Spiel #517 Turnierspiel#19 | Round 2 : 2017 PBEM Duel Tournament #19

So it wasn't you who did this? https://i.imgur.com/u1TsZTQ.png I thought it was done along with prohibiting it from being pre-researched.

Anyway, let me expand my point. Whispers of the dead is a very strong skill that should take some time to research/cast. Making it possible to be a starting spell definitely undermined it, so I'm glad this is no longer the case. However, that's not enough: because the current research/mana cost is too low, if you're lucky enough to get it early on, you don't have to invest much time and resources into researching and casting it. And having it pop up in the skill book at day 1 or day 3 doesn't make much difference, I'd rather see the spell being able to pop up whenever it can due to the normal skill book mechanics (except as a starting skill, because it would mean not paying the research cost), but have an appropriate tier/costs.

Regarding the mana: what I experienced was the combination of +30% income from the CP upgrades, not having enough scouts casted, Bone collectors surprisingly not having the mana cost associated with them and me being too paranoid and overdoing mana buildings =)

Great report, thanks!

Look at your mana and check if you're late game Hellbrick. I think you did experience mana overflow!

Regarding Whispers of the Fallens, we only prevented it from starting researched or being in the research book at start, we didn't move it to turn 3 or anything (but ok, it does mean, it won't appear before turn 3 most of the time). It remains a T2 tech so it will very likely appear very soon. I think you want to do the same for scout techs (Cherubs, etc.). I don't see why preventing it from starting researched is bad. Before, you could have people starting with it and other getting it on turn 15. Now, we reduced the gap: you can't have it before turn 3-5 more or less, and you can still get it on turn 15 if you're unlucky/do bad choices.

Alright, it's time to tell the world what happened here!

If I had to summarize this game, I’d probably tell it was very strategic. We’ve all seen game outcomes being decided by tactical successes (or mistakes), by pure randomness of getting a favorable set of conveniently placed sites or even by a single river of rapids separating an unlucky player from an important part of the map. None of the above was the case in this game =)

I had a bit of an awkward start. In a corner of the continent, but with the brigand sites located in three completely different directions. With three trading posts, but barely any mana or knowledge sites. Without a pre-researched Lost soul, but with Whispers being available at the day 3. And, what’s probably most important, with almost no decent units to ghoul. And those units that I had managed to ghoul didn’t (un)live for very long, because I somehow convinced myself that doing this Tomb was a good idea:


Spoiler alert: it wasn’t =) The plan was to split them by sacrificing the cadavers, kill off a few of their fast units, retreat and then come back with more units to finish the battle. In reality they didn’t take the bait, Reanimator raised back my cadaver, I completely forgot that the animals can be reanimated by the combat enchantment and lost the Troll in a futile attempt to save the Mammoth rider. I managed to escape with the leader and the hero and finish clearing the Tomb the next turn, but it really wasn’t worth losing my two main units.

Seeing that the ghouling rush wasn’t doing to happen, I focused on building the economy and gathering intelligence. And the things my Lost souls saw were somewhat troubling.

First of all, Marcus had an additional human vassal. And this vassal seemed to have provided him with some precious human cavalry:


Second, his obligatory tigran vassal was huge, while my corresponding frostling vassal started as an outpost:


Third, the key dwelling in the center of the map was friendly to Marcus, but declared war on me, which kept me worrying Marcus was going to vassal it:


On the bright side, the scouts allowed me to boost the economy by plaguing the cities of Marcus. Which also kept Marcus busy disjuncting the spells and not summoning more Cheetahs.


At this point the map geography was mostly figured out, here’s how the map looked at the end of the day 22. This is where things started to get really interesting, so take a closer look at it:


As you can see, there were four routes from me to Marcus: through Fengel, through Burathi, through Droos and the long way through the narrow path between mountains to the south of Droos. This landscape presented some interesting challenges: to be able to react to a possible attack through any of the routes and to figure out when, where and how to attack without being exposed to a counter-attack through another route. A lot of thinking and a lot of scouting went into this =)

Moving on. The day 23 is where the actual bloodshed started. I found Marcus’ secondary army, still damaged after clearing a node.


