then finish him off with the clasher, almost leveling it. However, I hit the wrong leader attack (the 11-3 attack, rather than the more-likely-to-seriously-injure-but-not-kill 17-2 attack. (2/3 hits is more likely than 2/2 hits), and killed him.

One poacher attack later, my leader was down to 14/62 HP, and beat a hasty retreat. A lousy retaliation by the clasher and the augur was unable to finish off the poacher, and it retreated with 2/30 HP. I then recruited one of everything, except for a scout, and found myself in that possition again - the one where ME's units are spread across the map, and all of mine are at my base (with slightly more, in this case, not less). This usually results in a bloodbath, and my victory.

This time was little different, save that the bloodbath took a damn long while, due to the silly guardsmen who refused to die. First I slaughtered a gryphon and a thief, then when the dwarf guardsmen moved off the mountains and stole my villages I... attacked the guardsmen. And attacked them some more. My entire army was attacking them (save for one guy who gave his life to distract everyone else from stealing all my villages while I was so occupied).

I then marched up the side, and slaughtered everything in my path with a horde of drakes. If you have enough drakes to surround someone, they are probably going to bite it.

Eventually I got to her leader, and, killing everyone around him, brought him down to very little health.

...and then it disconnected. Go figure. But Christy and I both count it as a win - I had covered her base in drakes, so she could not recruit, she was at low health, and could not escape, and the only units unaccounted for was a badly-wounded gryphon, who couldn't gank my (inordinately beefy) leader if he tried.

Cynsaun Battlefield, Knalgans versus MysteryExclamation's Loyalists

Cynsaun Battlefield is... huge. ME and I had never played on it before, and we both were a bit unsure what to do with it all. I grabbed two Gryphons (which never seem to work out well for me), and then a relatively quick-moving assortment of mostly Hodoric troops, plus a dwarf, by accident. I then immediately moved my leader forward, recruited some more when I got to the next keep.

By about then, I started seeing the enemy. I saw a horseman over west, and later the leader herself (White Mage) on the south-east. I decided to move my leader closer to hers, and see if I could hem her in, there. I had an abortative plan to Ulf her, but that was dashed when she full-recruited in her new keep (the south-east one).

I lost all my gryphons pretty quick, but she was unable to send reinforcements to the battle in the West. I had more invested there, and while I lost more units than I won, I secured control of that area while engaging my foe fairly actively from my central keep.

I then proceeded to gather villages while recruiting dwarves for the close-in fighting between me and ME. ME moved up to an even nearer keep, scarcely ten hexes away from my own, and between the white-mage healing and the good defensive position, managed to drive back my Dwarves pretty well.

But I had most of the map, and continued to get more of it. Before long, I was getting 70+ gold a turn, and that started to take a toll on ME. She ran south, and I called in all the village-gatherers, and killed her as my hordes were advancing from the north.

A fairly epic battle, but one that was mostly decided when I killed off the forces on my west. Or, arguably, when I set up shop in the middle of the map, since that made everything possible.

Weldyn Channel, Rebels versus MysteryExclamation's Loyalists

This battle went... pretty badly for ME. She started off losing a horseman, and then... Well, she killed an Elvish Fighter and three Mermen during the entire battle, and two of the mermen were right at the end. Things went badly.

On the eastern front, I had a combination of a Mage, a Wose, an Archer, and...someone else (can't remember). They were just supposed to hold that side until I could send reinforcements, but instead they basically slaughtered the few attacks that went in that direction. Of particular amusement was a spearman and an bowman attacking the Wose. That's 60% resistance is massive.

On the other side, we fought a bit, and I lost my fighter there. I brought in my leader to shoot arrows at things, and I leveled up a fighter there (Yay Elvish Captains!). I then got my leader back and brought down a stream of re-inforcements, and ME's bad habit of making piece-meal attacks left solder after soldier to be slowed and picked off.

By then the Eastern detachment, achieving well beyond my expectations, slaughtered their way to the leader and killed him.

