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TOPIC: Leadership, Fear and Combat
Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 13 years ago #252
Turtle wrote:
I have (tentatively) made a similar assessment of the dwarves (and of the few W4 games I've played so far, most were played with dwarves). But do try other races, there are some (eg Dragons, Daemons) where you have to play in a radically different way. Turtle wrote: There are a lot of 11 and 12 base combat units which puts elementals/dwarf-heroes at 7/8 combat at a serious disadvantage. (12 vs 7 means +133% more relative damage, and 30 HP is not nearly enough to make up for that.) Exactly. Turtle wrote: The reason I say "tentative" though is that crushing blow is a nice combat skill (which I almost always choose instead of warding) and I haven't done sufficient analysis to determine how much that combined with the high HP offsets the lower combat skill. (I'm guessing I will soon be expanding my program to account for various special abilities so I can check these things out.) The excitement I once felt over Crushing Blow has faded somewhat. The problem is that it only activates on hits, so if you have a Golem with Crushing Blow +1 (20% chance on a hit) and it keeps missing...well, the Crushing Blow just won't happen. With Golems I usually go for Armour instead. With the Earth Elementals I usually prefer Warding because it's comes in handy when attacking cities. There are only two units that can use Crushing Blow to it's fullest, and those are the Ogre and the Ogre Hero (Combat 11 and 10, respectively). I usually produce the Ogres with Terror to make it immune to Terror and then I start boosting Crushing Blow from level 3 and all the way up to +5. Unfortunately there's a bug in Crushing Blow. The manual says it takes away half of the unit's life in addition to the normal damage, but it doesn't. And there's nothing more annoying in the Tactical combat than when the opponent has 2-3 Life left and you land a Crushing Blow...and it takes away 1 Life, effectively turning the "Crushing Blow" into a miss. This really should be fixed. |
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"Negate does not negate Negate."
--- KGB "Moreover, I advise that Daemons and Dark Elves must switch places on the Race Wheel." --- Marcus Porcius Cato
Last Edit: 13 years ago by Seppuccu.
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Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 13 years ago #254
If you are going to play the Dwarves you need the right Warlord.
To me there are only 2 choices for your Major skill. Combat or Necromancy. That's because those are the only two that have 3 +2 strength buildings on the capitol. That allows you to make 15 strength Elementals or 12 strength Golems in the Capitol. With that boost + Crushing Blow you can do some serious damage. Both majors work really well. Combat lets you get lots of Morale which equals more swings which makes all those extra life points even better on your units plus gives more chances for Crushing Blow to take effect. Necromancy gives access to one of the 3 great Altars (Night) and the handy Summon Hero spell netting a +2 Fear hero to go with your Leadership ones you build. That +3 difference in Combat helps a lot to compensate for weaker strengths. My problem is still the slow speed. You typically end up with only about 3/4 the cities your opponent does due to taking longer to get places. That ultimately spells doom in many cases though sheer overwhelming numbers. Turtle, I'll check the stats on the hero offers. From memory it's biased to give heroes in your own race or adjacent races with lesser chances for races far away on the wheel. The ruins are purely random, generated at game initialization time without bias of races. KGB |
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Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 13 years ago #255
That's because those are the only two that have 3 +2 strength buildings on the capitol. That allows you to make 15 strength Elementals or 12 strength Golems in the Capitol. Elementals have a base combat of 7: 7+6=13 And your opponent can do the same thing. Except they don't use the Elementals with base combat 7 and instead use something with base combat 11 or 12, so now they're getting 17 or 18 combat. The relative combat score between them and you doesn't change one iota. Also, capital city production is limited. If you and your enemy each have 15 cities, the vast majority of your production is going to be coming from non-capital cities. (So even if your enemy doesn't have a +6 combat capital, they'll still have a major advantage against all of the elementals that aren't produced at your capital. And even if they only have the typical +4 combat capital city, your capital city elementals will only be about an even match for their capital city units, in which case for some small fraction of your units you are an even match and for the rest you are at a disadvantage.) Combat lets you get lots of Morale which equals more swings which makes all those extra life points even better on your units plus gives more chances for Crushing Blow to take effect. But on a swing for swing basis, the elemental loses against better combat units. So you are just describing something that could be applied to any race to increase their number of swings. If you want to show that dwarves have a redeeming quality when it comes to high-end combat, you need to show something they can do with high-end fodder (just produced L3/L4 units) that other races can't mimic or beat. (By high-end fodder I mean stuff that fights and dies, and subsequently does not get to level up much in its life.) Necromancy gives access to one of the 3 great Altars (Night) and the handy Summon Hero spell netting a +2 Fear hero to go with your Leadership ones you build. Now Necromancy is something to consider. I was looking at "Glory" as a way of getting more heroes (and therefore improving the chance of getting an opposite one), but Summon Hero seems a bit more reliable way to go about it. There's trade-offs to be made though -- there is good combat stuff in both Divine (Altar of Battle) and Summoning (Flame of Khazdhul), and one warlord can only pick (at most) two of these magic schools. That +3 difference in Combat helps a lot to compensate for weaker strengths. So your argument here is that if you have two heroes with stackable benefits and your enemy is too stupid to use any heroes at all, you can partially make up for how weak elementals are? That's not very convincing. Why shouldn't I want to combine the same two-hero strategy with an inherently stronger race and achieve exceptional combat rather than going through that effort just to achieve average combat? High combat provides even more per-level benefit at higher levels than at lower ones. Going from +0 to +2 combat increases (potential) relative damage by +31% (rel # of hits by +44%), nice. But going from +8 to +10 increases relative damage by another 54% (to a total of +209%; rel # of hits by another 149% to a total of +425%), even nicer. In fact, I am eyeing up knights for this as they also get bless (Archon and hero). Leadership + Fear + bless + either curse or Altar of Battle + archons with 11 base combat (and maybe throw in some heal) = cause enemy much pain, especially if they are Dwarves. (Heck, against dwarf elementals you could just use swordsman -- about 3 would do the trick. 2 dead swordsman take 1 turn to replace whereas 1 dead elemental takes 3 turns.) My problem is still the slow speed. You typically end up with only about 3/4 the cities your opponent does due to taking longer to get places. That ultimately spells doom in many cases though sheer overwhelming numbers. I can see that being an issue at higher difficulty levels (or against human players). But that just means the dwarves have two major strikes against them. So, dwarf summary:
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Last Edit: 13 years ago by Turtle.
