Warcraft III

[Mr_Pleasington]

Yes, Prometheus, that was a sad night when neither of us could set up an AT.  Glad to hear you have the problem fixed.  

I'll actually be on Bnet quite a bit this weekend since most the folks I know have left town for MLK weekend, giving me very little to do.

Hope to see you all on there.

[Prometheus]

When do we want to set up another gaming time? It's fun to meet people online by happenchance, but the most fun when we have lots of people there.

[Mr_Pleasington]

I went over the replay of that last game before I went to bed and if these guys are any indication, I'm teching entirely too fast for that type of game.  Perhaps I'm rushing to knights too quickly and should spend some time getting a goodly number of footies.

I guess only time will tell.

Great fun, even despite losing

[Prometheus]

I'm not sure that teching speed was your problem. I think it might have been just a little too fast, but one of the other big problems was the major loss of footmen you suffered fighting the spiders earlier. I'm not sure why that battle turned out quite so poorly for you...I've taken on those spider clusters before and not lost nearly so many men. Maybe I had a few more footmen before I tried taking them on, or perhaps they had an offensive upgrade.

The one thing I noticed about all of us (myself included that game, I usually do a better job of it.) was that we didn't have enough troop producers. By the time the big battle started, we had a total of five active troop producers among the three teams, and that isn't nearly enough for online play. The only races I've found that should stick with just one of their initial troop producers is the undead and the orcs, unless they intend to use those buildings throughout the game. Ancients of War and Barracks both produce good enough troops that a double count of them early on is very justifiable even if you plan to go on to something else. Teching straight to X unit is another matter, but that's a gamble that the team can decide to take together.

I'm not sure why, but we were also missing Fell for the major conflict. He came in, but only after my army was completely gone, and I think Pleasington had about one knight left. One thing I've found in base defenses is that it's often best to let the enemy chew on the base just a little bit while you and your allies get coordinated for their jump back to the base that's being attacked. Under the firepower of three or even four enemy battle groups, one or two friendly armies are almost never enough to turn the tide. We didn't do that and we paid for it.

I also made the mistake of trying to use night elves on the front line of the battle. I should have been shooting over the heads of Pleasington's forces. Huntresses, incidentally, can throw their moon glaives over the heads of footmen and ghouls...maybe knights and grunts too, and should usually be behind them in battle to focus the total team firepower.

One thing we might want to try out is having all members of our teams tech striaght to high level units, gambling that the enemy won't attack early, and use our heros in one big pack to creep together. Six heros is a formidable creeping force, particularly if they have spirit wolves and/or water elementals available.

[Mr_Pleasington]

Those spiders really did chew me up and I'm not sure why either.  There was one big surprise to me while watching the replay though...there actually are little creeps on that map.  I thought it was only tougher ones so I went for hte spiders.  I had no idea there were merfolk scattered everywhere.  

The only thing about going straight tech is that it does leave us really vulnerable in early game which is where we're getting hit anyway.

I agree on troop producers though.  I was building my second barracks when I got nailed.  Definitely some things to think about.

[Prometheus]

Creep location is one of the big advantages of replays. Some maps have weak creeps, some don't, and it can make a big difference in play style. Crucible, for example, has a tough group of creeps nearby, and also a set of golems. The trick there is that dreadlords can't use any of their initial abilities on the magic immune golems, making them a worse choice for that map. A Death Knight or Lich work better there if they fit with your play style at all.

The weak creeps on that swamp map we played on are one of my favorite things about it, as I can go beat on them and level my hero just a tad while I wait for more troops to come online, as well as boost my gold economy a little. Sometimes I even try to steal a weak group of creeps away from my opponents.

The problem of whether or not to tech is a tough one. It's impossible to tell, in my experience, whether the other team will creep/tech themselves, and whether you have time to do it. Perhaps a better idea would be to have all members of the group agree to a rough teching speed, so that when our armies hit an effective level, they all do it together, and no one is left in the dust. Although it isn't my sort to strategy, we could also practice hero rushing. One big benefit a skilled group of hero rushers does get is that they usually can build their bases in peace for a while their opponents recover. As long as we don't resort to that stupid Archmage/Blizzard trick, I'm fine with it.

[Prometheus]

I just tried that battle Pleasington had vs the spiders in our game out a couple times, and using all the creep hunting tricks I knew, I couldn't get it to come out significantly better, and sometimes it came out worse.