And so my Elvish Fighter was avenged.

There is a thread here about the battle. It contains the replay.

Caves of the Basilisk, Drakes versus MysteryExclamation's Northerners

http://www.4shared.com/file/2Tx2BoJG/2p_-_Basilisk_ME_Fixed.html

So a few nights back, I was playing truth or dare with the folks on vent. Since Truths are easy, I went for Dares. Kallaster dared me to... well, let's just look at the chat.

What can you draw from this? Well, I had a series of objectives. Lose the game, and make it look like it was fair. At the same time, show in the game that I could have won, but threw it.

11/16 22:48:22 Kallaster: I dare you to play a game of Wesnoth with someone and purposefully lose.

11/16 22:48:31 Kallaster: *evil*

11/16 22:48:35 Yineth: screenshots or it didn't happen

11/16 22:48:40 Nil Athelion: Screenshots?

11/16 22:48:44 Kallaster: mmhmm

11/16 22:48:44 Nil Athelion: I can give you a bloody replay.

11/16 22:48:45 Kanhef: (This is why legalese is so convoluted, to avoid ambiguous interpretation)

11/16 22:48:47 Kallaster: :D

11/16 22:48:54 Nil Athelion: Or computer-cam a replay.

11/16 22:48:54 Kallaster: yes, replay

11/16 22:49:03 Nil Athelion: With commentary.

11/16 22:49:09 Yineth: < 3

11/16 22:49:29 Nil Athelion: Do you want me to make the other person think that I am playing hard, or do you want it to be obvious that I am throwing the game?

11/16 22:49:40 Yineth: playing hard :3

11/16 22:49:44 'Nil Athelion' has left the chat.

11/16 22:49:48 Yineth: >.>

11/16 22:50:05 Nil Athelion: Kall, what is your opinion.

11/16 22:50:07 Nil Athelion: ?

11/16 22:50:09 'Yineth' has left the chat.

11/16 22:50:21 Yineth: Bye bye Dopples

11/16 22:50:54 Nil Athelion: (Also do you want me to lose by leaving my leader open to assassination, or by over-all defeat?)

11/16 22:51:12 Nil Athelion: (Actually, it would have to be over-all.)

11/16 22:51:25 Nil Athelion: (None of the players I play against are really good at leader-ganking.)

11/16 22:51:30 Nil Athelion: (It's sort of my specialty.)

11/16 22:51:35 Nil Athelion: Okay.

I decided that I shouldn't make tactical mistakes, but rather sweeping strategic mistakes.

Mistake 1: Recruiting all pierce-vulnerable drakes, and only Fighters and a Burner.

Mistake 2: Doing a very ill-advised attack through the middle, where the great mobility of Fighters is negated.

Un-mistake 1: MysteryExclamation is playing Northerners, who have very little pierce.

Un-mistake 2: I send a fighter around the side - she doesn't notice, and he grabs all the villages.

Un-mistake 3: I slaughter her attack on the side.

Mistake 4: After slaughtering her attack on one side, I ignore the other side, save for the village-grabber (who I send to an early death).

By the time all the drakes are dead, I'm making 24 gold a turn... so I'm really winning. Her level 2 turns what should have been me scaring her off into... well, she loses her water-mobile level 2. I fight back a bit, and wind up with three level 2s, all saurians.

Mistake 3: So I decide not to recruit units until my current attacking force is done. Should put a damper on things - plus I have oodles of gold by this point.

Un-mistake 4: I seem to be winning. I crush the center, and dominate one of the sides.

Mistake 4: I don't take villages. It would have been seriously easy just to claim all the villages and let her run out of units, even against my guys.

Mistake 5: I don't kill her leader, despite the many opprotunities to do so from my level-2 magic-users. And everyone else, really.

Un-mistake 5: I still seem to be winning - even with her recruiting a few people, I still have most of the villages, and she's too busy to take them back.