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Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 13 years ago #258
My previous post was originally confusing relative damage and relative # hits, and in fixing it I found I was reaching for my TI-85 again, and on second thought decided that was a bad idea. So I made another table, this one with the following columns:
public final class hits5 {
static double hit_chance;
final static double[] chances = new double[]{
0.50, 0.55, 0.59, 0.63, 0.67, 0.70, 0.73, 0.76, 0.79, 0.82, 0.84
};
static double get_chance(int rel_combat) {
return rel_combat >= 0 ? chances[rel_combat] : 1 - chances[-rel_combat];
}
static double round2(double value) {
return ((double)((int)(value * 100 + 0.5)))/100;
}
static double round3(double value) {
return ((double)((int)(value * 1000 + 0.5)))/1000;
}
static double calc_pdps(double hit_chance) {
return hit_chance * (.9*(5+8)/2 + .1*12) + (1 - hit_chance)*1;
}
public final static void main(String[] _) {
System.out.println("[table]");
System.out.print("[tr]");
System.out.print("[td][b]rel combat[/b][/td]");
System.out.print("[td][b]to hit[/b][/td]");
System.out.print("[td][b]abs damage[/b][/td]");
System.out.print("[td][b]rel damage[/b][/td]");
System.out.print("[td][b]rel # hits[/b][/td]");
System.out.println("[/tr]");
for (int c = -10; c <= 10; ++c) {
System.out.print("[tr]");
System.out.print("[td]");
if (c > 0) System.out.print("+");
System.out.print(c);
System.out.print("[/td]");
hit_chance = get_chance(c);
System.out.print("[td]");
System.out.print((int)(hit_chance*100 + 0.5));
System.out.print("%[/td]");
final double pdps = calc_pdps(hit_chance);
System.out.print("[td]");
System.out.print(round3(pdps));
System.out.print("[/td]");
final double other_chance = get_chance(-c);
{
System.out.print("[td]");
final double other = calc_pdps(other_chance);
final double rel_dmg;
if (c > 0) {
rel_dmg = pdps / other - 1;
System.out.print("+");
} else if (c < 0) {
rel_dmg = 1 - pdps / other;
System.out.print("-");
} else {
rel_dmg = 0;
}
System.out.print(round2(rel_dmg*100));
System.out.print("%[/td]");
}
{
System.out.print("[td]");
final double rel_hits;
if (c > 0) {
rel_hits = hit_chance / other_chance - 1;
System.out.print("+");
} else if (c < 0) {
rel_hits = 1 - hit_chance / other_chance;
System.out.print("-");
} else {
rel_hits = 0;
}
System.out.print(round2(rel_hits*100));
System.out.print("%[/td]");
}
System.out.println("[/tr]");
}
System.out.println("[/table]");
}
} |
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Last Edit: 13 years ago by Turtle.
