Book 2 – Page 52

[Ansan Gotti]

Well, to be fair I'm not talking about exploits that are "wow, I never saw that coming and that makes no sense (or is cheesy, or whatever)." I'm talking about an exploit that most people smack themselves on the head afterwards, saying, "that makes total sense."

The former can be a hallmark of, err, "god out of the machine" writing (to avoid a much maligned phrase of the past). I think the latter is often great writing.

[BLANDCorporatio]

Well, to be fair I'm not talking about exploits that are "wow, I never saw that coming and that makes no sense (or is cheesy, or whatever)." I'm talking about an exploit that most people smack themselves on the head afterwards, saying, "that makes total sense."

The former can be a hallmark of, err, "god out of the machine" writing (to avoid a much maligned phrase of the past). I think the latter is often great writing.

And to be fair, I'm speaking of the second kind too. In the end, it's all smoke and mirrors, as no less a writer than Norman Spinrad said about the craft.

The smoke and mirrors I'm talking about now being that we just do not have enough info to make a definitive, authoritative argument on a lot of relevant topics of Erfworld tactics. As evidenced, har-har, by how often tactical speculations crop up.

Besides, for any 'sploit that the comic threw at us, there often were, in fact, several interesting ideas posed in these forums too. A side effect of the fact that we don't know enough to separate good ideas from bad ones.

In the end, it's not the 'sploits. Seriously, anyone with some experience GM'ing or powergaming might pick/design a system and try to find cool moves there. To make it interesting beyond a mere puzzleish diversion though takes characters and story. That is the more difficult, and rewarding, kind of smoke and mirrors. Erfworld has it too, which is why we come back to occasionally try to tease tactics out of a fog of unknowns.

At least when we're not trying to decide where the Idiot Ball currently resides.

[Ansan Gotti]

In the end, it's not the 'sploits. Seriously, anyone with some experience GM'ing or powergaming might pick/design a system and try to find cool moves there. To make it interesting beyond a mere puzzleish diversion though takes characters and story. That is the more difficult, and rewarding, kind of smoke and mirrors. Erfworld has it too, which is why we come back to occasionally try to tease tactics out of a fog of unknowns.

Believe me, I am not denigrating the importance of characters and story, which I believe this webcomic also has in spades.

But as a wargamer, I really LIKE the occasional reveal and tactical/strategic nuance played out in a satisfying manner. Obviously, YMMV.

At least when we're not trying to decide where the Idiot Ball currently resides.

Hey, you're the one who wanted to usher that discussion off to another thread, remember?

[BLANDCorporatio]

But as a wargamer, I really LIKE the occasional reveal and tactical/strategic nuance played out in a satisfying manner. Obviously, YMMV.

Heh, as it happens, I love things that are amenable to math and analysis. Including wargames. And I thought this was one of the reasons why I liked Erfworld in the first place. In the end though, it's just not the case; the rules do in fact appear (to me) to change in bursts, there's not the same organic progression as there's in, for example, scientific models of the real world*.

(EDIT: *: which is a totally different discussion, for what I said is a bit controversial, but hey.)

And there's at least a fundamental difference between the real world and Erfworld. There is, IRL, no smartest person. OTOH, Parson's Best Warlord Ever status seems to require everyone else to be limited in their creativity for it to work out. So in the end what seemed to me a draw towards the comic turned into residual annoyance, as I'd prefer a clash of intellectual equals.

There's lots to like in Erfworld beside tactical specs, thank goodness.

At least when we're not trying to decide where the Idiot Ball currently resides.

Hey, you're the one who wanted to usher that discussion off to another thread, remember?

Well, it just keeps bouncing back here as the previous page can attest. At least mix it up fellas. Let's say, Jack has the idiot ball, or Sylvia, or Maggie or someone.

[Dr Pepper]

Perhaps everyon is just playing racquetball with idiot ball. Or maybe jai alai. Or quidditch.

[╒╦╧╬╩╦╦╛]

Perhaps everyon is just playing racquetball with idiot ball. Or maybe jai alai. Or quidditch.

Playing quidditch with the idiot ball would be idiotic.

[Oberon]

All Tram needed to do was two simple things, both of which were tied together in a single causality:

1) He needed to recognize that Parson could attack at any moment, and then cogitate as to why Parson had not yet attacked.

