Summer Update - 033

[teratorn]

About dance fighting... We knew most units in RCC couldn't dance fight, but we also knew uncroaked lead by Wanda could do it. Does that extend to uncrypted units? Could Wanda stack even more bonuses on top of these guys?

[raphfrk]

A side note: The shief warlord of Unaroyal is a wimp. He only gives a general bonus of +1 to his side, assuming the minimum attack is +1.

Another possibility is that they haven't formally appointed another one.

[yay]

i don't think dance fighting is about the type of units, but having someone to lead them in it. for instance, the archons helping ansom dance fight, which was previously impossible for the RCC. and with the four archons giving air support, another dance fight could be possible. but overkill

[BarGamer]

but overkill

There is no "overkill." There is only, "open fire" and "time to reload." XD

[Welf von Ehrwald]

A side note: The shief warlord of Unaroyal is a wimp. He only gives a general bonus of +1 to his side, assuming the minimum attack is +1.

Another possibility is that they haven't formally appointed another one.

Possible, but unlikely. The position of the chief warlord is to important to leave it empty. Jetstone appointed a new one the same day. i don't think Unaroyal sent all of his warlords into the battle. The should at least withhold the second or third strongest warlord to command the troops in case of an attack from an enemy. And there should be some warlords left to rule cities. Even if they lost their heir and ordered a new one who shall become chief warlord sooner or later, they would appoint meanwhile another warlord as gap filler.

[TheWombat]

This post makes me think of decrypted less like Zombies and more like Borg. They retain their memories/experience and can use them to exploit the side they used to work for. Way to go Parson, introduce the Borg on Erf, what next Tribbles?

[Cmdr I. Heartly Noah]

Still, I can't help wondering if there was some special reason why Ansom called Wanda "Chief Croakamancer" instead of just Croakamancer. Hmm...

Actually, he called her the "Chief Croakmancer." I noticed when I wiki'd it and it came up red.

[Cmdr I. Heartly Noah]

The column was three hexes long. No unit within it had less than eighteen move. No unit within it had lower than six base attack. This was a strike force. It was several strike forces.

His leadership would add three attack to all units on his side, five to those in his hex, and ten to those in his own stack. His mistress would add one to all Decrypted troops on her side, four to those in her hex, and eight to those in her stack.

I'm wondering if by "all units on his side" Ansom meant within the column, or literally all units on his side, including the ones that are nowhere near his present location. The former seems more likely to me for some reason.

agreed. I don't think either Ansom or Wanda's bonuses apply to the troops inside GK. (though if they were right outside the city, then probably. I imagine it applies to all the units on their side that are in the same battlespace

A side note: The chief warlord of Unaroyal is a wimp. He only gives a general bonus of +1 to his side, assuming the minimum attack is
+1.

mmm - you're assuming the current Chief Warlord of Unaroyal is at Warchalking, which I find hard to believe, considering that he/she would have either been at GK or back home, and not sitting with a tiny garrison of a far-flung level 2 city, or you're comparing his smallest bonus of 1 to Ansom's of 3.

What you're probably looking at is one or maybe two low-level warlords giving a +1 leadership bonus.

Assuming the Chief Warlord gives a global bonus to all his troops everywhere, the new Unaroyal Chief Warlord could be level 5 and still only give a +1 bonus to the troops at Warchalking. (Though if he could do that and they had a lvl 1 warlord there, they could stack the entire garrison and have a minimum attack of 3, rather than averaging 2-3 - though, then again, Ansom might have been estimating their base attacks, not after leadership bonuses).

But yeah, CW bonuses seem to break down at full/half/third (rounding down), so a lvl 5 CW gives 5/2/1, a 6 would be 6/3/2, an 8 is 8/4/2, and a 10 is 10/5/3

Also, considering that Ansom is the best we've seen, and is only approached by Jillian (9) and Caesar (8/9ish), I'm not sure it's fair to call the (likely replacement) warlord of Unaroyal a "wimp" for being a 5, even if you're right about that. (Webinar was a 5, and he was no great shakes I guess, but "wimp?")

[quindraco]

This update clarifies a lot about bonuses stacking with each other, but makes me wonder about multiplicative abilities. It's at least been implied already that Erfworld contains ways to multiply your bonuses, rather than just add them together. I would love to see some of them in action.

It would explain a lot, for example, if Dance Fighting included a multiplicative bonus of, say, 1.5 - giving her thriller zombies over 12 attack.

[DevilDan]

I think people are getting a bit confused here. When Parson criticized Ansom's "additive" thinking, he was criticizing his absolutist approach to overwhelming an opponent by greater force of numbers. When Parson refers to force multipliers, he is talking about "leadership, terrain, artifacts, specials, spell buffs, dance fighting." The advantages apply to multiple units. Everyone who plays RTS games has seen this: units with a particular damage bonus or with a special defensive bonus will take down a numerically superior force. Calculating the bonuses isn't necessarily about multiplication, as is shown in Ansom's summary of the bonuses.

