What went wrong here?

[Aelaris]

Hi everyone,

I am curious as to what you all think about the attached replay. The replay stops when the internet died (again) and I decided to concede and go eat dinner. I conceded because I really did not think I could win by that point in the match.

So how did this game go so badly for me?

My own theories:
Too many skeletons. I had never played the Undead vs. Drakes matchup from the undead end, and I habitually recruit a healthy number of skeletons to chop mages, and other squishy targets during the night. However, I think this was largely unnecessary.
Too much ghost usage. I found that ghosts worked quite well partway through the game, but I then over-recruited. They cost 20, and thus are not good to trade. I also mis-managed them several times.
Failure to retreat. At several points I could have played it safe and retreated, but didn't. Part of this has to do with drake speed, though.
Not enough Dark Adepts. Should have recruited more.
Tried too hard to make a solid push. Undead kinda run away during the day, so I couldn't make a solid advance on one side. Consequently lost units that could have been saved if I fought just to kill drakes (make a monetary advantage), and not take territory.
Wasn't careful enough with my level 2s. I could have been a lot more careful with them, and not taken any chances with them, but I didn't. Losing the Shadow early on was really sad for me.

Other notes: We both picked random, race-wise. Map was on 50% experience and 2 gold per village per turn.

So what does everyone think?

[Tonepoet]

Your hindsight is fairly good. Failure to retreat and brash advancements were both things that cost you a huge advantage near the beginning of the match. Killing the glider and gaining a level up was more than enough for one night and clashers aren't really as fast as their kin. You make similar mistakes later but the exponential potential of units so close to the beginning of the match is perhaps the most important instance of this. Adepts are a much more prudent recruitment than ghosts and skeletons tend to be rather fragile, although the archer version can be useful as their attack build somewhat makes up for their fire vulnerability.

Some other things you might not've thought of:

When you leveled up your ghosts, Wraiths might've been a better upgrade choice since you were facing primarily Drake units, as opposed to Saurians. In this matchup the blade damage of a Shadow gets dampened by resistances, where as the Archane damage of the Wraith gets boosted, with Drain adding a whole lot to the Wraith's defensive capabilities, to make up for any remaining difference in backstab's purer offensive effectiveness. Wraiths can also act better solo to some extent, since they don't rely on allies for making backstab damage. It's already granted that some Saurians may've negated many of these advantages but your opponent didn't have many and a force in unit diversification may've helped your skeletons fair better, since more saurians mean more blade weakness, more cold, more pierce and most likely less fire. Perhaps not too much so, since saurians don't really deal a lot of damage back to wraiths either but still, the Wraiths would've probably helped you win out moreso than the shadows here in one way or another.

You needed more Ghouls earlier on to tank fire damage for you. The 10% resistance with a reasonable HP count makes a whole world of difference as opposed to the half-hearted endurance of the ghost and the -20% resistance held by the skeletons. By the time you actually decide to get some, it's just about too late because they have nothing left to protect, more or less eliminating their usefulness as they also have nothing they can directly kill without assistance. Ghouls are a generally a necessity in any matchup, as their well rounded resistances generally make them far better suited for surviving on the frontlines than any other unit in the faction. Also their poison attack lends melee geared units to not attacking or using their less effective ranged most of the time, where as those same units would just bash into an adept almost risk free. Melee poison can also be used to tempt fire wielding units off of the front-lines to heal, which will in turn generally prevent them from attacking to begin with. Most basically though, they're a "meat shield" so to speak and should generally be used as such.


Drakes vs. Undead is fairly volatile so normally safe advances aren't as you've already realized. What you may not've thought about is that with the proper counterattack set up, taking villages isn't as safe of a tactic either. If you'd had more Adepts, you could've kept them out of reach of initial Drake attacks while remaining in range to attack villages. Your opponent might deny you 3 gold by taking them for a single turn but you'll get that back with at least a 14 gold added profit by killing the very unit they used to perform the steal. (Assuming that your opponent is drake heavy like this anyway.) This would've been a far more effective defensive measure than placing expensive and fire fragile Ghosts on villages near the Drake Burners that're so effective at killing them.

