The Battle for {Insert Name Here} - South Wing

[WaterMonkey314]

Ferrrr-durrrp!

A dark cloud of flying shapes appears on the horizon and approaches... upon further examination, it becomes apparent that a flight of orlies are approaching.

An ORLY enters I7 (from the northwest) and engages a swave!

[WaterMonkey314]

Spoiler: show

COMBAT!
Battle is joined in hex: I7
TIME OF POST (in minutes and seconds): 49
Attacker:
Total Attack Value: 2
Level of Highest Commander: 0
Total Defence of Stack: 1
Number of Units: 1
Average Defence: 1
Terrain Bonus of Hex: 0.0
Special Bonus: 1.0
Random Percentage: 85%
Total Damage: 2

Hits Inflicted on the Enemy: 2

Defender
Total Attack Value: 1
Number of Units: 1
Level of Highest Commander: 0
Total Defence of Stack: 0
Number of Units: 1
Average Defence: 0
Terrain Bonus of Hex: 0.0
Special Bonus: 1.0
Ambush Bonus: 1.0
Random Percentage: 90%
Total Damage: 1

Hits Inflicted on the Enemy: 1

The ORLY is dusted; the swave is cwoaked. 4 Swaves remain.

Another ORLY enters and engages; for the sake of brevity, combat is not shown. The result will be the same - both units destroyed.

3 more ORLies enter and kamikaze the remaining swaves in I7. MCC:S loses control of I7.

[WaterMonkey314]

Similar to the attack on I7, eleven ORLies enter J8 from the northwest, engaging the swaves one-by-one. All ORLies and swaves are destroyed.

The MCC:S loses control of J8.

A single Dwagon enters J9 and engages the lone Bwoodrider!

[WaterMonkey314]

COMBAT!
Battle is joined in hex: J9
TIME OF POST (in minutes and seconds): 1029
Attacker:

Spoiler: show

Total Attack Value: 24
Level of Highest Commander: 0
Total Defence of Stack: 3
Number of Units: 1
Average Defence: 3
Terrain Bonus of Hex: 0.0
Special Bonus: 1.0
Random Percentage: 85%
Total Damage: 20

Hits Inflicted on the Enemy: 20

Defender

Spoiler: show

Total Attack Value: 12
Number of Units: 1
Level of Highest Commander: 0
Total Defence of Stack: 0
Number of Units: 1
Average Defence: 0
Terrain Bonus of Hex: 0.0
Special Bonus: 1.0
Ambush Bonus: 1.0
Random Percentage: 80%
Total Damage: 10

Hits Inflicted on the Enemy: 6

The bwoodrider, as a ranged unit, gets first strike on the dwagon; the dwagon takes 6 hits. When the dwagon melées, the bwoodrider is cwoaked. (Does the dwagon take retal damage again and cwoak?)

MCC:S loses control of J9.

A stack of doom {Diwigible (5 x HA, Warlord "Bob" (lvl 2))} enters J10 and engages the stack of 7 stowm twoopers!

[WaterMonkey314]

COMBAT!
Battle is joined in hex: J10
TIME OF POST (in minutes and seconds): 2145
Attacker:

Spoiler: show

Total Attack Value: 146
Level of Highest Commander: 2
Total Defence of Stack: 30
Number of Units: 7
Average Defence: 4
Terrain Bonus of Hex: 0.0
Special Bonus: 1.0
Random Percentage: 55%
Total Damage: 96

Hits Inflicted on the Enemy: 60

Defender

Spoiler: show

Total Attack Value: 21
Number of Units: 7
Level of Highest Commander: 0
Total Defence of Stack: 21
Number of Units: 7
Average Defence: 3
Terrain Bonus of Hex: 0.0
Special Bonus: 1.0
Ambush Bonus: 1.0
Random Percentage: 75%
Total Damage: 16

Hits Inflicted on the Enemy: 7

Diwigible takes 7 hits; 93 left. The Stowm twoopers are annihilated under a hail of fire...

The MCC:S has lost control of its base camp.

Turn Summary: Swave wall crumbles under hail of ORLies; Dwagon noms a bwoodwider; Diwigible flattens base camp. All in all, not the best of turns for the MCC:South.

[WaterMonkey314]

So, since I (think) I've won... some options for you guys:

1) Call it game and move on.
2) Give you guys one turn to take back your base camp à la Erfworld Empires.
3) Retconjure the game back to the beginning
===3a) Retconjure such that the MCC:S has its own mega-heavies.
===3b) Retconjure the 30 hp cap back into existence.
4) Any other ideas you have.

