"Suddenly, I felt something, something odd. I could win this game! Maybe..."
- Anderkryst
|
| Pink vs. Teal on Lost Temple - triple fruity | | | Author: | | | IP: | h00045a0XXXX | | Date: | 07/30/02 07:07 | | Game Type: | Warcraft 3 | | Labels: | Warcraft 3(1) | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 3, Max: 9, Min: 8
Lifetime Rating for Blarg: 8.2105 |   |
 |
Starring...
| | |
|
| |
archmage |
footman |
gyrocopter |
knight |
mortar |
paladin | |
| |
peasant |
priest |
rifleman |
sorceress |
steam tank |
zeppelin | |
Another night, another BR. Again this was my "last" random public
game of the night, and in my opinion it was good - well played by both myself and my opponent. You've seen the principle characters above, now let's meet the players and the map!
BLARG (ijustcantwin-1) - Chosen teal human. I had been using this account to test out my human strategy but, like always, On reaching level 5 I hit a wall of 66% orc tower rushers and 33% people who are better than me, driving my percentage from the high 70s down to... well, it never stops.
DRACO (Frost-Draco) - Random pink human. I don't know anything about this guy because it was a random game and we didn't chat much. I'm only calling him a "guy" because "Draco" sounds kinda masculine. Sorry if it's otherwise. :) Anyway he was at level 6 and had about 50% wins when this game started.
LOST TEMPLE (Lost Temple) - Random (!) map. Similar to Starcraft but with no mineral expansions. Starting points and naturals are at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00, and 9:00. In the SW and NE corners are expansions reachable by land, guarded by creeps. In the NW and SE corners are expansions reachable only by goblin zeppelins (no race has native transportation) and both the inventor who sells zeppelins and the expansions themselves are guarded by very powerful monsters.
 My town hall sprung up at 12:00 and I sent one peasant off clockwise on recon while ordering the rest to start mining. My build order with humans is still somewhat haphazard and involves guys trading off between lumber and gold for the minimum necessary resources, but the buildings are usually in the same order: altar, barracks, two farms, lumber mill, and sometime after that the blacksmith. As the altar was nearing completion, my scout spotted a pink human barracks at the 3:00 main. Looks like Draco has a faster build. Oh well... Nobody followed the peasant and he returned unharmed to his mundane existence of chopping down trees. As I quietly pondered whether this wasn't the most fruity color matchup in the RTS world.
 
My disaster of an opening gave me five footmen and a paladin three and a half minutes into the game. Draco (who had actually built slower than me - better recon next time.) left the camp at this point with only an archmage and two footmen (!!) and merely attack-moved them into the creeps, letting reinforcements catch up. I left with a contingent of five footmen and concentrated their attacks. After killing a few gnolls, I left to clear out my natural expansion as I usually do around this time. Had I continued creeping, my footmen would have met up with Draco's numerically equal but damaged group in the temple. Sigh.
 
When the natural was clear, I upgraded the hall, set up a static defense at my main using walled-off towers, and built a blacksmith. The barracks was producing footmen this whole time and my paladin left with around a dozen of the little guys to see what was left of the temple. Draco, daring soul that he was, was attempting to kill the creeps at the fountain with only his archmage, plus one rifleman. The mage ran away with 100hp, the gnolls followed him, my troops passed right by the fountain, assuming it had been cleared, and then the creeps returned, all within a few seconds. Quite amusing that no one noticed anything.
 With the blacksmith completed, many/most human players would immediately begin constructing riflemen but I focused on defense and powering, hunting with my massed footmen and using the funds available to take the natural and build towers in front of it as well, blocked by a workshop. When the cash started flowing in, I began upgrading weapons and armor (starting with swords - I have no set pattern of upgrades when I haven't faced the enemy yet) and building arcane sanctums, planning on the ever reliable knight/rifle ground force + mixed spellcasters.
My paladin and his footmen cleared out both gold mines at 6:00 (their numbers thinned by bad healing micro - d'oh!!) and then headed north, running straight into Draco's all-rifle force and his archmage in front of the goblin inventor - our first confrontation. My footmen were at 1/1 and dealing a pathetic 14 damage (average) while his 1/1 riflemen were doing almost twice that. The footmen had superior armor, however, and managed to inflict a few casualties before blizzards and elementals forced my paladin to town portal. Draco lost three riflemen while I lost three footmen and a town portal scroll. Hmm...
 Even though I thought I had lost that mini-battle, I was encouraged and I started upgrading the castle and built my second rax, producing riflemen from both and now focusing my upgrades on them. I planned on producing knights once my castle upgrade completed and once humans reach knight tech, the footman is basically just an expensive peon so I sent my remaining footmen to check the map for expansions. Surprisingly, Draco hadn't touched his natural so I sent the paladin and his riflemen down there to do it for him. Then I went back to the inventor to see what was left. Unfortunately Draco had the same idea and we clashed in almost the exact same area.
His superior (1/1 to my 1/0) and more numerous rifle guard killed my paladin almost immediately, but I used the scroll of the beast just before he died AND my next gunpowder upgrade kicked in, combining to  give my own rifle guys average damage of 29 and enabling them to take out the archmage and a handful of enemy rifles before dying. Even though I lost my rifle guys, I was almost satisfied with the hero trade and-- wait, what's that, WTF OMG STFU SOB HE HAS THE FRIGGIN' ANKH!! BANE OF MY EXISTENCE!!1! The archmage sprang back to life and helped drive away my remaining forces, leaving me down one hero and one army of riflemen.
 