This brings up another point, however. Watching the game on a creeping level rather than a building order level, I noticed another big difference between us and our opponents. They creeped together while we creeped alone. This allowed them to maintain a large firepower advantage over the creeps, and they suffered hardly any losses, while ours were significant. They were also able to kill bigger creeps and have better heroes. That's another area we need to improve in. Looking at everything, though, we aren't that far off. There's a few things we need to brush up on teamwork-wise, but if a few things had happened differently (those things would have made a large difference) we could've taken them.

[Mr_Pleasington]

Again, I agree completely.  I've had a streak of wins in 3v3 RT in the last week or so and in virutally all of them we combined forces to creep.  The only disadvantage is that each hero gets less XP, but that's offset by the amount of creeps they can take down.  

We actually did that once last night, in the first game, when Prometheus remembered that the Shamans in the middle had good treasure.

[Fellfrosch]

You can't comprehend how much this conversation is reinforcing my dislike of Arranged Team games.

[Fellfrosch]

The inevitable has arrived: http://www.blizzard.com/war3x/

No new race, but some incredibly cool-looking new units and intriguing ideas (like player-built shops and hirable neutral heroes). Yay!

[Prometheus]

Yeah, that does look cool. The Blood Mage is giving a whole new dimension of darkness to the Human side...kinda creepy. It'll be interesting to see how he fits into the story.

I don't get, however, how the discussion above led you to dislike AT games more. Random team games have the same considerations...you just don't have any way to prepare ahead of time for everything. The only thing I can think of is that you dislike either ladder team games or having teammates in general. I could be reading it wrong, though.

[Prometheus]

After thinking about it for a bit and then reading Gamespy's article on the new expansion here: http://www.gamespy.com/interviews/january03/war3tft/ I know what is on my wishlist, and also that I already have some of it.

One of the strategies that has become epidemic in Warcraft ladder games is caster-only armies. Whether it be sorceresses and priests, shamans and witch doctors, or necromancers, pure forms of these units have ruled the board for months now. The only solid counter to those armies I can think of right away is the spell immune dryads, which is why you see so many all-dryad armies. While part of me wants to gripe about not liking spellcaster-only armies being viable, let alone extremely powerful, I'm going to take a more moderate approach and just say that my wish list was that there were more ways to counter spellcasting armies, which I expect would lower their incidence and push the average army toward a more combined-arms approach. (which I think would be a very welcome change)

I found out in the Gamespy article that I have at least partially gotten my wish. The humans have an announced spell-immune unit now...the blood elf spell breaker. Normally you won't see these guys in large numbers, but when set against spellcaster-only armies, they will likely clean up. Hopefully the orcs and undead will get at least one spell immune unit as well. It'll be so much fun if I ever get to mob a sorceress-only army with spell breakers.

[Fellfrosch]

I never play non-AT ladder games, so I didn't think to mention them, but your deduction is correct--I don't like ladder games in general. Warcraft, to me, is not about knowing the map ahead of time and getting the creeps in the right order.

As for AT games specifically, I have yet to play one that wasn't a rout--I either annihilate someone or I get annihilated. There's no close calls, and none of the long battles I liked so much in starcraft. Maybe my issue is with the game itself at some level, but I'm going to take it out on AT games for now.

[Prometheus]

Overall, you're right about the length of Warcraft III games. Blizzard intended for them to be of roughly half an hour in length, and not many of them fall very far outside of that. If you play for a while (and not necessarily as long as I have) you will see some long games, and a large number of close calls, but it is somewhat routish nowadays.

Map familiarity has long been an important part of RTS games. Starcraft had natural choke points and resource clusters that it was important to gain control of, ect. Creeps enhance that effect somewhat, as it also helps to know where creeps are and roughly what it takes to defeat them without significant casualties. Playing with partners in AT games can help to ease the pain of this somewhat if you start creeping with partners, but it is an unfortunate side effect of having creeps.

As far as ladder games in general go...there are just certain things you have to learn and apply to be competitive, but this is a facet of all online games I know of...even MUDs. I still hold, however, that our AT teams aren't terribly far off from being successful. We've got a couple tricks to learn, but the edge between success and failure in Warcraft is thin and sharp. All we have to do is cross it.

[Prometheus]

I'm not seeing anything new on Warcraft Extravaganzas, but it was moved to the top of the article list today...do we know what happened?