For the record, I was actually going to hit the main group at I9 but didn't like the looks of it... then I realized that J9 was so lightly defended.

[HerbieRai]

Hey watermonkey, there's another 4 stacks at the basecamp. Don't you have to kill all stacks to "take" it? Otherwise whats the use in putting more than one stack in a spot, especially if only 8 units are going to defend.

edit: one other stack, the crab peoples garrison.

[Nihila]

Hey watermonkey, there's another 4 stacks at the basecamp. Don't you have to kill all stacks to "take" it? Otherwise whats the use in putting more than one stack in a spot, especially if only 8 units are going to defend.

Uh, yeah, you're absolutely right. I think that WaterMonkey and I had a collective blank on that score... We should let WaterMonkey decide what he should do now.

[WaterMonkey314]

Oops - well, what IS in the base camp? I was going off of Siralus's unit listing.

I still have enough firepower to flatten everything, I think, no matter what.

[HerbieRai]

A stack of 2 Agelenidae.
I think the rest were moved to I9

True, were still screwed as of this point. Although the other diwi can't make it to our base camp. Truthfully if you recede your previous orders, you can attack in 2 waves and take us out.

Giving us a super heavy wouldn't help in the long run. Since the 4 of us have to share pop points, we wont every be able to produce one, while you can theoretically pop one every three turns plus some other fodder units.(assuming 200 pts/ turn like northern flank)

Even if you let us retaliate this is going to happen eventually. The diwi's can move faster than anything we got, and the closer we get to taking you over, the easier it'll be to capture and hold our basecamp.

[WaterMonkey314]

The actual problem here, like I stated to Nihila in our private discussion, isn't the giant Diwigible (in fact, I personally think it'd be even worse for you guys if you made me use 30hp or lower units).

The problem is two-fold here: mounting flyers on flyers allows ridiculous mobility on my part (sending 11 orlies instantly to the front), and you guys relied solely on your wall of swaves, forgetting that an orly was superior in combat. If I swapped out my dwigibles for their pop point equivalent in dwagons, heavy archers, and warlords, the situation would be even worse. I'd have that much more firepower with much higher survivability (reminder - diwigibles are def-0).

[Sihoiba]

This is going to be a rant because Watermonkey you've completely booped up with this scenario setup, making it useless as a test:

Flyers:
This is not the scenario to test out how balanced flyers are under this formula. A featureless terrain of plains gives them two key advantages they wouldn't normally have in a feature rich map, while only taking away one (the ability to hide over water tiles).

The first advantage is they effectively given them more move compared to the slower ground units, a normal terrain has roads likely to lead between the key locations which means (and especially for the slow units) this effectively gives the bulk of the ground units +1 move as they are likely to want to travel along the road i.e. for normal purposes siege has move 2, infantry move 3, cavalry 3.5-4.5 (are they likely to want to take advantage of their move to hit off road). Summary: No roads, flyers effectively move further.

The second key advantage they gain over the battles in likely maps with variable terrain is the lack of defensive terrain. Remember that flyers don't ever get terrain bonuses, while ground units do. From my experience in the TbfGB 1 & especially 2, trying to deal damage to ground units that frequently had +2 defence was pretty damn hard, making flyers less useful for their cost than they otherwise might have been (though I admit move generally and flyers specifically were more expensive under the old formula).

Summary: a flat featureless plain gives flying units an advantage.

Diwigibles and units with > 30HP
You've completely missing the problems with the giant diwigible.

Firstly it forced us to be defensive. Having a practically unkillable stack means we have to use swave wall tactics, because we can't profitable advance if you can just pick off any stack of your choosing at 0 risk at all times. In contrast you mass producing dragons makes them easy fodder for our ranged units, or if you make them ranged unprofitable trades in terms of point costs as our ground ranged units will be cheaper.

Secondly it allows you to transport much larger troops more easily. To gain a single bit of move for any of the bwood widers (which if our side had a couple more units I could have mounted bwood widers on, I'd have probably taken out the diwigible in the non-ranged stack on that first turn - only 50-55% wouldn't have killed it). In order to gain even a little extra move I had to mount them across a smattering of different units, effectively tying those units up for the turn. Being able to easily and efficiently transport unit makes a major difference to your force mobility.