 Back at the base, I started building knights, rebuilding riflemen, and researching master training for both my spellcasters. Even though I had just been screwed again, it didn't escape my attention that Draco had no tech above riflemen, and my scouting footmen confirmed that he still hadn't touched his natural. Another was sent to recheck 6:00. Finding nothing there, I invested some surplus cash in expanding to the 6:00 natural. I often attack with a composite control group of rifles and knights and a smaller group of spellcasters, but my paladin left the base with only half of the first group to get a few creep kills in at the other goblin inventor and then explore further south. The gold mine in my main exploded right on schedule and the displaced peasants were directed southwards, only to be mowed down by waves of buckshot.
Draco was on the move again with his now standard control group of riflemen. He had checked the inventor's shop right after I left and killed the peasants on his way back. Angry about this (and wanting to distract him from my main and the 6:00) I attacked. Despite his lack of knights, Draco did have one of the same ideas I did - priests. Two of them autocasted inner fire on everything in sight, giving them that hellish armor bonus. Fortunately for me, the paladin had level 3 devotion aura, which was nearly as effective, enabling the entire group to focus fire on the hero and kill him before taking casualties. Unfortunately, Draco did the same thing and my paladin fell... or so he thought. :) My hero was reincarnated by a second ankh dropped in front of the inventor, and drove the remaining pink forces away with the help of newly trained spellcasters.
 
 I probably should have gone offensive at this point, or at least tried to harass, but like the fool that I am, I played it safe and decided to kill everything else on the map before tackling my opponent. Scouting footmen verified that 9:00 was still creep infested and my growing army quickly remedied this, proceeding to the lower left corner and clearing that too. Not wanting to pass the opportunity by, I sent a peasant to that corner and started a town hall. Right now I should give a recap of my expansions and visibility. From the 12:00 main I've expanded to the 12:00 and 6:00 natural. I have a scout at Draco's 3:00 natural and another one patrolling between both 9:00 points.This means I can see almost the entire mainland and have no evidence that he's mining at all. What I didn't see was Draco simultaneously staking claims to the two locations I wasn't monitoring.
 First, during the last fight, he walked his peasants to the upper right corner and built a town hall. Then when his archmage returned, he sent a zeppelin purchased just before that fight to the lower right corner and destroyed the golems and drakes that were guarding it. I had always thought you needed air support to take either island, but Draco did it with only an archmage and some very badass riflemen. He also had help from summoned units - a water elemental and a golem who could attack land and air.
When I know (or think) that I'm easily out-mining an opponent, I have a tendency to enter super-turtle mode - letting the other guy drain his resources and trying to win through attrition. To make sure I had all seven remaining goldmines under observation, I sent the very patient 3:00 footman patrolling between the 3:00 natural and the 6:00 main. On his very first trip back to 3:00, he was murdered by the remnant of Draco's dragon slaying team. With knights + riflemen + priests + sorceresses attacking only riflemen, I thought I could take him out, but something went horribly wrong. My priests were healing instead of autocasting fire (idiots) and even though they attempted to dispel the enemy's inner fire, Draco was dancing his troops around like mad and making it hard to target them, plus his priests just kept casting and I didn't target them. In the end, he took my paladin out while I managed to kill the archmage and bitterly run away.
 The gold mine in my natural collapsed and I was determined to keep the resource advantage, so I expanded again to the 9:00 main. At this point I made my dumbest move(s) of the game. My workshop had been cranking out steam tanks and gyrocopters for some time now with whatever spare cash I had. Following the battle above, I underestimated Draco's ability to rebuild his forces and overestimated his losses. After building another control group, I decided it would be a great time to attack with the tanks, using my army to clear out whatever was left after the last battle. Steam tanks are NOT siege tanks. They can only attack buildings at close range so it's vital to support them with conventional units. Unfortunately what was "left" of Draco's force was the archmage, a huge group of riflemen (damn these frigging riflemen!), and of course, priests. Everything I commanded was destroyed before
I could even say WTF. I didn't even get a hero kill before losing my army and the kamikaze steam tanks managed to lay waste to a grand total of one barracks before exploding.
 
