Game #365 | B&I vs King Serpents

Excellent write up Hiliadan and Jean!

I liked the final gambit, in the end a bit too ambitous this time, but it took preparation, coordination, and courage. I have played alot of games where people just don't have a plan to win. They fall behind, further and further until they become irrelevant, ending squashed like a bug. Serpents may have lost, but they lost by giving themselves a chance to win and I for one admire that

The match results should be clickable on the homepage imo. This way your more likely to open the results and read the report. This game has an excellent report.

Thanks Jean and cbower for the report! Both very interesting! I just finished cbower's report and indeed, Arcane Catalyst for AD would have been the end of us. I also agree that if Jean would have moved towards us when he had the chance (when his lone Goblin Wolf rider moved towards us), it could have been very different. I also think you attacked (and surrendered) too early because it was not yet the end.

To start back at the beginning...
My build was Dwarf Dreadnought with Shadowborn Master and Destruction Adept, a pure bad guy!
I played a racial Dreadnought and never tried to build class units, especially not machines, as most people usually play Dread. Machines are too slow, both to research, to build and to move. UG, Dwarves move fast and that's a bid advantage compared to slower races like Evgendil's Elves. In order to harness this speed advantage and to get the most of Dread's Empire Upgrade, I focused on Boar Riders.
I focused on researching Empire Upgrade and getting as much as gold as possible to build many units. On turn 17, I hit +300 gold/turn. I was able to produce 2 Boars every turn at Helmdal, the pearl of the Dwarf's Empire (173 production/turn) and at my throne.
Unlike cbower, I ensured my domain was safe and built Watchtowers at all the UG entrance and positioned units there to ward off invaders. Evgendil sent a few Pinguins/Wyverns but I afraid them away. Unfortunately, I had not secured the entrance nearer to cbower's cities and Evgendil caught us off-guard around turn 23.
Helmdal had been given to me by cbower who had conquered it initially. We exchanged a few items and mana/gold. This choice of focusing empire building on me was very good as it allowed me to get a very strong production base and cbower did not much as his main stack was self-sustaining and even snow-balling.

During that initial phase, we spotted a Dragon Dwelling (surface, middle) and a Naga Dwelling (UG, Jean's side). We were not sure if Jean was UG or surface. I was pretty worried by the Dragon Dwelling and what would happen if Evgendil developed it. It was behind rapids that our troops could not cross easily and had no cave entrance nearby so it was very hard to take. We were discussing a raid by Supercharged Banshees to take it down when Evgendil struck us and we never had any opportunity to attack it afterward.

The fall of Helmdal and the first encounter at Fal-Fala
Almost at the same time, I took the Fairy Dwelling at the center of the map and encountered Jean's main army (turn 22) and Evgendil struck in our southern border (turn 23). I decided to move toward Jean's army, protected by a rock cavern, in order to force them in a 1.5 (1 stack + swimming unit in the flank) vs 2 which would have been very bloody and which I would probably have won.


One turn later, Evgendil took my jewel from me. I had one rapid-intervention stack not far away and I moved them back, at a junction, with the possibility to move toward Hemldal in 1 turn or to my throne in 1 turn too. Unfortunately, as cbower described, Evgendil had played smartly and I could not take back Hemldal without being crushed the subsequent turn. I thus stayed put and Hemldal was razed, causing rage and hatred in the Dwarf's ranks.



The Simple Plan and the skirmishes at Fal Fala
As Jean described, cbower and me then agreed on a simple plan: I would move North and he would move South, to take Jean on both fronts at the same time. cbower first wanted to go back to defend our homeland but we agreed we could probably defend it with our current units there and it would make more sense to put pressure on our enemies.
Around that time, cbower sent me very powerful items he had gotten from high-level sites, as we chose to create a "super-hero" and chose my Dwarf leader for that. The key abilities of the items were: +40% physical resistance (to stack with the +20% from Dreadnought), Life Stealing through a Vampire Spider Queen, Tireless. With these, I would be basically invulnerable or at least very hard to kill, especially against summoned animals. Unfortunately we were far and the items took 4 turns to arrive (and arrived in my accompanying Theo, which was pretty risky!). And the egg still had 4 turns to hatch.

