I'm not saying it didn't happen, I'm just looking for cool examples of people fighting triple or more their army power and winning.
Where are you guys with this?
- Thread starter coodav
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To be fair, Army power is a rough measurement. There are risky battles that are extremly hard, and impossible battles that autoresolve wins without using any operations.
The bigger question is, how did you equip your units? What about your heroes? Which operation are you using?
I do admit that I keep repeating fights, but at the same time that also shows something else: How vastly different the battle can go, depending what actions do you use. For me, most of these hard fights are more like puzzles, find a way to snatch victory.
For example, I, just for fun, attacked an roving army of 4 T1 and T2 with a level 20 Sniper decked out in Firearm modifiers. I retried the fight about 6 times, the first two without tactical operations until I finally decided that without it was unwinable. So, I tried different options, and saw how vast the differences were between my choices.
What I want to say, is, that you can't just take a fight of someone else as an example on how to do it. There are tons of factors (including RNG) that influence a fight. Sure, you can get general ideas what mods to equip, what positions to take or which operations to use, but.... In general it is not as easy to learn by example in these kind of things, especially if you decide to takee another faction / secret tech / hero / ...
The bigger question is, how did you equip your units? What about your heroes? Which operation are you using?
I do admit that I keep repeating fights, but at the same time that also shows something else: How vastly different the battle can go, depending what actions do you use. For me, most of these hard fights are more like puzzles, find a way to snatch victory.
For example, I, just for fun, attacked an roving army of 4 T1 and T2 with a level 20 Sniper decked out in Firearm modifiers. I retried the fight about 6 times, the first two without tactical operations until I finally decided that without it was unwinable. So, I tried different options, and saw how vast the differences were between my choices.
What I want to say, is, that you can't just take a fight of someone else as an example on how to do it. There are tons of factors (including RNG) that influence a fight. Sure, you can get general ideas what mods to equip, what positions to take or which operations to use, but.... In general it is not as easy to learn by example in these kind of things, especially if you decide to takee another faction / secret tech / hero / ...
Oh, for that there are a ton of threads. I frequently get into fights where I completely blow out the computer. But just take the one from Sinsling:
Where he was way outnumbered, and only lost one unit that he had stolen just a while back. There were a ton of these, I think maybe 3 or 4 with fairly similar outcomes.
One of mine had to be this:
I'm green obviously. Which the computer resolved thus:
and I resolved thus:
They had:
2 heroes
13 T1 units
9 T2 units
24 total
I had
3 heroes
6 T1 units
6 T2 units
1 T3 unit
1 T4 unit
17 total
Didn't lose a single unit. This happened like 4 times that game.
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Does this qualify?
As can be seen, I did not use any tactical operations,in return my army got (theoretically) routed: all units that are half life died here. So, basically, only my Hero and a single, near dead, indentured had survived.And yes, that one indentured and the Hero are the only modded units in my stack ... Seems like I forgot to retrofit.... XD My opponent had modded units (two had up to Aetherstorm). And no, this time I did not need to retry the fight either (an exception ^^)
So uh describe the strategy behind all these uphill battles O_Oa
Love to hear about it.
wat mods/ops were key, and what kinds of tactics causes the computer to underestimate your forces capabilities
Love to hear about it.
wat mods/ops were key, and what kinds of tactics causes the computer to underestimate your forces capabilities
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Huh, I think that was pretty useless XD
Anyway, tactics. Hm. It really depends. Generally ... The AI likes to move just outside the range. The AI also loves to throw grenades. As such, you can use Sniper to soften the enemy line and use mods that give stagger resistance.
In my example the key was, unsurprisingly, the Lord I had. It was a melee Lord that dealt considerable amount of damage, so, keeping him alive (and free from enemy effects) was imperative. For some reason the AI decided to ignore it and deal with my Indentured .... (fun fact: What you see was my start army + one indentured I got early on due to my Hero).
Generally, you need to split your units so that AoE effects aren't as devastating (something I generally fail to do XD) and take advantage of the terrain. The enemy settlement has towers? Just let them come to you! Easily done by provoking them via abilities or Snipers.
Probably the most coherent discussion of my fight was this:
Not exactly the same context as here, but this is what I did in the fight to kill so much so fast. Here is the OP:
How did you tackle Shakarn 2?
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Yeah luring the AI into grenading you can be pretty useful when dealing with a stacked deck(assuming you have some stagger resist of course). During the base game when I ran through the amazon campaign my scouting was too poor and I got ambushed just before I grouped up my stacks. 3 full stacks against my hero stack(back then I would usually just lump everybody into one stack, though I still tend to pair up unless the hero is an absolute beast or I really need an extra clearing stack).
This was the first Amazon Campaign I think and I don't recall having too many heroes involved in it. The Commander, the Voradon from that map, a biomancer, a huntress, and obviously that leaves two others I can't remember, but I don't think they were both heroes in fact they may both have been huntresses but I don't rightly remember. I just know I had at least one huntress since I used a blinding arrow on the two hiddens in the enemy stack. I also recall using the biomancer to heal and the Voradon really was the mvp of that fight. I got crushed in autobattle. But when I battled it through I clumped up to try and focus fire down the incomming plague pod equipped Frenzied before they melee'ed me to death. My first thought when I was constantly being AoE'ed was that I messed up big time. If I recall right even the Hiddens had Plague Pods equipped so after being staggered by the flash arrow they ran to grenade range for me and my Voradon got a nice hearty meal. Yes everyone had stagger resist since Amazons get it nice and easy like, but eating AoE tends to be a bad thing in many games. I ended up winning with only 1 loss if I recall right. Everyone else was redlinned, but since the Frenzied just kept focusing on AoE'ing whenver they could instead of engaging me in melee they never actually killed anyone. And in this game a unit at 1 hp is just as deadly on the offense as one at full hp. Though the AI seems a bit better at focusing a single unit down these days, but maybe that is just me. I haven't really let myself get into that type of situation again since back then and the Amazons were on of the first campaign I went through, if not the first other than the tutorial.
