Caves of the Basilisk, Undead versus DeathSong's Knalgans

I'm doing this Velensk style, see how it goes.  Wrote this all late, late last night when I couldn't sleep.  Slightly sleep-trippy, as a result.

*ahem*


Turn 1:
DS: Not the greatest recruit: Two expensive and situational Urfserkers less than ideal, two footpads on one side less than ideal, and they are not even bought at the edge of the castle.  Note that a footpad on 18,5 (the lower Urfserker) could go straight south-west to village 11,9 on the first turn.
Nil: I send my leader onto a village that... I already control.  Smooth.  Causes my leader to waste the next turn

Turn 2:
DS: Three villages not taken on this turn.  Also, there are three dwarves not on villages.  Hm.  Additionally, urfserkers don't lead attacks very well, due to instantly dying to melee units.  Additionally, putting forces in the middle of this map is ill advised, as they do not help control villages.  Missed out on 9 gold, this turn - equal to losing half a Dwarfish Fighter.
Nil: I fan out wonderfully, taking every village, save for the one I missed by sending my leader to the wrong village.

Turn 3:
DS:  You got the three villages, leaving you only 6 or so gold behind me.  Dwarves still going through the caves.  Shouldn't you be petrified by the basilisk?  Come to think of it, this is a horrible place to fight.  But anyway, I don't think those two villages can be taken purely from the cave side.  From all my experiences of this map, only the path going through 23,14 is viable, and only if all the other defenders are picking their noses.  Also, sending the Footpad back to get a village rather than getting them in the reverse order takes up time as well (though you aren't attacking during the night, so it doesn't really matter).
Nil: I kill the Urfserker, and bring over another skeleton to help fortify the center, just to be sure.  (Having two skeletons on the villages is better defense than a DA on one of them.)  Unfortunately, this means that my attack force up the western side is purely composed of DAs.  On the left side, I peek with an adept, see the leader, and back away.  28-1 damage is absurd.

Turn 4:
DS: Nothing of note.  Retreat is better than hanging around the undead during the night.
Nil:  Ineffectual Nil is ineffectual.  Attacking the Urfserker was probably worth it, given the chances and the Urfserker being more expensive, but that didn't work.  I wanted to pin the footpad in the village for the DAs, but attacking was silly (gets healed anyway) and he can always escape out the back.  In fact, the most effective part of this turn is doing friggen DA scouting, and finding that the leader has left the village.

Turn 5:
DS: Dwarves come back down again, silly them.  Should have sent them around the side.  Watching the replay induces hilarity concerning my DA snagging that village - he's one hex outside of the sight/attack range of an Urfserker.  And the DA has no back-up at all!  Good recruits for ghost-hunting.  50% chance of 9 damage to the ghost, then if it hits, the Urfserker can finish it off.  If it doesn't hit, no need to risk the Urfserker.
Nil: Having seen the Fighters and measured their movement (which could get into the water, but not to a village, I opted to leave my skeleton a bit back, as not to be glaringly obvious.  I also recruited a ghoul, since being poisoned in shallow water several hexes from a village seems like bad new bears.  Also a ghost, as to explore the west without putting my DA in harm's way.  And thank goodness, given where the Urfserker is healing.
...In the west, the DA does his thing, not enough, of course.  I probably should have moved my ghost out of there, but I figured that night-time combat against an urfserker is probably in my favor, and there's only a 50% chance of getting hit by the Thunderer, and the Footpad doesn't do much damage... yeah, shoulda called off that whole attack there, certainly until I got some skeletons.  I am dumb sometimes.

Turn 6:
DS: So I am losing now.  I've lost 36 gold of units, and only killed 19.  That's a difference of 7 gold.  ...which is more than the 6 gold difference between how quickly we grabbed villages, but less when you notice the DA sitting on the village, giving me a relative gain of 4 gold a turn for one turn.  Money is dudes, but dudes aren't the same as dudes who are in the right place.  My saving grace, of course, is that the two fighters are stuck in the middle, doing nothing and less.  Ghost dies, to nobody's surprise.
Nil: Retreating my DAs out of range of the dwarves.  The Footpads don't work me right now, not against adepts, so me having some idea how you are attacking is worth it.  Probably didn't need two.  I've been recruiting skeletons for your Urfs, and I send one to hide in the deep water.  Using submerge leaves me very satisfied.  Ghoul and skeleton take defensive positions, and my ghost moves up.  For some reason, nobody seems to see my DA up there, and I don't want to spoil that I'm doing things on that side.

Turn 7:
DS: I think your footpad sees my DA.  I don't know that yet, of course.  It would be cool to jump him, but you're Knalgans, and it's the day, so I guess that's not really an option.  I wouldn't have retreated so much on the eastern front.  You're basically invulnerable during the day.  I mean, sure, I could fight you, but after I do 7-2 damage to your guys, you do 7-3 or 18-1 (x2) to my poor DA.  So better to get hit and run away... which means on your end that you can hit and I won't fight back.  Not sure about your big footpad recruit - I generally have one for each front (for vision purposes and finishing folks off), but Dwarven Fighters are just so wonderful in this match-up.
Nil: Relief for the DA arrives.  The ghost is supposed to hold the village, with the other two as back-up.  Amusingly, my ghost can't see your footpad because I wanted to keep him back out of sight - I thought you still didn't know about my DA.  I position my DAs to dare you to attack.  Trading an DA for an Urfserker seems pretty sweet to me.  Unfortunately, one skeleton is a bit visible.  I also get a bat to have a better idea of what is going on in the east. Nanananananana... bat-cam!