I considered Fal-Fala, the Fey Dwelling, to be pretty strategic as it was at a crossroad between Jean's lands, my northern cities and, through a longer route, our homeland. I wanted to control it and build some feys so we had several skirmishes with my Champion Toad Fairy and animals sent by Jean. After several siege, Jean decided to send a tougher beast and I had to decide what to do against a Dire Bear. As my leader stack was already 2-3 turns away and moving toward target (Jean's outpost in the north), I considered the Fairy could not rejoin them and I had nothing to lose to try. I brought back 2 Spy Drones and bought the last remaining unit in the nearby Inn (Jean had bought all the other): a Civic Guard. I then tried my luck, hoping the Bear would go against the Drone and give me time to (more or less) one shot all the T1 units with the Fairy and then finish the Bear off. Unfortunately, the Bear went straight at my Fairy and I lost the combat. It was the last fight of Fal-Fala.



I consider the game was lost during that phase for King Serpents. Had they developed the Dragon Dwelling or even more simply, had Jean pushed East of Fal-Fala with his main stack or even with 2-3 strong units, he would have arrived to my northern, poorly defended, cities and plundered them. But he moved West instead and these cities were never worried.

The final phase and the final mistakes of the King Serpents
Having decided not to research machines, and knowing the mobility of AD, I had decided to research Shadowborn techs instead, in order to get the Angel in the long run. Given my poor research capacity (especially after losing Helmdal and later the city south of my throne), I was far from achieving this objective. But still, even the 1st spell of Shadowborn Adept would have been very useful to me: Embrace Darkness gives Life Stealing to all units in the enchanted city's domain and I had a lot of units in my throne!

Jean got a Chtonic Guardian from a site (as he described in his report) and showed it to me by killing my Spy Drones. However, I had no idea where his leader stack was (because of the Drones being killed and because Drones do not have Night Vision so see nothing anyway). I moved as planned with my main stack and I tried to get 8 cities to get Monoculture and send the 3 Firstborns I would get through the lava to get one city from Jean (by the way, I crashed one Drac Flyer I had bought for a lot of money at Fal-Fala's Inn very stupidly against a Sun Guard earlier near that city... I knew Pikeman would be good against Flyer but I underestimated how good, very stupid). But even though I had been very close to Monoculture for a lot time, the loss of Helmdal and a 2nd city had delayed me. I took a Goblin's independent Jean had not spotted and migrated it, and eventually reach Jean's, took his northern outpost and migrated it (1 turn) and I was suppose to get Monoculture at that time... but Jean took back the old Goblin's city!... So delayed again! And then at that point, I discovered that Jean's main army was just in front of me, waiting for me it seemed!

I discussed with cbower as I had an opportunity to get Monoculture that turn by getting my old vassal from the game's beginning in my Empire. Eventually I did just that and reached Monoculture, surprising Jean, killing his Chtonic Guardian sitting in the lava one hex from my main army (with the help of a Forge Priest who saved one Firstborn from death with Guardian Flame) and positioned myself to get a 2 vs 2 against Jean.
To do that, I had to finish a quest from my Dwelling with only 2 Boar Riders against 1 Banshee, 1 Bone Wyvern, 1 Dread Spider Baby and 1 Skewer. It was very very hard and I almost failed (I retreated once with 1 Boar dead and the Wyvern + Skewer remaining and then casting a Drone to attack again) but I made it! It may have played a role in my subsequent defeat at my throne because the 2 Boar Riders came from my throne and thus lacked during the defence of the throne.

You know the rest as it was well described by Jean.

I mentioned Embrace Darkness earlier... I finished researching it one turn after Evgendil's suicide attack on my throne. Too bad because had I gotten it one turn earlier, Evgendil would probably not have won that fight!


I also mentioned a Vampire Spider Queen's Egg. It was about to hatch 2 turns after Jean's attack. At that point, my leader would have been able to take many of his units alone I think (he only lacked Total Awareness to be a true stack killer).

The items and stats of my leader.



The score (no one showed it) is below. Actually Jean was 1st for a significant time. cbower raised up in the end through Research (site clearing + Whisper of the Fallens I guess). Evgendil stayed back because of his raid which hampered his progression. But we were all pretty close.



A few final screenshots of the UG and the surface and my leader slaying Jean himself and slaying Rikki the Filthy, the nasty hobbit who tried to defy the Dwarves!




Rikky the Filthy one-shot by Hiliadan the Impaler's own hands! That's a lesson for the Hobbits!!!


Jean the Unworthy killed by Hiliadan the Impaler, who rode the whole battlefield to face his enemy, and then decided he was not worth hitting properly, so splashed him with magic (the worst of the insult from a Dreadnought!)!!

