Do you need help in multiplayer 1v1?

[Huumy]

So I decided to make this thread for several reasons.
I like wesnoth and have the time but I don't feel like playing it at the moment. I enjoy replying threads where new players ask about units or strategies but I feel like there's just lot of talk, not many replays or actual situations to talk about.

In this thread I analyze a player replay(s) once a week. I'll go trough 1 or several replays over one week period and try to help answer that player questions like "What should I recruit vs X", "How can I protect my villages?", "When should I attack?", "Where I lost this game?".

If you are a player who has struggles with a certain playstyle, matchup, map, faction or don't know why you lost, plz send replay or several to this thread with a one or two sentence description what you are having problems with. The point of the replays are games where the problem is obvious, not games where you totally smash the other player

I will be starting at next monday 5.11.2012 if there's replies. I'll be focusing on one player per week, so I'll make a lenghty post what you can try to improve in monday - wednesday and if that player has follow-up questions or more replays where he/she tried to change his/her gameplay I will be answering those rest of the week. I will be picking a new player every week with the most clear and interesting problem.

I guess if this gets going there will be other posters also giving advice, talking about the replays. I actually would love to see more people analyzing and talking about the replays on this thread. Tho I will answer mostly the players questions and will be avoiding saying if I think some1 elses point of view is wrong or right.
It's up to the players try out the advice that seems the most reasonable.

Ps. This thread is only for 1v1 games with default settings.

[MRDNRA]

I don't play 1 vs 1's except on very rare occasions against my cousin, but I shall follow this thread to see what else I can learn.

[The Black Sword]

Hey Huumy,

This is a great idea I think, there hasn't been a lot of in depth discussion of replays since neki stopped his videos. I'll try to post my thoughts on any matches as well.

You don't seem to have any replays yet, which is a shame but I'm sure they'll start coming in once the thread is up and running. You could use with a place to choose replays from in case there are none posted over the week. There is a danger that it could just be you commenting on games and nobody else interacting, but if that's the case you can just stop it. Discussion of more advanced games would be interesting too.

In any case; the obvious place to go for a replay would be one of the ladder sites but with the PYRAMID tournament currently ongoing I thought it might be a nice idea to pick some matches from there and discuss them.
I was also thinking of maybe looking at the 3 final games between me and Mint and I would post my thoughts on why I did what I did and others could comment/criticise as desired.
Drumming up excitement for both ideas is a good thing IMO.

PS. I realise I'm overlooking a couple of the points in your post; that it is mainly aimed at new players and that it is based on default wesnoth. Both are relevant to my proposals though, if not directly, I apologise if I'm overstepping the bounds.

[AxalaraFlame]

Query1:
How do we counter orc attack by elves, if they have taken away one village and keep take advantages of keeping a line and rotate the orc grunts, and our economy situation does not apply for making mages to storm the village back?

Query2:
Drakes vs Loyalists. I know it is somehow IMBA, but some guys gotta figure out some ideas to fix it.

Query3:
Knalgans vs Drakes, we feel feckless doing positive attacks.

Query4:
Undead vs elves, how do we deal with the situation when the enemy gather many trees.

Query5:
Undead vs Knalgans, how do we deal with Ulf+footpads?

Query6:
Humans vs Elves, tree issues.

Query7:
Elves vs drakes. Somebody say it is IMBA because elves are too strong, somebody say it is IMBA because elves can hardly kill drakes. What is more of a truth in general, and how to do counter each other, regardless of map differences?

Query8:
Orc civil wars, what should we do?

Query9:
I hate Khalifate. We don't need more humans now.

[watbesh]

I read a website(wiki) which gives hints in MP strategies. These may help AxalaraFlame. The site says;

Query1:
How do we counter orc attack by elves, if they have taken away one village and keep take advantages of keeping a line and rotate the orc grunts, and our economy situation does not apply for making mages to storm the village back?

Defend with Fighters at night, and counter with Fighters and Archers. Use Shamans to slow poison. Magi are useful for killing units on villages.

Query2:
Drakes vs Loyalists. I know it is somehow IMBA, but some guys gotta figure out some ideas to fix it.

