Finally, the return of the novo vs keika match! Very interesting as always.
Congratz keika, looks like you played a solid Dreadnought which should inspire others, though I do think you misplay Cannons (maybe look at how AlX plays them, I remember he was quite good at it).
From the balance perspective I could say that I don’t like advanced logistics skill so much. It gives a huge advantage to one of the players and makes the game unpredictable.
Dreadnought class is still slow and you can see that from the scores, it is quite hard to expand early. Machine (golems) way is kind of playable and the golems+engineers combo is very nice. Engineers are quite expensive and imho would be good to slightly reduce their cost. I still haven't found a way to use cannons to get advantage. I did research cannons in this game, but never produced one. I planned to produce flame tanks and should research them in the next two turns, they looked more promising for me in this game.
First turns were quite hard. Sites guards were strong and without healing many of my units were seriously injured almost all time. There were a lot of back and forth movements, I didn't get any additional units from farms/camps. Independent's peace/vassalize cost was low and so unfortunately they gave me only archer as a reward. I was expecting to get a cavalry or priest which could help me a lot, but no luck.
In addition I scouted that I am on a separate island with one cave entrance and so I had very limited ways to explore.
Also I scouted the dungeon and wizard tower on my island and it was a bit disappointing for me, because I had no idea how to take them early with my starting army. However then I discovered that dungeon has a halfling guard set and they were on the arctic and so had negative moral and no luck. I thought that I had quite good chances to take if I disjunct battlefield enchantment successfully and so I did that on turn 11 with heroes, knight and 2 engineers.
The reward was storm sister and brew brothers which gave me a good opportunity to take wizard tower on next turn. I wanted to play more “dreadnought way” in this game and so I accepted dreadnought second hero, and surprisingly it was very useful in wizard tower - under force field spell my knight was immune to three damage channels and I was able to take tower without losses.
I have scouted another wizard tower on another continent and I decided to take it also, so I left engineers with the rest of the units to explore underground with 2 newly produced golems. A bit later I splitted my UG army to explore another underground path with two more engineers and two golems.
In my starting location I found a good place for a city with flowrock quarry and crystal tree in range and two latest golems were produced with enchanted armor and flowrock machinery bonuses. I can’t say if it was really worth it or not, but it was nice to have elite golems with 90HP and 19/11 stats.
These two unit stacks with golems and engineers were quite successful during the game and cleaned many sites including dungeon, sphinx temple, lost city and ziggurat (naga set).
Meanwhile my leader stack cleared the second wizard tower, found naga dwelling, completed the quest and then captured them. It was in the middle of the map and I was thinking about sneaking into Novo’s cities and razing them.
I hesitated to pick abilities on my max leveled sorcerer hero and had a lot of points untouched. I was considering an option to take master illusionist and make a diversion, but I was not able to stay unnoticed and so abandoned this plan.
I discovered Novo’s minor city not so far and with some units bought from the inn, captured it. At the same time I found his main stack and very unhappy to see very strong floating/swimming units with three T4 units.
I was expecting that he had a much bigger and better quality army, but still was shocked. To be honest I felt depressed and just wanted to give one big fight and then surrender, but everything turned out completely different.
With all research bonuses I got from wizard towers, sphinx temples and 90RP/turn I decided to rush advanced logistics and skip cannons because I thought they would be useless on such map. I was very close to finishing the research when our armies met and I wanted to try to catch his main stack and succeed just in time. Novo has placed his units far enough on the road and didn’t expect advanced logistics to be researched on turn 24.
With movement advantage I was able to bring my main stack and units bought from the inn. (there was also one traitor - frostling white witch. Couple of turns earlier I found roaming independent which wanted to join my army for gold. Never had that before and after a lot of thinking I decided that it was Novo’s deserted unit).
Trying to increase my chances in the battle, I spent all my sorcerer’s upgrade points and took chaos rift and thunderstorm. I also was able to level up my leader to level 13 in the very last battle and picked force field generator ability. On dreadnought hero I also picked the “summon siege engine” spell, but he was not able to cast it in the battle.
Result of the battle was very impressive and inspiring for me and I felt that I have chances to win this game. I thought that I could probably reach the throne with the advanced logistics bonus before his leader returned from the void, but I was quite far from the throne and roads were not straight. Anyway I proceeded, razed three forts on my way and discovered ambush. Novo had at least two stacks of good units and it was impossible to beat them with my one stack and so I retreated.
I didn’t see any of his heroes anywhere and thought that they are exploring map corners. I was pretty sure that at least one hero went to the upper right corner, because I saw a few sites cleaned there and scouted banshee with my drone. I was afraid that I missed it and it is going towards my cities or summoning banshees to capture my cities which I was vulnerable to, but in the end it appeared in UG. I had my two elite secondary stacks nearby and also bought one more stack from the inn and wanted to ambush him also with movement superiority.
Novo scouted some of my units and placed his army as he thought safely from the attack, but there were haste berries not so far, I built roads with builder and engineers and also help to dig tunnels with goblin beetle to make the path shorter and attacked with outnumbered forces.
It was the second serious loss for Novo. I think he still had a big army and good economy to continue the game, but he surrendered on the next turn.
Overall I think I have played a very solid game as dreadnought, but still should lose it. If Novo didn’t lose his main stack, it would be a completely different game with low chances to win.
Written by Hiliadan
Finally, the return of the novo vs keika match!