As a final note, Games below 60% can lend themselves to more level-ups at an alarmingly hastened pace, so it's far more prudent to get kills and not get killed, since both the full healing bonus and heightened strengths both come a bit more into the forefront of the game. It also lends itself to hurting a lot more when level ups do die, as the bonus exp. granted for killing an already leveled unit virtually guarantees a level up by the unit to deliver the finishing blow. Generally most players will advise you to stick to the default setting of 70% exp, since that's what the game is actually balanced for. The deviance can indeed be fun for casual games but it's not so great for learning purposes, as I might assume you might just be starting to do. Otherwise the settings you used are very much the generally recommended ones.

By the way: Welcome to the forums and also nice avatar. I like the character art. I feel compelled to ask either "Where/what is it from?" or "Who drew it?" as whatever may lend itself to the most appropriate answer, if I may.[/offtopic]

[Aelaris]

Thank you, Poet.

I don't think I've figured out how to use ghouls, really. I currently use them defensively, covering my retreat during the day. I try to use them to stall lawful aggression by forcing some of the attacking units to go roost on a village during those all-important few turns of day-time. But aside from forcing units to roost on villages, I've never managed to get much use out of ghouls - they just die to fast to use as meatshields, and I was worried that with the Drake propensity to gang up on them, that they would get burned in a single turn, losing me a few gold. That said, in this case the same is true (and worse!) with skeletons.

Hindsight comes into play with the Shadow/Wraith thing. In the abstract, I much prefer the shadow, as it deals wonderful amounts of damage when not missing. With the skirmish, I've never had a problem with backstabbing, though I do my best to keep the fragile shadow on my side of things. I didn't realize that drakes were weak to Arcane until somewhat after my shadow was dead, and I suppose that would have been the better choice. The second one leveled on my opponents turn, and auto-leveled into a Shadow. (What controls the auto-level choice?)

I have no idea why JKR failed to play Saurians - when I play drakes, I use them just about as much as I use actual drakes. I kept expecting them (We were in the same room, and when he was able to see me before I saw him, I accused him of playing drakes, and his reaction confirmed it). I do love the skirmish on the... skirmishers, and healing is always nice (though the cold attack would be pretty bad in this matchup).

I will be sure to use villages as bait next time I play this sort of hyper-offensive matchup (DAs do such a ridiculous amount of damage sometimes). I do like the defensive capabilities of a ghost on a village, but it's an expensive, 20g delaying tactic.

I probably will shift the exp thing upwards next time around. When I started playing, it was at 1g per village per turn, and 100% experience, which I found leading to one rush, one battle, and never being able to recover from the first losses. 50% experience might be slightly over-doing it, though.


What effect, if any, do you think this particular map had? I felt it prolonged the game by leaving such a large middle gap between villages - no middle village to fight over, so to speak. Also, having two fronts was entirely troublesome to me, and I think I managed it relatively badly.


Attached is another battle of mine against the same player, again with me randoming into the undead. The replay ends the turn before I killed his leader. How would you compare my undead tactics in that game to this one?

[offtopic]The picture is clipped and bordered from a picture by my favorite artist Sandara. You can find the original in her archives here (fifth row, seventh picture). Her website is here, and her deviant-art is here.

Thank you for welcoming me to the forum.[/offtopic]

[Velensk]

I'll edit this to have feedback both for your comments and for the replay later, but I'm busy at the moment.

[Aelaris]

Thank you in advance, I suppose.

Also: How good am I and JRK at Wesnoth? I feel I have a pretty decent sense of what is going on, but is that just me being full of myself? I'm not a complete newbie, and I am better than my friends, but how do I compare against the average folks on the main servers? (Which, by the way, look absolutely terrifying and very different than the games I have been playing.)

I feel like I'm a bad player, as I can't seem to muddle through the campaigns, but I also win against my friends, who muddle through the campaigns a lot better than I ever do. (Which raises the question of whether the computer creates bad habits for 1vs1 play, and whether 1vs1 play creates bad habits for campaign play.)

[Tonepoet]

Ah, to address these thoughts in no particular order:

Most 1v1 maps are built like that actually if you take a close look. I actually have a hard time naming any 1v1 I've played where there are any villages in the middle anymore. Hamlets, Cave of Onis, Wendlyn Channel/Blitz and even The Freelands/Charge. There were some but Doc kinda phased that out when he started his balancing of the maps, which happened years ago. It's probably for the best, since player 1 would be able to take much more painful initiative against player 2 if so desired.

