Opponent's Gold

[KGB]

KenC80,

LOL, you are probably right.

The real point I was trying to make was with regards to Strach's initial comment about units and strategies being more varied in the original War2. Since Warbarons went online over a year ago I've installed Dosbox and War2 and went back and played some games for nostalgia sake after not touching the game in over 14 years.

First thing I noticed was that things were slightly different than I remembered. But more importantly was that everything I learned in all my online/PBEM games of DLR were relevant to War2. And that knowledge made me realize that a lot of what I thought I knew about the strategy of the game didn't make sense, or was rather, an inferior strategy to what I had learned from playing human players in DLR. Now I crush the AI much more effectively than I ever did before despite 14 years of rust away from the game.

That's been the greatest thing about online play on the internet in all strategy games, not just Warlords. It's that you can learn to be a world class player if you have the patience to learn from others. That's because repeated online play has weaned out all inferior strategies in every game until only the best ones remain. So the overall level of knowledge in these games has reached untold heights because of the collective learning of players. I remember when I first went online to play 'DLR' and 'Axis and Allies' in 1997 that despite my own knowledge of those games and reading all the strategies I could find, I was still hopelessly outclassed. It took a lot of losses before I became a top player.

KGB

[LPhillips]

Even after years of experience piddling around with the older versions of Warlords, there was still a learning curve here. My losses are a little inflated by the known bug, but I did indeed lose 6 games in a row before I won one. Then I won 6 1v1's in a row

I always got Archons in my W2 quests after the items ran out. Even up to 9 Archons, I seem to remember. Whether the quest was pillaging, razing, or hero hunting. Granted, I wasn't playing the Deluxe version, and maybe it was different in that?

But I found the W2 AI to always fall short of challenging. Generally you have to restrain yourself from capturing 2/3 of the map while the AI spends every turn trading castles and never exterminating weakened enemies. The only exception was when Diplomacy was on, and the 7 computers would sometimes declare war on you and only you for no good reason. Then the game could go on interminably and it rapidly became tedious as you'd have to kill 20-30 enemy units on defense and lose a couple of castles every round. The only hope for survival was the cheap quests that allowed you to form armies of Archons.

The W2 AI was never a challenge by itself, and it certainly couldn't teach you good strategy. It was just too easy to stomp.

[Pillager]

Yeah...the War2 AI was quite dim.

Still, I'm not sure you can explain away the fact that giants simply hit harder in OG war2 and Deluxe than they do in warbarons.

In fact, I was playing deluxe right before I found warbarons...and my first post was about my giants under-performing.

There were some extra factors back then (every unit type had a critical strike chance)...but warbarons giants are still utter crap to this very day. I don't care if the code is exactly replicated (and I'm not too sure I believe it)...something just doesn't add up!

[KGB]

Pillager,

I remember that post!

I rarely built any so I'm not a good judge of War2 Giants. The ones I had came from AI buying production in it's cities.

The only explanations I have are:

1) As you recall, some cites made Giants in 1 turn while others would make Giants with +1 strength. So maybe you ended up with more of the +1 strength Giants.
2) You blessed more there than here because here the bless sites tend to be in out of the way places while in War2 they weren't. Plus I recall Giants moving 18 so they could bless easier due to slightly more move.
3) Maybe you had more hills combat where they got their terrain combat bonus.
4) Maybe you had more Giants combined with other bonus's from Pegasi/Heroes compared to here where you don't.
5) Maybe there is some secret bonus in Deluxe for Giants compared to the original game or maybe they had base 6 strength? I rarely played Deluxe, most of my experience was in the original game.

Perhaps you could start another game of Deluxe and pit 8 Giants vs 8 Hv Infantry then 8 Giants vs 8 Lt Infantry and reload over and over (say 50 battles of each) to get an idea of the loss ratio so we can compare to the theoretical losses based on the combat formula.

LPhillips,

You are right the only challenge was playing 7 Enhanced (+2 strength for all AI units) Warlords on an 'Open' map with 'I am the Greatest' turned on. That had the AI's ally with each other on turn 8 and play a 7v1 game. That's an excellent challenge that turns into the game you describe where you have to fortify 4-5 cities very heavily then use hero stacks to gradually conquer the enemy AI's one by one. That can be lost easily if you get a bad map start spot. You are also correct that it teaches nothing about strategy of the game itself.

KGB

[strach]

KGB - you seem not to take into account the most important thing. in W2 you can have a giant (with a strength of 5) in two turns, or two LIf (withe strength of 2). In Warbarons you get 2 units of HvI with a strnegth of 3 (4 in open). so the giant was much more powerful in W2 than it is here. I guess you'll agree with that. completly other thing is the strategy you favoured: powered up (by hero or Pegasi) LI is always a good choice - but whenever you found giants in W2 it was always good to produce them.

what's more important that the game in Warbarons is kind of monotnous while everyone use HvI - I guess the idea behind original warlords was that you have different races and they are fighting using different types of units. in warbarons it's all about HvI and heroes. of course the game is great and cant be compared to playing against AI in when you were able to win against 7 computers, but nevertheless it would be much better when the choice between one and twoturners was less obvious.

my idea to solve this problem is to just get rid of HvI and limit strength of pikeman and dwarfs to 3.