Very interesting as always.
Congratz keika, looks like you played a solid Dreadnought which should inspire others, though I do think you misplay Cannons (maybe look at how AlX plays them, I remember he was quite good at it).
Confirmed by novograd
Written by keika
Dreadnought class is still slow and you can see that from the scores, it is quite hard to expand early. Machine (golems) way is kind of playable and the golems+engineers combo is very nice.
Engineers are quite expensive and imho would be good to slightly reduce their cost.
I still haven't found a way to use cannons to get advantage. I did research cannons in this game, but never produced one.
I planned to produce flame tanks and should research them in the next two turns, they looked more promising for me in this game.
First turns were quite hard. Sites guards were strong and without healing many of my units were seriously injured almost all time.
There were a lot of back and forth movements, I didn't get any additional units from farms/camps.
Independent's peace/vassalize cost was low and so unfortunately they gave me only archer as a reward. I was expecting to get a cavalry or priest which could help me a lot, but no luck.
In addition I scouted that I am on a separate island with one cave entrance and so I had very limited ways to explore.
Also I scouted the dungeon and wizard tower on my island and it was a bit disappointing for me, because I had no idea how to take them early with my starting army.
However then I discovered that dungeon has a halfling guard set and they were on the arctic and so had negative moral and no luck.
I thought that I had quite good chances to take if I disjunct battlefield enchantment successfully and so I did that on turn 11 with heroes, knight and 2 engineers.
The reward was storm sister and brew brothers which gave me a good opportunity to take wizard tower on next turn. I wanted to play more “dreadnought way” in this game and so I accepted dreadnought second hero, and surprisingly it was very useful in wizard tower - under force field spell my knight was immune to three damage channels and I was able to take tower without losses.
I have scouted another wizard tower on another continent and I decided to take it also, so I left engineers with the rest of the units to explore underground with 2 newly produced golems.
A bit later I splitted my UG army to explore another underground path with two more engineers and two golems.
In my starting location I found a good place for a city with flowrock quarry and crystal tree in range and two latest golems were produced with enchanted armor and flowrock machinery bonuses. I can’t say if it was really worth it or not, but it was nice to have elite golems with 90HP and 19/11 stats.
These two unit stacks with golems and engineers were quite successful during the game and cleaned many sites including dungeon, sphinx temple, lost city and ziggurat (naga set).
Meanwhile my leader stack cleared the second wizard tower, found naga dwelling, completed the quest and then captured them. It was in the middle of the map and I was thinking about sneaking into Novo’s cities and razing them.
I hesitated to pick abilities on my max leveled sorcerer hero and had a lot of points untouched. I was considering an option to take master illusionist and make a diversion, but I was not able to stay unnoticed and so abandoned this plan.
I discovered Novo’s minor city not so far and with some units bought from the inn, captured it.
At the same time I found his main stack and very unhappy to see very strong floating/swimming units with three T4 units.
I was expecting that he had a much bigger and better quality army, but still was shocked. To be honest I felt depressed and just wanted to give one big fight and then surrender, but everything turned out completely different.
With all research bonuses I got from wizard towers, sphinx temples and 90RP/turn I decided to rush advanced logistics and skip cannons because I thought they would be useless on such map.
I was very close to finishing the research when our armies met and I wanted to try to catch his main stack and succeed just in time.
Novo has placed his units far enough on the road and didn’t expect advanced logistics to be researched on turn 24.
With movement advantage I was able to bring my main stack and units bought from the inn.
(there was also one traitor - frostling white witch. Couple of turns earlier I found roaming independent which wanted to join my army for gold. Never had that before and after a lot of thinking I decided that it was Novo’s deserted unit).
Trying to increase my chances in the battle, I spent all my sorcerer’s upgrade points and took chaos rift and thunderstorm.
I also was able to level up my leader to level 13 in the very last battle and picked force field generator ability.
On dreadnought hero I also picked the “summon siege engine” spell, but he was not able to cast it in the battle.
Video of the battle: https://drive.google.com/file...
Result of the battle was very impressive and inspiring for me and I felt that I have chances to win this game.
I thought that I could probably reach the throne with the advanced logistics bonus before his leader returned from the void, but I was quite far from the throne and roads were not straight.
Anyway I proceeded, razed three forts on my way and discovered ambush. Novo had at least two stacks of good units and it was impossible to beat them with my one stack and so I retreated.
I didn’t see any of his heroes anywhere and thought that they are exploring map corners. I was pretty sure that at least one hero went to the upper right corner, because I saw a few sites cleaned there and scouted banshee with my drone.
I was afraid that I missed it and it is going towards my cities or summoning banshees to capture my cities which I was vulnerable to, but in the end it appeared in UG.
I had my two elite secondary stacks nearby and also bought one more stack from the inn and wanted to ambush him also with movement superiority.
Novo scouted some of my units and placed his army as he thought safely from the attack, but there were haste berries not so far, I built roads with builder and engineers and also help to dig tunnels with goblin beetle to make the path shorter and attacked with outnumbered forces.
Video of the battle: https://drive.google.com/file...
It was the second serious loss for Novo. I think he still had a big army and good economy to continue the game, but he surrendered on the next turn.
Overall I think I have played a very solid game as dreadnought, but still should lose it. If Novo didn’t lose his main stack, it would be a completely different game with low chances to win.
Knowledge score:
Military score: