Sablestone Delta, Loyalists versus MysteryExclamation's Drakes

I was second-player this time around, and I was happy to be able to jump forward and get to the forward keep on the first turn. Distributed my recruits between there and village-grabbers in the original keep.

ME was playing drakes, and with more drakes than Saurians. I went as fast as possible, and during the last part of the day, I lunged deep into enemy territory to take out a Saurian Augur on the first turn. Indeed, I played very, very aggressively this whole game.

A few thoughts on the match-up:

With standard recruiting patterns, the loyalists have the advantage in damage and health because of the abundance of piercing damage, etc. Drakes can use saurians against piercing folks, but they fall easily to normal guys in the loyalist army (note that they are basically slightly-better/more-expensive fencers with no HP). The other tactics they can use involves being careful about when and where to place attacks, hitting the piercing units with Burners' ranged attacks, and outright killing them before the can retaliate. There are many tactics, but the limiting factor is that they all involve the drake player choosing his or her battles.

I didn't want to let MysteryExclamation choose her battles. Instead I pushed forward hard and made the biggest bloodbath I could. Bowmen shot Clashers, Spearmen stabbed everything, and calvary ran around finishing things off. When the dust settled, I held the position, and had gotten a Spearman to become a Pikeman, which is golden against drakes. Of course, by then I had killed about twice as many drakes as I had lost units, so the game was pretty much up by then.

Back to winning!

Hamlets, Northerners versus MysteryExclamation's Loyalists

Northerners!

I had been hearing about how to play Northerners for a while, and a lot of buzz on the forum seems to indicate that having more grunts and other cheap units was the way to go. Specialty units were for specialty circumstances. I resolved to use more grunts.

I also started recruiting with a keen eye as to how to get the most villages the quickest. As was described to me on the forum, if buying one unit over another allows you to get to a village a turn earlier, you make +2 (or more, if upkeep is an issue), which can be thought of like 2 gold discount on the unit. Extra kudos if you place your units right so that they can get extra villages without buying units that need more move points to do so (I am, as always, bad at scouting, as can be seen in this map).

Anyway, in Hamlets I prefer to get the two villages behind and to the side of my keep with my leader. They are pretty out of my way, and it gives my leader something to do between buying units and getting sufficient villages. Actually, in this case, I went back and bought more units first, because Northerners are so damn cheap.

When we clashed, night was starting, so I pressed the attack with grunts and trolls (and an assassin) on the west, and... well, I hadn't been expecting to fight on the eastern side, but I managed to knife the fencer pretty well. If they were going to fight during the night, I was going to make the most of their nerfed damage, etc. Unfortunately, against 60% defense my naga only hit twice, which is above average, but not enough to kill the fencer I was attacking.

In response, Christy killed my Assassin, and my attack on that side crumpled. On the other side, I failed to kill a mage, but was able to finish off a merman fighter. Unfortunately, most of her units were on pretty darn good terrain, so there wasn't a whole lot I could do right away. Her counterattack put up some fresh targets.

In the meantime, I grabbed her middle swampy village. I've come to realize that with the bucket-load of HP and decent dodge, northerners on a village are pretty hard to dislodge - I was hoping to hang onto that position and get more gold that way.

I tried some mroe to finish off the mage, but missed all four times. Very disappointing. Meanwhile, I used my assassin against the archer on the mountain and moved my troll (fearless, all that) onto the hills next to my grunt on the village. Trolls aren't bad during the day, as the regeneration stays the same, and they are often fearless anyway. Which is odd, but I guess it just goes to show you can't have any expectations of what trolls are like.

So my right side was collapsing, and my left side had sort of collapsed. Christy hadn't pressed the attack during the night there, though I only had one unit, instead retreating to protect her wounded. I reinforced the position.

Holding the village didn't work out for me with the grunt, though he did good damage to his foes before dying. I had an assassin in range, and used that to reinforce, and put my troll on the... village? I led the reinforced western front to help the troll and assassin. Meanwhile, I fell back on the other side completely - daytime Loyalists are very powerful.

As I moved my units forward (and killed a loyalist with rebel tactics), I noticed ME attacking my my right with a bowman and a mage - no melee units to defend them. This made me happy, and I stationed two grunts, a troll, and my leader to intercept and ambush them. She attacked the grunt on the mountain with her magic, but then had to put her archer on bad terrain to try to finish the grunt off. I killed the mage with two grunts (as should be the case), and cornered her archer with a troll. Also sent up a grunt there, and retreated my assassin that way.

In hindsight I realize that by this point, everyone who had participated in my daytime assault against the loyalists had died, save for the archers. Turns out that attacking a lawful faction with a chaotic one during the day is just as bad as it sounds. Losses/kills by this point were 7/4, or 92/65 gold.

On the other hand, her response to her troubled bowman was... another bowman? More blood for the bloodgod, I guess. Meanwhile, I leveled up an intelligent Orcish Archer. The other orcish archer died, and I resolved to make the most of my level 2, who was too cornered for me to bother running (basically, I couldn't get him back to my own lines, and if he ran away, he would simply help the Loyalist nighttime retreat).

The crossbowman did wonderfully, counterattacking with his 4-3 (5-3, nighttime) attack all over the place, and managing to somehow give as good as he got. He also set up all my other units to attack the units he weakened.

When the smoke cleared, ME had gotten a fish leveled up, I had lost my crossbowman, and I had swooped in and killed 4 of her guys. It was a pretty good deal, really. I then trapped her fish, and took it down, while I distracted the rest of her guys with a troll and a grunt.

Note that one of Mystery Exclamation's bigger flaws is bad management of level 2s. A level 2 is not an army by itself. They need support to survive. My Orcish Crossbowman died because he was alone, but while didn't kill a single unit himself, I was able to send in reinforcements to reap all four of the wounded. ME's fish didn't even do that, attacking a unit who was out of the way, and then getting surrounded and dying. I leveled up a grunt by killing it.

I then swept across the map. ME rallied for a brief while, but while she killed my second nearly-leveled-up grunt, I leveled up a troll anyway, with a lucky hit against a fleeing fencer. In a few turns I had most of the villages, and a massive army killing each unit sent at it. I won in short order, having recruited nearly twenty grunts in the game.

(ME's worse flaw: she often sends insufficient reinforcements to a losing front, and then they still aren't enough for the losing front, so the front is still losing while she sends more insufficient reinforcements. The proper response is to run away from the front, and get back to the reinforcements - not fight unless you have a decent number of units, all that. I think this is because she was raised on the neutral elves, who don't always run away during opponent's ToD. I was raised on DA/Skel Undead, who are immensely fragile on the defensive, and absolutely must run away during bad ToD.)

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.

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.

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.