This. This and a thousand times this. This is EXACTLY the crux of the entire matter.

If Tram had realized that Parson could actually do something useful, then I would agree with any denigration of him, if he continued to act as he did.

However he did not. The question then is - how much should that be held against him when discussing his intelligence?

Consider this. Out of ALL the people watching that fight, the ONLY one who thought of that exploit was Parson.

NOT EXPLOIT! Damn it, why does it always circle back to the same flawed premise? Well, I know why. There's nothing else to your position except pulling irrelevant BS into the discussion to divert or deflect.

Guess who recognized that Parson could attack? NOT "pull some kind of exploit", just attack. Tram did, that's who. You can argue that Tram's analysis of what Parson could do was flawed, but that just points back at the Idiot Ball. Parson could attempt to assassinate the foolish CWL who hops his Roo right under circling enemy yellows. Parson could destroy the atrium and kill plenty of troops under the crap. Parson could bomb the tower. The fact that Parson could attack was well documented, all by Tram or Slately in discussion with Tram. So just to be sure you're clear on this: We're speaking from Tram's point of view. Not Parson's, not the readers. This is an analysis of Tram's actions and conclusions, using only knowledge that Tram had available to him at the time.

The question then becomes, why didn't Parson attack? And not from Parson's POV. That does not matter, Tram can't know Parson's mind. But what Tram should be able to do is to observe Parson's restraint and come to a logical conclusion as to why he hadn't yet attacked. And, not knowing about any kind of exploit, the only answer that makes any sense at all is that Parson wants to talk just as much as Tram does. And then this conclusion is reinforced: Tram gives some orders which lead up to a parley. The response from Parson? Complete adherence to those orders. Why? Seems like Parson also wants to talk. And then the discussion, but oh, crap, Tram sticks his foot in it and convinces Parson that an attack is inevitable, and so Parson does what he can, while he can. Follow along now, we're still completely speaking from Tram's point of view, no exploits need apply and no 4th wall breakage is necessary.

More than that, Parson's initiation of this attack points to Parson's recognition, still from Tram's POV, that Parson had nothing left to hope for from the parley and had decided to do "what he could, while he could." This is in quotes because, still in Tram's POV here, this was Tram's conclusion as to why Parson was doing what he was doing.

Considering that Tram's hope was to form a deal, then Tram had a clear motive in preventing Parson from arriving at this natural conclusion, and a rather simple means of trying to head that off. A simple means which can be boiled down to "Don't convince Parson that you're only planning on offering insult leading to an attack." And how to go about accomplishing this? Well, not opening a monitored discussion with insults seems like a damn fine place to start convincing Parson that perhaps parley isn't worthless with royals after all.

And for the manyth time, success was not either guaranteed nor even necessary, all that was required to avoid the Idiot Ball was for Tram to draw the logical conclusion that convincing Parson that he intended to operate differently than Parson had every right to expect was what Tram needed to focus on. Not insulting his brother, not trying to turn him, not seeing if he could gain so-called "valuable intelligence" from Ossomer. No, he needed to have a single goal, and then take smart and diplomatic steps to try to achieve that goal. Anything else was Idiocy.

Gee, thanks for keeping the discussion civil, oberon, by calling us all idiots.

No, not everyone. But gee, thanks for reading a post which contains the words

This is, of course, entirely from the POV of Tram and his knowledge of the situation. No 4th wall breakage needed.

and then immediately launching into a "No whay! Tram couldn't have known Parson could pull exploits." That's all you've got, but without dragging the exploits into the discussion you have no point at all, and so off you go. Congratulations.

[ryanroyce]

1. GK didn't attack Tram because it didn't know that Tramennis was the new CWL.
2. GK didn't attack Tram because it didn't think to attack Tram with yellows until it was too late.
3. GK didn't attack Tram because it want to waste its only chance of having ANY units survive.
4. GK didn't attack Tram because it was planning to conquer Spacerock off-turn.