...time to get tactical - I pit my magic-users on bad terrain against a high-HP unit in a village. Looks like he's going to die anyway, but I hold back my nearly-level-2 Clasher on the side, and give her enough time to kill them, leveling up some of her units. Also do things light attacking with low-health level 2 guy, using pierce-vunerable drakes against pierce-happy Goblin spearmen, etc. I even manage to bother up the battle in the west.

Un-mistake 6: She sees my Clasher. Now I have to attack with it, or everything looks silly. He has a chance to kill her leader outright. Awkward. Fortunately he fails, and "merely" levels up. I attack her leader again (she has more health now), and let her forces surround and kill my level 2 (rather than running off to a village and getting support.

And now it's just a matter of making it look real.

Mistake 6: I have 190 or so gold. I buy only six saurians with it. That's going to be my excuse for having no waves of re-enforcements - I was building up Saurians with all my money. Or something.

Mistake 7: I split my unnecessarily meager forces between two fronts, rather than using their skirmishing and range to concentrate power and kill things.

Mistake 8: I get my leader trapped out on the front-line (in the cave) so he doesn't look stupid not recruiting anything.

...and then I lose! Simple as pie! Kinda!

Are you happy now, Kallaster?

Tactical Notes: Defense and dodging

Sometimes you sit out there in the battlefield, and you think to yourself, "Why is this 10% extra defense relevant at all?"

Well... it is.

See, when you are getting hit by a 5-4 attack, that really translates into a mere 10% less damage of the total, which is only 2 damage, on average. Which seems weak. But this shouldn't be weighed as damage relative to max damage, but rather relative to the difference in damage taken between defenses. Consider:

The difference between with 30% dodge and 40%, you take 16% more damage than you would have from that 10% difference.

For 40% and 50%, it's 20% more damage - the amount of most resistances units have.

For 50% and 60%, it is 25% more damage - the difference between the optimal time of day and the less-optimal time of day.

And for 60% and 70%? That's a 33% difference. Which is big, particularly since most evasive units take extra damage or have low HP to balance.

Consider:

An Orcish Assassin stands on plain ground, with a 60% to dodge. An elvish fighter does a max of 24 damage to him, if all four hit make it. With a 60% to dodge, on average that fighter is only going to do 9.6 damage to the Orc Assassin. With only 26 HP, he's not going to last long - 2.7 attacks of that will finish him (which is to say that three elvish fighters have a pretty good shot at killing him in a turn).

But what if he moves over to some place and gets 70% defense? Suddenly that damage goes down to 7.2 per elvish fighter attacking. He can survive 3.6 of those attacks - it would take about 4 elvish fighters to put him down, reasonably.

What's one extra elvish fighter? Well, most of the time, units only get surrounded by, at most, three people. Two people, if in a line, or three people, if not a very good line. Four is... excessive.

(If you're curious about the exact difference, three elvish fighters have a 56.18% chance of killing an assassin on 60% terrain, and only a 27.63% chance on 70% terrain.)

Moral of the story? The defense does matter. But it matters more between high percent dodge rates than at low ones - the difference between 30% and 40% is less than half of the difference between 60% and 70%

Keep that in mind when you position your evasive units.

Freelands, Loyalists versus DC's Knalgans

http://www.4shared.com/file/KYhE39Tx/2p_-_The_Freelands_DC_replay_2.html

DolphinCheddar's first Wesnoth game against a real human opponent!

I won, unsurprisingly. I was loyalists, and I didn't know what to expect, so I stocked up on spearmen and stuff. Grabbed a Horseman for the Western front. Embarassingly, I forgot to grab a village on my first turn.

I marched forward and took the hills and stuff on my side of the Freeland basin. The sun was just setting, and I had noticed two Griffins on DC's side. Knaglans are neutral, sometimes chaotic, depending on the recruits. Griffins, flying all that, have pretty good defense whereever they are - sort of a fake calvary effect. I kept my troops on the hills, so they would at least survive the night.