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Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 13 years ago #259
Turtle,
Turtle wrote: Elementals have a base combat of 7: 7+6=13 Typo. Turtle wrote: And your opponent can do the same thing. Except they don't use the Elementals with base combat 7 and instead use something with base combat 11 or 12, so now they're getting 17 or 18 combat. The relative combat score between them and you doesn't change one iota. We are talking theory and reality here again. I never said what your opponent might or might not play in terms of race or Warlord. In reality/practice that almost never happens. There are 10 races and 36 warlord combos leading to a potential of 360 different combination's of race/warlord. Now not all are equally likely but typically 150-200 or so are potentially in play in any given game. Especially since you pick Race + Warlord before the game begins so you have no idea what your opponent might or might not pick. Once in the game you can't switch Warlord or Race. So the odds say your opponent DOES NOT have the ability to get +6 battle units in his capitol. Turtle wrote: Also, capital city production is limited. If you and your enemy each have 15 cities, the vast majority of your production is going to be coming from non-capital cities. (So even if your enemy doesn't have a +6 combat capital, they'll still have a major advantage against all of the elementals that aren't produced at your capital. And even if they only have the typical +4 combat capital city, your capital city elementals will only be about an even match for their capital city units, in which case for some small fraction of your units you are an even match and for the rest you are at a disadvantage.) You should be making Elementals *only* in your capitol. I never make them anywhere else when I play Dwarves. All I make are Axemen and some Crossbow men unless I get lucky and find a city with 3-4 sites attached. It's a game of masses. It's FAR better to make 6 Axemen than 1 Elemental. You effectively have a 5/78 unit instead of a 7/30 unit. I assumed you understood that since you are so statistics oriented. This is why the AI changes were all geared toward the AI making masses of units and only a few high level ones in the capitol and getting anything else from Mercs/Ruin Allies. Turtle wrote: But on a swing for swing basis, the elemental loses against better combat units. So you are just describing something that could be applied to any race to increase their number of swings. Absolutely true. I never intended to imply there was a magic bullet for the Dwarves that made them invincible. Had there been I would have found it long ago in all the MP games I played. Then it would have been eliminated in the Patches. There is no absolute magic bullet for any race. My suggestion of Combat and Necromancy was what I consider the best 2 Warlord majors to take when playing Dwarves. Turtle wrote: If you want to show that dwarves have a redeeming quality when it comes to high-end combat, you need to show something they can do with high-end fodder (just produced L3/L4 units) that other races can't mimic or beat. (By high-end fodder I mean stuff that fights and dies, and subsequently does not get to level up much in its life.) Their redeeming quality is the great 1/2 turn units. About 80% of the units in the game are 1/2 turn units. So having great ones is a huge advantage. If you are trying to make lots of L2/L3 units as Dwarves you are playing them incorrectly. They are a mass produce race meant to overwhelm with sheer numbers of Axemen backed up by Crossbows. Again, 6 Axemen are MUCH better than any L3 unit in the game in a straight fight due to the sheer number of hit points. They definitely have poor L2/L3 units. The only ones you should make are ones in the Capitol to go with your best hero stack (typically retinue). Turtle wrote: Now Necromancy is something to consider. I was looking at "Glory" as a way of getting more heroes (and therefore improving the chance of getting an opposite one), but Summon Hero seems a bit more reliable way to go about it. Glory is pretty good at high levels. Once you get to +6 or better you start getting a steady supply of heroes. You just need to be sure to have a lot of gold which in many games is in short supply if you don't get lucky in the ruins. Turtle wrote: There's trade-offs to be made though -- there is good combat stuff in both Divine (Altar of Battle) and Summoning (Flame of Khazdhul), and one warlord can only pick (at most) two of these magic schools. Quite true. But overall the 3 Altars (Night, Battle, Fire) are about equal in power. In fact the best spell for Necromancy is the Blood Ritual (Vampirism +5 on heroes). If that can't be dispelled those summoned heroes are almost unkillable. You should not take magic from 2 schools. It's not practical at low Warlord levels (<L30) as other Warlord types are far superior at those levels. Turtle wrote: So your argument here is that if you have two heroes with stackable benefits and your enemy is too stupid to use any heroes at all, you can partially make up for how weak elementals are? That's not very convincing. Why shouldn't I want to combine the same two-hero strategy with an inherently stronger race and achieve exceptional combat rather than going through that effort just to achieve average combat? My point isn't that other players won't stack heroes (they definitely will). My point is you get guaranteed access to the other power (Fear) from the spell so you can and will have many more heroes than other players (except a Glory player) plus get the occasional Curse power too. So if you have 10 heroes and your opponent has 5 you have a hero advantage and thus more stacks giving -2 than your opponent does. So it was a reason why you take Necromancy for your Warlord, not why the Elemental is a great unit. Turtle wrote: High combat provides even more per-level benefit at higher levels than at lower ones. Going from +0 to +2 combat increases (potential) relative damage by 44%, nice. But going from +8 to +10 increases relative damage by 149% (to a total of 525%), insane! Indeed it does. This is why your Uber-Hero stack is so powerful/valuable. Turtle wrote: In fact, I am eyeing up knights for this as they also get bless (Archon and hero). Leadership + Fear + bless + either curse or Altar of Battle + archons with 11 base combat (and maybe throw in some heal) = cause enemy much pain, especially if they are Dwarves. (Heck, against dwarf elementals you could just use swordsman -- about 3 would do the trick. 2 dead swordsman take 1 turn to replace whereas 1 dead elemental takes 3 turns.) Knights are a much stronger race than Dwarves. And what you say about Swordsmen is exactly what Dwarves do against Knights. Just Axemen you to death. 6 Axemen > 1 Archon even with Altar of Battle especially if there are a couple of Crossbow men around getting extra archery power against the flying Archon. 4 Axemen > 1 Knight too. I suspect you are building too many L2/L3 units and not enough mass fodder. Comes from playing the AI. But I can tell you that 80% or more of your men should be the fodder units. Your Capitol produces super units to go with your best hero stack. When you get 6 of them (to go with your Leadership/Fear) hero you set out for the Enemy Capitol (ideally leveling a couple of them at ruins while you wait for the rest to get made). Sometimes you drag along some fodder but often you can just take down the Capitol with that one super stack thanks to the +8 combat bonus (Fear+Leadership) + any extra strength from capitol buildings (2-6 more depending on Warlord). The game is after all nothing more than Capture the Flag. Most MP games get decided like that. One strong thrust to the Capitol... Just be careful not to rely on getting your Altar. In many games it gets perpetually dispelled as soon as it goes up or takes too long to research. So when I pick a Warlord/Race I never count on getting it or being able to use it. I just consider the Altar to be a bonus. That's why I value things that are always in play like Morale, Weaponmaster, spells that are instant effect (summoning units, battle spells) etc. My problem is still the slow speed. You typically end up with only about 3/4 the cities your opponent does due to taking longer to get places. That ultimately spells doom in many cases though sheer overwhelming numbers. Turtle wrote: I can see that being an issue at higher difficulty levels (or against human players). But that just means the dwarves have two major strikes against them. Well I can live with the lack of High Level units since I don't use them other than my main hero stack. But the slow speed makes that Thrust to the Capitol knockout hard to achieve. In terms of Best Races to play it goes Best Dark Elves Ogres Knights Empire . . . Orcs Elves Worst The other 4 are in the ... range meaning I find them about equally good/bad. Knights are the easiest race for a beginner to play as they were meant for the Campaign. KGB |
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Last Edit: 13 years ago by KGB.