My secondary army was within striking distance, so I took this chance to attack:



But I didn't risk going any further. My main army was more than a day behind, I had no up-to-date knowledge of what forces Marcus has at home and there was some troublesome activity on the south route that could indicate the presence of Marcus’ army:



So I retreated to the strategic point near the center of the map and decided it’s a good time to secure one of the central routes by conquering the giant dwelling of Droos before Marcus had a chance to vassal it:


At the day 29 it became apparent that it’s not the southern route I should be worried about, but the northern one:



A few days of maneuvering followed. I was moving the army towards the threat, Marcus was gathering forces and scouting ahead in preparation of the attack.




I had to attack while I had the shrine boost on my main units and the chance to add a nearby garrison units as a cannon fodder. I gathered everything that I could and proceeded to start what turned out to be the bloodiest and the most important battle of the game:



After the battle I cautiously looked at what was waiting for me ahead and saw that Marcus gathered some units in his human vassal.



There was no chance for me to safely capture it, not with my heavily damaged and barely healing army, so I planned to retreat, but, to my big surprise, Marcus launched a suicide attack on my stack. Luckily, my elite mammoth with 1 HP was the only casualty:


While my leader’s stack was advancing towards Fengel, I had some units moving from Droos towards Burathi. Nothing too impressive: a crappy hero, a former garrison of Droos that wasn’t needed anymore after it had been released as a vassal, a Sphinx bought in a nearby inn and a couple of summons. At first they didn’t encounter much resistance and captured Burathi:


The plan was to join forces with the main army and then keep putting pressure on Marcus’ domain, but then something completely unexpected happened:


Another suicide attack – and it’s like I never had a secondary army =) And what was even scarier, that wasn’t the end of Marcus’ insane hoard of low-level units:


On the bright side, at least there weren’t more of them at Fengel, so my main army (more like the only army at this point) captured it. And then the outpost to the north of it. As it turned out, the hoard of Berserkers and Prowlers and Cheetahs wasn’t infinite after all and that stack on the last screenshot was basically all Marcus had left at that point. With 80 CP I was casting Banshees like crazy, so I could probably end the game right there and then by going straight for the throne, but I had miscalculated the day Marcus’ leader was supposed to return back from the void and thought I didn’t have time to attack it safely, so I decided to spend a little more time casting Banshees and joining forces with Reanimator and a very special reinforcement:


Marcus had a chance to run away with his leader, but that would have just dragged out the agony, so he stayed at his throne for the final battle:



That’s basically it. However, there’s a few things left to mention. First of all, whoever decided to give Necro the economical bonus linked to the CP upgrades did the class too much of a favor. Getting both more CP and more gold/mana/knowledge/production at the same time is just too convenient and too powerful. I’m really glad a discussion to move this bonus to some more appropriate place happening right now.

Second, I don’t like the result of preventing Whispers to appear in the skillbook until the day 3. That was a very hacky way to handle the problem: instead of getting a reasonably priced spell that you're gonna have to spend some time on to research and cast, we have a very cheap and very powerful spell that you either get early on, or you don’t, based just on a random roll. That’s hardly balanced. I believe that messing with arbitrary turn restrictions is a bad idea in general and a better solution would be to find an appropriate RP/CP/upkeep.

Third, as you might have noticed, there was no mentioning of the rapids this time. We played with the mod that disables them and it was awesome =) I’m not totally sure where exactly the RMG would have placed the rapids if they were enabled, but the lack of them both provided additional strategic opportunities and made the floating/flying scouts much more vulnerable to swimming units, which is definitely a good thing.

And finally, another thing you haven’t seen me mentioning is the underground. Admittedly, my scouting wasn’t as good as it should be, but it wasn't that bad, and yet I failed to find a single cave entrance on the map =) Some of them were most likely located on the corner islands, but nothing on the main continent, at least not in the parts of it that had any strategic importance. Playing the game effectively without UG turned out to be quite refreshing, with most of the annoying roaming indies being locked away and not interfering with the important stuff.