Ghosts on villages are typically very handy in most match-ups. Against Undead or Drakes though, this isn't really the role they're best at playing because Drain makes up a huge amount of their defensive capabilities so they don't even come into play. Also, the only two hyper-offensive matches I can really think of in Default Era are Undead vs. Drakes and Drakes vs. Drakes, so don't worry about utilizing the tactic that much.

Wraiths used to be the dominant level-up choice until the Shadows got skirmish, allowing them to have more practical raw damage output. I don't see wraiths so often anymore but in the past, they've acted as one of the most devastating level-ups in the game.

That's one pretty good way to use Ghouls. Just reverse it when you're advancing and sometimes hold villages with them instead of ghosts. The only time another unit should be up for consideration is when your opponent lacks enough impact, archane or fire damage to utilize all/most of the opponent's attacking hexes. That's when skeletons start to shine.

Saurians aren't really optimal choices for the all 'round factional matchup because they retain the telltale cold weakness and the resistance match-ups lend themselves to poor general performance. Skirmishers are often said to be great at catching Adepts off guard which I have personal experience in ruing myself, although my own optimization of this would probably be rather weak. Drakes are probably the only necessary units for the fight and JW's (slightly outdated) How to Play series reflects this.
_____

For your other replay, turn 1 your recruit was a bit illy optimized for the initial collection. The most obvious example of this is that you recruit a skeleton on 20,3 keeping you from reaching 28,5 if you'd recruited a bat there instead. You had a free recruiting slot elsewhere and you recruited a bat on the next turn anyway so this confuses me, especially considering that since they're level 0s that bats don't cost upkeep. It's only a 2-3g loss but it's a completely unnecessary one nevertheless. There are other details I could mention but I'll let you work those out yourself unless directly inquired. Velsenek will probably cover it anyway.

You rather casually tell the opponent you're undead early in the match, before they even uncover your fog. It's best to wait so they at least have to waste some movement finding out themselves. Or did you guys pick beforehand?

During the day Ghosts are worse against mages than they are against burners. 1 mage can always kill a ghost by itself on even luck, even despite their fire resistance. I'm sure you've noticed this yourself though.

Great advancement and pull out on the villages. This is a great improvement on what you did last game, although I'm not sure it would've worked against a more experienced opponent who would probably at least had units already lined up to just sit directly upon them, barring entry.

I do not even see any potential benefit from your ghost's attack. You just kinda let the expensive unit die for absolutely nothing. Solo missions revolving around direct combat like this generally aren't a good idea. Keep your units in groups.

On your east you don't have enough units to defend because of your earlier combat in the west. It would've been better to utilize Zone of Control to lock in those few units and send some units to your eastern front so you could more evenly fight. This might not've been possible with the skirmisher but the archer wasn't an absolutely vital unit to dispatch of, so you could've saved yourself some time there. There's no way just one Adept could hold that village during the day against loyalists so you should've probably held it further back a little. Unit preservation in general seems like something you need to work upon.

Generally sweet deal flanking your opponent's western villages with the bat. A +6g gold swing per turn means a whole lot and you're able to occupy three villages at one point, due to your opponent's lack of defenses for that side. His later loss was avoidable but I'm unsure if his sacrifice was in vain if it delays the horsemen from taking back two villages for another turn.

Nice setup for submerge that ultimately pays off when your opponent unwittingly exposes his mage. It might not've worked if your opponent had more optimal vision though so don't rely on this sort of tactic too often, as it could backfire with your opponent setting up powerful attacks for your skeletons to eat with only 10% def, which is even less than what magical would normally deal.

Shocktrooper shouldn't have been kept on the front village, as to prevent the juicy 16 exp. bonus that ending up giving you a Deathblade. Again +3g per turn is pretty good incentive for wanting to take villages but not if one's going to lose more than that in combat and losing a levelup to give your opponent one instead is a game-changing blow.

High level units attack first, so low level units get more experience and take less damage while attacking if a kill is possible.

Your opponent gets too many horsemen to face skeletons and the like with. Charge makes them take far too much retaliation damage and the skeleton's pierce resistance means that they don't get too much bonus in return. They're very fragile too. They're also very expensive, so if your opponent was wanting to deal with the Adepts in particular, the Cavlaryman has a cold resistance which can help with that and undercuts Horseman costs by 6g, not to mention as far as base damage goes, blade does better against skeletons than pierce on a very technical level. Otherwise, H.I. are a lot less apt to kill themselves while attacking, although they do require need some protection from temperature based attacks from the Adepts.