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Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 13 years ago #260
KGB wrote:
Again, 6 Axemen are MUCH better than any L3 unit in the game in a straight fight due to the sheer number of hit points. Yeah, I'd say the Fire Dragon is the only L3 unit that stands even a chance against the corresponding number of Axemen (. KGB wrote: In fact the best spell for Necromancy is the Blood Ritual (Vampirism +5 on heroes). If that can't be dispelled those summoned heroes are almost unkillable. No kidding! It took me one (1) map to develop Blood Ritual phobia. I'd say Blood Ritual is the best spell in the game, followed by Growth, Tentacles, Altar of Battle, and Heroic Expertise. KGB wrote: In terms of Best Races to play it goes Best Dark Elves And the reasons why Dark Elves are the best are 1) unlimited supply of Negate units, and 2) Giant Spiders, the 2nd best fodder units (or even at par with Axemen). |
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"Negate does not negate Negate."
--- KGB "Moreover, I advise that Daemons and Dark Elves must switch places on the Race Wheel." --- Marcus Porcius Cato
Last Edit: 13 years ago by Seppuccu.
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Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 13 years ago #261
Seppuccu wrote:
And the reasons why Dark Elves are the best are 1) unlimited supply of Negate units, and 2) Giant Spiders, the 2nd best fodder units (or even at par with Axemen). 1) 20 base movement 2) Above average Hero skills 3) Nearby races on the wheel have very useful skills 4) No Achilles heel against any other race/spell (or put another way, can match up well against any other race due to none of their skills being invalided/useless) 5)Virtually any Warlord combo works with this race. KGB |
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Last Edit: 13 years ago by KGB.
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Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 12 years, 12 months ago #266
We are talking theory and reality here again. I never said what your opponent might or might not play in terms of race or Warlord. The main point wasn't whether your opponent uses a given combination or you choose a different combination. It was that where L3 combat scores are of concern, there are better combinations. In reality/practice that almost never happens. There are 10 races and 36 warlord combos leading to a potential of 360 different combination's of race/warlord. Now not all are equally likely but typically 150-200 or so are potentially in play in any given game. I'm not sure what reality you're posting from, but in this one your "360 different combinations" factoid has no significant relation to the % of combinations with a +6 combat major and race that gets better L3/L4 units than dwarves. Major Ability: There are 6 of these. 2 of them get +6 combat. If randomly/uniformly selected, chance is 1 in 3. Minor Ability: This has no bearing on either capital city combat bonus or L3 unit base combat. Race: There are 10 of these. Of the 9 non-dwarf races, ALL 9 get L3 units with better base combat than dwaves. 4 of them get combat of 11 or 12. So, if major ability and race are picked completely at random, the chance of any given opponent having both +6 combat and L3 units with better combat is 1/3*9/10=30%. And the chance of any given opponent having both +6 combat and L3 units with 11 or 12 base combat is 1/3*4/10=13.3%. Now, I don't know about you, but I have not played the game against just one AI opponent. My experience with other strategy games is that playing one-on-one with the AI tends to be too easy and less fun, so I generally don't bother. If you play on a medium map with 3 AI opponents (and assume independent random selections) then the chance of at least one of those opponents having a +6 combat bonus major ability and a non-dwarf race is 1-(1-1/3*9/10)^3=65.7%. At least one of them having a +6 combat bonus and an 11 or 12 base combat L3 unit is 1-(1-1/3*4/10)^3=34.9%. The odds of course go up with a large map with more opponents. Also note that those odds don't even include all of the cases where an opponent has +2 or +4 combat capital cities and still gets a better total combat score due to having L3 units with better base combat. Especially since you pick Race + Warlord before the game begins so you have no idea what your opponent might or might not pick. Once in the game you can't switch Warlord or Race. I was not suggesting an actual reactive process -- only a thought process by which different options are weighed and compared in the process of selecting one. My logic is that anyone (and really I was referring to people in this case, not the AI) -- any person could pick a major ability that gives them +6 combat. And presumably if a person chooses to pick some other major ability it is because they decided that even though their capital combat bonus will be less, the major ability they are picking provides some benefit(s) that more than make up for it. So the logic is:
Now in general transitivity may not hold due to rock/paper/scissor effects. The only skill that the dwarves have where such an effect may come into play would be Warding. But since, as I previously stated, I always choose Crushing Blow over Warding, that doesn't seem to me like much of an issue in this case. So the odds say your opponent DOES NOT have the ability to get +6 battle units in his capitol. The odds say that if major ability is picked at random, any given opponent has a 1/3 chance of having a major ability that provides (up to) +6 combat in the capital city. If you are up against 3 such opponents (with independent randomness), the odds of at least one of them having such a major ability are 1-(1-1/3)^3=70%. So in a 4-way game the odds say one of your opponents DOES have the ability. You should be making Elementals *only* in your capitol. I never make them anywhere else when I play Dwarves. All I make are Axemen and some Crossbow men unless I