Finally it breaks the way the multiple defences penalty rule works. If you look at TBfGB2 the bulk of the MCC tactics involved hitting the dangerous gowem stacks with units capable of surviving in order to reduce their retaliation damage for subsequent attacks. With the diwigible (especially as it's massive HP allows it to carry seven high attack archers) it would have been extremely difficult to put together a stack capable of surviving it's initial attack, and even then the second attack would have still been subjected to fairly massive damage. In comparison a massive dwagon stack would have posed a similar problem, but for you to achieve the same sort of ranged attack power it would have been more expensive and more importantly chances are the first attack by us would actually kill a dwagon or two reducing the potential retaliation second time around even if the initial attacking stack was wiped out.

On a side note, thinking on it, there might still need to be some sort of limit to the maximum number of units in a stack.

How Watermonkey booped the scenario

Firstly if trading a 2 cost Swave for a 5 cost Orlie, or units generally at a 2:5 ratio still means you've come out ahead then you've planned the ratio between the two sides pop points wrong. The scenario will be unwinnable if you can afford to to throw away units in such trades and still come out ahead (though actually because orlies have 1 defence it's possible on certain % roles for a Swave to 0 damage to an Orlie - so it's slightly better for you than that).

Secondly are you sure you have enough forces in range to wipe out the base camp? The Agelenidae is still a 32 Attack 16HP 3 Defence stack.

Here's the key issue: where does it say losing our base camp loses the fight? While the goal of the game is to capture GK's base, the rules don't state that the alliance loses if they lose their base camp anywhere I can see, and neither did they in TBfGB. The way it worked (as far as I knew) was you could keep popping units in the base camp they just auto-engage the enemy (and probably for no real gain). Considering your massive flying units part of my plan behind the swave wall was to lure your diwigibles in to attack the base camp, where we could either pick them off at our leisure, or alternatively depending how they stacked, just trap them behind a wall of swaves and use the two or three turns it would take them to escape to rush your camp.

This is the big boop up: You've got the initial scenario set up entirely wrong. TBfGB was us verses a GM when the GM set up a challenging to scenario to see if we could beat it, it's why losing our base camp didn't matter as that wasn't the point of the game, sure it reduced our ability to field units effectively, but that's why we had two base camps, if we lost the first one, we could rebuild from the second and have to work harder to recapture the lost first one as well. The point of the game was to defeat a challenging scenario against an opponent with perfect visibility.

What you've created here though is a two side battle for each sides base camp, where one side gets perfect visibility of the map and the other gets more points, but needs to pop scouts.

In the former style of game the starting positions of your units is fine, as it presents us with a difficult situation from the get go. In the latter style, the style you chose, the game begins in an unwinnable state as all your forces begin in range of our base camp. If you want the latter style of game to work, all of both sides forces have to begin at the base camp (or possibly with in x hexes of the base camp if you want a little more tactical flexibility). Then if you want the GK side to gain an advantage over time (by getting more pop points each turn as you implied) you probably need to give the alliance the first move in order to keep it balanced.

What you can't do is have the scenario you went for, as aside from the issues you created with the Diwigibles, giving the side with long term advantage an effective 2 turn head start (in terms of their unit locations) is to give them an effectively insurmountable advantage.

[Sihoiba]

The problem is two-fold here: mounting flyers on flyers allows ridiculous mobility on my part (sending 11 orlies instantly to the front), and you guys relied solely on your wall of swaves, forgetting that an orly was superior in combat.

As I said in my rant I'll happily trade swaves for orlies till the cows come home, assuming you've not booped up the ratio of point allocations to either side.

The fact you can move flyers from base camp to base camp in one turn, just shows the map is too small/lacks terrain features. Clearly we need a bigger map if we want to go with all plains scenarios.

If I swapped out my dwigibles for their pop point equivalent in dwagons, heavy archers, and warlords, the situation would be even worse. I'd have that much more firepower with much higher survivability (reminder - diwigibles are def-0).

Much lower survivability, the heavy archers can't do anywhere near as much as they are useless mounted unless mounted on ranged units, and you can't move them as easily when using smaller HP units.

Secondly we can kill dwagons relatively easily in a fight using 8 unit stacks, diwigibles require a much higher commitment of firepower.

[Nihila]

The fact you can move flyers from base camp to base camp in one turn, just shows the map is too small/lacks terrain features. Clearly we need a bigger map if we want to go with all plains scenarios.

As I'm sure Twoy will tell you a thousand times, the bigger the map is, the worse things get for you. In fact, I've been forced to complicate my next campaign plan to reduce the effectiveness of my strategies. And, terrain features would make it even worse. Imagine if there were mountains, and WaterMonkey used those as a base for his fliers. With no fliers in the MCC:S except the scouts, you'd be booped. If he had 4 mountains scattered around the map, he could feasibly hit anything from them with impunity.