DC decided to build up first, and then attack, so she missed attacking during dusk and first watch. She attacked during second watch, but my dawn counter-attack worked pretty well. By then I could see she had griffins and stuff, so I got some Heavy Infantry and brought my leader forward. My leader was the lieutenant, so he gave a bonus to my attackers - I brought down a bird and killed a Thunderer. Meanwhile, I tried to sneak in with my horseman around the eastern front.

I had chosen to ignore the Eastern front, concentrating my troops in the middle. I was sort of worrying about her coming up that side, since I had no intel there, but she seemed intent on attacking in the basin.

During the day, it was a bit of a slaughter - I killed all the troops initally there, and a few troops she sent in to attack as well. In the Daytime, Loyalists are very strong. What can I say.

My horseman got hit by a griffin, and while arguably it could have beaten the griffin (it was on a village), I saw DC's leader (a trapper) leave her castle and wind up on 30% terrain. As it turns out, I couldn't quite kill her leader. My horseman did 22 damage, and attacked twice, but the leader had... 45 HP. 1 too much. I attacked anyway, hit twice, and brought the leader down to 1. The next turn I brought a spearman across to finish off the leader.

And so the game ended!

General strategic notes for DC:

During a favorable time of day, it is the moment to attack. The defending player generally has better terrain, so only when you have the advantage of day is it favorable to attack an entrenched position. In one way of looking, this is what you did wrong - you attacked a fortified position right at teh end of your units' favorable time, and that just went wrong.

A different way of looking at day of time is to say that you don't want to attack an fortified position anyway. Instead, use speed to attack / seize undefended objectives, and draw the opponent off of their hills and out of their forests. If they are out during the night, then they are at their most vulnerable. I prefer to do this during the last part of their favorable period, as to hold land as long as possible. Applied to this situation, my forces the whole night were sitting on hills and defending... only one village. If the griffins had been sent around the sides, taking advantage of their speed, they could have seized villages. If they seize villages, I can't attack them until daytime (grifs are strong...) and then I spend my favorable time reclaiming my own villages rather than counterattacking, and if I can't get back by night, you can seize my own defensive position.

Other errors included tactical things, specifically not checking resistances, all that.

Also leaving the leader out in the open, though that could just be a question of giving up, at that point.

Don't attack loyalists during the day. Maybe Drakes can do it. If they are careful. But if you aren't also lawful, you have no business attacking a lawful army during the day. When dawn arrives, run, run away. If you are faster, you can avoid being attacked altogether.

Anyway, yeah. Oh, and griffins are over-priced.

Hamlets, Drakes versus MysteryExclamation's Rebels

http://www.4shared.com/file/9NDKYqwg/2p_-_Hamlets_Christy_replay.html

So Drakes are probably my best race, all told. But, as I am lead to believe, my Drakes game is... different than most. I have a heavy predilection towards Drake Clashers, with their glorious 6-4 pierce attack, buttload of hitpoints, and good resistances. However, the way drakes are mainly played takes advantage of their mobility, and of their ability to pack a high density of attack power into a few open hexes of attack. Consequently, I've been trying to recruit units other than Clashers, Augurs, and Skimirshers. Like Burners, or like Fighters.

Thus, for this game, I tried to recruit a good mix of units. I did get two Augurs by accident. I also tried my best to measure out how to get a good second turn of everyone getting to villages. It worked... alright.

The lead-up to the first battle started more or less as planned. I jabbed at an isolated Scout to drive him off for the night, then retreated. (The scout jab was so he didn't prevent my retreat, and also target of opportunity.)

However, this got a bit derailed. I can't stem my blood-lust, apparently, and there was this juicy mage... right... there... So I killed her, taking one more unit than I expected. I put the Saurian on the far end, because it was night, and the thing was chaotic, right? Well, I neglected to put it on good terrain, and the different between 40% defense and 60% defense is him taking 150% more damage, and dying. To a shaman!

But after a mediocre assault on her side, I found that the majority of her forces were on relatively bad terrain, all clumped together. I decided that, since the sun was about to rise, I should trap them there, killing as many as possible. It was the reverse of my augur - now they were on 40% terrain, with measly elven hit-points.

