Goodfella, day 19

Razed another city and wondering where the Cyclops is.

ts

Blackheart day 20

Cyclops is back from his adventure...

Orc city is no more and a defender decided to join us.

The stalemate is getting fierce underground, his mountaineering ability is troublesome as the passes are blocked. We do have a plan.... but first things first.

Goodfella, day 20

Not much happened today, we killed 2 Lurkers.

Blackheart doesn't seem to distinguish Orcs from Goblins...

ts

Blackheart day 21

Orcs... goblins... we don't like either one... and it shows as we were not successful trapping or seducing the troops in the ruins. However the money was most helpful.

And our frogs continue to do all that we had hoped they would. Today one mighty frog captured Veskal's Summit. Silly Dwarves left it vacant and we walked right in. Too bad they sold all the structures in it. That's where they've been financing their war effort it seems. We do like the nice troops that joined us. We will put them to use, however their first day on the battle front wasn't impressive.

Things are INTENSE!

Goodfella, day 21

Yes, leaving the Draconian city undefended was silly, we didn't take into account that there might have been more Lurkers lurking around...

We managed to eliminate one of the enemy groups, including a hero, using an unconventional tactics (I sent some screenshots to Swolte showing how I did it).

Red has captured the Tigran town.

ts

Blackheart day 22

Wow! quite unbelievable... really... that is probably the most brilliant move I've seen

And it really sucks to be on the receiving end of it too. Here's what Pawel did.... (dang, I'm still upset... don't know whether to cry or give him a standing ovation)

My 3 mighty stacks are position in the underground so he can only attack with one stack. He's got 3 strong stacks nearby doing about the same thing. So here comes Pawel, sends a lone butcher out to get me... and low and behold... my stupid hero seduces the nasty troop. Well... now my 8 stack with hero has a butcher next to it.... and guess what those three mighty stacks of Pawels do now... that's right... they thump on me, attacking the butcher (and bringing one hero stack into the battle). Let's see... 24 vs 9.... Killing my hero, a stegadon, a healer and bunch of cannon fodder. Worst part of it.... he traps the stupid butcher and takes him back

Like I said... most impressive (and really sucks for me, and really glad I didn't have the rest of my strong troops in that stack).

So.... we battle on, positioning our troops once again, trying to find a way past the blockade. Red still is above ground causing mischief but he lost all his support troops taking the tigran town (which we took back today). Red is still bothersome.

Wow... what a move.... I bet if I tried it I'd fail miserably... but I may just have to try it and see sometime.... now that he has my seduce item.

he traps the stupid butcher and takes him back

HAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
ROFL!!
thatīs the best part of this unbelievable story!!
indeed one of the most clever moves Iīve seen so far - not without luck of course but none-the-less brilliant!!

Guess thatīs a new invention which might influence many a pbemīs from now on!!

great

Goodfella, day 22

We took back 2 towns. Not for long, I guess.

ts

Some details about my "special operation":

It was my idea, as far as I know no one has done it before. It was carefully planned - I recreated the situation in the editor and played some test battles, checking which units are likely to be seduced. The AI didn't want to seduce lvl1 units in most cases, but when I sent a Butcher, it was very likely to be seduced or trapped. Getting back the Butcher in the next battle was pure luck.

A note for those who are going to use this trick in their games: the seduced unit doesn't always appear in a place where you expect it, it's better to make a test battle first to check it. For example I was planning to make this move earlier, when Balckheart's units were in the Goblin city, but the test battles showed that the seduced unit appears in a place where it can't be attacked with only one stack defending.

[This message has been edited by PawelS (edited 10-27-2009 @ 10:42 AM).]

I had something similar in my Rocky Divide game, even if not so sofisticated. I attacked a stack of guards with Incarnate between them by two units, splitting the stack such way that the unit who moved into the fight got killed and the second one got possesed. Thus the Incarnate was separated from his gang and he was free to roam towards the closest flagged and not heavily guarded structure (my opponent's village, he-he). It seriously weakened the guards of the most attractive recruitment site in that map and made it much easier to deal with them.

There are Incarnates in one of the maps for the next rounds and I was going to try this trick again, but it does not seem that I will get anywhere farther than the current round What a pity.

[This message has been edited by Oleg123 (edited 10-27-2009 @ 11:00 AM).]

Blackheart day 23

We see a number of things today so let's start with some plans.... we had been given a quest from the war god to kill some infidels, we hoped we would be given some troops as a reward... but alas... all we got was a ring of free movement , luck is not with us today. So we try our luck again...

We see Red, wounded and sitting with a couple bats above ground (dang... just when we thought he was alone). So.... we decide to see how much mana goodfella has left and we attack, hoping to get lucky but no... we lose another hero and cavalier (and notice that after 5 rounds not a single attack spell was cast on us). The bats survived as did Red.... dang.... now the above ground is really in trouble.