get lucky and find a city with 3-4 sites attached. I would think that if you have a (standard production) capital city providing combat and HP bonuses it would pay off much more to create Axemen there than Elementals. Say you've got a +6 combat/+6 HP capital. What happens to the relative combat score between Axemen and Elementals if you choose to produce them there? Nothing -- Axemen goes from 5 to 11, Elemental from 7 to 13 -- still a difference of 2. But the HP, man, the HP... In the 3 turns it takes to make an Elemental, you can make 6 Axemen. Normally 6 Axemen is a total of 6*13=78 HP. In fact, the Axemen's "virtual HP" will be higher than that (where virual HP takes into account all of the potential damage that gets thrown away because the current Axeman didn't have that many HP). Anyways, 78 HP for the Axemen over 30 HP for the Elemental is a ratio of 2.6. Now when you have a +6 HP capital, that changes. The 6 Axemen then get 19 HP each for a total of 114 while the Elemental goes to 36. That is 114/36=3.2. So the +6 combat/+6 HP capital amplifies the difference between 6 Axemen and one Elemental. Now, exceptions may need to be made for specific cases. You only get two stacks to defend a city, so if you absolutely have to keep it (and depending on what you have to defend against) you may have to produce Elementals at your capital just so you can get your "power density" high enough to cram sufficient defense into the two stacks. Obviously the capital city needs to be held. Other cities (e.g., ones with attached bonuses) may also be considered worthy of extra defense, and in some cases (e.g., enemies that are razing and/or remaking cities and therefore making retaking them a gold-expensive proposition) avoiding even temporary capture of any city may be somewhat important. Another place where some "power density" may be required (though it's a much more complicated case to analyze) is when you are trying to take maximal advantage of support units (leadership/fear/bless/curse/heal). E.g., if you are using your leveled-up heroes for offensive maneuvers and want enough fire power so you don't get them dead. But, once those special needs are sufficiently met, I think the best use of the capital city is to produce Axemen. This logic of course doesn't hold for the +6 combat/+0 HP you get with a Necromancy major because there is no HP bonus in that case. Even if there were, it still wouldn't hold because you then get the -1 production time which makes the Elementals come out faster but doesn't make the Axemen come out faster. (What a rip off! It should make 4 Axemen per turn.) It's a game of masses. It's FAR better to make 6 Axemen than 1 Elemental. Like what I just said above? You effectively have a 5/78 unit instead of a 7/30 unit. Actually as explained above, it can be better than 78 due to potential damage being thrown away. I haven't done the exact math, but it's probably 100+ "virtual" HP. But it doesn't work as well against towers, archers, or multi-attack -- in those cases the effective HP could be a lot lower than 78. I assumed you understood that since you are so statistics oriented. As explained above, whether or not it is better to make 6 Axemen or one Elemental depends on circumstances. And if anything I am "reality oriented". The reality of the Warlords game mechanics just happen to yield to statistical analysis. You should not take magic from 2 schools. It's not practical at low Warlord levels (<L30) as other Warlord types are far superior at those levels. Not sure I'm convinced of this. I think it depends on what you are trying to get out of the two schools. If you want specific high-level (rare/arcane) spells from both, then yeah it's going to take some more warlord leveling to train both magic schools sufficiently to learn spells quickly. But if you are mostly interested in common spells from one school and higher level ones only from the other, then I think you could get away with just training the one magic school. I suspect you are building too many L2/L3 units and not enough mass fodder. Comes from playing the AI. I play to beat the AIs, not other humans. I'm not going to optimize my game to beat humans when I am not playing humans. So I'm not sure what to make of "Comes from playing the AI". But I can tell you that 80% or more of your men should be the fodder units. I tend to be in the 80% area for the initial expansion part of the game. But when gold starts getting tight I start producing heroes and use them to replace city defenses. That reduces my upkeep so I can afford to continue to upgrade front-line cities to L4. (During a given game I may slowly transition from one each of L2/L3/L4 and a bunch of L1 to 4+ L4 and a bunch of L1, and eventually just 8 L4. The old units get thrown into battle ASAP so they stop costing me gold. Eventually, only where I am attacking or am getting attacked do I keep L2/L3 and lots of L1 units around.) Your Capitol produces super units to go with your best hero stack. When you get 6 of them (to go with your Leadership/Fear) hero you set out for the Enemy Capitol (ideally leveling a couple of them at ruins while you wait for the rest to get made). Why would I do that? (I suppose I could use the extra gold...) If I take out an enemy capital, then it's just a feeding frenzy where the remaining opponents may get more cities (at least combined) than I do. Better to cherry pick which cities I want, and take their capital when I've already taken the rest of their decent (e.g., 36+ gold or good bonuses) cities. Plus, why would I throw good units at a capital when I can take it down (or at last severely weaken it) more efficiently with fodder? Also I try to keep my opponents somewhat balanced (taking cities from whichever one is the strongest so none of them can get too strong and overpower me), so I'm not likely to take one of them out unless they are already so weak that they are about to fall anyways, or unless I have expanded so much that none of the other players is even a threat any more. Most MP games get