Use Clashers as meatshields. Attack with Augurs at night. Skirmishers are sometimes good.
Loyalist is slightly overpowered in this matchup.

Query3:
Knalgans vs Drakes, we feel feckless doing positive attacks.

Fighters defend (and sometimes attack), and Thunderers attack. Guardsmen are great if they are strong. A couple of Gryphons are good for finishing drakes.

Query4:
Undead vs elves, how do we deal with the situation when the enemy gather many trees.

Cut them down with skeletons' axes at night. Attack hard and defeat the leader before the enemy get too many woses.
This matchup is hopeless a bit.

Query5:
Undead vs Knalgans, how do we deal with Ulf+footpads?

Use Skeletons and Ghosts to guard Adepts, the main force to kill non-ulfs. You lose easily if the enemy get many Ulfserkers and enough guards.
Knalgan is somewhat overpowered in this matchup.

Query6:
Humans vs Elves, tree issues.

Use magi. 5 missiles plus a 2-damage scratch kills one at dawn/dusk. 4 missiles does at day.
Spearmen can be good shield at night, but of course useless to kill woses.

Query7:
Elves vs drakes. Somebody say it is IMBA because elves are too strong, somebody say it is IMBA because elves can hardly kill drakes. What is more of a truth in general, and how to do counter each other, regardless of map differences?

The site says that Drakes are a little too strong.
For Rebels; Defend with Fighters. Archers are good if they are dextrous. Also, Scouts' mobility can help to finish drakes.
For Drakes; Get Fighters and Burners, and wait until you get enough units. Clashers and saurians are good at defending at night.

The biggest problem is, there is little point in sharing the link, as it is written only in Japanese.

[UnwiseOwl]

This thread is a great idea, I learnt a lot from Neki back in the day and it'd be great to see someone else showing us how it's done. I'm just sad that I don't play enough multiplayer (or any in the default era) to make this worthwhile for me. That said, maybe you should start with a couple of your own, or maybe TBS v Mint as TBS suggested, and get the ball rolling showing us what to do before you jump into asking people to expose their failures to the world.

[AxalaraFlame]

I have never seen TBS fight before, but I am famliar with Mint. He loves fast units and he is good at them. I am just not sure why does he get two IDs, hm.

[Crendgrim]

The OP states that this thread is meant for analyzing replays, not for giving general information. You can do that in other threads, please do not misuse this one.

Apart from this: I do like your idea, Huumy. As neki left, you stopped doing videos (afaik?) and now Velensk left as well, there is need for something like this. I hope this goes somewhere.

[Huumy]

I didn't have any expectations for this thread, I was hoping for a replay over next two weeks. I was surprised by many nice comments.

You could use with a place to choose replays from in case there are none posted over the week. There is a danger that it could just be you commenting on games and nobody else interacting, but if that's the case you can just stop it. Discussion of more advanced games would be interesting too.

In any case; the obvious place to go for a replay would be one of the ladder sites but with the PYRAMID tournament currently ongoing I thought it might be a nice idea to pick some matches from there and discuss them.
I was also thinking of maybe looking at the 3 final games between me and Mint and I would post my thoughts on why I did what I did and others could comment/criticise as desired.
Drumming up excitement for both ideas is a good thing IMO.

PS. I realise I'm overlooking a couple of the points in your post; that it is mainly aimed at new players and that it is based on default wesnoth. Both are relevant to my proposals though, if not directly, I apologise if I'm overstepping the bounds.

I like the idea, of looking trough a series of games in a tournament. But I'll give this a little more time if there's a player who wants help on a specific thing. So I'll wait this week, and see if any1 has send a replay. If there's no replays I'll pick a series from the PYRAMID tournament next monday.
Thanks for the idea and letting me know about the tournament .
Also I don't think it's easy to "overstep the bounds" I'll just try to give my insight to players who want it and I trust the mods to keep the discussion somewhat relevant.

[watbesh]

The OP states that this thread is meant for analyzing replays, not for giving general information. You can do that in other threads, please do not misuse this one.