Well, despite relatively high kill chances for a lot of my attacks, nobody quite managed to die, surviving with 7, 1, and 1 hitpoints. Also my leader managed to miss all 3 times against the archer, which was embarassing, since the archer had only 19 hit points. Silly mountains. Otherwise I would have been able to finish off the Scout with my Augur, and then use his square to finish off the fighter (or the Shaman) with my Burner.

Things after that went... pretty badly. My Skirmisher, the one who only hit the Shaman 1 out of 4 times, despite a 60% chance to hit, happened to be both at the edge and on bad terrain. He got shot four times by an archer, speared once by a Merman... and then killed by a shaman. A shaman who leveled up from it. Into a Druid.

Druids are... bad mojo. Not only do they have slowing attacks, which seriously mess drakes up, but they also heal 8 hitpoints a turn to everyone around them. "But Nil, don't villages do the same thing?" Well, two things: First, a druid can move with the troops, healing them every turn, and secondly, a village only heals one person for 8 HP. A druid can heal up to six people, each for 8 HP. That's a good 48 HP, more than a Drake Clasher. Even half of that (which happens more often), is 24HP, which is about 2/3 units worth of HP. Getting two units of HP every three turns is... not what I wanted.

On the bright side, she hadn't slowed anyone yet, and it was day, and I was Drakes. I attacked with my leader, who hit once, then with my fighter, who hit once, and then (cutting down the wounded scout) with a Clasher, who hit once. That's 10 attacks against a 40% defense. It hit at half of the average number, leaving the Druid at 6 HP. One more hit - is that too much to ask for?

On the next turn, MysteryExclamation opened up with an Archer, and with help, killed my Fighter, releasing the druid from her hard pin. She ran away, to heal and fight (okay, heal others) another day.

Except... ME took a really long time on deciding the placement of her fleeing units. Suspiciously long. Checking my units, indeed, one of the forward Fighters had a move speed of 7, just enough to get him in range of of her Druid. My wounded Drake was in range to kill one of the wounded units screening the Druid, and so I was off! I slew the wounded unit, and flew past his corpse with my other drake to slay the foul witch. Druid. It worked. (I also freed my leader from being pinned, so I could move down and get back to my castle to recruit.)

Well, it worked, except that instead of having roughly equal losses on both sides, I left myself exposed and took heavy losses the next turn. As in, both my Fighters died, including the one that was almost leveled up, and then she killed my healing Augur and a Clasher. This left me with my leader and one Drake Burner against her entire army. She had 7 units, and her leader. Drakes are tough cookies, but that's pushing it, especially since drakes are uniformly weak to pierce (Clashers aren't technically weak to pierce, but they are resistant to almost everything else).

What to do? Well, I thought I was going to lose, but perhaps the situation wasn't that bad. Losses on both sides were roughly equal, albeit because the Druid counted as a lot of money lost, even if she didn't have to pay to recruit it directly (she paid 15 for a shaman and got a druid, rather than paying 35, the actual value of the unit - leveling up makes you money, you see. And that's not counting the insta-heal).

I got back to my castle, and suffered an attack by a spearman on my leader, which put the unit 1 xp away from leveling. I got to my keep, and recruited a bunch (two) of pierce-resistant Clashers, a Burner, and an Augur. Woo, built-up money!

However, on the next turn, the spearman attacked again and leveled up. Fortunately her horde of units was still only entering my field of sight (specifically, killing my original drake before he could level up). I attacked her level 2 with an Augur, my leader, and two drake clashers. That's 13 attacks of 6 damage each from the melee units, and a 5-3 magical attack. Understandably, he went down like a brick of bags. He also gave one of my Clashers half the XP he needed to level up (Clashers take 32 XP to level up, and a level two gives 16 XP, twice that of a level 1).