decided like that. One strong thrust to the Capitol... I don't play any MP but... if player A uses his best stuff to attack player B's capital, and in the process his best stuff is diminished (say a bunch of his L3 units get toasted), hasn't player A now made himself highly susceptible to a killing blow from player C? (Or are most MP games just one-on-one?) Just be careful not to rely on getting your Altar. In many games it gets perpetually dispelled as soon as it goes up or takes too long to research. I haven't actually gotten an Altar spell yet, but in my current game I have been using Bounty and the frequent dispels are definitely annoying. And because I'm a level 1 warlord and my opponents are level 7/8, they can dispel faster than I can regen mana to recast. (Though I just stole a city with library attached which should help -- took it from the one that was casting Void all the time, so it should doubly help.) By the way, here is my handy/dandy dispel table:
But the slow speed makes that Thrust to the Capitol knockout hard to achieve. But since I don't use that strategy, the speed doesn't hurt me in that way. |
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Last Edit: 12 years, 12 months ago by Turtle.
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Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 12 years, 12 months ago #267
Turtle wrote:
Race: There are 10 of these. Of the 9 non-dwarf races, ALL 9 get L3 units with better base combat than dwaves. 4 of them get combat of 11 or 12. But NONE get L1 units that are stronger than the Axemen. If we're going to use statistics, we should look at all the facts and not isolate the special cases that prove our points. Right? (And that goes for the both of you.) So to sum it up: Dwarves clearly have weaker L3 units, which is compensated for with better L1 units (plus the Bolt Thrower which so far has avoided being involved in the discussion). In the special case of meeting more powerful stacks this becomes an issue. This, in turn, can be partially compensated for by producing L3 units from adjacent races (Dragons and Knights). The movement points can be an issue but is partially depending on one's play style. Apparently it works for Turtle in SP. Given KGB's MP experience it probably doesn't work in MP. Turtle wrote: I would think that if you have a (standard production) capital city providing combat and HP bonuses it would pay off much more to create Axemen there than Elementals. [---] Now, exceptions may need to be made for specific cases. You only get two stacks to defend a city, so if you absolutely have to keep it (and depending on what you have to defend against) you may have to produce Elementals at your capital just so you can get your "power density" high enough to cram sufficient defense into the two stacks. Obviously the capital city needs to be held. You want the highest power density with your Hero uber stack since there are only 8 slots. The units of the hero stack will still die and therefore need to be replenished with more Elementals from your capital. You don't need to cram a lot of L3 units into your capital, at least not in SP. You will rarely ever see the AI make a bull run for your capital with a super stack and if it does, well, you'll see it coming. I usually keep a small number (2-4) of low/mid units in the capital and if the enemy approaches I simply vector the production from adjacent cities to the capital and fill it up with whatever gets produced. In the meantime I wear the incoming stack down with whatever is availabel and by the time they reach the capital my units there + walls will take care of the rest. Turtle wrote: Even if there were, it still wouldn't hold because you then get the -1 production time which makes the Elementals come out faster but doesn't make the Axemen come out faster. (What a rip off! It should make 4 Axemen per turn.) No. It's very good for the game that it doesn't. Turtle wrote: Not sure I'm convinced of this. I think it depends on what you are trying to get out of the two schools. If you want specific high-level (rare/arcane) spells from both, then yeah it's going to take some more warlord leveling to train both magic schools sufficiently to learn spells quickly. But if you are mostly interested in common spells from one school and higher level ones only from the other, then I think you could get away with just training the one magic school. The problem is that your spell list will be so long that it's difficult to actually get the spell you want. Instead you'll have to waste precious mana to regenerate the spell list. Turtle wrote: Plus, why would I throw good units at a capital when I can take it down (or at last severely weaken it) more efficiently with fodder? Also I try to keep my opponents somewhat balanced (taking cities from whichever one is the strongest so none of them can get too strong and overpower me), so I'm not likely to take one of them out unless they are already so weak that they are about to fall anyways, or unless I have expanded so much that none of the other players is even a threat any more. I usually check the opponents at the beginning of the game and go for the one with the most dangerous retinue (usually involves Heal, Regeneration, Negate, Assassin or Vampirism) or some factor in the Warlord skill and take them out before their retinue enters the game. Personally I find it very difficult to take down or weaken an enemy capital efficiently with fodder. Its walls will take a heavy toll on your units because of the high damage they cause. First you need to siege it and use sacrificial units with a lot of Life withstand the walls' arrows so your siege units get a chance to fire. Turtle wrote: I haven't actually gotten an Altar spell yet, but in my current game I have been using Bounty and the frequent dispels are definitely annoying. Which is why you want to take out that Warlord as soon as possible. Growth, Turtle, Growth... |
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"Negate does not negate Negate."