Nice keep occupation with the shadow and congratulations on your victory.
_______
Ah, new post: As for how you both fair so fair, I might not be the best person to comment since I can be play fairly lousy at times myself... However, so long as you're asking, my take on it is that you both make some rather obvious mistakes while playing from my point of view as a looker oner but also seem both seem to have some grasp on how some of the units work at the least. I'd say this is pretty par for the course insofar as the average skill level for people on the server goes. Don't worry about this too much and just focus upon improving your skills and seeking opponents that're better than you, as you can learn a lot from playing games with them, observing their movements and taking their advice. If you see a player by the handle of jb on the server, he's a highly skilled player, a fairly nice chap and gives fairly solid advice to boot so you might want to observe some of his games or play something with him if possible. I'd list some other names but I'm not really sure which players I've played with are active, who's rusty, who's adverse to playing with newbies, if any have been banned, ect. and so on, although I've memorized the names of a lot of interesting/regular players of the game. If requested, I'll P.M. as many of the more skilled ones as I can remember to you, if you're particularly interested in expanding your horizons to learn. I'm pretty sure they won't mind, since you'd probably run into them anyway with any prolonged contact with the game. I know Velsenek's advice should be very insightful while remaining quite concise, when he actually gets the time to post. At least if our discussion hasn't made the task of analysis too daunting anyway. XD
_____
Thanks for the info by the way, the full picture looks quite nice and I'll have a nice time looking through that gallery. I was just kinda trying to be funny with the tags B.T.W. Gotta go, so see ya later.

[Aelaris]

For TonePoet:

I realize that about the 1v1 maps, but I find that it wasn't just the lack of a middle village, it was that there was such a large (i.e. more than a unit's movement) distance between the lower villages and the upper villages. This is as opposed to a continuum, as in, say, Freelands. Also, there is very little defensive terrain in between the villages.

I'm glad to know that ghosts on villages aren't quite that bad. I generally use them to divert my opponent's forces, as it generally takes more than one unit to oust a ghost.

Interesting to know that about the ghost/wraith level-up. I used to level-up into Wraiths, but eventually I did the math, and that 8-3 attack is a lot stronger than I originally thought. Never got to use Night-haunt.

So only Ghouls 'n Ghosts on villages, huh? interesting to know. I always felt that the lack of a ranged attack makes ghouls ill-suited for sitting on villages - this also might have to do with two of my friends playing Rebels and only Rebels. I could definitely see it against Northerners, though.

---

Skirmishers generally manage village occupation and defensive cover for the night. Or just the night in general. I suppose I've never played Drakes vs. Undead or Drakes vs. Drakes. What other races have cold attacks?

I noticed this ghost management problem. In the particular game, both ghost died to delay assaults vis-a-vis time of day. For the first one, I was absolutely terrified of getting janked by two horsemen, a mage, and an archer while my forces were on the wrong side of the mountains. For the second, I was trying to draw off his forces with a nice, expensive bait, as to avoid them running up the left side and hitting me before I could mount a defense. As it was, my defense on that side barely managed it. I could have moved the adept back further, but I was planning on defense via poison, and I didn't want them to control too many villages.

I do have a problem with sacrificing expensive units to stall for time. If I wind up as undead again, I'll have to remember to do it with bats, not ghosts. The thing with the bat later on was quite worthwhile, and it almost killed a horseman, which would have paid for the endeavor twice over.

Submerge... is something I try far more often than I should. I do wish that they didn't actually "ambush" opponents, but rather only were revealed if a unit tried to move onto them. Them actually being run into with units is a raw deal, what with the 10% defense (still 30% defense against magical, but...). Them running out of the water to chop up mages is my dream scenario, but very few maps are set up in such a way. Cue my failed attempt to hide in the Caves of the Basilisk scenario. The only other time I got to use it was when I was losing a game on an island, and sent my commander out to sea while another hidden force of skeletons inched their way around the island to attack their commander. Needless to say, my commander was found and killed (by gryphons) long before my skeletons made it there. Is walking through water really that hard for skeletons? Anyway...