GG 
Congrats to team B&I. Smart tactics, smart play, good victory!

First excellent write up Jean. From the start I moved west in the UG as described. Early on I was able to take a wizard tower at the city of Osx. Once I had that I knew what I wanted to do. I pushed mana, built only one city, and built arcane catlyst and summoned units at Osx, so they would be supercharged. Downside was I wasn't casting scouts, so we didn't catch E coming from the surface. The upside was it left me with reasonable defense force. When E hit I had just assembled about 15 units with 6 supercharged units. Which meant that I had a sizable enough threat to E, maybe not enough to win, but a threat nonetheless.       Since I was focused on summoning and I was able to clear early. I gave Helmdal to Hiliadan, and cleared some nice area between us for him to settle. With both of us clearing and setting up space, Hiliadan was able to be an economic force. Hiliadan did not stop pushing forward, he kept building economy, and quickly was turning out many boars. So When E hit Hilidian was able to divert some boars back home, without pulling his leader stack.      This I think is where we won. We were able to each build a sizable defense, maybe not enough to take on entirely a leader stack invasion but a credible resistance. One where walls and units would create bloody battles. So when E hit he spread as one does attacking our economy. Even though we were caught off guard we were able to retreat a few units. E took position outside helmdal to ensure the raze I would gather. It was a well positioned maneuver. He stayed off the city in a position to be able to counter. But what made it successfully is he bought out the cheap inn units, forcing us to have to commit an actual army to take it back, but with E in a position to counter we would lose any army we sent in. I lost another city because it was too far away from my troops, and had to be careful with my one defense force I had. I couldn't thin them out. However ensuring the raid on Helmdale allowed us to take back a city beneath Hiliadan's throne with a reanimator. At this point E doubles back towards I chase with my units and the rest unfolds as described above.  
 
The point I am trying to make here is that while E has enough to possible defeat either of our defensive armies he doesn't have enough to defeat both. Which means he can't control the zone, it's no longer and invasion it's a raid. So we are able to control our zone, while continuing to apply pressure forward. Jean Doubled back to defend but we were patient and continued to build our forces. Outnumbered 2 to 1 with very real threats. It is hard  to face down 2 leader stacks.    The other problem is Hiliadan's leader stack has summon and animal slayer +6 damage on Jean's t3's. Boars with medals and solid engineering and pistols are pretty strong. Hiliadan's leader itself was also very strong. My leader stack was good but I was far behind what a necro would normally be accustomed to. My ghouling was up and down, I went through a drought where I missed repeatedly, then I nailed like 4 t3 in a row. The no mind control ghouling makes a significant difference as well. Still by the end I think I had amassed a very decent invasion force for this game.   Serpents positives:     Have the surface ug split worked in their favor. E was able to have the surface to himself and avoid our detection as the bulk of our force was committed in ug. E spread and committed his units carefully in his attack. He gauged the landscape well, positioned his units well and safely razed cities. Similarly jean was cautious with his leader stack, he knew where we were and didn't throw his units away. As we advanced Jean was able to sneak behind and recapture the faeries. So he didn't bail entirely on his double back, so basically he kept Hiliadan honest as he moved forward. Forcing him to thin if he wanted to keep hold of his spoils.  
 
B&I positives:  
 
We built into a complementary strategy. We shared resources, we coordinated, and Hiliadan is a great communicator. We created significant advantages of both economy and units. Economy was Hiliadan’s domain, and pitched in with some clearing. Hiliadan twice was able to use solid UG positioning to give himself advantages in important fights. We are able to snipe back some cities stalling razes.  
  Corrections:   My units were not held together by being undead, as it turns out undead will dessert but you need to be really behind in gold. In this game I was not producing alot of units, and I was clearing alot. Most of my units came from ghouling and summons. So I was able to easily stockpile gold. The razes caused me to have negative gold and mana, but even at the end I I think 5+ turns before I had to worry about hitting 0, and the whole time I was being attacked i was building and summoning additional units. We were close to turning the corner, I was about to stabilize my economy for the most part. The successful ghouling did create more of a gold issue but it was serious yet. It actually takes awhile for it to become serious.    Final Thoughts:      My only real fear in this game was when E first hit. Jean Was at the center of the map. I was afraid instead of doubling back he  would collapses with E onto Osx. If this happens Osx is likely lost and The two stand a very good chance being able to reinforce with summons of completely overrunning our homelands. Which would cause us to have to commit to defense or attack. Abandoning our homelands is not a real good option for us. Hiliadan's strength is built upon his production and then there is the issue with losing Osx. Until that moment it didn't really occur to me how dangerous it can be to build an arcane catlyst against two AD's. Can you imagine a supercharged army of high level animal summons? Abandoning the zone had real consequences, a trade would have probably done us in since our homelands were better setup and we were still a ways away from them. So even though we would have been able to slip behind them and control their homelands.      I think this is a thing to think about with AD, it setups up fast with a strong attack, and it does so without having to have a strong base. Therefore it can be almost mindlessly aggressive, because trades seem end in their favor, and that puts all the pressure on your opponents. I think if you double up on AD, no half measures, go all in on the attack.   Now production based setups, I think you need to be more cautious. You need to scout better then we did, because your optimum strategy is more fluid and you need to react. In this sort of way you need to have both offense a defense, and be able to play both equally well.   