--- KGB "Moreover, I advise that Daemons and Dark Elves must switch places on the Race Wheel." --- Marcus Porcius Cato |
Re: Leadership, Fear and Combat 12 years, 12 months ago #268
Turtle,
Turtle wrote: So, if major ability and race are picked completely at random, the chance of any given opponent having both +6 combat and L3 units with better combat is 1/3*9/10=30%. And the chance of any given opponent having both +6 combat and L3 units with 11 or 12 base combat is 1/3*4/10=13.3%. Doesn't that sort of say exactly what I said? That the odds are you *won't* face someone who has +6 combat. Indeed you just showed it was only 30% likely. Hence odds are you won't and odds are only 13% likely its one of the L3 units with 11/12 strength (note, some of those races L3 units take 4 turns instead of 3 to produce which has to be factored in). Turtle wrote: Now, I don't know about you, but I have not played the game against just one AI opponent. My experience with other strategy games is that playing one-on-one with the AI tends to be too easy and less fun, so I generally don't bother. If you play on a medium map with 3 AI opponents (and assume independent random selections) then the chance of at least one of those opponents having a +6 combat bonus major ability and a non-dwarf race is 1-(1-1/3*9/10)^3=65.7%. At least one of them having a +6 combat bonus and an 11 or 12 base combat L3 unit is 1-(1-1/3*4/10)^3=34.9%. The odds of course go up with a large map with more opponents. Also note that those odds don't even include all of the cases where an opponent has +2 or +4 combat capital cities and still gets a better total combat score due to having L3 units with better base combat. I typically play with 3-5 AI's when I play. On occasion I'll play with 7. When I play with 3, it's almost always a 3V1 where the 3 are allied against me rather than a 4 player FFA. So if only 1 of my 3 opponents has the +6 I'm quite satisfied. If 2 have it I feel slightly unlucky and if all 3 have it I feel very unlucky. But hey, you have to deal with it and plan accordingly. So that means if I play Dwarves, I make sure I get the +6 combat bonus for my capitol because I know I *need* it. I also didn't realize you were mostly playing medium sized maps. I tend to play Large/Huge. That's why movement is more important. Because on those maps if you move slow you'll get to a lot less resources (cities, ruins). Turtle wrote: My logic is that anyone (and really I was referring to people in this case, not the AI) -- any person could pick a major ability that gives them +6 combat. And presumably if a person chooses to pick some other major ability it is because they decided that even though their capital combat bonus will be less, the major ability they are picking provides some benefit(s) that more than make up for it. Quite true. Sometimes other benefits outweigh getting +6 on your capitol units. That's especially true if the Major than gives it doesn't work well with that particular race or against what you think you might face. Obviously the more opponents in a game, the less valuable some skills become (Morale, persistent spells like Altars) due to the chance they are completely negated by one or more of your opponents. Turtle wrote: The odds say that if major ability is picked at random, any given opponent has a 1/3 chance of having a major ability that provides (up to) +6 combat in the capital city. If you are up against 3 such opponents (with independent randomness), the odds of at least one of them having such a major ability are 1-(1-1/3)^3=70%. So in a 4-way game the odds say one of your opponents DOES have the ability. Which as I said, I don't consider to be too bad. Only 1 of 3 opponents has that +6. The other 2 don't. Those are the 2 opponents I want to pick on/work over with my Elementals. Turtle wrote: I would think that if you have a (standard production) capital city providing combat and HP bonuses it would pay off much more to create Axemen there than Elementals. In the early turns (say 1-5) that's true because you need masses of men to take down neutrals. As the game progresses it becomes worthwhile to make Elementals to fill out 1 super stack. Especially a high level superstack. Turtle wrote: Now, exceptions may need to be made for specific cases. You only get two stacks to defend a city, so if you absolutely have to keep it (and depending on what you have to defend against) you may have to produce Elementals at your capital just so you can get your "power density" high enough to cram sufficient defense into the two stacks. Another place where some "power density" may be required (though it's a much more complicated case to analyze) is when you are trying to take maximal advantage of support units (leadership/fear/bless/curse/heal). E.g., if you are using your leveled-up heroes for offensive maneuvers and want enough fire power so you don't get them dead. But, once those special needs are sufficiently met, I think the best use of the capital city is to produce Axemen. I agree completely. You merely need to fill out 1 superstack worth of Elementals. I rarely fill my capitol with those L3 units. Heroes are better and so are just super Axemen if you have a couple of heroes and a good Warlord. So then if we agree that you only need L3 units for 1 super hero stack (and maybe your capitol) then how important can combat strength of L3 units be when picking a side? I'd say they aren't that important at all. That ranks WAY down there because there won't be many of them made compared to the 1/2 turn units of which there will be hundreds made. So 1/2 turn units are much more important when picking sides than combat strength of L3 units are. To me the *only* thing I care about in L3 units is Skills + Flight (or lack of). I want either a great skill or flight or ideally both. Elementals to me have neither which is why I don't consider them great. Has nothing to do with their raw strength or combat worthiness. Turtle wrote: Not sure I'm convinced of this. I think it depends on what you are trying to get out of the two schools. If you want specific high-level (rare/arcane) spells