The reasonable one is 3. Of course Tram is going to be the new chief warlord. Its Jetstone and they appoint royals. For crying out loud Tram assumes that the newly popped royal with 0 combat experience will be placed as chief warlord against a terribly powerful foe when Jetstone is in dire straits. And two is absurd because that assumes that GK is completely brain dead; they have multiple competent warlords, and indeed Tram saw their tactical knowledge when his brother was nabbed. Four is unreasonable; conquering Jetstone off-turn is unreasonable for various reason...
And I would like to point out this implies a false dichotomy. 3 implies that GK would happy with say... only the dwagons. They might believe that they can get Wanda out by talking.
The answer could have been 5. GK didn't attack because it didn't want to waste its only chance to talk Wanda out of it.

Oh, I'm not particularly interested in speculating on exactly how Tramennis rationalized GK not attacking him as he returned to the Tower. His rationalization was wrong, whatever it was. I was merely trying to drive home the point that #4 was not the most reasonable conclusion for Tram to make.

It isn't a straw man. I have been reading your posts over the course of several Reactions threads. You insist that Tramennis, a rusty warlord at best, should have come to a better tactical conclusion than far more experienced warlords like Jillian or Duncan. That is absurd.

The argument is that Tram should have anticipated that following the standard royal parley script would lead to attack, and that Tram is acting weirdly when he accepts everything Charlie says at face value except for "don't talk to Parson". Or at least that is what I gathered from Oberon's posts. Anticipating the attack is simply trying to get into the other side's head; seeing things from their side, and analyzing what they would see. All these are the job of a diplomat. Accepting some things but not others is a little weird "everything Charlie says is true, but this"; it fits with his character, he hopes to meet this wonderful person and so believes that he exists even if he has no reason to trust Charlie.

That assertion presumes that Tramennis should have somehow noticed that GK was not completely Doomed. Sure, they could cwap on the Atrium, and it was a genuine oversight on Tram's part to not move his troops to certain safety, but in the end Jetstone would still have GK by the short and curlies. IMO, Tramennis was trying a reverse bait-and-switch or sorts; start off with the typical Royal script to make GK feel that their situation was hopeless (and to establish the more-dreadful alternative), then switch to offer hope in the form of a genuine surrender parley. Sure, WE knew that the Story would never have allowed Wanda to be executed or even captured, but Tram didn't. He thought he had all the time he needed to parley as he liked, but he was Wrong. Counting your chickens before they've hatched (it occurs to me that Erfworld does not have this phrase, on account of the lack of chickens or, even, hatching. But I digress...) is a mistake in any world, even a turn-based one, and it was a serious mistake on Tram's part that will cost him his Capital and probably his life, too. This does not mean he was carrying the Idiot Ball, however.

EDIT: oh, and one other thing. Tramennis doesn't necessarily believe anything that Charlie has told him. Tram concluded on his own that Charlie was scared of Parson for some reason, be it for the reason Charlie cited or not, and wanted to find out more about the warlord who could scare Charlie into giving away free information.

OK, I'll keep this simple. Let's assume a scenario where the physics of Erfworld permitted neither the Banana Exploit nor the Harvest Exploit. What meaningful gain would Parson achieve by cwapping all over the Atrium? Keep in mind that Jetstone's loss does not equal Parson's gain.

No Jetstone's loss pretty much completely means GK's gain. They are at war. Jetstone has no significant allies, Haggar is a backstabber, Jillian abandoned them, and blue Translovito needs food badly. If every less unit Jetstone has is one less GK needs to kill.

And that saves Wanda's pretty little butt how, exactly? How does it save Jack? Or the flight of dwagons? GK could have killed every last unit inside the Atrium and they still wouldn't have gained a bloody thing, on account that the damage inflicted would have been recouped in the form of schmuckers during the following parley. Wanda, the Arkenpliers, Jack and the dwagons would still be at Jetstone's mercy.

Irrelevant. My point is that even we, who have the most complete intel on Parson, did not see the Banana Exploit or the Harvest Exploit coming. We had months to think it over, too, as opposed to a few hours at most. Why should Tramennis, who had even less intel than us, have seen these Exploits coming?

IOW, Spacerock is in danger solely because of these Exploits that none of us saw coming.

No we saw it coming as soon as we learned one could fall I'm pretty sure. In fact I'm pretty sure its what nearly everyone concluded as soon as we say the title raining men. Obviously we didn't know that Parson could stick heavies on the dwagon until we learned he could promote hobgobs, or harvest dwagons until we learned about harvesting. But as soon as we learned of them they got added in.

