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.

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.

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.