Game #592 | Skuns vs Jean

woooow - grats for the nice game you two had (;

so glad to see that others (well.. the number two ranked player actually) make the same lame mistakes i do -

messing up a good fight in the early game is something that i would love to have a workaround for - like we all have a load we can ask for in the 1st 5 turns maybe?

about the economics part of the game - i prefer to go 1 builder and that's it. then again i'm not the best example on how to play the game (:

Love the report - as always, the best reports on the-battlefield

I do not think what you say is correct about the strength of Defenders Skuns, I'll make some tests to see.

As for Quests, yes, it's probable that City or Metropolis give more Difficult quests, but it's not very common to have such size for independent cities.

Maybe that, what I was writing below, are known and obvious things.  Then I'm sorry for this  (that you had to read many words )

@Hiliadan 
I think you are wrong about difficulty that it affects only the AI. It also affects on the strength of the sites defenders especially sites starting from very strong treasure sites as Flowrock Quarry etc. E.g. with the King difficulty I saw in one session at Dungeon: 1xT4 (Manticore Rider), 1-3xT3 and others are T2 units. With the Emperor difficulty I saw in another session at Dungeon: 2xT4 (3xT4 in Lost City) and others are some T3/T2 units (once I could see that others were only T3 units). A fortiori it affects on the strength of the treasure defenders on the map: with the King D. - 5 units with only 1xT3, with the Emperor D. - 6 units with 2xT3. Roaming units with the King D. consist from 3-4 (rarely 5) units T1/T2 with 1xT2 only, with the Emperor D. - from 4-5 units T1/T2 with at least 2xT2, and sometimes there may be T3 animal.
As for, does the session difficulty affect on the quest difficulty - I thought it does, but maybe I'm wrong. I did not see it that often in my sessions with different difficulties because I'm playing not so many sessions for the last period of time. 
You wrote: "For instance, it's very very rare (or even never happen) to get Difficult Quests." For the dwellings maybe it is so. But as for the vassal and vassalizing cities I don't think so.  In my opinion (on my observations) the appearance frequency and difficulty of quests depend on a size of the vassal city. If it's size are the Village or the Town then you won't get Difficult Quest hardly ever. But if it's size is already the City then there is a big chance to get D.Q. with T3 reward.

Confirmed by Jean_de_Metz

The difficulty (Emperor, Knight, etc.) affects only the AI players, not the independents or other things in the game, so Quests are not affected by that.

I do think there are some weird stuffs with Quests, I'll try to investigate that in the future, maybe we could bring some fixes in the balance mod.
For instance, it's very very rare (or even never happen) to get Difficult Quests.

Here is the screenshot of the score: Jean lost   

I agree with Hiliadan in almost all   T1+T2 (I mean summoning units) for Sorcerer are enough to start growth from zero. But Jean made so many efforts to reach T3  I'm not going to argue with anyone which way (to solve problem) was the best.   And in my opinion T2 is better than T3 for Sorc. 
I think 2-3 apprentices was enough to start the way. Then I would summon few T2 and went to clear sites.   I agree that in such risky way you should have good scouting to avoid big armies of your opponent   But there is no nothing impossible   I don't know when you got floating ability. But invisibility + floating more than enough and very good to try to do something bad for your opponent   like the killing my stack (3 units) by 2 almost full stacks of Jean   
Hiliadan wrote: "In that specific game, you could not because you lost most of your army." Right after his loss - yes, he couldn't. But I think he had enough time to become stronger. Maybe not so stronger to win but still enough to good resist  
Hiliadan wrote else: "I'm pretty sure Skuns would have been in worse economic shape if he had had 29% less income from clearing. " Maybe you are right  And definitely I couldn't pay 600 gold to vassalize Dragon dwelling. This dwelling is very strange settlement. When I met it dragons declared war on me   But some turns later they offered me a peace without any conditions or quests    At the end they offered me to complete the quest with 2 wyverns as a reward. But the difficulty of this quest was, for some reason, very high  and I had to kill full stack with 2xT4 (!!) undead which one of them was Reaper!?  It's madness because the difficulty of this session was King, not Emperor 

I'm not very experienced with Sorcerer so I'm not sure about research but I believe you do not need to invest that much into research building to get Phantasm Warriors and they are sufficient to go clear most sites. Wisps and Phantasm Warriors should be enough to clear your way from your throne to the enemy's throne, and collect extra units on your way, at Farms, Spring of Life, Dungeon, etc. By the time you arrive and with the clearing of sites giving RP, you should be able to cast Node Serpents.
Unlike Warlord or Dreadnought, you do not need to build your units and wait for them as a Sorcerer. Like AD, you can just build (summon) your army as you go.