The Shocktrooper thing was where I felt the game shifted decisively in my favor. Big mistake on his end.

JRK is the only friend I've played who uses Horsemen to such an extent. On my end, I buy at most one horseman at any one time, to pick off injured units and grab periphery villages during an advance. It is kinda cool to play against Horsemen, as they produce a very different feel (not unlike Urfseekers) for combat.

For references, this game was a few days before my game against the drakes. These also happened to be a few days of traveling, so I was pretty tired during the long game against drakes.


(As for names to play against, I'm not sure if I'm ready to venture out into the great, scary beyond just quite yet. But thank you anyway.)

[Velensk]

Tonepoet (below) hit all of your earlier comments/questions and I don't have much to say about the this batch.

If you are going to present replays for analysis I would prefer if you played with standard settings (for 1vs1s 70%, 2 gpv, non-random time, fog) because some conventions that apply with these settings apply differently with other settings. In this case it isn’t too much of a problem however on lower xp games you should be even more careful with your units.

Anaylisis:
Turn 1: Work on positioning more efficiently for rapid village grabbing. The sooner you grab your villages the sooner you are ready to fight and the more money you get overall. To get to the center village from the keep only requires a 5 mp unit whereas the ghosts had plenty of movement to spare and could have been sent to the right earlier. I would generally avoid getting two ghosts on the first recruit incase you get an enemy who can very effectively counter ghosts. Scouts in general are good for making your grabbing rapid but less good for holding the village against a prepared enemy so always try to have durable commbat units on their way to the head of each front to be there in time to defend or attack as needed.

Your opponent shows signs of inexperience. Two horsemen and a mage are quite expensive for an initial recruit and his positioning could have been better.

Turn 2: You do have counters for mages but that doesn't mean that he shouldn’t get them. If you were going to get a bat you should have got it on the first turn to speed up your mobilization

Your opponent sends his leader out to the outer village, if you happened to choose a build that mobilizes quicker you might have been able to take advantage of it. As it is it probably won’t hurt him too much.

Turn 3: As a result of your somewhat slower mobilization and your opponents aggressive style you are in a poor position to hold off his invasion right now. Your opponent has left himself quite vulnerable on the left and you should be able to take advantage of this.

Turn 4: The bat had a better chance of living if you kept him on the swamp village. You were fairly lucky that he wasn’t able to just kill the bat and take the village. Skeletons or skeleton archers would be a more effective unit for repelling horseman than a ghoul would be.

Turn 5: If you hadn’t turned on random time of day it wouldn’t have been day. That isn’t sneaking that is him simply not committing any force to an area he should be protecting better. I would question the wisdom in your opponent getting to many heavy infantry against undead if it weren't for the fact that in the situation there isn’t anything better.

Turn 6: No comment except that your opponent would probably find retreating/healing the horseman preferable to capturing a village for a short time.

Turn 7: Letting the bat level is preferable to not having a chance to level up the horseman. He needs to learn to keep his leader on the keep more. His tendency to move it further away makes it so that he cannot respond to threats he should be able to.

Turn 8: Sending the ghost to attack was a pointless sacrifice. The damage you could possibly do is relatively insignificant and the chance for him to kill the ghost was great. A 20 gold unit is a bit expensive to be using as a distraction especially one that can’t prevent him from presenting a threat that will be difficult for you to counter.

Turn 9: No comments.

Turn 10: It probably wasn’t worth taking the risk that the adept would survive to hold the village. If you had moved him to one of the villages in the back the heavy infantry and mage wouldn’t have been able to reach him leaving you to merely lose a little bit of gold from the village temporarily. As it is the risk you took paid off but the odds were against you. Your opponent would have benefitted from a little risk management strategy.

Turn 11: He’s not going to chase off a skeleton with that very easily.

Turn 12: He still can’t attack your skeleton from more than one hexside.

Turn 13: It was in no way necessary to abandon that village however it turns out that doing so gave you a good ambush opportunity. There was no need to attack the shock trooper at that moment. Better to wait until you could do more serious damage to it in one go. Would have been less risky to place the ghoul on the opposite side of the trooper so that it couldn’t run and try to bait it out of the village, if it doesn’t come out of the village than a turn or two down the line you could simply run it over with adepts.