[KGB]

Strach,

Yes, I agree with what you say about War2 only having Lt Inf with strength of 2 while Giants had 5 so they were better relative to Lt Inf than they are in Warbarons to Hv Inf. But the problem in War2 was the Hv Inf took 2 turns to build for 3 strength. So they (along with other such units) were never used in War2.

That's the hard part about having so many units in the game. You end up with lots of units that are very specialized and a few units that are always used because they are the 'best in class' units.

The suggestion (elsewhere) to remove the Open bonus on Hv Inf is a good idea for Beta4. But removing the unit entirely makes no sense as another unit will just take it's place as the 'most commonly used unit'. If removing the Open bonus still isn't enough to get players to use more 2 turn units / other 1 turn units then further steps can be taken (increased cost, higher upkeep, further stat changes).

I still believe Pikemen/Dwarfs are fine with lowering their terrain bonus to +1. Their high cost, slow movement and upkeep prevents players from buying lots of them. Plus not everyone is buying these units as I personally don't and several other Warlords don't either.

KGB

[Pillager]

Even if the tweaks to 1 turn units do happen, I doubt it will be enough to make buying two turn units worth the extra gold and production time.

I predict that the only real change will be that light cavalry and elves will become more common (again).

But, lets see how it goes...maybe I'm not quite the Nostradamus I think I am.

I suspect that something like...giving 2 turn+ front line units (not support or special purpose units) an extra wound will be necessary to bring these unit types into balance.

[kenc80]

ok call me a purist but I am very much against the extra wound. Its complicated and makes it very hard to calculate battle odds on the fly.

Good point above about war2 lite inf being str 2. It did make a difference. I had also forgotten about the occasional extra strength giants or extra moves occassionally given to neutral castles.

also to clarify an above post the most allies a quest ever gave in war2 was 5, not 9.

[Pillager]

I am first and foremost a DLR fan...so extra wounds seems pretty pure to me. But, if you are only familiar with warlords 2 then I can understand a certain hesitation to take this step.....its like you are a caveman being asked to ride a bicycle.

[KGB]

If Pillager is right and Lt Calv and Elves become more common then I'd consider the changes to be a success.

That would mean that Bats, Hv Infantry, Elves, Lt Calv would be the most prevalent 1 turn units compared to just Bats and Hv Infantry now. With occasional Pikemen, Dwarfs when that production appeared for free in the neutral. Potentially Scouts would see some use too depending on how useful it is to see in enemy stacks in Beta4. That gives six or seven 1 turn units that would be used.

As far as having more 2 turn units made, I suspect that Pillager is right and that we won't see a dramatic increase in them (unless 1 turn units stop giving terrain stack move bonus's). Basically there will just be the ones you get for free in neutrals. That's because from a cost perspective it's not worth spending the extra money on such units until late game or you are very rich. If the assignment of neutral production undergoes an adjustment to put more 2 turn units in cities then we may see more 2 turn units used because players don't have to buy them. Also maybe Beta5 will introduce the concept of faster production in some cities (like 1 turn Giants or 2 turn Pegasi) that War2/DLR had which will make 2 turn units worth getting.

So the question is whether you consider this to be a bad thing or not. War2 only had about 7 truly useful units (Lt Infantry, Minotaurs, Spiders, Catapults, Pegasi, Gryffon, Elephant). Everything else (other than ally cities like Dragons) was better off being pillaged and replaced by one of the above 7 units. The fact that the War2 AI bought insane amounts of Hv Calv/Giants is the reason you saw so many of them and was the reason it was so pitiful a challenge. At least Warbarons in Beta4 would have more useful units than War2 ever had.

KGB

P.S. The other thing that players seem to misunderstand is the combat odds of the game. You don't have to be 2x the strength to be 2x as good in combat. For example, Dwarves and Pikemen look great in theory with their 4 strength but because of their movement they are basically Dreadlord Fodder. That's because they have to get within a Dreadlords striking range to attack on the following turn. So a stack of 7 Dwarfs + 1 Hero who get attacked by a Dreadlord + 7 Giants works out to (5,5,5,5,5,5,5,6) vs (7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7). The Dreadlord + Giants wins that 89% of the time with an average of 3.2 units left. So even if there is another stack of 8 Dwarfs next to it (since you make 2x as many) that hero + 2 Giants can attack the remaining 8 Dwarfs and win 30% of the time (or add more units and win 100% of the time). If the reverse was true and the Dwarfs could attack the Giants it would be a 50/50 battle due to the Dreadlord bonus making both stacks all 6's. This is why I say movement HAS to be considered when evaluating the value of units because slow moving units (12 moves or less) are garbage for anything but city defense.