No, we figured that a fall would be incorporated somehow (like you say, the title was a big hint), but the exact method for accomplishing that was never (to my knowledge) suggested. We knew that heavies caused fliers to Slow Fall. We knew that it was possible for Parson to simply declare promotions for immediate effect when he promoted himself to Field Unit. We had the info we needed to make that specific logical leap, but none of us did over the course of months (again, to my knowledge).

Again, I repeat that everyone who didn't know Parson's plan believed that GK was Doomed and Helpless. Without the Banana Exploit or the Harvest Exploit, they would have been. Why should Tram have come to a different conclusion?

Sure no one thought GK was anything but doomed. But pretty much everyone concluded that they could attack and do some damage. And of course since the sides are at war GK would gain from Jetstone's loss. And after GK attacked Jetstone would lose bargaining power and lose units. The side wouldn't fall from it, and the dwagons wouldn't be saved, but Jetstone would sustain damage it can ill afford to lose. We aren't saying Tram should have worried about Jetstone's defeat. We are saying he should have realized that GK would attack and it would have cost Jetstone units and bargaining power.

As I said above, keeping the infantry in the Atrium under the yellows was a genuine oversight on Tram's part, but it wasn't his fatal mistake. Like Tram said in his initial response to the Poo Plan, JS would just "send GK the bill" for the slaughtered units and re-pop them later. The parley would continue and, trusting in his vaunted diplomatic prowess, Tram would secure a non-aggression pact that would do more to save their Side than that one collection of infantry.

[nth]

No. You don't get extra move until the next turn starts. Switching sides only allows you to change turn order.
Example: Charlie's Archons sided with Jetstone after they had ended turn. They could then assist Jetstone but could not move. They would get their move back when Jetstone's next turn started.

I believe the rule of thumb is that you only get so much move per day. Once you have used that up or ended turn (reducing move to zero) then you don't get any more until the next day and the start of your turn. I am sure there are exceptions using turnamancy but for the most part I believe the above to be true.

That's my point, exactly. It's not actually clear whether ending turn reduces move to zero for all units on a side, or whether the units are simply unable to use any remaining move, because it's no longer their turn. This is exactly the sort of loophole that erfworld natives seem not to have tested.

If it's the latter, Wanda might actually have remaining move that she couldn't use.

Or, possibly, this has been made explicitly clear in the text and I've forgotten because it's been so long.

[Smoker]

I do believe that when your turn ends, your move drops to zero. Its in the comic somewhere.. cant recall just where though..

[vrellum]

I don't understand how the raised army can go from the court yard to the dungeon. I think this was raised by other posters as well. Those are two different zones and you need movement to go between them. So it seems one of the following is the case:

The dungeon is in the same zone as the court yard? I don't think that is true.

You can move between zones when it is not your turn. I doubt that is true, otherwise it wouldn't have taken Parson's trick to get the dragons out of enemy airspace and into the court yard.

So since they needed a nifty trick to get from the airspace to the court yard, how will they make it to the dungeon?

[Sylvan]

I don't understand how the raised army can go from the court yard to the dungeon. I think this was raised by other posters as well. Those are two different zones and you need movement to go between them. So it seems one of the following is the case:

The dungeon is in the same zone as the court yard? I don't think that is true.

You can move between zones when it is not your turn. I doubt that is true, otherwise it wouldn't have taken Parson's trick to get the dragons out of enemy airspace and into the court yard.

So since they needed a nifty trick to get from the airspace to the court yard, how will they make it to the dungeon?

Okay, so the garrison is all one thing. It does have three parts, but the garrison is the garrison. If you are in the garrison, you don't need move to get to other parts of the garrison. If you own a city, I believe this also happens to be true for the airspace, tunnels, and outer walls of that city. You need to be able to move freely between parts of the garrison because the enemy might be moving from your airspace to your outer walls or your tunnels in order to get in where you are weakest.

Semi relevant text update.

So, the answer to your question is the dungeon is in the same zone as the courtyard, that zone being the garrison. The tower is also in that zone.

I do believe that when your turn ends, your move drops to zero. Its in the comic somewhere.. cant recall just where though..

This may be what you are remembering.

[Sylvan]

Ryanroyce, I like your style. Just sayin'.

This update has me wondering how awesome dwagons are. I think they are rather significantly cool. I forgot to post it at the time, but I remember wanting to throw out an argument for Parson actually being able to do massive damage to the city of Spacerock with just the yellows.