from both, then yeah it's going to take some more warlord leveling to train both magic schools sufficiently to learn spells quickly. But if you are mostly interested in common spells from one school and higher level ones only from the other, then I think you could get away with just training the one magic school. You should be if you look at it statistically. In addition to what Seppuccu wrote about being harder to get the spells you want there is one other overwhelming factor. Specialized casters are 3 Levels higher than all other Warlords! That's because they start with +5 in their magic school instead of +1. So at L1 they have a total of 7 Warlord points (5 in magic and one in their major/minor skill). Any other warlord combo has only 4 points (one in each). So you get 3 free levels being a specialized caster. That bonus is huge in early levels because it means your Altar spells come in 12 turns (instead of 17) and all your rare spells come in 5 turns instead of 7. Getting spells sooner matters. These initial bonus points tend to become less useful around the time Warlords starting hitting L20-25. By the time you reach L35 the specialist caster has topped out because they only have 3 places to point points while others have 4. This is why most MP games take place in the L25-L40 range where the Warlords are about equal. Before L25 specialist casters rule and after L40 they are weaker. Turtle wrote: I play to beat the AIs, not other humans. I'm not going to optimize my game to beat humans when I am not playing humans. So I'm not sure what to make of "Comes from playing the AI". Nothing more than what you just said. Your game is optimized around beating the AI. By that I also mean you may be missing out on things because you don't have to vary your play much or experiment beyond what's necessary to beat the AI. So you might be missing out on some types of strategy that could improve your play but you don't try because you don't have to. Turtle wrote: I tend to be in the 80% area for the initial expansion part of the game. But when gold starts getting tight I start producing heroes and use them to replace city defenses. That reduces my upkeep so I can afford to continue to upgrade front-line cities to L4. (During a given game I may slowly transition from one each of L2/L3/L4 and a bunch of L1 to 4+ L4 and a bunch of L1, and eventually just 8 L4. The old units get thrown into battle ASAP so they stop costing me gold. Eventually, only where I am attacking or am getting attacked do I keep L2/L3 and lots of L1 units around.) Ah, yes. I can see your style of play now. Loading up cities with men, expanding slowly, city to city making sure you have plenty of defenders in cities you just left. I am surprised you aren't using a Nature Warlord. Perfectly designed for your style of play with the Defender skill as I wrote in the Help files. I'm a much more dynamic player. I tend to defend lightly and perpetually push my units all over the map. Commonly I'll fly a bat or imp or L3 flying unit deep into enemy lines and Summon a few units and take weakly defended back cities. I have no problem self razing my own cities or those I take to deny them to my opponents. I rarely run out of gold because I don't end up with lots of units on defense. That's why I value speed so much to let me get past my opponents and swarm all over the map. Turtle wrote: Why would I do that? (I suppose I could use the extra gold...) If I take out an enemy capital, then it's just a feeding frenzy where the remaining opponents may get more cities (at least combined) than I do. Because it's one step closer to winning the game as they are fewer opponents. Also because the ones I tend to pick off are the ones who have Warlord skills that matter (can cancel my spells, have Chaos effects on me etc). I could care less if the other opponents end up with a majority of their cities. I'll easily get those from my raiding attacks. I'm guessing your games tend to last a large number of turns (50-100 on medium maps?). Mine tend not to. Players are out quickly. I've won many games down to just my well defended capitol and 1 super hero stack on the rampage picking off enemy capitols. Turtle wrote: I don't play any MP but... if player A uses his best stuff to attack player B's capital, and in the process his best stuff is diminished (say a bunch of his L3 units get toasted), hasn't player A now made himself highly susceptible to a killing blow from player C? (Or are most MP games just one-on-one?) They tend to be 1-1 or 2v2 team games. Some 3 player FFA's if we can't get a 4th player. Time restrictions make it impossible to have more than 4 (turns take too long). Players tend to defend the capitol well and take shots at the opponent capitol. There are plenty of big battles but players by and large realize that you can win by one lightning shot so if you fall behind you just take a shot for the capitol rather than being slowly strangled. Turtle wrote: I haven't actually gotten an Altar spell yet, but in my current game I have been using Bounty and the frequent dispels are definitely annoying. And because I'm a level 1 warlord and my opponents are level 7/8, they can dispel faster than I can regen mana to recast. (Though I just stole a city with library attached which should help -- took it from the one that was casting Void all the time, so it should doubly help.) I didn't realize you were playing with such low level Warlords (L1). Been forever since I did that. As I said, virtually all my games are L25-40 range where there is a real difference in the Warlords and they are about equal in value (at L1 Combat Major is useless while spell casting isn't). So a lot of what I say is meant for higher level Warlord games where spells come faster / more often and Warlord skills have a lot of value. The table you show is well known. It's basically like Magic - The Gathering. Picture a Pentagram/5 sided star. The opposite points cancel each others spells. KGB |
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Last Edit: 12 years, 12 months ago by KGB.
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