Game #979 Tournament game#21 | Round 3 : 2018 PBEM 2vs2 Tournament #21

The game was odd in the sense that really all “odds” were slightly against Thorgal and me, yet we still muddled through it. I (fortunately) restrained myself and didn’t clear 2 ancient ruins near my starting position because both had the monster hunter/bard defender set that tends to really screw me over. In the end it led to me loosing only a total of 3 units in clearing fights until turn 23 I believe (which, for me is really on the low end) and that enabled a rather strong push by me that ended the game, so I believe crucial for our victory was the careful patience I took approaching this game, even though "patient restraint" sounds weird considering I somewhat aggressively pounced on Gilafron on turn 23.
But now step by step...
Thorgal and me started in the bottom left, Thorgal under- and I above ground, our start wasn’t really good or fast as I was slow in clearing my surrounding and Thorgal made a miscalculation in a fight and lost his leader. This left us not only being slow, but also having rather shitty scouting as we were counting on cherubs to do that job… I did some scouting with summoned animals which always is a bit frustrating - also my animal rolls were: penguin, warg, tiger, spider, spider in that order before I switched to eldritch animals, obviously I would have hoped for an early snake.
But I could still found a city and vassalize another one in OK-ish time, and even though Thorgal and me both were constantly scraping the last remains of our Mana we somehow managed without having to wait much.
Rather late (due to bad scouting) we found that the map wasn’t really ideal for us either, the 2 closest connections through which we could have sent reinforcements towards each other were on the other side of the sea in the very very south and pretty much in the tropical wetlands in the middle of the map, so it'd be hard to support each other with units other than summons.


When we met our opponents we noticed that at the end of the swamp the blight begins and Gilafron had a city there, that was fortunately occupied by indies when my warg stumbled over it .
But still that meant that Thorgal would have to face the dwarven theocrat underground and I had to fight for the control of the Naga dwelling in the middle of the map against the wizard hunter/pest control squad Goblin Dreadnought in wetlands.


Because Druids have a rather strong early game (and I didn’t mess up) and Dreadnoughts generally are a bit slower I decided to try playing aggressive anyway, even though that meant slowly marching with my frostlings through the tropical wetlands. Especially because I figured that Gilafron will probably loose 1-2 turns to take back his city from the indies. I got a quest from the Nagas (reward was peace and a Naga guardian iirc) and indeed I was there first. To my great concern I saw though that the Nagas also had 2 ice giants running around their territory and it wasn’t Thorgals quest… so I made sure to kill them (which lost me a frostling raider). Next turn I managed to charm a vampire spider Queen and then I did my 2 biggest mistakes of the game. I split my army, my main stack, lead by my leader and a dreadnought hero, was going north towards Gilafron. While my Theocrat hero was going south to clear some sites. But actually I wasn’t quite strong enough for a serious push AND a good clearing sidestack so for the rest of the game the theocrat side stack was just walking around nowhere waiting for a time I could safely reinforce it, but that time never came, the stack took 1 tower and that is absolutely all it did for the last 5 turns or so…
The other mistake was that I completely forgot to even try charming another spider queen when I had the chance clearing a spawner (spider queen and 5 spider-babies).
In the end fortunately it didn’t matter, my two hunters came just in time to shoot down Gilafrons spy drones, I reached a watchtower just in time to see Gilafron approaching with what seemed to be his main army (leader + both heroes). I burned down the watchtower hoping he wouldn’t spot me too early and positioned myself close to an Inn to reinforce next turn. My hope was that either he doesn’t spot me in time and moves close to me, or that he sees me but thinks his army is stronger and doesn’t consider the Inn. I actually don’t know who would have won the fight without the Inn, he had 3 heroes (lvl 6,5,4 I believe) and 8 other, rather weak units with the strongest units being a warg rider and a goblin doctor. I had two T3 spiders, a polar bear and a Naga guardian, my two heroes (lvl 7 and 5) two snowscrapers and a baby spider at that point. But obviously he did extra damage against summoned animals.
So I begged Thorgal for some gold and here it must be mentioned that Thorgal after his very delayed start due to loosing a good chunk of his army and the leader in one of the early turns, was bouncing back in force, he had 3 cities and was already sending out another settler and during the last few turns he was clearing mines, flowrock quarries and magma forges like crazy loosing only 1 unit I believe, so he was on his way to become an economic powerhouse and could send 500(!) gold my way. In the end I needed only 250 (+my own) and when I spotted that Gilafron indeed was close enough for me to attack I cleared the Inn and bought everything in it - a knight, a tigran blade thrower and two orc spearmen.
I won and most imporantly I still had 7 units standing after the fight (including both heroes)