Turn 14: Don’t be rattled by small spurts of bad luck. Your opponent may use many horsemen but this is only to his discredit in this case. You need to shift more units to the right side because those horsemen will either advance there or run and leave it undefended.

Turn 15/16: No comment.

Turn 17: Game is practically over.

Overall for the game: Your opponent had a decent start but shot himself in the foot repeatedly in various ways. Your reaction was adequate to take advantage of this and defeat him.

Playstyles:You weren't horrible though you could defiantly use some shaping up. Your opponent was quite clearly new to his faction and probably would not have been good even with a better one. The average duelist in the lobby could probably beat either of you without too much difficulty but there are plenty of players whom you could beat. It’s hard for me to give you too many suggestions because the majority of the game was you responding to him or taking advantage of his oversights. I would merely advice that you think through your initial build and spend more effort keeping your units alive. Your opponent was far too fond of high damage expensive units and would be well advised to use fewer horsemen and more cavalrymen.

[Tonepoet]

Just tossing in some final thoughts on some of your more interesting comments:

I'm glad to know that ghosts on villages aren't quite that bad. I generally use them to divert my opponent's forces, as it generally takes more than one unit to oust a ghost.

Ghosts are a highly necessary defensive tank for the faction and more or less the only unit really suitable for defending against hard hitting impact attacks. Just keep in mind that they're great against melee units due to drain, average against most ranged units due to a compromise between resistances and HP and just basically terrible against fire or arcane attacks.

Interesting to know that about the ghost/wraith level-up. I used to level-up into Wraiths, but eventually I did the math, and that 8-3 attack is a lot stronger than I originally thought. Never got to use Night-haunt.

Damage dealt can be very important but it isn't everything. You have to use discretion and weigh pros. vs cons for the exact situation. Generally you'll want shadows for offensive purposes and assassinations due to their high damage output, while wraiths are better built for general purposes or defensive ones due to the endurance granting properties of drain.

So only Ghouls 'n Ghosts on villages, huh? interesting to know. I always felt that the lack of a ranged attack makes ghouls ill-suited for sitting on villages - this also might have to do with two of my friends playing Rebels and only Rebels. I could definitely see it against Northerners, though.

Not "only ghosts and ghouls" but they're generally better suited for the job. It's a good rule of thumb but depending upon your opponent's army build skeletons can sometimes be better. The key thing to take into consideration is unit survivability. Dead units are essentially money going down the drain and cannot protect a village from subsequent capture. I suggest ghosts and ghouls for general defense because skilled opponents bring Impact and Fire to the playing field to gain bonuses against skeletons, which usually makes skeletons much less apt to actually survive. Sometimes the retaliation damage can be more important if it can cripple the opponent's army for the kill, although they'll try work to avoid leaving themselves so vulnerable. However don't count on bad playing or strategic weakness on the opponent's part, unless they're actively demonstrating their vulnerabilities within your line of sight. It's just a factor that's out of your control.

Skirmishers generally manage village occupation and defensive cover for the night. Or just the night in general. I suppose I've never played Drakes vs. Undead or Drakes vs. Drakes. What other races have cold attacks?

None in default era currently. Rebels used to have it in the past, starting at level 2 with the Elvish Sorceresses but that got changed to Arcane, when Holy was replaced. Saurians also have to worry about just about as much with blade damage in particular though, which is very very commonplace, although at the very least usually not coupled with magical. Also, for future reference you can use The Wesnoth unit tree to study which units have what and figure many things out from there. I'd especially suggest analyzing the Level 2 units in particular so you can make split second decisions as to which branch is better suited to what in your next game. (I've had opponents leave me before because my old computer used to experience terrible slowdown while trying to open up the in-game descriptions to find out certain key details. Since I couldn't input until my computer stopped loading, I suppose they thought I left? )

(As for names to play against, I'm not sure if I'm ready to venture out into the great, scary beyond just quite yet. But thank you anyway.)

No problem, just let me know if you change your mind and maybe give give me a shout out if you see me on the server if you want. I don't participate in observable games anymore, which is a bit of a crux but perhaps some allied team matches would allow me to demonstrate some general ideas to you. I must warn that I'm a very gungho player myself though, so my actual play-style might not be as solid as my advice. See ya around and hopefully my input has been enlightening for you. See ya.