And, well, if you really want your 200 or 250 points of units to auto-engage a Diwigible, that's your prerogative. I will point out that the Diwigible has far less attack than 422 points worth of, say, Sniper Cats, so you might be able to slowly take it down, even though it will have massive retaliation.

I remain convinced that the Diwigible is a flaw in BLAND's cost formula, but whatever. The point is, it broke the cost formula pretty well. Whereas, despite my efforts to frustrate, confuse, and stop the players in the northern wing, my units are all killable, and they happily croak them. Maybe a little too happily, but whatever.

Would it have made a difference if WaterMonkey had started in his base camp? I think it would have. He would have waited for a ranged stack to get a bit too close, then fielded some Heavy Archers to take down the special bonus, then hit it with a pair of Diwigibles. Ranged stack vanishes. Rinse and repeat.

Or just made a melee stack disappear suddenly.

[Sihoiba]

As I'm sure Twoy will tell you a thousand times, the bigger the map is, the worse things get for you.

You've missed the point, if you want a two sides trying to capture each others base camps they need to be more than 1 turns move away from each other - hence bigger maps

And, terrain features would make it even worse. Imagine if there were mountains, and WaterMonkey used those as a base for his fliers. With no fliers in the MCC:S except the scouts, you'd be booped. If he had 4 mountains scattered around the map, he could feasibly hit anything from them with impunity.

If there had been mountains and other terrain features, chances are we've had designed our forces differently. Secondly a mountain only gives a flier an effective range of 2 in a radius around the mountain (remembering that the unit needs to return to the mountain to be safe, and it takes 2 move to enter the mountain hex). If Watermonkey designed a map so that every non mountain hex was within two move of a mountain hex, then I'd never want to play any of Watermonkey's games, because that would be rubbish GMing.

And, well, if you really want your 200 or 250 points of units to auto-engage a Diwigible, that's your prerogative. I will point out that the Diwigible has far less attack than 422 points worth of, say, Sniper Cats, so you might be able to slowly take it down, even though it will have massive retaliation.

I've got a free unit type slot, I'd just design a unit capable of wiping out the diwigible... Missing the point though the issue was with the initial set up. It doesn't work if we're actually expected to have to defend our base camp in order to not auto-lose.

I remain convinced that the Diwigible is a flaw in BLAND's cost formula, but whatever.

Bland's formula was designed with the 30 Hit limit in mind, if you're going to exceed that limit I'm not surprised you're finding problems - hence a pointless test. I'd agree though that flyers are too cheap in his formula*.

He would have waited for a ranged stack to get a bit too close, then fielded some Heavy Archers to take down the special bonus, then hit it with a pair of Diwigibles. Ranged stack vanishes. Rinse and repeat.

Or just made a melee stack disappear suddenly.

So yes if you keep a broken rule breaking unit it'll cause problems, what's the point? Also I think you'd find we have stacked intelligently, the whole point of the Bwoodwiders was to surround them with other units, not to leave them on their own to be picked off at will, that would just be stupid on our part.

Plus if the did diwigible drop in heavy archers it would give us a very smaller set of possible locations for the diwigible to be hidden in (think of the dragon hunts from TBfGB1). Or if we get rid of diwigibles (because they are broken) he'll need 8 dragons (568 points worth) to be able to move those 8 heavy archers.

Look if you want a base camp versus base camp style fight, you need a separate GM I think perfect visibility and an offensive goal is too strong a combination. It works fine when crafting a challenging scenario for a group of players, but only if the goal for the GM is to make a fun/challenging scenario, not to defeat the players. Which is the mistake Watermonkey seems to be making, while you have mostly avoided it Nihila.

To clarify there's the difference between a GM crafting difficult challenge the players can lose, and the GM's beating the players. I prefer the former to the latter.
-----

*As an aside, I'd be more inclined to have larger maps and movements of
Garrison 0 move
Siege 1 move
Infantry 3 move
Calvary 6 move
Flying 10 move

This would also have the advantage of making flying units twice as expensive, and push sides into relying primarily on siege and infantry for efficiency.

With this I'd suggest a map with 30 hexes between the two base camps, joined by a road so you'd be looking at 3 turns for flyers to make the journey, 5 for cavalry, 8 for infantry and 15 for siege. With flyers being so expensive comparatively, you'd have to be much more careful about how you use them.

[BLANDCorporatio]

Hi all.

