Blitzkrieg! (the value of speed in Wesnoth)

[Just_end_turn]

Bouuh, no one in this topic

And because I like the topic creator ( Not true but still ), I will up this with a wonderfull game on freelands played at 1:00 AM so with some little mistakes

I was against TheFish .

So i make an hodorian recruit after getting dwarves randomly. Two thiefs and one footpad annoy the two archers that hold village.

To not lose his archer The Fish retreats them a bit and comes with his Rm leader

But what he didn't understand is that i just didn't care about those 3 units, so i take one vill and go full forces on this side. The think Thefish don't know when he kills the footpad and get back the vill, is that I just recruited a nice force with 2 bersekers, two thieves, one robin.

While he's busy on left flank, they just destruct the right flank, so sacrifyng 40 gold of units can sometimes make you win the game.

( Game is a little long for a blietzkrieg, but i think this was already won on turn 8, after i just played safely

[Rigor]

maybe hes had a bad day but nice to exchange your left for the right flank, good plan that works pretty often! but generally he could have brought some units close to leveling to help later on the right side, so careful with killing your own stuff too early nevertheless.

[Just_end_turn]

Elves need much xp

And he recruited too much archers so I saw the opportunity to apply this

And if he had given much xp to one of those lefts archers > Berseker

[Maiklas3000]

While there's much discussion of specific blitzkrieg battles in this thread, I don't see much discussion of the theory behind the strategy. The first post in the thread details some strategic advantages of blitzkrieg, but it's almost entirely about villages. That's all well and good, but I see tactical value in blitzkrieg that has nothing to do with villages.

Let's say you're fighting in the mountains with no villages against trolls who are sort of dotted around without a coherent line. (I'm thinking mostly about campaign games vs. AI.) You could conservatively form a line, but it will be slow going, getting only two attacks on each high HP self-healing enemy unit. This may not even be a particularly safe approach, as if two trolls land all their hits on one of your units, that may spell its doom. You can try to slow the enemy, but this can fail and often the units with this ability don't have many HP's.

Alternatively, you could blitz the trolls, rushing around and through them. For this, sheer numbers and speed are important, so usually this means lots of cheap, fast units, like footpads, archers, or dwarvish scouts, possibly backed up by some heavier hitters.

Blitz advantage #1: Surrounding enemy units allows you to get more than two attacks, up to six sometimes.
Blitz advantage #2: You can use things like critically wounded archers and mages to attack, if you know with high probability that these weak units will no longer be on the front line by the end of your turn.
Blitz advantage #3: Once you surround and kill an enemy unit, this provides more movement options for your other forces on the same turn, improving their ability to either surround other units or defensively fill in your now overextended line.
Blitz advantage #4: Your opponent's mobility is greatly restricted, relative to if you had played more conservatively.
Blitz advantage #5: Your opponent will be less likely and less able to form a line. The AI in particular generally only forms a line if you form a line (because it's just trying to move close to your units, not form a line.) For something like trolls in mountains, you especially don't want them in a line.

Maybe that was all too obvious, but I find it useful to identify the specific advantages. Do you see any other advantages?

Blitzkrieg can of course fail spectacularly even on a tactical level. When you fail to kill an enemy unit, especially something with strong attacks like a troll, then suddenly your front line is jeopardized by attacks on both sides, and weak units you used to attack behind the new front line are exposed as well. This is another reason why it's nice to use disposable units like footpads in a blitz, particularly for the units that are doing the risky flanks.

Keep in mind that I'm a campaign player... I have never played against a human... so my viewpoints may be different or newbish.

[donkey_noob_trash1]

While there's much discussion of specific blitzkrieg battles in this thread, I don't see much discussion of the theory behind the strategy. The first post in the thread details some strategic advantages of blitzkrieg, but it's almost entirely about villages. That's all well and good, but I see tactical value in blitzkrieg that has nothing to do with villages.

Hey dude! So glad that this topic is still going! I love the idea of blitzkrieg (which to me means a quick and decisive victory) so much that I still blitzkrieg opponents on 2 player maps. Just today I did a Knalgan blitzkrieg on Hornshark Island. My opponent was the orcs. As a change-up, I went with 3 gryphons and 2 footpads as my initial recruit (going for speed and firepower, rather than speed and manpower). This allowed me to take all my villages within 3 turns, with another gryphon stealing his far right bottom water village on turn 4. He learned all too late the value of recruiting nagas on that map. By turn 7 he left the game, realizing that he was in a no-win scenario. I had maneuvered my gryphons into his backfield while securing my main line as well. There was just nothing to do. Personally, I prefer those kinds of wins- where the opponent realizes he has been completely outmaneuvered, and just leaves.

The take-home message for blitzkrieg is to always be one step ahead of your opponent, both in terms of how you recruit and how you position your army. This can be accomplished with speed, but also with maneuver... which is one reason I like skirmishing units.

[Maiklas3000]

Blitz advantage #2: You can use things like critically wounded archers and mages to attack, if you know with high probability that these weak units will no longer be on the front line by the end of your turn.

In a related point, when I have critically wounded units, especially those with strong ranged attacks, I try to think about whether to go on the offensive - a very aggressive, blitzkrieg style offensive. Like maybe I have two critically wounded white mages, a wounded red mage, and a wounded knight, among other units, and maybe the situation is looking grim when I think about resting these wounded units and still holding the line against the enemy. In such a situation, I try to estimate what my chances are of staging a successful offensive. Three leveled mages almost can guarantee vaporizing a particular target, but I might do better to split their attacks and finish off the wounded enemy units with the wounded knight and healthy melee units. It's often a very difficult mental calculation when expanded over all the units. The goal by turn's end is to leave your wounded attacking units in a relatively safe position. When this offensive gambit works, it's glorious. When it fails, it usually spells defeat.

One time I like to use this aggressive approach is when I'm being blitzed myself by highly mobile but vulnerable units. If I can reduce the spam in numbers so much in one turn that I reduce their threat to my wounded units - or at least don't increase the overall threat - then it may pay to punch through the enemy line, break my own line, and surround the surrounders.

[Rigor]

interesting that u write critically wounded archers attack and survive because on the opponents turn they r no longer on the frontline - an especially beautiful example may be this game, that i played 2 days ago, doing exactely what u said.

generally, this (what u wrote about) is a good elf strategy. hit enemy with 4 strikes, where one of them will probably deliver once or twice, and then you can start sitting on good terrain 60-70% and fend off the furios enemy.

another thing you can do:

split attention: the enemy might need 2 strikes to defeat one of the units, and u got lots of wounded units. simply attack as hard as possible, you wont heal anyways or go back to a village and hope for the miracle that u will survive AND heal. like that you can kill NUMBERS and still let the other guy face the question "do i kill the 11 hp archer or the 15 hp archer?" when one of the attackers is close to level up they will think of a retreat faster than you think.

http://forums.wesnoth.org/download/file.php?id=43080

and forum thread

http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 42#p442542

[Maiklas3000]

Yes, when your enemy can kill a couple of wounded units (or perhaps weak healthy units), a good strategy can be to attack with everything you've got. This wounds more of your units, but if your enemy can still kill only couple of units, this may not be a problem.