I Need Help

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Moribund
Posts: 156
Joined: July 19th, 2010, 10:42 pm

I Need Help

Post by Moribund »

So yeah I am a big noob in this game. Also a sore loser if you read the conversation.
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perseo
Posts: 324
Joined: January 8th, 2011, 4:09 am

Re: I Need Help

Post by perseo »

First of all I see that you do some kind of strange things like attacking dwarves while they're in the mountains. I'm not a good general but this is the most obvius fail to me.
"I was pulling a barrow, when I saw a stalking horse
what a beautiful day!- he said- for visiting a red herring
and getting hoarse."
Working on this campaign: The septentrional tower
Velensk
Multiplayer Contributor
Posts: 4002
Joined: January 24th, 2007, 12:56 am

Re: I Need Help

Post by Velensk »

Turn 1: I generally find that you can get away with one wolf on this map if you want to.

Turn 2: No Comment

Turn 3: No Comment

Turn 4: No Comment

Turn 5: Around this point you should be getting the idea that your opponent has a very defensive build. At this point feel free to grab a few defensive units of your own and start either banking or goblin spamming. Attacking on the first night against a build designed specifically to be hard to attack on the first night is some kind of stupid and he hasn't built it properly to be much of a threat on the second day. I would bank if you plan to try to attack second night and goblin spam if you plan to wait till later (and of course, keep the pressure on to prevent your opponent from counter banking).

Turn 6: Attacking the guardsman was taking a risk for practicaly no chance of success. There is no way three orc units could take down a guardsman before reinforcements arrive and if you had to attack with the assassin it should have been from a location where he could not be backstabbed, stabbed, then slashed (though this last step became irrelevant). Poisoning enemies on villages mostly just stops them from regenerating but poisoning the thief could have kept it out of combat next day. Having failed to poison the guardsman, attacking it with the grunt was a 75% chance to do nothing and take retaliation for he would have regenerated all the damage a single blow could do.

Turn 7: Continuing the engagement into day on the possibility you could kill the thief could have paid off but I'd argue that even if it did it likely would not be worth the price of the grunt and the exp to whomever gets the kill. You're already down 2 units on that flank for negligible gains.

Turn 8: No Comment

Turn 9: An incredibly foolish attack on your opponents part there.

Turn 10: I'd have done a few things different but I cannot declare that what I would have done is inherently superior.

Turn 11: Why did you just abandon the village? Certainly, your foe could put quite a bit of pressure into that area but with correct positioning of the wolf and grunt you could have made it hard for him to blitz strait to the village before reinforcements could arrive, and if you let hims just plop a guardsman onto that village you will (as you have noted) have a nasty time getting him off it. If your grunt is on the village and the wolf is in the woods he will very likely be able to kill one or the other due to the ulfserker but he'll have to kill both to get the guardsman onto the village and attacking orcs in cover at night with thieves and ulfserkers can be very painful. Incidentally, if you had had the extra grunt and assassin from your failed attack defending this region would be a foregone conclusion. On the other side, attacking the griffon with the assassin was likely a mistake. It could have been worthwhile to attack the thunderer instead despite the heavy retaliation. Or alternatively picked some target which would not allow the thief to backstab you.

Turn 12: No Comment

Turn 13: Think you wanted to get your leader back to the castle rather than working on the guardsman. Faster reinforcements will likely help more than damage which will be healed by the time you get around to attacking him again.

Turn 14: No Comment

Turn 15: No Comment

Turn 16: Well the important thing is that you keep them off your villages, when they're on their own villages you can either kill all their support or surround them.

Turn 17: I think you spotted your own problem there though take heart, still probably worth trading that for a griffon kill.

Turn 18: No Comment

Turn 19: That wasn't a foolish gamble, there was nothing you could really do about it but you wanted to kill that ulfserker right there and there was no one better for the job.

Turn 20: No Comment

Turn 21: No Comment

Turn 22: That is why assassins are useful for these situations.

Turn 23: I don't think you needed/wanted to retreat from there (yet again). Remember, your units are fairly tough and knalgans don't do great damage either (except with thieves, and it's pretty risky to use those on entrenched grunts at night). What you might have wanted to do is transfer some forces from the right flank. You could have still maintained your wall using the archer (remember, his only melee units are thieves without backstab and guardsmen, they arn't going to break an archer on a hill in one turn which will buy you the time you need here but don't let him put guardsmen on you villages so easily that is practically giving him several turns worth of income and annoyance, force him to fight and pay for them. You are more chaotic than he is.

Turn 24: No Comment

Turn 25: No Comment
Turn 26: No Comment

Turn 27: No Comment

Turn 28: You left your crossbowman within range of the ulfserker, something which has the potential to be very bad.

Turn 29: Not so hard to get them off your villages with level 2s, if you're going to leave your assassins where they are ulfserker bait then you should have at least finished off the thief.

Turn 30: No Comment

Turn 31: No Comment

Turn 32: No Comment

Turn 33: No Comment

Turn 34: See, it's risky for him to use those thieves even at dusk.

