Final Stand [3.0] is submitted for review.

[LPhillips]

New map: Final Stand [3.0] by LPhillips.
Map editor link: Final Stand [3.0]

[LPhillips]

It's 1v7 against the AI. It's been kicking my ass for some 48 turns now, starting to feel like an "I'm the greatest!" game gone into overdrive. Try it with Fog of War turned off, and see how quickly you can beat it! (If at all)

[LPhillips]

94 turns to win, Fog of War on.

It's a grindfest if you make it. Be sure to set the city control to 100% and save the advanced settings, or the game won't go past the 1st turn (you own less than 10% of the cities at start).

[Moonknight]

Is this available to all? I wasn't able to find it the other night...

EDIT...never mind, forgot to make it a scenario game...

[KGB]

I noticed something weird with this map so I wanted to ask what exactly are you meant to start with.

First time I played, by accident, I forgot to set the Victory cities to 100%. I started first and on turn 1, I the 2 stacks of Hv Infantry were mine and I started with 15K in gold. Of course the game ended on turn 1.

So I started again, this time with the right settings and with FOW off. This time I started 2nd and on turn 1 I only started with 10K in gold and the 2 stacks of Hv Inf are both neutral (WTF). I thought something was messed up so I quit immediately.

I've started a 3rd time, again with FOW off. It's the same as the 2nd time time above, I am going 2nd and it appears I will only have 10K in gold and the Hv Inf are neutral.

So which time was the game scenario screwed up? Does the FOW setting have something to do with it?

KGB

[KGB]

Turn 19 on non-FOW map and I am going to win easily. I've known I am going to win for at least 8+ turns now. The rest of the game is just the time spent to occupy 100% of the cities as the AI can't come close to breaking into my 2 guarded gates and I am picking off and razing cities with flying stacks.

In non-FOW games, the cheese of the Crow is off the charts. I've used them to raze 20 EMPTY cities already.

My initial builds were 2 spiders (N and S gate cities), 1 Red Dragon, 2 Demons (inner 3), 1 Dwarf, 1 Orc (left gate for Dwarf, left inner for Orc), 2 Crows (near the bless site), 3 Elves. Yeah, no Hv Infantry, imagine that

On turn 1 you take your hero and group with the upcoming Dwarf/Orc and rush the swamp player along with a few Hv Inf you start with. You will easily kill the AI Valk hero on turn 3 and give yourself a point city into the Swamp. The Swamp player is the weakest by far so you can easily hold that city with no fear of flying units going past the hero into your homeland so you can leave the gate city empty behind you. Build Hv inf there and keep sending Dwarf/Orc each turn to add 3 units there per turn. The Swamp player can never seriously threaten you.

You MUST guard the East gate as that is where all the strong AI units will come (from Red flight and Black ground units). N is the 2nd important gate to guard. With luck you get some serious allies on turn 2 or 3 (I got 3 reds on turn 4). But really you won't have much to do until at least turn 10 in either of those gates.

That's because of the crows! Just send them with abandon at the AI empty cities. Lurk on all the handy water/mountains to avoid being killed. Especially concentrate on the desert player and you can easily raze 2/3 of his cities before he knows what hit him because the AI spends its early turns getting the gold sites. Later you will continue to take the gold sites with a bat every turn AND THE AI WILL NEVER EVER COME NORTH TO ATTACK. Thus you can leave the south gate very lightly guarded with only a couple of men. So that's 2 gates you have under control for next to nothing.

Its important to get crows to the East into yellow/black/dk blue and raze too because plenty will be left empty there in turns 1-10. Whenever possible get the AI stacks to chase you because they will happily chase a crow with 3-4 stacks and leave your center area. Eventually they will get you but by then it's turn 10+ and you gates have 3-4 spiders, Red, heroes, +15 walls etc and you just let the AI crash into you over and over again on the East/North gates.

Eventually you will get a spared Red (or two) from building/ally offers (I only took Red or Demon) and send it + blessed crows + a spare Demon and raze a bunch more cities that end up having only 1-2 defenders in them (there will be lots of those).

KGB

P.S. An early Wizard build might work really well too since you will always take down the Swamp player on turn 3 and with a Dwarf/Orc to get over the terrain the Wizard can then run wild on empty cities. But it's 1000 gold and I prefer 100 for crows so I can get early big group of Reds/Demons.

[SnotlinG]

Small AI update, now it should hopefully not be so easy to lure all the stacks away with a scout or two

[LPhillips]

It's very, very easy to exploit the AI. I beat it without doing that. Can't say I recommend 2 hours of grinding down your opponents, but the AI are no fun to play against at any time if you just exploit their faults.

The swamp player's units will punish you for playing defense. They are almost all critical hitters, so the west quickly becomes a huge drain of units each round, no matter their power. It's a disastrous black hole, generally forcing the player to use far too much production capacity to keep it full. Defensively, the East and North are the easiest to withstand if you just stack a Dreadlord with the right units there. The AI all have stupidly high income so they'll hire heroes to come at you constantly. Big whup, I know, but give me a break: there are no settings nor triggers available yet to help them out. I'd like heroes generated by the AI players to level over time (say all heroes generated after turn 10 are level 3), but we're not nearly there yet with scenario editing. The early-stage AI is definitely the weakest point atm. Consider how red will sit and mass his demons at home for the whole game instead of formulating good stacks and punishing the player (he has all demons, with a dragon and a devil. *sigh*) The AI will chase your decoys with everything if FoW is turned off. All of these difficulties will disappear as Snotling perfects his AI.

