Funny things you did as a beginner

[bert1]

I cunningly did an all ghoul recruit once in an MP game against knals thinking that if I just poison everything my opponent will have to run back and heal, losing a lot of HP in the process. What actually happened is that he killed my ghouls and used my villages to heal.

[Civhai]

So, uh, all three have never really learned how to play the game effectively so that you do not have to debug or reload all the time? It might make it more fun then doing the same battle for an hour just to get the result you want. 1000 hit points, changing unit sides, making your own army. Wow.

No no, of course now we don't do any save reloading any more. (Ok, once in three battles, maybe I do it. Last time I did that when my loyal Ulf standing on a castle lost against a goblin with 1 hp, of course 99.9% to win.) I meant we did that a bit later than the things I mentioned before. It's only my sister who is at that stage right now.

Another funny thing: I really had a hard time trying to win the valley of death. First I recalled all my veterans, after having lost it, I tried to recruit as many elfish fighters as possible and then I thought I was very smart: I looked wich of the units I could recruit had the most hp per gold and I found out it was the mermen. Then I walked into the hills, because that's where all units have a better defense and was really sad that most were already killed on their way to the hills and that I didn't win it that time either. Then I thought, that this battle was impossible, because I had already chosen the mathematically best possible strategy and it didn't work.

Another thing I only learned recently was that I always expended all my money in campaigns. Of course, they were exceptions, if it was really clear that I didn't need a lot, if I had really a lot of money or if it was really necessary to enter the next battle with a lot of money, but it was the usual procedure to expend all my money.

[Urs]

I thought the percentages were something along the lines of "energy used up to go there", so I always went for the lower percentage ones.
Also, I had no concept of number of hits, so I thought it was some sort of "minimum amount" or a range.

[Cernunnos]

ZoC and ToD took a long time to enter my poor brain.

[MDG]

HttT - Elves Besieged is the scenario I knew best for a very long time, mainly because it went something like this:-
Recruit a unit - crap trait combination - save & re-load - 10-15 minutes later, yay! Got the traits I wanted, on to the next recruit...

Of course, having invested that much time selectively building the 'best' possible recruits, there was no way I was going to lose them! So, more save-loading throughout combat. Picked up some very bad, and time-consuming, habits.

It was frustration with the above that lead to me digging around in the .cfg files and then hacking the races and trait assignments to 'cheat'. That was my intro to WML . Once I had done this, I actually save/loaded a lot less since recruiting new units wasn't so tiresome! Even now, depending on what mood I am in, I'll still sometimes hack up the trait assignments.

[TheGreatRings]

I vaugely recall that I would recruit an all-mage/horseman army as Loyalists. Does that count?

[magohechizo]

Did Not liked the campaigns very much.
Went to Multiplayer against AI and tried many 1vs1 maps leveling All my Faction-
Units to Max Level, until i got used to the units, then Played multiplayer-
against a friend, Got Hooked ever since.
Of course I made a Bunch of crappy 1vs1 Maps when i got bored of the default ones,
Posted a huge list of all my maps on Multiplayer Development :p (sorry guys), on the old map code.

[LemonTea]

when my loyal Ulf standing on a castle lost against a goblin with 1 hp, of course 99.9% to win.)

Sounds awesome. Randomness FTW

Wait... how much HP did your ulf have?

[In_My_CrossHairs]

I recall that I played multiplayer right after the tutorial campaign, thinking that real people can't be THAT hard (I've actually done this for every game I've ever played that has multiplayer. guess I'll never learn ).

[Velensk]

14 or 15, depending on if Velensk counted

I didn't realize the Signpost on HttT was there, and tried to defeat the Orcs... Hey, I got one and a half of em dead.


PS: Velensk , was that the one with HttT's map? And 2nd level you had to kill Delfandor? I actually prefer that one...

Yes it was. I think that the new one is better overall, though I realy wish there was a part of the new tutorial that explained resistances. One common thing I'm seeing on the development server is new players who don't know how to check resistances.

[Orcish Shyde]

Not exactly a game-ruining mistake, but when first playing AOI, when I saw the orcish archers shoot fire arrows whenever I was in forest, I just assumed that was because they wanted to defile and burn the forest, despite the utter lack of burning in forest squares shot in this manner.

[Kess]

Hm... I think it took me about three or four years before I began to even glimpse at the resistance numbers. Well, in the beginning I never won any campaign, neither the tutorial. I think it took me a year or so before I beat that one (granted, I play very seldom).

I recognize most of the beginner mistakes in this thread. Even now when I know more about the inner workings of the game I still loose on any campaign that’s not listed as Beginner or Simple (on the easiest difficulty of course). (The top reason I play is to watch the terrains and their transitions, and the unit sprites as well, I’m not much of a gamer, am I?)

[Blarumyrran]

My first online game (2006 summer?) was fun. I had only played some 2 skirmish games before it (both with Classic Era so i could have wholly saurian faction), & no campaigns; so i joined the mp server, and the fist 2v2 game i saw (Default Era, me as loyalists, Clash map), and as things would go told noone that i was a newb, and then my ally (who was named Arni_PL if i recall correctly) was not very happy to see that my first recruit was a merman. And another one after that. And another. On a map with no water (almost). But noone got too nasty, and later on i actually managed to level one of my mermen, by killing an enemy dwarvish lord (who had leveled to dwarvish lord only because of my mermen on grassland terrain). & that iirc made one of the enemies quit.

[krotop]

In a campain :
"My horseman has 9-2 written under the portrait, why oh why is it written 6-2 in that combat window when I attack a skeleton ?!"

[beetlenaut]

I read the whole manual right after I played the tutorial. That seems to be funny.

Knowing everything didn't help me play better though. For one thing, I never recruited elvish shamans. I looked at the stats, and they were such a weak unit! A measly four hitpoints of healing was obviously useless. I didn't appreciate "slows" either. (Although it was a little weaker back then.) Now, shamans are probably my favorite unit! I've done the HttT all shaman thing, and I found it easier than regular.