I am sorry. I should have read Huumy's first post carefully.
And now I do not have replays or analyzing skills for this thread. Sorry again.
Still I will follow this thread to improve my gameplay. This may give me more practical guides of strategies/tactics.

[Alarantalara]

How about this replay from Cynsaun Battlefield: My Northerners losing to nelson's Knalgans
After a few mistakes early on in village grabbing, I secured an economic advantage but was unable to turn that into a victory as the Knalgans were able to outkill me to the point I was unable to hold the extra villages.

My question is: what could I have done to keep that advantage and achieve a better chance of victory?

[AxalaraFlame]

There are few problems in this replay. First of all, this map is not used for 1v1 very often, because the quality of scouts in a faction counts a lot in this map. Obviously nelson get a lot kills and village-loots on it. The first one who took 22 villages would usually gain a gold advantage, another, if played properly, would gain a firststrike advantage. But nelson get both by keep harassing, because there is simply no heavy units of orcs capable enough to counter a gryphoon menace on vast plains.

I would suggests to keep enhancing owned villages since turn7, mainly by grunts and trolls, where nelson stooarts to have the advantage of villages. Not simply that, storming the middle part won't be really helpful if he could keep swarming dwarvish units by such an advantageous economy, let alone dwarves' quality is better than orcs. Nelson did a really epic defense in the east, by taking all the forest hexes by poachers, all hills and mountains by dwarves. Under that situation, even in the night, orcks could not really overwhelm, because he keeps swarming units at that keep, while your troll leader left the keep on turn 17, which is a really regretable move. I guess if you get more assisins to storm east further, you could have taken over that place and brought him lot of trouble.

[Huumy]

How about this replay from Cynsaun Battlefield: My Northerners losing to nelson's Knalgans
After a few mistakes early on in village grabbing, I secured an economic advantage but was unable to turn that into a victory as the Knalgans were able to outkill me to the point I was unable to hold the extra villages.

My question is: what could I have done to keep that advantage and achieve a better chance of victory?

I haven't seen this map before but I'll do my best!

First of all, I have to say it was great game from both of you.

Overall I liked your unit choices, I think you always recruited the right kinda units. The wolfs and assassins early were great and the way you took the map with them.

Overall I think you outplayed your opponent at first but then gave back the positional advantage with few bad turns in the left part of the map.

I'll go over in details over the turns I think were important.

Turn 9: You made a really good move with wolves in the left-top corner. Also you trapped the footpad in right-bottom and also blocked the 2 griffons with an assassin. Very nice!

Turn 10: You move your wolf to take the right-top corner village, poison bunch of units and start pressuring the the right side of the map with your recruits.

Turn 11: On this turn I think you should more agressive in to left side of the map.
Before this turn your opponent had recruited lot of fast units, griphons, thiefs and footpads to defend both sides of the map. Which are all average vs your grunts, assassins and wolves. But I think your biggest mistake in this game not to attack this turn in the left side of the map.
I think it would have been a good move to not retreat. Instead poison dwarvish guardsman at 14,17 , poison footpad at 11,13 , use the 2 archers and grunt to attack the footpad and a thief (not sure about the grunt attacking but atleast using it to zone out the thief) and use the naga to attack guardsman or poacher. Basically I think you should have tried to win the battle in the left side of the map.
Also forcing Knalgan player to spread his units more by moving the 2 grunts in the middle of map, Erulo and Pruolo forward to threat the 2 villages and also to make sure no more Knalgan units were to cross that bridge.
Also a small move with the wolf whos in village at top-left, use that wolf (Vror) to the attack near death gryphon (needs 1 out of 3 hits) then move the injured wolf(Binak) to the village.
The right side was doing great even after you got unlucky

Turn 12:
The right side is still doing good, but leaving the left and letting your opponent units to heal means you are going to lose the fight eventually. Also this means your opponent can start recruiting only slow but powerful units to defend the right side and slowly win it too.

From this point on, the units on the left hold healed up and had no problems to hold the villages. Retreating from there lost you the positional and economical lead. I think instead you should have been more agressive and maybe even send more units to the left side or atleast to the middle of the map.
You still had a small chance to win the right side, but with decent luck the Knalgans on good terrain won the fight, even during the night.