Turn 8:
DS: On the west, not sure what your fighter is doing - dwarves are sucky in water, and a dwarf on flat land has nothing more to fear from a DAs than a dwarf anywhere else.  The footpads aren't exactly the high-offense units to drive someone out of a village, either (remember, kill quickly to avoid the village healing mattering).
On the east, I now see what you were doing.  Unfortunately, this makes your attack too late in the day.  If only those Fighters weren't in the cave, you could have attacked earlier.  I mean, this is morning - you should be hitting things already!
Nil: Awkward unit shuffling abounds as I try to figure out how to lure your Urf to his doom.  I'm like a siren, but without all the flesh.  Ghoul starts up the middle to distract reinforcements... and because I have nothing better to do with it.

Turn 9:
DS: You get your footpad through, causing all kinds of trouble.  I figure I'm going to lose the village, because I have to hunt damn Daedryn down.  However, you send your leader to roost on a village, rather than having him shoot ghosts with his BFG.  On the other side, your attack starts to come together.  I dislike putting evasivefoot (that's the move/resistance type) on flat terrain, but in this case it's probably worth it.  This sort of screening is how you get Urfserkers to work, after all.  (That and having such a strong presence after the Urfing that nobody dares attack the Urfserker.  There aren't two level 1s in the game that are worth trading with an Urfserker.)
Nil:  I agonize over whether to attack the urfs.  But I decide to wait.  More unit shuffling results.  I also recruit two DAs to help hunt the footpad (and reinforce the west).  Wrong units, of course - I probably should have had a DA and a Skeleton, to be better at reinforcing - the DA alone can kill the footpad, come nightfall.  Too bad for me.  Ghost goes to threaten the cave villages.  Rule through fear of force, not force itself, right?  Hopefully my one ghost will force two units to roost on those villages.

Turn 10:
DS: And the attack!  Surprisingly non-violent.  I would at least thrown rocks at the skeleton, and probably bashed it with a hammer.  If you had done that, it may have been a fairly fair fight with the Urfserker on the hill.  Also, did not really press the attack very hard on the ghost.  You roost a guardsman on the hill, but you don't really need to occupy villages when you can shoot a ghost for 14 damage with that gun of yours.  A more aggressive attack on the ghost would have been good, expecially since I only have two reinforcements within a turn's reach, and one DA isn't really lethal.
Nil: ...and this is the turn I probably win the game.  Kill the footpad with magic (good against his high defense and low hit-points, and then kill both of the Urfserkers.

Turn 11:
DS: This is the turn where you lose the game.  You don't run away with the dwarves, and they can't defend against DAs.  If the DAs are going to kill you at night, don't fight them.  Meanwhile, you doom a footpad and shoot ineffectually at the ghost.
Nil: Kill two footpads and a Fighter, take back both villages: now at 10/16 villages and I have more material than you.  Unless I am drastically stupid, you have no chance, and should be making your time.

For those of you who are curious, I did eventually win.

Sulla's Ruins, Knalgans versus MysteryExclamation's Northerners

And so it arrived. Another match of me trying to beat her Northerners with my Knalgans. Same as when I lost...

I started this match with a footpad and a gryphon over in my starting keep, then immediately moved east to recruit a bunch of dwarves on the eastern top keep. I then sent them hurdling down the side, and eventually moved my leader to the midway keep on the east side.

Meanwhile, my gryphon and my footpad wandered around grabbing villages and hitting targets of opportunity.

In the east, I holed up on hills and mountains, and ME led a relatively ineffectual assault against my position. My retaliation slaughtered her attack force as it became day, and I moved down a bit, and took up positions a bit further. Dwarf-creep. It was my new tactic against Northies.

On the other side, my gryphon and footpad did will until they ran into an archer and an assassin, who proceeded to kill the footpad. My gryphon ran south, hoping to draw them away from my villages, but they went north. By then, I sent a Ulfserker across, and he arrived just time time to stall their advance. They could out-see him (Or at least the assassin could), so they didn't get mauled, but they weren't willing to go where he could attack. They waited until she sent up a naga, and I sent another unit or two to support. I eventually got her naga in a land-battle, when she took a village with it, and then I was able to drive her away on that side.

On the other side, we fought hard and... bloodily. For the northerners. They couldn't take my hills and mountains, and I would attack at the end of night/start of day. I took a few more losses (three by the end of the game, I recall), and made her pay dearly for every little corpse.

As the battle wore on, I gathered experience and troops, and my stray gryphon grabbed villages.

Soon... victory was mine.

Howling Ghost Badlands, Knalgans versus MysteryExclamation's Rebels

Howling Ghost Badlands is an odd map in that it's basically diamond-shaped from the directions you can start in and, what's more, it actually matters. There's stuff (villages) in those corners, so you ought to fight over them. Also fake villages and villages that are hard to see. What's with that, anyway?

In any even, I started with a good deal of outlaws and other things that move fast, and took over my side of the map quickly. I advanced my leader at the same time, and then grabbed a bunch of dwaves when I got to a forward keep.

I then pressed the attack via dwarves on the west, and used dual footpads on the eastern front to trap and attack an elf. I later followed up with a dwarf. Early on I took a village, and I managed to hold onto the 1 village advantage the whole game (thus I had about 133.33% more villages than my foe my 8 villages to her 6 villages).

I got some good ulf-usage in the cramped quarters of the western battlefield (or against elves in general, really...), but overall the steadfast power of the dwarves triumphed over the pansy elves and their frail human allies. Meanwhile, the eastern front went alright, and I generally distracted people there until her leader got involved. 70% dodge doesn't work against marksmanship. Oh well. Instead, I fled and grabbed villages instead, which worked out pretty well for me.

I eventually crushed her forces on the east, and then attacked forward, took her semi-forward keep, and recruited three ulfserkers with all the money I was getting.

Urfserker > Elvish Marksman

I won.

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.)

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.

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.

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.)