I was two turns away from Gilafrons closes city (the one occupied by indies at one point) I believe there was not much in Gilafrons realm to defend against the remainder of my army, especially because I would of course keep summoning eldritch animals to reinforce. So Gilafron and Olop surrendered.
We didn’t see much of Olop, except that he had vassalized a fairy dwelling in mid underground given that he started UG that seems rather normal I believe (I guess our opponents didn’t see much of Thorgal either) and I am fairly certain that Gilafron had some very inconvenient trouble with indies taking his city which probably slowed him down and gave me the opportunity to make the naga quest uncontested and already be at the northern edge of the wetlands when he arrived.
Obviously a game like this isn’t the most exciting of all: Start, a few scouting fights, one big fight → over - No comparison to our first encounter in this tournament. But still thanks for the match once again Gilafron and Olop it is always a pleasure to play with you and I hope you enjoyed the match too even though it certainly ended somewhat bad for you again. I’d love to hear what the game looked like from your perspective, as obviously we didn’t have much scouting going on and the game was over before we really knew how good/bad it really looked for you.
Point wise at least Olop looks really strong.

Somewhat odd game that was over in turn 25 because Olop and Gilafron surrendered after a big clash between Gilafron and me somewhat in the middle of the map that killed all his heroes, while I survived with a stack of 7 units that probably(?) had no resistance anymore between them and Gilafrons cities.
I'll write a report soon
Again thanks for the game! Even though this one wasn't quite as tense as our first clash in the tournament.

Match has been reported, please confirm!

Read and understood

Yes, via the menu, basically it's Save & Quit.

Hi I am the last player.
However we managed to play quickly the last couple of days (thanks @all!), had a rather big fight and Olop has surrendered.
We might yet finish the game in time. But if not I'll do as you described I have no idea where the button is to quit the game after I surrender though (is it just quitting via the menu?).

Hi! Round 3 ends in a bit less than 3 days (see the time count here: https://www.the-battlefield.c... ) but you get +7 additional days, as announed in the Player Pool: https://www.the-battlefield.c...
Yet, it seems unlikely that your match will be won before the deadline. It might therefore be decided by score. The procedure is as follow:

1/ the current strategic turn is played until the last player in the turn order
2/ that player plays his turn, saves & quits, copy the save game to a backup folder
3/ that player re-enters the game and surrenders, then takes screenshots of all the scores. He does NOT end the turn. Instead he quits the game without ending the turn.
4/ he sends the screenshots to judges (Marcus, Jonny and me)
5/ judges check the scores and take a decision

Could you please confirm who is the last player in the turn order? Can this player please confirm he read this message and understood?

Unfortunately, I will not be able to play from Wednesday to Sunday next week.
Sorry for that :'(

My apologies.  I'm just not in AoW3 near as much any more, so I forget to check. I'll play the round this evening.  Going forward, I'll keep a better eye on those turns.

Hei Gilafron, I think we are waiting 2+ days for you again . I still remember that you were ok with a rematch 3 weeks after the tournament started when my former teammate didn't want to play anymore, so I'd feel really bad to turn on the turn timer and let you skip turns, but please write if you don't have time so we at least know whats up.

I was able to get to it today and play my turn.

Apologies, I won't be able to try the new instructions until Tuesday.

Please check my messages on Steam. It’s not the right way to use the .taf file.

Hi,

Did you run the game in debug mode at all times during your tries?
If so, try turn it off, or vice versa turn it on if it was off.