Then we make the final move, positioning our 25 armies around the capital where Goodfella is sitting.... with his 23 armies while 6 dwarves hide in the mountains nearby. If we attack and lose all will be lost... if however we win... Goodfella will not have a second tower to go hide in. The game hinges on this battle.

We are not sure if Goodfella realized that our three charges from a distance could just make it to the capital, and another frog joined in too so we got an extra 4 cannon fodder troops to add to our already nearly full 3 mighty stacks. He only has 3 strong heroes in the capital, a bunch of apes, butchers, mole, beetle, entangler, darters, ticks, kobalds, etc etc etc.... but we have committed our resources and all our troops so we decide to attack.

Wow..... what a battle that was! Bloody troops everywhere as 48 went to battle.... and only 4 survived! Bags of treasures filled with items here and there....

And the winner is......

(good game Pawel, most enjoyable)

Thanks for the game, it was enjoyable for me too

Post-game analysis: There was one decisive factor that made you win this game: it was big, strong and one-eyed. It caused Dahl's group to lose the battle at the beginning of the game. It would be better for me to move Dahl's group to the underground immediately, but I decided to explore the surroundings first, I didn't expect you to attack so soon. When I saw your group, it was too late to escape, so I decided to attack. After that battle you gained an advantage that you kept through the entire game. I was using all tricks that I could think of, and even won a few major battles, but I couldn't break your advantage. And in the final battle the Cyclops played an important role too...

Yes, quite a game and that Cyclops sure was an important unit for me.

I've got a HUGE game analysis in preparation and when I have it prepare I think you'll see just how precarious things were. I tried to hide the fact how vulnerable I felt after Red broke through and caused mischief above ground. Yes, I pushed and pushed and pushed hard throughout the game to keep the pressure on you. Sometimes that bit me and I can't tell you how hard it was to decide to attack or fall back or what I was going to do. WOW... what a game!

Blackheart is Victorious in 23 days!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is TNS reporting live from the scene, where, quite suddenly, the game between Enginerd and PawelS ended in Enginerd's favour.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have Enginerd here on the microphone. Enginerd, congratulations on this hard fought victory and reaching the next round. This was a game worthy of a final! You have been tested quite thoroughly, so it seems. Do you feel more prepared for games to come? Also, was that final assault an act of desperation after your loss on the surface?

PawelS, we are baffled. It seemed you were just about to turn the tides with your brilliant move! Did you expect to lose the game this soon? And is the timing extra sour for you now that you just seemed to get a hold of the game?

Ladies and gentlemen, this seemed like a rich game in many ways. We'll definitely invite both players to the show to discuss the post-analysis in more depth! This was TNS reporting live from the scene!

[This message has been edited by Swolte (edited 10-27-2009 @ 08:54 PM).]

Wow! My favorite game to "watch". Congratulations to both of you!

Thanks,

Just a teaser but I took approx 60 or 70 screenshots during this game and included comments that I put in a word document. It's only about 70MB and right now I'm converting it into a powerpoint presentation that I can then record to video.... if all goes according to plan there will be an extensive show of all the fun action going on this game. Give me a few days.... lots to do to make it happen.

To answer Swolte's questions

Tested... absolutely. This was TOUGH! Pawel played great. I'm putting this game up there as my best SM 1v1 victory ever.

Better Prepared for next round.... dang... there's another round to prepare for... YIKES! (I'll be ready)

Desperation attack.... No, it was planned. Pawel did gain a victory with his brilliant move but I still had over 20 armies near his capital including the cyclops, 3 cavaliers, hydra, stegadon, ponies, djinn, Blackheart, Uberhero, and lots of other cannon fodder. He wouldn't be attacking that stack anytime soon unless he could get 32 armies and the terrain didn't allow that. I had him boxed in down there, he was tight on money and couldn't produce units (but he sure could summon them). My plan was a slow waiting game where I would work around and raze more mines, nodes, towns, etc. Troops and income were on my side. Above ground I had more than a dozen troops in the capital with more on the way, my hero and cavalier were in the tigran town and could watch Red from a distance. Pawel left an opening to attack so I took it. Explorer helped out as some troops just barely made it there. I only attacked Red above ground because I knew it was game over if I lost below ground. I felt confident in the battle but wanted to make sure so I attacked hoping that he would use up all his mana launching stones at me. Just being extra cautious. And as Pawel said... The gold medal enchanted cyclops was awesome!

Quoted from Swolte:

It seemed you were just about to turn the tides with your brilliant move! Did you expect to lose the game this soon?