Turn 35: Just be careful not to lose any, the experience they'll give him could be trouble.

Turn 36: It was in your vision the whole time, you just didn't notice it.

Turn 37: By shifting your crossbow up a single hex you could have removed the potential to backstab him.

Turn 38: Would have been relatively safe to move the wounded crossbow onto the village and prevent another steal.

Turn 39: No Comment

Turn 40: I beg to differ. Mass bats is more annoying. Easier to deal with usually but far more annoying as not only is it irritating but it doesn't every give your opponent a legitimate shot at victory.

Turn 41: Your complaining is getting annoying. I don't think he realises you have negative income


Turn 42: You're back into positive income.

Turn 43: If your units start reaching level 3, you could probably just get away with marching on his leader.

Turn 44: I'd have poisoned the guardsman on the keep on principle.

Turn 45: No Comment

Turn 46: I think you would benefit from playing more aggressively, all those high level units/poison not doing damage at night.

Turn 47: Again, you need to be getting out there and forcing him to fall back.

Turn 48: You were really far ahead. I think endgame you were overestimating your opponent's toughness, that many level 2s can dice even guardsmen without any difficulty and it's not like the guardsmen do more than scratch you. As long as you are cautious of the ulfskerers, there is pretty much nothing he can do to you.

Overall: I'm not sure what you are complaining about. You had your opponent on the run and just didn't realize it. You were constantly able to force guardsmen off your villages, you could have prevented them from getting onto your villages in the first place.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
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Moribund
Posts: 156
Joined: July 19th, 2010, 10:42 pm

Re: I Need Help

Post by Moribund »

Thanks a lot for the advice! Yeah I tend to whine a lot with this game, I got to work on that. I never rage at anything testosterone-y like Call of Duty but this game makes me so intense. But anyways...

The points on banking/Goblin spamming are pretty smart, I'll definitely give that a go next time I fight against a defensive strat.

I was kind of scared because I keep reading that Orcs have to get work done right away.

I have a tendency to retreat easily, that was noted by another very strong player I met once. Is there any guidelines to unit/village trading?

I was pretty careless with my assassins, yeah. I guess I should never rely on them to tank?

Could I have rushed his leader? That was what I was thinking moving to the right but I figured he could just run up the left while his guardsmen, weak as they are, would give plenty of good stalling as he ran to the other keep.

Was I really ahead? I only had a scarce handful of units and he had every village. I figured a couple of ulfserkers would kill me dead in an instant.

Huh. I guess I do tend to underestimate my position a lot of the time. I suppose it's somewhat due to the fact that my biggest breakthrough was learning that retreating can sometimes be good.

One more minor thing: Would it have been prudent to get some Knights rather than Pillagers?

Thanks again for all the help.
Velensk
Multiplayer Contributor
Posts: 4002
Joined: January 24th, 2007, 12:56 am

Re: I Need Help

Post by Velensk »

Moribund wrote:I have a tendency to retreat easily, that was noted by another very strong player I met once. Is there any guidelines to unit/village trading?
The thing here, was that you would either have to fight him then while it was nightime and you had good terrain cover, or later when it would be day and he'd have terrain cover, or wait for next night after he'd been syphoning gold for a long time (gold syphons work at a rate of 6 per full turn +2gold-1upkeep for him -2gold+1upkeep for you).

The reasons you would want to retreat are that you want to conserve your units for a counter attack (or if you simply can't do anything with the units but that wasn't the case in this case) after A: the ToD shifts in your favor or B: reinforcements arrive. The time of day wasn't going to shift in your favor and sufficent reinforcements to knock a guardsman out of his layer would be several turns in the coming.
Moribund wrote:I was pretty careless with my assassins, yeah. I guess I should never rely on them to tank?
Assassins are the orcish equivilent of mages. Though they arn't as squishy they are still more costly to replace and needed to to break enemy fortifications so protect them well.
Moribund wrote:Could I have rushed his leader? That was what I was thinking moving to the right but I figured he could just run up the left while his guardsmen, weak as they are, would give plenty of good stalling as he ran to the other keep.
...What? In order to capture your keep he'd have to stop recruiting for many turns and run past/around you. Why would he even try and what are the odds your wolves wouldn't spot him if he did?
Moribund wrote:Was I really ahead? I only had a scarce handful of units and he had every village. I figured a couple of ulfserkers would kill me dead in an instant.
Look at the replay, you actually both had roughly the same number of units however yours were level 2/3 mostly. They were also mostly all types that could eat ulfserkers at any time of day. You wouldn't have had any problems forcing him to move off your keep with poison and could easilly have retaken your villages if you tried. If you kept your warriors/warlords protecting the villages on the right he wouldn't have been able to break you with guardsmen and ulfserkers thats for sure.
One more minor thing: Would it have been prudent to get some Knights rather than Pillagers?
I don't think so. The torches came in useful against the guards and although getting to level 3 would have been nice there was no real way for you to predict that it would be on the table.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
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