The point of the scenario is to form the ultimate defense. Exploiting the AI is easy, especially given the fact that I didn't give control of gold sites over to them. This was intentional so that the less hard-core players could enjoy the game. So was the inclusion of the two stacks of Heavy Infantry. The original scenario included no native defenders, 10k gold, and no walls, forcing players to put up a very hasty defense and decide what to do with their gold. I managed to hold out and get stable on my first try with that one, but I realized quickly that most players wouldn't like it at all. I wouldn't mind reverting the scenario to its previous condition, at least removing the free walls and units (leaving the 15k gold perhaps).

KGB,
You should gain control of the infantry and 15k gold every time. Sorry, that's some kind of bug! I shoehorned the extra troops and income in with some one-time events (+16 infantry and +5k gold) set at 9k, then gave the player 10k starting. There is also an added 2k "There is hope, if you can but hold on" to every player at turn 10 (because I didn't see a reasonably lazy way to restrict it to the player, and the AI is grossing some 1500/round anyway). It is a one-time bailout for those who fail to manage their upkeep.
Do you think I should toughen it up again a bit? Raiding the AI early on is so easy, and there's now way to assign them any units in their home cities to prevent it. I hope primarily that players will try not to ruin their own fun, instead of exploiting and breaking it, but beyond exploits is it challenging enough, or should I make it meaner again?
A version where players had to work together instead could be a lot of fun too.
I did enjoy having a level 26+ Dreadlord, even though it's useless.

[LPhillips]

My first strategy for the ultimate defense was ghosts and spiders. Since I'm the map creator, I had a little extra info. Enough to know that I needed unicorns in north/right sides, and their +3 negate isn't bad if you are neglecting Devils. It was fun, but upkeep-intensive. I started just hitting "End turn" til a hero died, and got bored.

Later it was spiders and a few supporting units, then the spare dragons burned the enemy with the help of some hero-offer demons and a Valk. The AI has many more units, even sizeable stacks, in its backfield after turn 20 or so. I wanted to play without relying on mass demons at home; seemed too predictable and boring. Found you could do it with infantry and good heroes/support units quite well.

[KGB]

LPhillips,

I understand the idea is to play defense. Which is OK but boring. So I wanted to go on the offense and hence I used crows to exploit the AI. Honestly I thought by turn 6-7 there would be at least 1 unit per AI city but I was still getting lots of empty cities on turn 14-15 to raze. On the other hand, to even it out, I deliberately DID NOT allow myself any negate units (Devil, Unicorn, Archon) other than a DK since you get 32 men in a city compared to only 8 attackers (and most of the time the AI only has 5-6). So what defense I have comes from walls and positive bonus's and heroes. That evens things up quite a lot for my crow attacks. In fact I only have 4 heroes, stopped taking them after getting 2 Paladins and 2 DK's.

The Swamp player is 100% your best early target. Yes, I know he has Ghosts/Orcs/Wolfriders but there is one other huge consideration. The Desert player has literally no flight so once you invade the Swamp there is no AI help coming from the West anywhere. Just the North Ice player and he can't travel in the swamp very well. Thus it's VERY easy to keep anything you take (I basically razed but I could have kept more early on). Plus Orcs/Elves/Dwarves are hopeless against the other AI sides in attacking but not in the Swamp where they have legit chances to kill Swamp units and capture cities.

Money has never been an issue for me. I had 5K in gold after buying my initial production. I got down lower after taking my 3 Reds on turn 3 but easily built it up to 5K and remained there from all the razing of the AI cities and the gold I got from their treasuries. I'm around turn 30 now and rapidly conquering and holding cities because the AI's now have 0 gold and thus are making no new men so they can't respond to anything I do now.

I'd do the following things if you want to make it tougher:

1) Give the AI's gold every 10 turns. Even if it's just 1000 so they can make units when they run low (which they will over time)
2) Remove (or move south) the gold sites in the Desert area since crows taking them means the Desert player never attacks anything but his old gold sites. Or at least remove the ridges so crows can't hide on them forever as I am doing.

That should help some.

KGB

P.S. By the way you are right about Red. He has all Demons and doesn't know how to use them. Strangely enough he sends all his initial Demons on the early turns right at me in groups of 1. But they never arrived to attack!!! I have NO idea what happened to them but somewhere around turn 5-6 they disappeared (I was not looking that closely). Not sure if the AI disbanded them or if he pulled them all back to his own cities. It was strange as hell but that was right around the time I fully blocked the North/East gates with Dragon+Hero+5-6 men in each. However on turn 30 one of my crows accidentally lured a Paladin/DK and 6 Demons towards one of the cities I took outside the central area. Not sure I am going to be able to hold it or anything else that stack might reach.