I haven't analyzed if all the enemy units have enough movement points to get to my capital, but I expected an attack at any time. And I knew that they were very strong, that's why I didn't attack the remaining forces after using the "seduce trick". So with the extra units that were coming from the east, they were strong enough to attack my capital. Of course if they lost, the situation would be very good for me, especially after Red has succesfully defended against the enemy hero and Knight. But this was unlikely, the attacking army was very strong, as Enginerd described.

Quoted from Swolte:

And is the timing extra sour for you now that you just seemed to get a hold of the game?

No, I don't think I "got a hold". Enginerd had an advantage all the time, as I said earlier.


This tourney convinced me that 1vs1 games can be fun too, I'm looking forward to the next one (maybe I'll even make a map for it)

[This message has been edited by PawelS (edited 10-28-2009 @ 07:20 AM).]

Wheh.... project finished.... as it says in the TNS, I created a video of the turns played this game with LOTS of commentary. Sorry if you have to pause the video to read everything but it's certainly a lot of fun. Please go to Youtube and rate it and comment on it.



This won't be the last video but it was my very first video upload so I'm learning lots about how to do it. Please leave your comments here/youtube/my email about how it can be improved. I've already got a few things on my list....

Resolution and screen size
voice over instead of text comments (or more time to read or less text or...)
More pointers and additional markers to explain things
Actual FC combat instead of screenshots
Sound in the background (imagine listening to those great AoW songs)

Anyways, hope you enjoy it!

Great video and good strategy.

You should try xfire to record the video. You can edit it later using freeware tools and upload it to xfire itself.

Thx, I'll check it out.

Hmmmm... over 120 views on the video and so few comments at least folks are looking at it

Wow! unbelievable! great video, great work!
Iīm wondering how much time this must have taken.
Iīm not completely through yet but I just felt the need to moan a bit now that I see how the game worked for you...
I was always wondering when I read some of the posts in all the other games what I might have done wrong in this game where you and the others had all these armies/units from...
I think I can tell I had only CRAP everywhere as guards (either worthless junk or evil-minded/pure-good-minded and thus always on the verge to rebel and whenever I took a production resource (should have been at least 5 by now) I got only crap to build (walls or barracks... best thing was a tower guard so far...)
There is only one thing left I didnīt do so far which was my own fault but it seems, bad luck could not have hit me much harder in this game from certain aspects.
I guess, without the lucky happenstances that I could eradicate Olegīs generals so fast, I wouldnīt have had any chance.
This shows me (as mapmaker) that it might indeed be wise from balancing perspective to not place too many random guards/prisoners etc... this can be deadly.

And I learned one more thing from your video: I think, Iīm a very cautious player... too cautious!
When I see how many stacks you made from the very beginning that did all survive it shows me that I should try to take more risks...

The video setting was a fabulous idea and, most obviously, very hard work! Well done!

Like you said, Enginerd, a few enhancements would just make it absolutely perfect, the icing on the cake:

1) AoW music on the background would be super!
2) Voice over too, but I would keep text - perhaps there is a way to insert subtitles; the scrolls take a large area away.
3) FC is probably not worth the trouble, in my opinion.
4) Pointers would make the narrative more clear to understand, especially if combined with voice.

But the way it is at this point is already great!
Can you give us a rough estimate of the total amount of time this took you (from the raw .doc to the final product)?

I spent about 5 min each turn taking quick screenshots and then writing down a few lines in the .doc, it really wasn't a lot of extra time as I was being very cautious and meticulous about the turns anyways. Some of the turns with lots going on I probably spent about 10 min writing stuff down.

I then spent about an hour figuring out what I wanted it to look like in the powerpoint presentation. Once I got the layout the way I wanted with the scrolls/text then I had my template. That took an hour or so, then I made about 50 of those slides. It was then a relatively simple manner of copying the pix and text onto the new slides and then the painful process of getting all the timers to work out. This part went well enough and only took about 4-5 hours and I did most of it in one sitting.

Then I played with the video software and I'm a novice. Had to download some free stuff and I made about 6 or 8 full length videos, some with sound, some without, spent a lot of time just testing video stuff out, probably another 2-3 hours.

Total time, probably 10+ hrs or so of real work so not too bad really.

Thx for the comments, yeah, the scrolls do cover a lot of the area and subtitles might work out well instead. Pointers... that could work too. Yes, I gotta put some cool AoW sound in the next one. Great ideas.

Hi Enginerd,

I checked out this video and it is very cool. I was surprised just how nice it all looked. I have been playing this game for a long time, and seen my share of nice screens, but this just had a really nice look to it. As well as showing the strategy involved in the game, it also has this nice adventure feel to it that is difficult to describe. It's a great advertisement for the game!

Well done.

Kirky