Good game Hellbrick, it was written in the stars for quite some time! Good luck in next turn.

Match has been reported, please confirm!

Match has been reported, please confirm!

That's it =)



Thanks for the game, Marcus! I'll write a proper report about it this weekend, but for now let's just say it was a fun one with some interesting and dramatic strategic moments.

Hehe, well, Im sad that all of the battles go the wrong way and I take most of the damage  My leader made a few bad decisions or the result could have been different. The game was decided when you attack with 4 stacks with life drain, now its just inflicting as much damage back as possible! I reckon 2 more turns then game over  I hope we play again in 2 rounds.

The game gets bloodier and bloodier every day %) This is pure madness.

That battle sure was scary =) A damn bloodbath and whatever-runs-through-undead's-veins-bath. I had no confidence whatsoever about the outcome, but I didn't have any choice: I had to attack right there and then. Well, I'm glad things turned out the way they did, we'll see where things go from here.

Good game Hellbrick, I believe this is the end. If I attack I win, now you attack and you win. Good game management to get the attack in, you can't have had much mp left, I thought I scouted well ahead and was safe from an attack. I also had a few beers last night when I took my turn so not sure I did the absolute best possible though

Hehe, I like Tigran Warlord, I picked a strong combo, but not the very very best (even though Tigran Warlord might beat a good theo or necro depending on the length of the game). I really gave you my strongest possible combo at this time. I looked at your previous match and thought you favoured a long game, a bit hesitant.

Does it mean I should be offended you picked a Warlord? =) Regarding the Necro, well, that's being ranked #8 for you: you're gonna scare people into putting the best foot forward once in a while. But look on the bright side: this is going to be a bit more challenging and interesting =)

I guess I should be honoured you use the "wild card" in our match with Necro!
I had a sneaky suspicion you would, and should have gone for Theocrat, argh for hindsight!

Pretty cool to be in the same "game time bracket" and get 3 turns in a day!

Please click here to read the rules.

In order to avoid advantaging one team or the other, for each match, the team who will host the match was randomly selected. The first team in the "turn order" above (who is also the team on top in the tree here must host the game.

Any of the players in the team can host. The host must play in #2 position in the turn order (please check rules for more details).
Tournament Game #19 Round 2 !

When players do not show up for their match, the Tournament Judges have the right to change the match!

Ok good to go. Good luck!

Ah, alright then =) I've joined the game while we're waiting for the confirmation so you could start it when we get one.

Hi Hellbrick, yes I also saw it, and I asked Hiliadan to be sure, and the message about 2nd slot is incorrect. That potential issue have been resolved. Its not a big deal to rehost though.

Your class and race have been received (altough hidden from me!).

We just wait for confirmation on my screenshots then we are good to go!

@marcuspers: aren't you supposed to take the 2nd slot? Hiliadan's post says "The host must play in #2 position in the turn order (please check rules for more details)". I can't find anything about this in the rules though, so I'm not sure if/why this is necessary =)

@Hiliadan: I sent you the class/race combo yesterday via PM, have you received it?

Game hosted, Match #19 Duel Tournament
PW: mvsh
Screenshots






Once Hiladan or Fist give go ahead we can start!

Sure, I will host the game with the mod, no problem.
Here is the mod I found: 
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=537938378

Let's have some fun, shall we?

But before we do that, there's something I'd like to discuss. According to the tournament rule #2, "Players can arrange whatever settings they choose". Would you like to play with the mod that replaces the rapids with normal rivers? I believe it makes the game more fair and less dependent on the map generator's mood, and, according to the poll results, there's more than 50% chance you're in the same camp as me, so I though I'd ask if we can deviate from default settings and use it.

Seems im the host again!

I will host the game tomorrow.

Best of luck and lets have a good game Hellbrick!