I think you lost because you were not spreading your units enough.
Your grunts and assassins are more cost efficient than his fast units and his more cost efficient units are too slow and terrain dependant to defend the whole map specially after that great outmanouvering at the beginning.
Also fighting in larger areas gives your more larger army more hexes to attack from.

If you, Alarantalara have any followup comments, questions, anything about the replay I'll be answering them this week.

I hope this helped you. Also this is only my opinion and I'm not always right!

[Alarantalara]

Thanks, that's very thought provoking. I find it fascinating that you say I was not aggressive enough, since the game I played with nelson prior to this I lost for being too aggressive. I would thus be very interested in anything you could say about why you thought I could be more aggressive successfully in the left. Was it that you felt I could bring enough reinforcements in time to support them without weakening the right too much or do you think they would have been able to win on their own if the enemy could be prevented from reinforcing. If you could explain the reasoning behind your thoughts about turn 11 in more detail, it might help me with making such decisions about where/when to attack better. Otherwise I'm likely to post another replay in few weeks where I'm too aggressive again .

I don't think it made it into the replay since we kept talking after the game was over, but nelson thought at the time that I should have attacked somewhere other than the right side and possibly recruited more fast units to do so. So it's not just your opinion, though you were very clear as to how to go about it! Thanks again.

[Huumy]

Was it that you felt I could bring enough reinforcements in time to support them without weakening the right too much

In short, yes. The best time would have been at turn 10 start recruiting in the middle keep. This would have made it almost a certain victory in the left side at later turns.

do you think they would have been able to win on their own if the enemy could be prevented from reinforcing.

I think you had a decent chance to win the left side even at turn 11. But fighting was still a better chance of winning the game than retreating.

it might help me with making such decisions about where/when to attack better.

I think the biggest thing to learn from this loss is that it's a good thing spread the Knalgan army as thin as you can early as you can in this matchup. Because it forces them to recruit less than optimal units vs Northeners. Also all their more defensive, heavier units are terrain dependant and slow, making it hard to move from a important position to another.

If you could explain the reasoning behind your thoughts about turn 11 in more detail

I think I made a too big deal about the turn 11 in the first post. I wasn't looking things like your leader movement or the attack in the right side.
I think what is more important is what happened at turn 9 and 10 in the left side and the fact you had a chance to start recruiting in the middle at turn 10.
The turn 11 was more or less just your last chance of winning the left side.

So let me try to explain what I see happening in turns 9-11 again Because I think something important started happening at turn 9 and with right kinda follow trough leads to your huge lead in the left side somewhere at turns 12-14.

Turn 9: Right side - Nelson is attacking you, you have to recruit bunch of units to defend it. Also Nelson is recruiting more units there.
The middle - Nelson has army in the middle it's hard to say what he is planning to do with them. You also move your leader to the middle.
Left side - Your wolfs are kinda just chilling out, he doesn't suspect anything but suddenly you take position that guarentees you a village grab. Also you have more units approaching making it really hard to defend all villages.

At this point you have a advantage on the left side of the map, but neither one of you can attack anymore in the right side and the middle will soon be empty.

Turn 10: Right side - Nelson backs away.
The middle - You see Nelson's army moving to the left side. (You should have started recruiting in the middle).
Left side - You start attacking.

Before turn 10 I think you are doing all the right things.
But I think the game winning move would have been moving your leader to the middle keep and make sure you keep the lead you had in the left side, by sending more recruits there. Because you can't do much on the right side as long as Nelson is recruiting there but you already have enough units to defend it until the next day.

So in short, with a few brilliant moves you got small positional lead in the game but instead of keeping the lead and growing it you choose to focus somewhere else, resulting you losing the lead.
After this the game got less spread out and it gave Nelson opportunity to recruit a lot more cost efficient units and use them on a terrain they are good in.

I think the game was not 100% lost after retreating from the left side.
But I think the easiest answer to

what could I have done to keep that advantage and achieve a better chance of victory?

is to send or recruit more units to the left side after defending the first attack in the right side.

Ps. if you have more questions or want me to explain my opinions more clearly I'll be answering this week still