[gameboy1234]

I think people are getting a bit confused here. When Parson criticized Ansom's "additive" thinking, he was criticizing his absolutist approach to overwhelming an opponent by greater force of numbers.

I think all warlords and overlords in Erfworld understand additive bonuses and are good about stacking them up. The problem is once they've stacked up those bonuses they just tend to push their stacks straight into battle and hope for the best. Kind of like how Stanley just tried to push straight through the pass on his way to Faq.

When Parson refers to force multipliers, he is talking about "leadership, terrain, artifacts, specials, spell buffs, dance fighting." The advantages apply to multiple units.

I think they're force multipliers because they make your forces fight as if you had a much bigger, or better, army. Like the movie about the 300 Spartans. The Spartans were good fighters, but the force multiplier was the narrow terrain they occupied, which enabled them to fight only part of the enemy at a time. That was the force multiplier in that situation. The terrain didn't give the Spartans a bonus, it prevented them from being flanked or the enemy from bringing his full forces to bear.

Force multipliers are complex things, and I don't pretend to understand them well, but just getting a bigger +1 than the other guy is not how I understand them.

[cloudbreaker]

Still, I can't help wondering if there was some special reason why Ansom called Wanda "Chief Croakamancer" instead of just Croakamancer. Hmm...

Actually, he called her the "Chief Croakmancer." I noticed when I wiki'd it and it came up red.

Ah, nice catch, but I think it's a typo. I checked the spelling in the comic archives and it was spelled Croakamancer. But on the plus side, when I was searching the comic for the spelling of Croakamancer, I rediscovered that Wanda was described as Stanley's Chief Croakamancer on page two. So it definitely isn't a new title.

[shadowdemon_lord]

I'm fairly sure the part about force multipliers was pointed out when Ansom was swarming Wandas uncroaked dancers with hordes of unlead troops. They were getting owned because of the huge bonuses on those zombies (dance fighting, Wanda's huge bonus with uncroaked, Parsons hex bonus), vs just Ansoms hex bonus. I think Wanda gets the title of chief Crockamancer because attuned to the pliers she now functions as a chief warlord for decrypted units. Her bonuses are nearly as large as Ansoms, which means she alone is probably a more powerful chief warlord then a lot of factions have (and the breakdown of her bonuses seems to work the same as chief warlords, with a bit weaker side wide bonus then the math would indicate). Also this would seem to mean that the "side wide bonuses" seem to apply to all units in the battle group, as Stanley's side wide bonus as overlord don't seem to be factored into this fight.

As an unrelated note, I'm beginning to see Stanleys decision to promote Ansom to chief warlord as intelligent. No he's not the smartest general Stanley has (clearly that honor belongs to Parson, no matter how you slice it), but he is statistically the most powerful, and Parson aside he is one of the best warlords Erfworld has to offer that we've seen so far. Also the idea of putting Parson on the front lines seems, well wrong. Sure, as a unit his combat stats are good, but without that sword he isn't ruthless, he now has compassion for others. He's also fat, not fit for long marches, and likely doesn't have that great move. Parson is a brilliant armchair general and will continue to be I think, but there is no better candidate for putting in the field then Ansom, and the way the mechanics of Erfworld break down you want the guy in the field to be the chief warlord.

[Goshen]

I liked the art. Wanda looks great, as always, in an art-deco way. The creepyness in Ansom is shows through nicely.

[Wender]

How is it impossible? I can easily see a Decrypted heavy/Knight having a base attack of 12. It's exactly the kind of unit I'd see Ansom bringing to The Battle For Gobwin Knob and everything in between, and we currently see him using it to conquer other cities. Add Ansom's and Wanda's, and you've got a unit with a TOTAL ATTACK of 30. It's simple addition, like Ansom's been playing all along.

This, and the nonstop triumphalism in Ansom's POV, give me the feeling that we're watching the Titanic (pun intended) slice through the North Atlantic at full steam.

Of all the formidable units in GK, the only tactician on Parson's level is Parson. Without Vinny he's be back to thinking along straight, well-worn lines. Warchalking itself might not prove to be a problem for them, but any of their cannier and more cautious opponents (now including both Charlie and Vinny--and I suspect that Jillian will prove challenging now that she's not running away from herself anymore) should be able to blindside them, to devastating effect.

If GK's enemies had any wit they'd set towns like Warchalking up as laboratories to test GK's strength and tactics and have scouts report back in detail. Some of them do have wit, even to spare.

[MarbitChow]

I think there might be some confusion on "additive" vs. "multiplicative".
The impression I got from the comics meant that adding bonuses was the multiplicative power.

Let's say we have two sides. One side's units (The Ogres) have an attack of 6, the other side (The Creampuffs) has an attack of 2.

