Key To Success at High Seas Pre-Tournament

[tabanli]

I had little success at this map but there are a few things I want to share.

1) At the coastal city in your Island, you have to train snakes (krakens may be later on)
2) You have one strong neutral in your Island and you need to see what it is before you choose your first hero. If it is a Ghost-Medusa, Assassin may make sense. You don't want to take a Valkyrie and see that the tough unit is an Archon. Barbarian is always a safe choice and he can level up at the island "IF" he takes all the cities by himself (with 85% Intelligence, he may have to take the gold site as well but I am not sure). If you have a Green Dragon at your island, I don't know what to do. Nothing would probably work there. Try the island next door.
3)First ability you need to get to your hero must be flight, unless you already have an eagle-ghost etc carrying your heroes.
4) You need to learn how to hop in and hop out from the Snake in order to increase movements of your heroes.
5) Coastal cities are not defendable. Don't try fancy units there.
6) Cities that are one move from port are very difficult to defend. They can be attacked by the land units. Don't try fancy units there either.
7) There are few ruins and the gold is limited. You will spend a lot of gold on ships etc so be wise in financing.


Good luck all.

[Igor]

That is what KGB said about strategy on this map (posted in tourney thread):

"All mine <games> are exactly the same:
1) Conquer the main island, build Sea Serpents in the coastal city.
2) Head directly to the main center island first to start conquering it with initial hero after owning home island.
3) Rush all units in good boats (for speed) toward neutrals and my opponent for rapid expansion/razing. There is no need to leave defenders in any cities but the coastal ones since any fliers can be easily intercepted by boats/serpents.
4) Use Sea Serpents to harass enemy boats/coastal cities.

The only variable is whether I take a Barb or Ranger as 1st hero. I take Barb on decent money start (900+) because I'll get a Ranger on T2/T3 and Ranger otherwise. Your 1st or 2nd hero MUST be a Ranger because of all those L2 ruins in the water and shoreline that can be searched at an incredible pace by a L2/L3 Ranger riding on a Serpent. I often have a L7-L8 Ranger by turn 10-12 after opening 6-7 L2 ruins plus another 4-5 L1 ruins. The gold, allies and item hoard I get from that haul is enough to decide any game that's still close (for example in 1 game I pulled 3 Sea Serpents on turn 4 from a L2 ruin which was HUGE).

This is a pure rush map and building defenses and making long term investments in good units is a waste of time because the game will be over by turn 15. The only good units you get are allies from hero offers and ruins."

[Moonknight]

Igor likes his Kraken/Unicorn combo

[tabanli]

I like Kraken too, especially when I am above 1000 at turn 1. Instead of Snakes I go with Kraken. Also if the initial units are very strong (elements,catapult,Gryphon) I tend to go with the Assasin instead of Barbarian. At level 3 he can take pretty much every city, and with his natural helper Ghost, he can search ruins too.

[Moonknight]

I like Ranger/Ghosts/Eagles combo for ruin hunting/barbie/flyers hunting. Only after I have a Barbie riding a serpent around at the speed of light...weeeeee!

[Chazar]

If you start in a corner island with strong starting units (but no ghosts), one might take a ranger and delay taking all cities on the starting island by a turn or two, just to ensure that the ranger participates in all city battles. That way, the ranger reaches level 3 when she naturally passes by the two L2 ruins and can search them right away without wasting move - on turn 4!

I have seen nagrogin do this (intentionally or not, I do not know) and the resulting rush was impressive.

XP:
Income building: 100+75
City with 1T Defender: 250+75
City with 2T Defender: 250+150
City with 3T Defender: 250+225
City with 4T Defender: 250+300

The main island offer 3 cities, usually with 1/2/3 T Defender, and the small island with the ruin another two cities with 1T and 2T defender, which yields:
2*325 + 2*400 + 475 = 1925

Given the Ranger's starting intelligence of 110, this yields 2117XP, which in turn leads to 18UL just after conquering a city right next to two L2 ruins. Nice.

[smursh]

Had more success using assasin as my first hero rather than barbarian. Now that the barb. has even more xp reduction, and needs to get to lvl-3 to water walk he takes too long to get started. At 2nd lvl my assassin has 68% ambush plus water walk. A bit of a risk, but go for weeker cities to improve victory chances till reaching 3rd level and it's a good gamble. The reward in faster expansion makes up for the risk.

[Moonknight]

I'm guessing you had decent units to start off with in your games than Smursh? Otherwise, starting with Assassin would be fairly risky start.

I tried to make sure I had a sea serpent produced by turn 3 (trying to get the coastal city on the island on turn 1 with the Barb), so going with the Barb first wasn't slowed down a ton. Also, I started with an eagle in two of my games, and a Ghost in another.

I preferred Barb, then Ranger to ruin hunt, and then get level 2/level 3 Assassin offer, but Assassin was definitely needed to kill off the high leveled Barbs riding around.

[tabanli]

I agree Moonknight. I like to start with an Assasin if the starting units are strong, like elements, catapult, gryphon, spiders. I think Assasin is the worst starting hero against good neutrals, +8 group ambush is too weak compared with other bonuses.