match rating.

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(Attention! Remove children from your monitors, the text is 18+)
Hello, guys.
First of all, I would like to thank you for the game. It was a great pleasure to play in team with such a cool guy as Evgendil and to fight such sophisticated opponents as Hiliadan and Cbower (or Cbower and Hiliadan - I'm not sure about the order as I don't know who is jedy and padawan here ). I'm looking forward to playing with you again soon. 
Secondly, I've made up my mind to share the report with other bf players cause I consider the game to be very interesting due to many maneuvers on strategic map, unexpected and unpredictable events and several final "grand battles".
So have fun reading it!

Chapter 1. Dark clouds over our heads. 

It's common knowledge that druid's level uped armies are powerful at the beginning of the game due to timing. That's why if you happen to find the bitch who cursed me and Evgendil in this game then don't hesitate to pm us. We are available at any time. Astrologists announced the month of boars. Not even a single penguin to take a gold chest on the water (it turned out that the guy who lost it due to the shipwreck wasn't very rich). It took me 5 attempts to summon a baby serpent here. That's why we both didn't manage to level up even one tier-4 serpent in this game (but maybe we are just bad at level uping, who knows).

Chapter 2. First meetings and planning the route.

While expanding and scouting I've made up my mind to visit a Naga dwelling hoping to get a good quest nearby. It was a good idea => I got 2 more baby serpent animals here and managed to stabilize my army a bit. Closer to the center of UG I found a Fey dwelling and some very good objects including one with a Grey Archangel in defence. And a crazy idea came up to me "Why not give a try here?". You see, I had a very good hero, a halfling Rogue guy with charm. This guy was known for having sex with more than 2000 halfling women (a local 'Pierre Woodman I believe). Well, I shall not continue this...you got the idea.
Screen # 1. As Evgendil was the only player on the surface he felt himself quite safe and was able to clean all the objects he needed while moving towards our opponents. We expected them to attack me in the undeground so Evgendil was to hit in the back unexpectadly. 


Screen # 2. My route to the center of the map where I met Hiliadan's army. 


Chapter 3. Mid game. 

Screen # 3. My idea was to block the bridges in order not to let him come to my domain and get more time (for producing shamans and researching gargantua). Grey Archangel helped a lot killing drons here. 
At this time Evgendil had already attacked Cbowers domain and started to raze cities...


So at this point our opponents' plan became very clear. Cbower was moving with his main forces towards me in the south part of the UG, slowly getting more and more units. Hiliadan was coming from north. If Cbower hadn't been Necromancer then all Evgendil's actions would have been very strong here making Cbower lose his towns and forcing his troops to rebel. But, unfortunately, undead never rebel. They have no brains at all. Retards I should say. So our plan became like this: Evgendil should take Hiliadan's throne city while I had to try to kill his main forces including the leader => destroying one of our opponents completely. But it never happened.

Chapter 4. The end.

It all started with the Grey Archangel. It was killed in a very funny way. There was nobody in the Hiliadan's army who could possibly stay on lava so my scouting and killing drons was quite logical. But Hil got the monoculture quest and the reward - 3 firstborn delivered by Airbus directly to his leader killing my Archangel nearby. "Thanks for choosing our airlines. We hope you liked the flight". 
I expected this Archangel to help me a lot in the final battle if honestly. 


Then when Evgendil took the throne city (almost losing his whole army), Hil forced me to attack 2 vs 2, not 3 vs 2 as I hoped. Well, we didn't have many illusions here. I hate UG sometimes xD


We just needed to win the battle or to kill the leader.