If it took 3 Creampuffs to take down 1 Ogre, then units would be additive: 2 + 2 + 2 = 6

But what if each +1 made the unit twice as good as it was before? This would be one possible way that bonuses could be multiplicative.

In that case, a "3" Ogre would be worth 2 Creampuffs, a "4" Ogre would be worth 4, an "5" Ogre would be worth 8, and a "6" Ogre would be worth 16 Creampuffs!

Now granted, the examples here don't take into account stacking, leadership bonuses, etc. but this is my impression of how stacking bonuses might work.

[Glenn]

The fact that Warchalking's garrison is from Uniroyal is significant because Uniroyal has unusually close ties with Transyvito. Remember, they were the first side to contact Bunny after the Volcano destroyed their troops. I'm pretty sure that the garrison will be very decisively crushed, and that the information will reach Jillian and Don King very rapidly. The sheer speed with which Warchalking falls will let them know they are in even more danger from Gobwin Knob than they'd previously realized.

[Spot]

This post makes me think of decrypted less like Zombies and more like Borg. They retain their memories/experience and can use them to exploit the side they used to work for. Way to go Parson, introduce the Borg on Erf, what next Tribbles?

The Borg, by the way, weren't an idea that was original to Star Trek. They rather obviously copied the idea from a novel called "Vacuum Flowers"... and it was a poor copy.

In "Vacuum Flowers", the concept was much more chilling. For one, it wasn't a "collective". It was a single entity. One being, with several billion 'cells' that just happened to take the form of human bodies. It's name was 'Earth'.

As to how I know it was a copy... read the book, and then watch each of the STNG episodes featuring the Borg... and you'll see a one-to-one correlation between themes in various chapters of the book, and the poorly-done dumbed-down versions in the STNG series.

And... heck... while we're at it, even "Vacuum Flowers" can't claim to have originated the basic concept, as "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" from the 1950s covers enough of the basic concept to overlap a bit.

Or "Hellstrom's Hive" by Frank Herbert.

Or even "The Thing" (movie) based on "Who Goes There?" (short story).

[Spot]

If GK's enemies had any wit they'd set towns like Warchalking up as laboratories to test GK's strength and tactics and have scouts report back in detail. Some of them do have wit, even to spare.

From what I can see, at this point, GK doesn't have any enemies. Only victims-to-be.

It took a coalition of many many kingdoms to face down Stanley before... and Stanley is much more powerful now, and the coalition no longer exists.

It seems to me that the victims-to-be can be as "witty" as they like, but it won't help them until they reorganize.

[Lord Kasavin]

I'm going to take a stab at bonuses. OK, every unit has a "base attack." What that means, I don't know as the only stats every unit has is move, hits, combat, defense, and "special" (see comic 40a). Assuming hits is HP in function, I'd say combat might be synonymous with base attack. Anyway, there are a ton of ways to provide bonuses to this base attack.

For example, the "stack bonus," which is "a... bonus that maxes at 8, so you see a lot of 8-man stacks." So, a stack is a grouping of units, and I'm 90% sure there can be multiple stacks per hex. What I'm not sure is WHAT the stack bonus is numerically. Is it +1 for each unit in the stack up to 8? Or is it a flat +x for the first 8 units in the stack? Regardless, we can assume all units with Ansom are in a stack of 8 and get the full stack bonus.

The other bonus is one provided by Warlords. It's based on level, and we know it effects at least units in the Warlord's stack, but may or may not extend further. Warlords probably do not benefit from their own leadership bonus. Regardless, they tend to be powerful units in their own right. Chief Warlords are different and we know more about them. Units in their personal stacks get their full bonus. Units in the same hex get a partial bonus. Units in the capital get their full bonus (though this probably requires the CW to actually be at the capital, and may extend to any city). This latest update says units in adjacent hexes get a small bonus. Note, it doesn't say there is a universal bonus, just a bonus for being in a neighboring hex. This might extend to a battle space.

There is also an "Artifact" bonus. The specifics of this are never mentioned, but Ansom had it as unatuned, and he implies in the update Wanda has a better artifact bonus now that she's atuned. The attack on the wounded dwagons implied the artifact bonus was hex wide. Exact numbers unknown.

Being a "decrypted," a type of uncroacked, they units all get a bonus from Wanda. Parson describes this as a "huge bonus," but in 84a its implied the bonus only aplies to units in Wanda's stack.

So, the weakest unit had a base attack of 6. This unit may or may not have been in Ansom and Wanda's Stack. Lets assume so. He then jumped to a functional attack of 30, but that was only in Ansom's stack. We know that +10 came from Ansom alone. That leaves +14 or less to be divided among the artifact, the dececrypted bonus, and the stack bonus. It means Ansom's leadership may be the most impressive bonus availablele to Stanley's side.