In that specific game, you could not because you lost most of your army. But that does not mean that in general, it's not possible to counter an army similar to Skuns. I'm sure you could have if you had not done the Catalyst.

Then on the strength of clearing + mind control vs production, obviously the first one is stronger and especially in Tournament size map. That's why we are trying to change the risk/reward ratio for sites. And that's why I recently came to the conclusion we should remove the +40% reward for sites (that comes with Strong Defenders).
I'm pretty sure Skuns would have been in worse economic shape if he had had 29% less income from clearing.

Answering you question, Skuns:
You got it wrong: I didn't lose my leader and never went to the void, I lost everything except leader and second hero. So, when you're on turn 10 with all the troops lost and neutrals on the borders of your domain, it's pretty difficult to go your opponent, don't you think so? 
Besides, the snowball strategy is much easier to play than actually perfect empire building. You produced 2 bards and came to me with a very good snowball. While snowballing you got more and more units => easier to clean different sites and get additional gold/mana/knowledge. So you get your army on the route to me. Now compare this to my task:
No army at turn 10. No really good income and knowledge. So I needed to build and summon every single unit in the army (already costs much more than getting it for free with charm). While producing them you lose your income more and more so you have to stabilize with outposts where you need to build laboratories/observatories to get more knowleldge and reach the summon of the highest tier (and this also costs gold). Then you need to get these newly produced units to the army and take some objects near domain (to get resources, to level up heroes and units to floating and invisibility). That's what I was doing pretty successfully but didn't have enough time to counter the snowball due to the failure at the catalyst. 
That's the answer to your question why I didn't come to your domain  Just try to imagine how much turns you would have spent if you had actually built in the cities or summoned your every single charmed unit.

That's why I'm thinking that a perfect snowball wins against a perfect empire building. Like in the tournament game between Hellbrick and Gab: by the time Hellbrick researched bard (or, let's imagine, any other tier-2 unit like phantasm/reanimator/musketeer) and started to build it Gabriel had already come to his domain with several elite tier 3 units (not produced in towns but converted/bought in a tavern).

2Hiliadan:
This is really a topic do discuss, by the way! You wrote:

And another way to counter it is to be in his base yourself and take his cities. So then you would have swapped your lands and would have to try again to catch each other. 

I actually agree with this but we have a certain problem here:
The player who uses a snowball strategy can leave his domain at the very beginning of the game, head to his opponent and, in 10 turns or more, come with a decent army. Because he gets his units on the way.
The player who, for example, builds his units can't do this cause he has to lead every single produced unit from the throne, for example. Through the whole map. He will inevitably be later than his opponent. With summoned units you have to build a certain ground=economy to success. At least knowledge buildings to research the summon and shrines to get mana. 
Then, Hiliadan, when you play on empire building you have to produce more towns than a snowball guy. Cause, for example, it's much better to produce tier-2 in 2 towns, not in one (at least faster). So it's very comfortable for a snowballer. Skuns sais with all these charmed units he still had positive income and could even build units! With just a throne and several vassals. That's why trading domains can be not profitable at all.

I think I have to lose several more duels to get the understanding of the timing in such fast games  I'm really good at late game in big epic matches but when it comes to such duels...
That's why any comment is welcomed here, even from the guys who didn't participate in this match.

@Hiliadan  Yeah, Darkrider gets his snowballs straight from the air   And when Jean said me that he sent stacks to my borders I was frightened that we switched our domains and have to start again. So for this case at about turn 15-th I've started continuously to build T1 units with Life Steal  to be prepared to his run. 

