Book 2 – Page 50

[Ditto]

In the instance of Jetstone/Charlescom, this was done over a thinkagram (the EULA), and Ansom actually addresses Charlie by name in that brief discussion - he did not negotiate with the Archon in charge. We also know the thinkagram data is from Charlie, becaue the updated terms are a product of a conversation he had with Parson, about which the Archons are presumably unaware.

In the instance of TV/Faq, Jillian is taken cross-country to meet with Don King. She wasn't expected to talk to Vinny, or even Caesar, who is the CWL - her Rank demanded better, it seems. (I accept the fact that this discussion was something of a special case though)

These don't really dispute the 'top unit in hex runs a parley' theory. Neither of these situations are parleys. They are both allied or friendly sides conducting business.

[Oberon]

[...] I still find it entirely believable that Dwagons are units with very good stats and useful specials. They've just haven't had their crowning moment of awesome yet (although 'pwning the column' came close).

If by "the column" you refer to the destruction of the siege, yeah, that was awesome.

[Lamech]

His skills did get him to the point of diplomatic contact". Would Ossomer have put in a call? Unknown...but Trams options at that point hadn't been narrowed at all. Trams mistake, as far as you are concerned, is that he didn't concern himself too much with the idea of attack by the yellows - which is AFAICS inconsequential given how easily they were dealt with and the limited damage they could do - and the fact he didn't plan for Parson doing something supposedly impossible, rather than unlikely.

And had the yellows been screened as to inflict maximum damage against Jetstone? All of his bargining power went out the window. And he some how believed he would be able to get reperations for the yellow attack; that seemed like a joke to me. "So demand reperations for your dishonarable attacking during our cease-fire. Only royals are allowed to attack during cease-fires." He has less bargining power and he thinks he can get more from GK? (I suppose he may have been trying to calm his father...)

Not only that I think Parson would be far more likely to answer Maggie saying "They a thinkagram with someone important". than Ossomer saying "After throwing insults and trying to turn me, he wants a thinkagram with you."

On dwagongs:Dwagons are super-fast flying units with a variety of ranged attacks, and enough hits to ensure they can escape from combat. They seem vastly effective for raiding, with 50 move they can attack a column and retreat to beyond the range of something like doombats. They make amazing raiders, and are one of the better air units in straight up fights.

My impression of that battle was that GK was losing big time force-wise, and got away primarily because of jack. Vurp appears to have wacked Dark Mario, Stanley swatted Ceasar out of the sky... Stanley's red roasted a pair of marshmallow peeps, but that was pretty much the extend of visible dwaconic contribution, and the text updates indicate they survived it. TV lost only insofar as their objectives differed from delivering a straightforward military defeat, and not thanks to the dwagons in any way but their continued capacity for flight.

So, Iunno - I actually think that battle was an excellent example of dwagons being Worfed. They were repeatedly pointed out as a tough obstacle beforehand, then got pwned to demonstrate the unexpected potentency of Transylvito Style. Rob has been using them as a unit type that the audience would acknowledge as tough without much previous evidence, to demonstrate the tactical relevance of hitting wounded units and boosting/sapping multipliers early in his story, while continuously having erfworlders declare them powerful and relevant to counteract badass decay.

Translovito clearly won, but most of the fighting was against leaderless dwagons. They got ambushed mid-hex and at some point Stanley broke stack, turned around and fled. AND he was the first one out. So I'm guessing at least 2/3 thirds of the fighting was with out a leader. (Half a hex forward, two halves back.) So leaderless dwagons when out numbered badly by almost-heavies lose. Bonuses are big in erfworld; we have no idea what would have happened had Stanley stayed and fought. That doesn't seem particularly worfed to me...

[GaryThunder]

The impact of Caesar being in the hex cannot be underestimated. Guy like Caesar, he's got to have a massive leadership bonus, probably 9 or 10 or close. If he gives half of that to all units in his hex, each of the hundreds of bats gets a sizable leadership bonus that stacks with traditional warlord leadership bonuses. Stanley was the only GK warlord present; his leadership bonus is unknown but presumably not a match for Caesar's. Once Stanley broke stack and the dwagons lost leadership (and artifact bonus, probably), the fight was over.