Unfortunately, we lost this battle and conceaded. It was our only chance to fight for the win as Cbower was doing very well in ghouling the enemies



If you, guys, can add something describing your strategy, moves, etc and show some screens it would be very cute!
And once again thanks for the game

I think we have different definitions of the word "massacre". Hiliadan has pick strong positioning, and this is not a battle decided simply by who has more t3's. I expect it to be far from a massacre. Yours is a fine plan, and fine play, but from where I am sitting, it looks like your downfall. I still believe in our overall position, perhaps I am wrong, certainly wouldn't be the first time, we shall see. No draw, if you want victory you will have to earn, and you still have work before you can claim that.

Hello, my dear opponents Hiliadan and Cbower. What a fight we have! After your firstborns killed my archangel (I can't imagine a more evil action on Earth if honestly) Evgendil had nothing left to do but let his forces, seeking vengeance, destroy the defenders of Hil's throne city. So much blood. I was sleeping at that moment but immediately woke up hearing screams and shouts. 
And now we are one step away from witnessing another massacre...My forces can attack Hil's main army this turn and, who knows, what happens there. If Hil loses the battle or his leader dies (and the chance is very high) then Cbower will lose a teammate in this game.
Do our brave soldiers need to die just because their leaders want to find out who is better? Do dwarves and tigrans need to lose fathers, brothers, sons just because we can not live in peace?
You know, in professional poker there are situations when both players, having made their big bets, see 4 of 5 opened cards and understand that the winning combination for both of them depends on the last, 5th card. And in this case they sometimes decide just to withdraw cause no one wants the result to be dependant just on one random moment...
I beg you to consider everything. Evgendil and me are ready to open our hearts to you, our units are almost willing to hug their opponents, to drink a glass of beer with them, to talk about nature, life, happy moments...We can leave all this and call it a draw...Just imagine! A first draw like this in the battlefield history! We, not others, are making this history now...
Just think about the draw, guys

You need a cable Cbower 

My wifi went out during my turn. Even though I rebooted it successfully then saved and exited, it still gave me  restart notice when I came back. Not sure why.

Sorry guys I had a strange "restart" on this turn. When I opened the turn appeared this message. No idea why it happened. 

Hi guys! Just want to inform that I`ll be able to make next turn no earlier than Sunday evening or Monday. Please, stop the timer, if I`m not back in time. Thanks in advance. 

Hello, Hiliadan! 
Sorry for some delays in making turns. I've had 2 difficult weeks because I participated in World Championship Qualifiers in Magic the Gathering and I had to travel to the place where it was held + a lot of testing with teammates and etc. Sorry once again, I should have informed you. I thought I would be able to make turns in time but it turned out I once even missed the timer. Thank you very much for turning it off!
Now I'm once again present and able to make my turns in time! 

What's up Jean? You were going to miss the deadline so I removed the turn timer. I'd like you to explain if you have changes IRL or something because you are not playing during the playtime you indicated and now you're missing the 24 hours turn timer. We can adapt but you need to communicate... and for the tournament, that would be nice if you put a true playtime in your profile, otherwise it will significantly slow down games, just like it does for ours because you rarely play before I go to sleep, unlike what your displayed playtime suggest you should.

Hi guys! Sorry I had a power cut at my house today (still no electricity right now) and thus I used my mobile phone as a wifi hotpost but as I'm running low on battery, I desactivated it while playing my turn. Then I forgot to reactivate it when sending the turn and the turn upload thus failed (no internet). Unfortunately, it triggered an Ironman notification...
Please see the screensot of the upload failed below. As you can see, battery is not plugged in and timestamp is just before the actual turn sent.

I'll be on business trip on 11-13 so I may need to put turn timer to 2 or 3 days.

Hiliadan thanks!  

Ok, I revert the turn!

Hi guys! I see you have set timer to 24 hours again. I assume that Jean de Metz may not know about it and think that he has a day left 

I'm taking the plane so I move the timer to 48 hours. Should be ok afterwards.

Hosted: B&I vs King Serpents
Password: battlefield

Yes, I`m ready.

Sorry, I confused 2 matches so made a mistake initially!

So... Jean and Evgendil, ready for our match? Settings as described in the news.

Jundland Banshee was replaced with Jean_de_Metz !

Lightform was replaced with Evgendil !

Tournament settings and mod

Jundland Banshee joined !!

Lightform joined !!

cbower joined !!