So I went across the map at UG accumulating forces during this travel. This way was a long journey with big and good surprises (as e.g. all 3 charmed T3 orcs in my domain  or charm of Orc Priest with 28% of succefulness of Charm  or T3 dwarf as a reward from the small city which wanted to be vassalized :blush and some small mistakes  (as the loss of Mammoth Rider).
My starting position (my throne) was not so defensive as I wanted. And my second (vassal) city was not so big as it could be (it gave quests for only T2 rewards).    Also all treasure sites were so far from my throne and I hadn't any possibilities to clean them without slowing down my empire's growth. 
Before Jean's defeat he asked me how many bards I had in my army on my way. And I had to lie him that it was only my leader and 1 bard which he could see himself.  Sorry for this, Jean,  because I had to do it as our duel was not finished at that moment.   Actually I had 2 bards instead 1 and I sent my second bard with my second big Druid hero when I splitted my stacks on the Jean's domain borders.  But my lie was little because in every fight Charm ability worked well on average 2 times out of 3. And Luck was on my side because on this map I found enough sites with animals there. It happens not so frequently on simple small map so Druid usually is useless as Charm hero. 
I scouted almost all of the map by few crows except the center of the surface. And I was surprised not only when I firstly came up to Jean's domain that he missed many free treasures.   At the end I've found 2 additional free treasures on the map.  :ninja:  A little but nice.  
My main army was growing and growing.   So, to earn additional resources, I organized second stack (with Theo hero  and 1 bard) to clean sites on the surface in my domain. This stack was growing slower than the main army but at the end there were 3xT3 units from all of 9 units in it.    
Despite my huge army and producing units every turn in my throne city I had positive gold income almost every turn.    Not the least role in this played casting Iron Grip spells))  

P.S. Jean asked me to agree on draw in this session TWICE.    The first time was after his leader loss. And I refused his proposal because his position was not good at that moment.   He threatened me to grow up and beat me    But I wasn't afraid and continued the session   The second draw proposal was shortly before his defeat. He said that he walked up to my borders with the cool stack (where, according to him, was few Eldritch Horrors).    I can't say that it was unreal (to get T4 so early) to be true. But, as I said earlier, I could see almost all the map and there wasn't any cleaned sites which could show his run.  So I was confused from his words,  but refused his proposal again.   It was a bit risky because my stacks, which defend my throne (6xT1 pikemen with Life Steal + 1 Tigran Mystic + 1 Succubus with Life Steal), would lose in a very bad fight. But I've already finished researching Shadow Stalker's tech so I wanted start to build them when Jean surrendered.

P.P.S. One thing I don't understand - if my travel to Jean's domain was very long (10 turns or more) then why he stayed at his domain instead to fly to mine and try to crush my economy?  Especially considering invisibility of his main stack  

P.P.P.S. I agree with Hiliadan - Catalysts are very dangerous. Earlier, in previous sessions, I tried to clean few Catalysts. As the result of this tryouts - once I killed my leader and a half of the stack, another times I won, but lost very good units (even T3). So I attack this type of treasures very rarely and at least by 2 full stacks with many shooters which bring non-physical damages (T2/T3 units).   And Jean was very lucky to get Black Sun cosmic event which ending current research.  Many sessions ago I cleaned one Catalyst hoping to receive exactly Black Sun. But it got to me another cosmic event  - powerful too, but useless in that session with that class  It is another reason why I usually don't touch Catalysts.  Though 2-nd place in top of the ranking is the reason for anyone to consider himself an AoW3 god  

It looks like you haven't played DarkRider or gab yet. The units of Skuns were numerous but I would not call that perfect snowball.
And another way to counter it is to be in his base yourself and take his cities. So then you would have swapped your lands and would have to try again to catch each other.