I'm not going to read all rants so far right now, will do that later.

I'd just like to point out that

1) it IS a bit suspicious that 11+ Orlies popped up out of nowhere. Yes, I know that they had many unscouted hexes to come out of, but still it seems a tad too convenient. Well, either that or it was a very good play, so congrats! Good plays are those that seem unseemly

2) I think the other Bump required a camp to be held for a turn to count as a win. Not sure, maybe I confuse it with Erf Empires, but still.

3) I like fliers and would rather they be reasonably cheap. This was not a case of MCC losing because fliers (or the Diwigible) were imba, but rather poor territory placement on our part. We had to start in one predictable hex. The Bump could start with all forces located anywhere and with full map knowledge. The AI is a cheating bastard, remember?

4) I don't think the Diwigible is that imba. It's very hard to kill, can carry loads of units, but on the other hand it's not the best when it comes to either defense or attack. Now, since in Erfworld there's a full auto-heal at the start of a turn, some HP cap may make sense, but I'm not seeing as how this was a case of the Diwigibles stomping us.

Face it, we lost because many Orlies were placed conveniently out of sight but in range of the swave wall. That's simply something that I would NOT fix in costs. I kinda like it, actually. Good play, WaterMonkey314!

Anyway, I'll be reading the longer posts some time later and look at suggestions therein.

[Sihoiba]

Hi all.

I'm not going to read all rants so far right now, will do that later.

1) it IS a bit suspicious that 11+ Orlies popped up out of nowhere. Yes, I know that they had many unscouted hexes to come out of, but still it seems a tad too convenient. Well, either that or it was a very good play, so congrats! Good plays are those that seem unseemly

Face it, we lost because many Orlies were placed conveniently out of sight but in range of the swave wall. That's simply something that I would NOT fix in costs. I kinda like it, actually. Good play, WaterMonkey314!

The Orlies were popped in the other base camp and dragon relayed half way across the map. That in itself was a good tactic, and not one I spotted I must admit. However I still think the fact the map was small enough to do it, that Watermonkey's goal was to capture our base camp, not stop our forces, and that with that goal he could start units whether he liked made it an unwinnable flawed scenario from our side. There was no way we could defend the base camp, and advance and avoid death from diwigible.

4) I don't think the Diwigible is that imba. It's very hard to kill, can carry loads of units, but on the other hand it's not the best when it comes to either defense or attack. Now, since in Erfworld there's a full auto-heal at the start of a turn, some HP cap may make sense, but I'm not seeing as how this was a case of the Diwigibles stomping us.

High HP heal at start of turn is awkward, but it's the ability to carry other high hit units on mass which is the real problem I think, as it leaves you with an unassailable high HP unit.

[BLANDCorporatio]

There was no way we could defend the base camp, and advance and avoid death from diwigible.

Eh. "No way" is a bit harsh. It depends on pop point allocation to the different sides of the conflict. Even slightly imbalanced in our favour would have made a slow push just as viable as in TBfGB2.

High HP heal at start of turn is awkward, but it's the ability to carry other high hit units on mass which is the real problem I think, as it leaves you with an unassailable high HP unit.

I wonder if I could call this a Feature? Crack commando teams carried over by Airships ... I dunno about you guys but I like the possibilities presented by fast movements of forces. It is a bit different of course when you send one airship into the unknown, and when you know exactly what the enemy placement is like.

[Sihoiba]

Why I had it in my head that base camps being captured weren't an auto-lose:

http://www.erfworld.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1317&p=32804#p32804

This is the problem with just saying your using the TBfGB rules and not specifying which ones you mean.

[BLANDCorporatio]

{EDIT: about tactics-} Think about it this way. If the Diwigible-Orly relay were the problem in itself, why didn't WE do it? We had first turn after all.

(Setting aside that none of us made Diwigible-like units, or any strong fliers for that matter.)

The answer is NO, we wouldn't have, because we had no idea what we'd get our intrepid air-marauders into as they went into Bump territory. So it's information imbalance in this case that made the tactic viable and so effective.

So in this, there's the issue of how challenging you want a scenario to be. "The AI is a cheating bastard". CAN we hope to win, even against this? Yes, provided we get more pop points than the Bump. How much more? would a 1.1 ratio in our favour help? How about 1.01? How low can we go? {EDIT: While still finishing in a reasonable time-frame?}

(1 or less- well, without caster link abuse, no chance; rule-of-thumb in the military says an attacker should outnumber a defender 3-to-1. A side that's expected to expand and conquer some point to win must be producing more than the defender.)