[Raza]

The dwagon donut trick should have demonstrated how strong dwagons were, and did in at least the beginning part. An entire force of elves and Gumps, with Ansom's hex-wide CW bonus (+5 if it's the same as his Decrypted one) were repeatedly being annihilated by three dwagons. Three. Of weaker types.

This is false. The three dwagons wiped out a single (as far as we were shown) stack of unled woodsy elves. No gumps, no leadership bonus, and Ansom himself was in the next hex over. When the force you mention entered combat, it was the dwagons that got wiped.

Translovito clearly won, but most of the fighting was against leaderless dwagons. They got ambushed mid-hex and at some point Stanley broke stack, turned around and fled. AND he was the first one out. So I'm guessing at least 2/3 thirds of the fighting was with out a leader. (Half a hex forward, two halves back.) So leaderless dwagons when out numbered badly by almost-heavies lose. Bonuses are big in erfworld; we have no idea what would have happened had Stanley stayed and fought. That doesn't seem particularly worfed to me...

It is! That's the thing - they got their asses kicked to demonstrate the high relevance of leadership. This understanding of Erf combat which you are applying now, we saw in unmistakable, emphasized action for the first time in that battle.

That's the worf effect, when done to the same unit/character repeatedly - and Dwagons suffered to demonstrate leadership, 'hitsies', the archons' power and Jillian's aerial combat prowess throughout book one. This doesn't mean it was bad writing - it was the potency of a highly relevant story element that was established in the process, not the phony kung-fu of another bad guy of the week. The damage to the dwagons' badass-ness was expertly mitigated and well-spent - but it is there, and I feel that they deserve a(nother) turn to shine now that it's all over with.

[Lamech]

That's the worf effect, when done to the same unit/character repeatedly - and Dwagons suffered to demonstrate leadership, 'hitsies', the archons' power and Jillian's aerial combat prowess throughout book one. This doesn't mean it was bad writing - it was the potency of a highly relevant story element that was established in the process, not the phony kung-fu of another bad guy of the week. The damage to the dwagons' badass-ness was expertly mitigated and well-spent - but it is there, and I feel that they deserve a(nother) turn to shine now that it's all over with.

I disagree with the "hities"/archons.
Example: Lets say worf charges 100s of borg, some have saws and claws for hands, and a few have phasers, and worf kills a bunch of them. But he gets hurt, and shot and sliced a bunch. So worf staggers out using his sword to support himself, and hides. Then the borg queen finds worf on accident and shoots worf, but worf runs over and nearly kills the queen, but the queen is saved just in time by her counter-part. I don't think that does much to show how that borg are particularly powerful, or that the queen has a good phaser; worf just took on an army of borg, and nearly won and only lost cause the queen got lucky. We don't assume worf can kill an army. We don't expect the nearly dead worf to kill the borg queen let alone her counter-part too.

Similarly here we expect dwagons to lose if they are nearly dead already. We don't expect dwagons to kill an army.

Nor do I agree with Jillian. In the lake fight, injured dwagons, so we would expect a pile of bats to win. In the first fight we we expect a dwagon to go down to a well placed sword swing if they get out smarted, and out manuvered. Which shouldn't be to hard against dumb lizards if you can fly. Well at least if they are the kind of dwagons that lancelot slays. Jillian goes down instantly when the dwagon gets a swing in. This isn't worfing this establishes what kind of dwagons they are. (King Arthur, Tolkien, DnD, spiritual-something-or-others ect.) And we later learn warlords are increadibly strong if they are high level royals.

That said you are absolutly correct about leadership at translovito. I was using what we learned from worfing the dwagons, to explain why we expected the dwagons to lose. (Look at how powerful super-strength is. It beats worf. So of course worf can't win against super-strength.)

[Kyrt]

And had the yellows been screened as to inflict maximum damage against Jetstone?

Then the screening stacks would be less viable as they'd have several targets to cover and Wanda would be more visible. Plus, there was nothing to stop him shooting down the screening stacks. In addition, if the damage did threaten to be serious enough, Tram ALWAYS had the option of simply annihilating the GK force.