Yeah, I was constantly telling Skuns that I had built stacks of support and was waiting for him. To scare him and probably win some more time before he comes with a super strong army.
A bit unfortunate that some perfect snowballs are too difficult to counter even with mass production of units. Let's say, starting from turn 10 I was producing apprentices every 2 turns and casting phantasm/serpents. But even this wasn't enough. So to counter these snowballs you need to make no mistakes at all and sometimes probably snowball yourself (or at least get additional troops from taverns, quests, idk)

Great game.  Especially considering our communication with Jean about session situation  - some kind of diplomatic and fraud war (by another words - Who will deceive whom more ) 
Such duels presume that both of the opponents don't communicate between each other and don't discuss game situation to prevent a disclosure of their secrets ahead of time. But Jean was forced to make a trick from his mistake and his bad situation after that. So he told me about his leader's loss and pushed me to go to kill him  But I think now that it was a trick to lure me into a trap while I was not so strong   I answered him that I was on my way to his borders and he thought that I was closed to him.  But all of it wasn't true.   At first, I didn't know where is his throne city. So I couldn't go straight to it.  Secondly, I had only one stack T1/T2 units at that moment. My full second stack with 2 bards just started its run for cleaning 2 Flowrock Quarries with in summary 3xT3 orcs. And thirdly, I was too far from his borders at all  (in upper left corner from Dragon dwelling at UG). But I had to say him that I will come soon to scare him and force him to defend his borders  

Ahah! My videos are better than drugs it seems, you can fly for free!

Yeah, Catalysts are VERY dangerous, you'll see I repeat that in my latest Duel Tournament videos (around turn 30+) so you should definitely never attack one early game, even with a crazy Necro army. Because the elementals phase, then stun and freeze you.

And indeed, on our duel settings, there is not much point in building an empire. I'm not sure NOT settling your 1st city is a good idea, because the 1st settler is cheap and you always have a good site to settle nearby. But for the 2nd, it's probably true. It depends on the skills of the 2 players and the class/race though. If the game is balanced and won't be decided in 1 big battle, then it may go beyond turn 30 and a 2nd settler might be worth it.
The issue with players like gab is that they just snowball, reach you and kill you. So they don't need an economy. That's why we need to identify what allow this and fix this. One thing is high level sites. Another is the +40% bonus to sites' rewards with Strong Defenders.

Well, this definitely was one of my worst games  
We didn't have any decisive battles at all and I conceaded on turn 31. Let me tell you what happened. 
I guess, 4 things are to blame for this result:

1. Hiliadan XD
2. I
3. Incredibly unfortunate autobattles with Skuns' scouts.
4. Awesome snowball perfomance by Skuns



No, no, don't take me wrong: Hiliadan is a very cool guy (who has a pet dragonfly). He has nothing to do with this loss. But his videos have. Let me joke a bit here
You know, when you watch a video where Hiliadan or Marcus take a mythical site before turn 10 with almost a starting army...you feel like..."damn, this is really cool. I think I could do it myself". Especially when you're rank 2 (have got some doubts recently). You probably wouldn't risk taking these objects at all if you didn't watch these training videos. But having carefully examined them you really feel like this:


I felt all this when I saw a magic catalyst near my domain. You know, which can bring a cosmic event and give you some CP. That one. I have to add that at that particular moment I had a sort of brain damage: some idiotic thoughts came into my mind like "why not take this catalyst and get Planetary Alignment just after I research phantasm warrior? Could boost me a lot, better than get this event at random time when you have 1-2 turns left to research a spell". 
An obvious question comes to everyone's mind at this moment: "But how can you guarantee that you will get exactly Planetary Alignment here?". A good question. It didn't come into my mind XD

A very important observation:


In fact, the plan was good. As I was playing sorcerer, I could use Arcane Binding spell to gain control of a node serpent till the end of the battle. The defense, by the way, was: several tier-3 elementals (air and frost), a node serpent and smth else.
I wanted to use my fast draconian raptor to split the defense. Draconian Crushers would stay in defense and block the mighty elementals!

Well, as it always happens in such cases, everything went wrong. I messed everything. I lost all 3 starting draconian crushers, my draconian raptor, 3 wisps, hatchlings and was left with 2 badly injured heroes. But took the catalyst lol.

Match has been reported, please confirm!

Match has been reported, please confirm!

Hi. You've asked me to create Duel game   So I did it today, I couldn't do it yesterday from my guests :whiteman 
Session name is "Skuns vs Jean". Password is 604
Here are the screenshots of the settings (as into tourney rules): Screen1, Screen2, Screen3, Screen4, Screen5

Jean_de_Metz joined !!