My takeaway from that fight was simple. Grenades exist primarily to stagger. If you aren't staggering you shouldn't be grenading unless it will finish someone off while letting you shave a bit of hp off someone else at the same time. I actually hated grenades for the longest time since it seemed like it was such a large trap for the AI. I would unequip the grenades the hero started with and would absolutely refuse to use plague pods on anything so that it wouldn't waste actions in auto-battle throwing the dang things. I also believe strongly that this is a big reason why troopers die so often in Autobattle. Rather then keep them at range where they excell the AI likes to run up and grenade a wrecker in a face, only to get completely wrecked when the wrecker's turn comes up. Stupid suicidal trooper, I am sure there are better ways to die than that.
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Lol funny thing you mentioned unequipping grenades from heroes; I do that on my melee kirko because I don't want them thinking for a second that they have any alternative to running up close to melee enemies in autobattle.
Okay, hear me out. I think that this army composition is pretty strong.
Mods I used: Accelerated Metabolism for the witches, as well as damage boosting and stagger resistance. The Heritor Priests had .... well to be honest, that wasn't really important. The stagger resistance mod at most (they became immune after attaining prime rank)
So, here is the thing. Once the enemy got into range, I used the Witch's Channel ability, then gave them back their action points with the priest ability, attacked (most likely killing something), then attacked again. (Hero is equipped similarily, having a staff of tumult)
The only thing missing here was the heal (didn't had anything except the secondary of my hero). Generally, one attack was enough to off a T1 or T2 unit, allowing it another turn ... with channeled still up. So, instead of only having a single turn channeled, you can, in theory, get up to 4 attacks.
So, next time I will load out jetpacks as well, and maybe some form of healing. With that they should be able to get the first strike, dealing massive damage before the enemy can realistically react.
EDIT: I do admit, having a Sniper Lord did help with getting reliable kills, too.
What are combinations you found pretty powerful/fun/interesting?
Pretty sure most of the wins in here is because of the AI not engaging the enemy with its entire army at same time. And human players is taking advantage of that. Its just right move to make when outnumbered.
Turn 1.
Human has 6 units.
AI has 12 units. Both stacks is separated.
Turn 2. Human 6 units engage six units while other six is still running to engage the human army.
Turn 3.
Human still have 6 units.
AI has 8 units left. 4 died to the human.
Turn 4.
Human still have 6.
AI's first stack is now eliminated. Second stack engaged and killed 1 of the most badly wounded human controlled unit.
Turn 5.
Human has 5.
Ai has 4 left.
Turn 6.
Human has 5 still.
Ai has only 1 left.
Turn 7.
Human has five.
Ai gets wiped out. Defeated piecemeal.
If the ai moved its army together in tactical combat then nerfs will have to be made towards AI's production bonuses because it would be almost impossible for 6 to defeat 12 unless its one of the exceptions.
Its just right move to make when outnumbered. Turn 1.
Human has 6 units.
AI has 12 units. Both stacks is separated.
Turn 2. Human 6 units engage six units while other six is still running to engage the human army.
Turn 3.
Human still have 6 units.
AI has 8 units left. 4 died to the human.
Turn 4.
Human still have 6.
AI's first stack is now eliminated. Second stack engaged and killed 1 of the most badly wounded human controlled unit.
Turn 5.
Human has 5.
Ai has 4 left.
Turn 6.
Human has 5 still.
Ai has only 1 left.
Turn 7.
Human has five.
Ai gets wiped out. Defeated piecemeal.
If the ai moved its army together in tactical combat then nerfs will have to be made towards AI's production bonuses because it would be almost impossible for 6 to defeat 12 unless its one of the exceptions.
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Why? There would be no need to nerf AI bonuses because they don't exist on easiest difficulty levels.
Surely you do know that Extreme AI has bonuses enough to smack you around 20-30 units right off the bat in first 30 turns? Excess number of units is to compensate for Ai's failings in tactical combat such as easily getting engaged piecemeal.
Surely you know that there are other difficulties than Extreme? It would be completely fine if Extreme was unbeatable for most players.
The extra units have nothing to do with AI shortcomings. The whole point of Extremely hard difficulty level is to make the game extremely hard. Unfortunately it does not work as intended currently, it is still too easy.
Now that I have a fully unlocked empire, my loadout has changed quite a bit. I like assembly and dvar as races as they have my favourite non-cosmite units (I use cosmite to produce sirens). I like xenoplague as tech as it provides units with no cosmite requirements or tying up production, plus hyperspore aggression and the healing mod are decent to start with.
My requisitions tend to be:
units: siren, Amazon echo walker, and prospecto/Amazon malictor.
ops: pre-battle predictions, true ascendency, and deploy constrictor/deploy trencher
mods: eyes of eternity, jetpack, deployable malware daemon
Thoughts? Am I missing anything awesome in the requisitions?
My requisitions tend to be:
units: siren, Amazon echo walker, and prospecto/Amazon malictor.
ops: pre-battle predictions, true ascendency, and deploy constrictor/deploy trencher
mods: eyes of eternity, jetpack, deployable malware daemon
Thoughts? Am I missing anything awesome in the requisitions?