Draco was no fool and realized that I probably just handed victory to him on a plate. He sent a sacrificial priest up to my main to verify that I was still recovering (his only recon other than some inconclusive crystal ball usage) and waited for his army to be healed. Fortunately, this is where I made my smartest move(s) of the game. Those gyrocopters I mentioned way back were finally going to be put to use. The first one I found scouted out the upper right corner and found it bustling. No surprise there, but since his riflemen could simply walk there and shoot down my flying machine, I flew away without doing any harm and swung out over the center of the map to visit the lower right. The first corner expansion was completely undefended. Could he have really?
Jackpot! A lone town hall stood serenely on the lower right island with nary a guard tower or combat unit in sight. Cackling with glee, my lone gyro parked himself next to the town hall and started merrily dropping bombs on the peon line. An ominous looking zeppelin floated into view as the gyrocopter did its work, but it was quickly shot down. "No zeppelin for j00!" I shouted. What I didn't realize at the time was that he had seen the gyro scouting the first corner and immediately piled his peasants into the zeppelin, thinking an attack was coming. I thought the zeppelin held reinforcements, but it was actually a gold mine's worth of peons. My gyro had just taken out an entire expansion. :) This diversionary raid caused Draco to do the only thing he could and mass teleport his *entire army* to shoot down the gyro.
 Seeing the enemy stranded on an island, how could I not attack his main? Draco town portalled back but now it was my turn to attempt to micro and wreak havoc with spellcasters. What happened was that Draco gave the order to *move* toward my base, just as I was entering his. My reflexes were faster at this point and I switched from moving to attacking more quickly. As luck would have it, many of his priests and mortars were marching in front and died first, leaving only the archmage and riflemen with no spells protecting them. The mage was blizzarding and summoning like mad, but my priests, finally doing something right, dispelled the water elementals he summoned. The religious guys were also casting inner fire,
which boosted the armor level of my knights to an incredible 20. I was so confused watching their health bars that for a second I thought they weren't taking damage and I had turned god mode on. When the dust settled, I had destroyed the entire pink army with minimal losses. My paladin resurrected the few casualties and we proceeded to lay waste to the 3:00 main.
With his army destroyed by the offensive push, his economy reduced to three peasants operating on a single gold mine, and an ominous formation of gyrocopters coming over the horizon to lend their assistance to the invasion force, Draco leaves the battlefield. Good game!
Observations:
Lost Temple is a terrible map for zeppelin/island expansions. Alone, the novelty and obscurity of the corner expansions isn't worth the trouble it takes to build there. If you want a map with rewarding islands, play Tranquil Paths.
Riflemen own! Despite his inferior economy, Draco repeatedly fought off my mixed force and easily rebuilt his own because he relied heavily on rifles while I produced large numbers of more expensive knights and also spent extra cash on their upgrades. Maybe massed tank knights just aren't right for some matchups.
Sorceresses are most commonly used for casting slow on the enemy army and both Dracos and I did this. However, when your opponent uses positive magic buffs (inner fire or bloodlust for example) slow is a waste of mana because the priests will dispel it along with the enemy magic. Instead, polymorph the enemy priests.
Always defend your expansions. In some situations, a single guard tower can postpone an attack for valuable seconds. It also helps if at least one of your expansions can double as a fall-back point.
Always attack after a confrontation, or at least send in cheap units to harass and/or recon. War3 gameplay as currently practiced on battle.net favors attacking with a large percentage or even a majority of your forces. If a player is defeated in the field, there is a good chance he's hurting at home.
Keep an eye on your enemy's upgrades so you know whether to fight or run. If eight 3/3 riflemen are attacking your ten 1/1 riflemen, get the hell out of there!
Dispel > Elemental (and infernal, and treants, and skeletons, and red drakes, etc)
Please comment on this report.
Replay here if you want it.
|
|
|
 |
|
Home
Forum
Starcraft Tournaments