The yellows attacking were never seen as a serious danger to anything other than the orderly conduct of the parley.

And he some how believed he would be able to get reperations for the yellow attack; that seemed like a joke to me.

If GK and he can come to some arrangement....that is very possible. Trams goal is the survival and prosperity of JS. He is willing to consider alliance with GK so he may even be willing to let GK keep the Wanda and the pliers. You may think that is ridiculous, but if all he wants is for GK to go away and leave them alone, that'd be possible.

Not only that I think Parson would be far more likely to answer Maggie saying "They a thinkagram with someone important". than Ossomer saying "After throwing insults and trying to turn me, he wants a thinkagram with you."

"They want(?) a thinkagram with someone important?" would answered the same way by most people....."What for?" "Take a message" "I'll get back to them". Tram doesn't need to leave a VM, he needs to speak with Parson or Stanley.
And you really think a straight cold call out of the blue, from someone Parson has no reason to trust, believe or even talk to would be more likely to be accepted than a Thinkagram from one of his own warlords?

[GaryThunder]

This is false. The three dwagons wiped out a single (as far as we were shown) stack of unled woodsy elves. No gumps, no leadership bonus, and Ansom himself was in the next hex over. When the force you mention entered combat, it was the dwagons that got wiped.

Hmm...you're right about Ansom's bonus not applying. But Tarfu was complaining to Ansom that their attack wasn't working: "Can't keep sending in leaderless stacks. Getting overwhelmed...Going to lead a max stack in there next." This implies they'd been feeding stack after stack of elves into the dwagon meatgrinder before Ansom finally decided to mount up and lead. And even then, presumably still the elves and certainly the Gumps still took a lot of damage on their way in.

Ansom: "That's how we should have done it to begin with. But I wanted the Gumps fresh for the main attack."
Vinny: "They're arright."

Ansom was concerned enough about eliminating the base hex that he didn't even want to risk the Gumps on the punchthrough, for fear of losing too many. Against three dwagons without leadership.

[Aquillion]

The thing about Dwagons is that this is how it works in many real-world strategy games, too. The Dwagons are hugely powerful units, definitely. But everyone knows they're Gobwin Knob's most powerful units. If you don't have a plan to deal with the Dwagons and you go up against Gobwin Knob's forces, you get stomped.

[atalex]

And you really think a straight cold call out of the blue, from someone Parson has no reason to trust, believe or even talk to would be more likely to be accepted than a Thinkagram from one of his own warlords?

[/quote]

I thought whole "thinkagram to Parson" idea was silly from the beginning, especially if one expects Parson to have the same preternatural insight that is demanded of Tram. Parson knows that GK just got screwed with some type of turnamancy effect, most likely bimancer or trimancer link. And now, the leader of JS calls him up out of the blue to talk about forming an alliance with them? Ridiculous. Unless Parson is, dare I say it, "holding the idiot ball," he will almost certainly assume that JS still has their turnamancer-thinkamancer linkup and will use the thinkagram to try and turn him or otherwise harm him.

I mean really! People expect Tram to be afraid of GK pulling something sneaky -- even though they had just spent hours floating helplessly in mid-air -- because of Kingworld, but Parson, who had been a victim of Kingworld, is just supposed to accept suspiciously timed thinkagrams from his enemy. Whatever!

[Oberon]

I mean really! People expect Tram to be afraid of GK pulling something sneaky -- even though they had just spent hours floating helplessly in mid-air -- because of Kingworld, but Parson, who had been a victim of Kingworld, is just supposed to accept suspiciously timed thinkagrams from his enemy. Whatever!

Please... Parson has conversed via Thinkagram with Charlie, and been unscathed. If Parson is willing to enter into a thinkagram with Charlie, against whom Maggie warned him explicitly against, then there is no reason to assume that Parson will fear thinkagram contact with anyone of a lesser reputation.

And in case track record counts, Parson has never, not once, refused to hold a discussion with an opponent. Neither via thinkagram, eyebook, or whatever. And Parson also reaches out to opponents at any opportunity. But hey, for some a perfect track record counts for nothing. I just can't vouch for the logic or sanity of those who refuse to acknowledge that track records might be used as a litmus test for future behavior...