This discussion inspired by Wanda's red protecting her from "heavy volleys". (I hope Archer and Fud find some similar cover, get lucky, or Sylvia's bonus is just enough)

So, here are a few things we know about dwagons.

Recently, we found out that one can take about ten arrows, presumably with leadership and maybe tower bonuses, and a fall, and it'll still take some infantry to kill it after that (but probably not a lot of infantry, and probably mostly low level and the stack may have been unled). Also, Fud's version of "help".

Fudging some numbers here, but I think I have a reasonable baseline. From this, and other portions of book one, we know that about 19 dwagons destroyed 40% of the siege forces that an army of around 10,000 brought with them to assault one of the toughest known defensive positions in the world. Oh, and apparently the Warlord who brought them all usually prefers siege heavy infantry assaults, so we can assume they had a fair amount of Siege. They did this all in a turn with no losses, but a lot of wounds.

A dwagon is somewhat below a level nine warlord, maybe. Jillian routinely fights from the air (terrain does give a bonus, a landlocked warlord might have a harder time) and has a huge freakin' sword, so she can one-shot one. But if it isn't a solo fight, I imagine stack bonuses catch up pretty quickly.

Conversely, a fully spelled up tower can take out about 10 dwagons instantly. Then again, we also know that tower defenses are pretty beefy. They also took out pretty much the airforce of the RCC, and would've murdered Caesar in that other text update, had he not gone straight to the garrison via the outer walls. Also, presumably the tower that took out these dwagons was in a level 5 city.

Yellows are a weaker dragon type, but just one partial hit from a yellow can seriously cripple a warlord who is probably mid to high level. Also, they can melt buildings in about thirty second to a minute and a half. Specifically, around 10 yellows (count em yourself if you want more accuracy than that) can melt through the Garrison walls in a level five city that has an unusually well constructed garrison.

Finally, he may have just been boasting when he said "no force of fliers could hope to survive the turn", but around 30-50 dwagons (with decryption, stack bonuses, and warlords) might have been able to run 600 archers out of arrows, a tower out of defenses, and four casters out of juice/personal scroll stashes.

Personally, I'm thinking that Parson won't actually try to take the city this turn. He may, but a bunch of dwagons holed up in Spacerock's multi-level garrison, plugging doors and melting walls, and who knows what else, will seriously screw up Jetstone at this point. As long as he is in the Garrison, JS cannot leave it without losing the city. So, they either risk losing troops to decryption or losing the city.

Stepping back to before the banana 'sploit, I had this niggling thought that Parson could have done a lot of damage to Jetstone by redeploying the dwagons to different parts of the city, with orders to screen yellows and specifically aiming for archery capable stacks. Tramennis does, after all, mention that they would have to redeploy archers to whatever portion of the city corresponded to where the dwagons wanted to fly.....probably to give the archers the best chance to hit before they, you know, run out of arrows.

Now, they might run out of crap to drop before they could actually kill everything/turn Spacerock into a level 1 city.... which would make sense if archers ran out of arrows. But if they could survive for long enough to go around buzzing the city indefinitely, it would be troublesome for a side that is already facing financial difficulties.

I think Tramennis was expecting something more like this from a "tactical genius" stuck with zero move, hence the troops in the courtyard/all dwagons assembled together, where the tower/archers can specifically target the yellows (or anyone not screened).

[joosy]

I don't understand how the raised army can go from the court yard to the dungeon. I think this was raised by other posters as well. Those are two different zones and you need movement to go between them. So it seems one of the following is the case:

The dungeon is in the same zone as the court yard? I don't think that is true.

You can move between zones when it is not your turn. I doubt that is true, otherwise it wouldn't have taken Parson's trick to get the dragons out of enemy airspace and into the court yard.

So since they needed a nifty trick to get from the airspace to the court yard, how will they make it to the dungeon?

Please read this text update from Book 1.

http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F116a.jpg

The first paragraph explains how the garrison works.

The garrison is one zone with three parts. Each part can only be attacked from a specific area; Dungeon must be attacked from tunnels, tower from airspace, courtyard from outerwalls. Once enemies have control of one part of the garrison then they can attack any other part. Since the garrison is considered one zone, it requires no move to go from one zone to another even if you don't control the city, just that you control one of the garrison parts.