/Marcus

I've tried to run with that download and am still getting the same error.  I did the following steps:

1.  Removed the .taf file from BALANCE_MOD_FROM_VASYAN666 - PBEM [76561198009345019].
2.  Downloaded UGC_BALANCE_MOD_FROM_VASYAN666 - PBEM [76561198009345019].
3.  Place that .taf file in directory BALANCE_MOD_FROM_VASYAN666 - PBEM [76561198009345019]
4.  Started game, got the same error (trying to start with newer version).

I changed the name of the file to remove the preceding UGC_.  It didn't work.

I changed the name of the file to remove  the trailing  [76561198009345019]  It didn't work.

What should I do at this point?  Unfortunately, I won't get back to this game until Sunday at the soonest.  Perhaps set a timer and skip my turn just to get the game going?

Hi! It's another issue here, because the mod was updated after the crash of Gilafron.
Please use the version from 20190302 v1.27 here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qv...

I also get it often (especially in another game), just check that you have only the right mods activated and then play it nonetheless is what I would say.

I get this all the time.  I think it means the player in front of you played in debug mode.  But double checking with the judges is good.

Sorry, forgot about this game. However, I'm getting an error with the mod. It says I have a newer version of the PBEM mod. I've sent an email to the judges.

Hei Gilafron you can continue the game, why aren't you? is there anything, i as host, have to do?

Hi guys,

@Gilafron recieve a warning with proof based on the information provided.

When you play the turn again, please take a screenshot of the result in that fight.
Also enable "windowed mode" (so that time and date can be seen) as well as debug mode for the turn.
This is in case the game crashes again, we will have a log and can investigate further.

Separate instruction are sent via PM to Gilafron.

You can continue the game.

/Marcus

Hi! Sorry we missed this one yesterday. We asked a few more details to Gilafron and are discussing it among judges.
@Fluksen & Thorgal: please let us know by PM if there is anything worth mentioning about the current situation in the game (e.g. armies close to each other or just met, etc.).

Damn
I think the course of action now is to send a message to the judges with all the "proof" you have that this crash was an accident - e.g. video, screenshot(s) and logfile (If you ran the game in debug mode). If the screenshot is the only proof you have I guess you'll probably get a warning and will be asked to at least play in debug mode from now on.
But in any case we'll have to wait for the judges response before continuing the match. Judges are Hiliadan and marcuspers. So just send them a message

Personally I believe you that this crash is not due to someone cheating and wouldn't mind to just keep playing! But since it is a tournament we better stick to the rules and hope the judges don't need too long with their decision.

Game crashed during fight.  Not sure what I am supposed to do.  Screenshot attached.

Not moving too fast unfortunately, but we are steadily going forward
I'm the last player and just played turn 17, so we should now be in turn 18.
Hope turn times will speed up a bit during the last weeks.

Hi! About 29 days left. What turn did you reach?

On holiday, won't play until monday

I just played turn 8. So the game is proceeding not too quickly but at a somewhat steady pace.
And I'm afraid I might be the cause of a bit of delay within the next 2 weeks. I'm moving and I'll go fly to a funeral for a few days, both occasion may lead to me being a bit late on my turns.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hi! What turn did you reach so far?

Gilafron was replaced with Fluksen !

Fluksen was replaced with Gilafron !

Ok sorry - and just for the record the game has now officially begun

Settings look good, you're good to go.
Good luck & have fun!

(and please do not update to ongoing BEFORE it started, as it was done )

Hei I opened the match, below the settings, please check them, last match I accidentally too the wrong mapsize...
Game name is: PBEM2v2 tournament game#21
Password is: #21










So here is your chance for revenge!
Looking forward to the match

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.
Tournament Game #21 Round !

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

Hei I tried opening it, but currently I can't even play AoW. It always crashes on start trying to fetch some new documents. I believe that problem was fixed for steam users so i hope it won't take much longer for GoG user like me.
Sorry for the inconvenience

Hi! We have both class/race, waiting for Fluksen & Thorgal to host the game and post the settings.

Hi! Round 3 started! We need the class/race of both teams. Deaf Ogres NWO is hosting.