Looking for an analysis

[Velensk]

I recently played this game and something about it bothered me.

It was Loyalists vs Northerners went for about 30 turns.

I do not feel like I played poorly (except near the end where I was trying to speed up the end without just giving up or acting completely suicidal). I do not feel like my opponent played exceptionally well (though he was defiantly good). I did however feel like I got fairly lucky and lost anyway.

I'm looking for other peoples opinion on what mistakes I might have made, or possibly if this demonstrates some imbalance.

[Raliven]

Well after having watched the replay, I think the basic problem was one of recruiting. Your recruitment was a bit too fancy and expensive while your opponent kept it simple and cheap. You had about 4 cavalrymen early on. That's the equivalent of 5.6 grunts in cost. And then your fencer died quickly and that hurt. Of course, you recovered pretty well from that, but the recruiting I think was still the difference the rest of the game. The most basic northerner unit is the grunt and they were about 70% or so of your opponent's recruits on the field throughout the game. The most basic loyalist recruit is the spearman and you only recruited 6 the whole game, not having more than maybe 3 on the field at any one time. You recruited as many bowmen as spearmen, and the lack of melee retal vs. the grunts hurt you a good bit. You also recruited 5 cav and a horseman which is the gold equivalent of about 9 grunts, helping him to overwhelm you with numbers. Plus add the fact that goblin spears are even cheaper and quite effective against horses and the couple of fencers you had aren't too good against grunts.

Anyway, I think, overall, fewer cav and bows and more spears might have made the difference.

[Velensk]

I feel that had I gotten more spears and less cavalry early on I would not have done nearly so well during that time period. I would have gotten fewer kills, and having them allowed me to get forces to where I needed it and allowed me to push my enemy back more effectively than in I would have if I had gotten spears instead.

You are probably right about the bows.

[Duthlet]

Imho both cavalry and bowmen are fine against northeners, but bowmen surely aren't useful as defenders against a grunt horde. Unlike spearmen they don't deal enough retaliation damage to easily drive of orcs at day, so you'd better recruit them sparingly. Personally I prefer to renounce the endurance of the bowmen and rather recruit mages if I have enough money.

What bothered me most about your play was your efforts to kill grunts on villages at night.
E.g. at turn 11 you attack the grunt 13,6 barely harming it (I admit, it was also a bit unlucky) and leave a bowman (unsuited for that job) at 6,7 to be attacked by four units. And at turns 28 and 29 you attacked 24,2 effectively only harming your own units by retaliation and bringing your dragoon in bad position. Afterwards you lacked these units to retake villages at day and lost they game right there with 3 lost villages.

Further disjointed comments:

I dare to claim that his attack at turn 17 on the right would have failed if you had a spearman in the village (24,7).

I didn't understand either why you risked your only mage by letting him be attacked by two grunts at turn 13 and at turn 25 when it gets killed.

I usually try to cause as much damage as possible at my preffered time of day. This means I try to prevent a save (and slow) withdrawal of my enemy. So at turn 18 I would have pushed left and thrown at least one spear at 9,11 sending the mage to 6,7 to be ready for an attack on 6,15 at morning. I'm not sure how this would have worked out, probably it's just my preffered way to lose

PS: I'm not absolutely sure about anything else I wrote either, so if you have any doubts about my ideas it's probably me who's wrong.

[Tonepoet]

I have nothing against Bowmen against Northerners in particular. On the other hand, they simply weren't well suited to this game where your opponent had a disproportionately high number of melee units. Mages would've gotten more kills with fewer units on the offensive. Spearmen would've softened up the grunts a lot more or at least have allowed you to set up an attacking-front at optimal ToD a lot better. You seemed to try and use Bowmen to do the job of both, however they aren't quite optimal enough to do the job of either in this case, at least so I believe.

Also, I agree with Duthlet about turn 11. You seemed like a shoe-in before this, but I believe that turn 11 is what caused your downfall. Because of this turn 11 fiasco, despite your best efforts to eject the Northerners who subsequently flooded into your territory, you suffered heavy damages. Yes, the kills themselves seem to have been more or less equal but the income swing at that point is rather high. It also throws off your timing, keeping you completely pre-occupied during the whole of the day. Not only does this deny you favorable conditions during your prime attacking time but it allows Le_Loup to thrash upon you again during the next night, without even a chance for recovery. In fact, it seems like after this, you never do get back into the swing of proper ToD management.

I must note however, that you could've more or less done the exact same thing with very minimalistic changes and made it much less disastrous. You just needed to micro-manage your troops a bit better, especially the cavalryman. Here's one way you could've done it: Caryn (starting at 15,4) attacks 13,6 which allows Blebrynyn (starting at 8,6) to move to 8,8 and block some attacking hexes for your archer to help him survive the next turn. In preparation for your next turn, to allow you to continue holding 6,7 , have Addynyn (Starting at 4,6) heal at 7,2 allowing him to rotate him into 6,7 at full health to defend, if it need be. Even if nothing else changed, you would've easily been able to prevent the Northerners from flooding in on you at their optimal Time of Day and have been in a much stronger position overall. I suppose you intended to kill the grunt on 13,6 by using both Blebrynyn and Caryn. On the other hand you could've committed your leader and Caryn beforehand, to see if that course of action would even work and shouldn't have sacrificed your archer if that was indeed the case.

A final comment about this same point in time, is that your troops are rather lopsided. This almost allowed your opponent to almost ransack your eastern villages almost unopposed. They weren't, at least not until much later, but they easily could've been.

[siowy]

i want to add on to what the others have well described.


units-wise:
too many cavalry -> punished by goblin spearmen
too many bowmen -> not cost-effective against grunts
not enough spearmen -> the staple against northerners
horseman -> not worth his cost against lots of grunts
mage -> one or two should replace the bowmen

tactics-wise:
i feel that tactically you were wittier than him in the early game, but not that much. he grabbed your villages and held them for several turns, reducing the advantage you had from a 12:5 kill/loss ratio to not much, considering his units were goblins and grunts.

you didn't preserve your exp well on your mermen, losing one which was about to level. that was a big problem. probably should have got one more merman to solidify the advantage on the waters and level your mermen. this was a problem because your advantage in the early game was not much gold-units advantage, mainly exp advantage, since he held villages from you for a while. you didn't use that exp advantage well.

exp on bowmen is not great, because their level 2 is only decent. i prefer having mages for less upkeep, more concentration of firepower and making it easier to gain exp.

you had a painful lack of spearmen throughout the game. as a pure northerners player(having tried all races vs northerners too), i have the most problems vs spearmen.

sun tzu said, a heavenly army has two forces: an ordinary force and an extraordinary force. the ordinary force engages, and the extraordinary force shows flair and movement and decides the battle. you didn't have the proper ordinary force to support your other troops.

overall, your army composition was not as good as his, and in the beginning you got a better kill/loss ratio because you played better and had better luck, but you overlooked your advantage because he lost cheaper units and he held villages for sometime. you didn't capitalise on your exp advantage from the kills, and he eventually won out with a persistent attack where he kept holding more villages than you.

gg anyway. well played by both of you thanks for sharing the rep