[John Thacker]

In the end though, it's just not the case; the rules do in fact appear (to me) to change in bursts, there's not the same organic progression as there's in, for example, scientific models of the real world*.

(EDIT: *: which is a totally different discussion, for what I said is a bit controversial, but hey.)

Yeah, Thomas Kuhn says hey.

[BLANDCorporatio]

In the end though, it's just not the case; the rules do in fact appear (to me) to change in bursts, there's not the same organic progression as there's in, for example, scientific models of the real world*.

(EDIT: *: which is a totally different discussion, for what I said is a bit controversial, but hey.)

Yeah, Thomas Kuhn says hey.

Excellent! I was kinda expecting that. Well, no; I was expecting a Michio Kaku inspired rebuttal. Good to see that the popsci of today didn't invade everything and everyone.

Anyway, I see your Kuhn and raise you the classical limit. Basically, the way science moved forward was by always asking how new ideas were supposed to mesh with the old. The older theories were pretty good for the experimental data available, after all.

The end result is not, as popular press would have one believe, a constant rewriting of textbooks. New ideas appear as extensions of old and there's always, inbuilt from the start, the notion that you can get back to the simple models once you impose known restrictions (like velocities, masses, sizes etc).

Perhaps everyon is just playing racquetball with idiot ball. Or maybe jai alai. Or quidditch.

I have it now. Seriously, Xin, if you're reading this, it's as good as a request if ever you find a time for sketches on demand again.

So it would be Wanda and Sylvia vs. Jillian and Vanna, at the beach, playing Idiot Volleyball. Maggie can referee, because I love Maggie.

[zilfallon]

I'd have agreed with you, IF "holding the idiot ball" was equal to "being an idiot"

Oh come on, zilfallon. If you accuse a debate opponent of holding the idiot ball, you are effectively accusing them of being an idiot. That insult put me over the edge on the foe list issue. Please don't defend bad behavior like that.

Actually, if I understand the trope correctly, someone has to be of at least fair intelligence to even be eligible to hold the idiot ball.

At least someone else who sees the difference between being an idiot and holding the idiot ball.

basically, people who are idiots themselves can't hold the idiot ball, because...they have merged with the ball and became the idiot ball itself? (okay, that was a retarded example, but anyway...)

[Ansan Gotti]

At least someone else who sees the difference between being an idiot and holding the idiot ball.

basically, people who are idiots themselves can't hold the idiot ball, because...they have merged with the ball and became the idiot ball itself? (okay, that was a retarded example, but anyway...)

Look, I'm not going to split hairs with you. It was a rude comment and completely uncalled for. If you want to defend it, that is to your own disgrace.

[effataigus]

I don't understand how the raised army can go from the court yard to the dungeon. I think this was raised by other posters as well. Those are two different zones and you need movement to go between them. So it seems one of the following is the case:

The dungeon is in the same zone as the court yard? I don't think that is true.

You can move between zones when it is not your turn. I doubt that is true, otherwise it wouldn't have taken Parson's trick to get the dragons out of enemy airspace and into the court yard.

So since they needed a nifty trick to get from the airspace to the court yard, how will they make it to the dungeon?

This question comes up a lot... so I made a picture that might just confuse things more than it helps. Besides being a little ugly, is there anything inherently wrong with this? My greatest misgiving with the picture is that we don't know how tall the Courtyard Subzone portion of the Garrison Zone is for most cities (though I've convinced myself that it is at the roof of the atrium in JS to >80% certainty).

Color changes and hex boundaries cost move to cross.

[elrolfe]

This question comes up a lot... so I made a picture that might just confuse things more than it helps. Besides being a little ugly, is there anything inherently wrong with this? My greatest misgiving with the picture is that we don't know how tall the Courtyard Subzone portion of the Garrison Zone is for most cities (though I've convinced myself that it is at the roof of the atrium in JS to >80% certainty).

I think the City Walls are also part of the Garrison zone. Parson was able to go onto the city walls when he was a Garrison unit with no move. *EDIT* Nevermind. I just looked again at the pages you referenced, and the walls are separate from the Garrison for defensive purposes. They're all part of the city, which is why Parson could move around to all of them. */EDIT*

Other than that, fine picture!