The next few turns were... tense, but the sun was rising and she was attacking with Elvish Fighters and Mermen Hunters. My Augur held out admirably against three attackers (finally on good terrain, see?), and then I killed one of them with my experienced Clasher, and then another with the mighty fire attack of a Burner and a Clasher's massive attack. Her counterattack almost killed my experienced Clasher and my Augur, but they lived with a little health.

Now, here I had options. As previously mentioned, leveling up heals the unit fully. I wasn't about to sit around and heal via villages when she controlled the majority of the map - it was live or die, kill or be killed. ...I used my leader to weaken a Fighter, then killed him with my Clasher, leveling it up into an Arbiter, and then used a Clasher to weaken the (primarily ranged) Hunter, and finished him off with a magical attack (70% to hit, one hit needed, but if the opponent got an attack, they would have a 60% chance to kill me. But 60% of 30% is only a 18% chance, so you can see where attacking is handy - the Drake case was very similar). I finished off another unit with my Burner and a Clasher, using that obscene Drake attack power to my advantage.

Suddenly I was winning again. She may still control most of the board, but I had more better units. A Clasher is nothing to trifle with, and I sheer outnumbered her now. With Drakes!

I swept upwards, wanting to take back my villages and end her economic advantage. My Clasher's enormous 18-2 attack worked wonders against any elf with less than 36 health (I.e. all of them), and my units were still clumped together. She recruited a Wose, for whatever reason (more on that later), and I killed that. I chopped up Archers as they came by, etc. She didn't do a very good job of grouping up for a counter-attack, and I carried onwards up the map.

I was leery of making the same mistake as her, and so when I pressed near to her castle, I made busy getting villages and converting my field advantage into an economic advantage. Her leader, a Druid, came out of the castle to fight or die, since without the money she was going to lose anyway.

One of my Arbiters killed her in two hits.

Victory!

(Notes: Woses are a questionable choice against a Drake player - this is not just because fighters and burners deal fire damage, but also because because they only deal impact damage, to which every drake has a 20%-30% resistance. Additionally, Woses are slow, which means drakes can avoid them until they can grab a burner to attack with, and since drakes are fast, they have a sight-range that sees Woses moving into forests to hide. What's more, Woses are resistance to Impact (40%), and pierce (60%). However, every Drake unit has a blade melee attack, so there isn't even that advantage. The only thing they can do is slaughter Saurians, who have 26 and 22 HP, a 10% weakness to impact, and happen to melee in pierce and impact only. (And a ranged attack of cold, but why the Augur is attacking rather than running away is beyond me).)

The Freelands, Knalgan Alliance versus Kallaster's Loyalists

(Replay on other computer. I'll get it... sometime.)

Played a game against Kallaster, from the Seraph-Inn forums. It was her first time playing multiplayer, and a variety of things went wrong.

First off, I was using Mesaba's twin sister, and that computer still retained the setting from playing Biophlosion. Namely a relatively strict time limit.

I didn't notice it until after the game, when talking with dear Kallaster. See, I take my turns relatively fast, when I am paying attention, so it never was an issue for me. For her, she was reading unit descriptions, recruiting... and ran out of time. Only recruited a few units on her first turn.

On my end of things I bought three dwarves at the start, and raced them downwards. Freelands has some nice hills and mountains, so I wanted to clog up the middle there. I also sent bandits down both sides, with mixed results.

Kall didn't have enough units at the start, and this showed in her only expanding slowly. I was bearing down on her door with dwarves, of all things, and she had barely gotten her villages. I beat away some isolated units, and set up shop on some nice hills for the day.

During the next night, I just started cutting down her troops, all fairly well. In her counter-attack, she really, really, really should have been able to kill my Urfserker, but somehow it survived... and leveled up. Then her connection died, but by then the result was obvious. I switched it over to computer by accident, and it immediately shot arrows from the Lieutenant to the Berserker. I then slaughtered it the next turn.

So... kinda lousy for a first game with Kall. We need to play a nice proper game without her getting jumped by time-limits all the time.