My First Ladder Game...

[Yevi]

...was an unmitigated disaster.

I am new to Warbarons. However, I did play Warlords. Not competitively, but I enjoyed it. I have played a few games of Warbarons, with others new to it. I decided to give a ladder game a try. The map is Hammer Mountain. In 7 turns my opponent marched in with a hero stack with a mammoth and a battering ram. Two turns later he has another hero show up.

How? That's some rich units that early and then to have them in the middle of my cities.

I have been reading some of the advice in here. Is the advice here make that big of a difference? Always plunder? Get more heroes? Explore ruins? My hero seems to die from early ruin exploring.

On a side note, the name of my opponent is a cover? How do you do that? Do you ever get to know?

[LPhillips]

Welcome, Yevi!

It sounds like you got trapped into a game where someone was looking for ladder points. We have been discussing this problem recently on the forum. Don't be discouraged; you just got blindsided and you need to start out with a few normal games.

Most of the best players can't compete well with someone on their pet map like that. Some players love to take advantage of certain maps to get quick points. They likely play the same map over and over until they learn to win in a few turns. If you want to see who they were, I think it is possible to find out when the game is over.

Do you want to play a more normal game with me, and maybe some other friendly players? Just click on my name and send me a message if you want to. We can give you all of the advice you need to win

[piranha]

Yevi: To play as an undercover name you change the name just before you select color. Then you will be playing undercover. Most 1 vs 1 games are played on a couple of 50 x 50 maps where several ladder competing players have played many games and are very good. You might want to play some FFA or team games first to get a hang of the game and then if you want some really aggressive fast games you can try the 1 vs 1 ladder .

[Yevi]

Thanks piranha!

The game did show me the player name at the end. And I am grateful to that player. I spent the weekend reading and learning and have revised my general strategy.

Trying a ladder game was on a whim. I didn't expect to win, but I was really surprised at how quickly it went. Now I know what level of play is needed to compete in the ladder.

[ezras]

Yeah, I second what phillips said. I tend to avoid a lot of those small map 1v1 ladder games as I know, despite the fact that I have been with Warbarons for quite sometime, I am still likely to get beat pretty quick and badly. If you want to play a no fog game with me or phillips or anyone else just ask and I am sure that there are many players that would be happy to oblige.

As far as all the strategy talk is concerned, always pillage etc. I encourage you to experiment with different tactics and you will get a sense of A)what you like and b) what will be successful pretty quick. Proper Hero management is critical and I am still weak when it comes to that (too risky a player)

Anyway welcome and goodluck.

[hungrytales]

Yevi, don't get discouraged. Rememeber that those 'highly competitive' guys trade fun for points in the ladder. I learned it's true when I tried myself to go that way .

I also come from a similar stock as you. Contrary to what KGB would have everybody believe I have Warlords background (and more of W1 than any other edition). I even actively waited till somebody somewhere does a Warlords remake at last (thx, devs!). Kept checking Warlords wikipedia page like for ages (there I learned about KGB's Warlorders site, and there I learned about Warbarons - so it was no coincidence I ended up here). Still when I started to play WB I quickly realized that while it's solidly based on its predecessors it's a rather new game and I still have to learn a lot. Luckily I had enough sense take those painful lessons in casual games .

So I'd played for like a few months casually and then it was this moment I thought, OK, now I need to up my adrenaline levels . I chose a nice well balanced map called Rivalry and won my 2 first ladder games there against notable opponents (and my fellow countrymen too): Darkh, who is a creator of some maps I enjoyed in earlier games and strach, whose Ten Warbarons Commandments post in the Strategy Talk section of the forum was the focal point of my learning curve (so it was almost like beating your mentor). Then I mopped up 3 opponents (amongst them Darkh again with an undercover name) in a FFA game on a nice big map called Four Lords (created by Darkh btw) and it was the first time I played on this map. Now, at this point I was 100% sure I'm good as hell . The only thing that bothered me was that it lasted so long. The Four Lords game went on for like 40-some turns, that's more than a month (2 months?). I thought how the hell am I supposed to make any impact on the ladder in this snail-pace? (And I kept seeing those flashy "+8 HOT" beside some names in the ladder). The solution was simple - I have to choose a small map and master it. Then I'll be able to knock out one poor wretch after another in no time . I decided Lonely Isle looks like exactly what I needed. I played one casual game there for a warm up, the next was a ladder one and I happened to win that too. I thought, OK I got it. I didn't . Next thing I know a guy named Saladman sweeps me in 9 turns. My first ladder defeat! In petty NINE turns! And I thought I got the map worked out. That gave me a pause, but still hadn't brought me yet to my senses. I racked my brains over it, made some adjustments in my strategy, thought I got it perfect this time and ventured for another Lonely Isle game. That ended up in a 6 turns-worth of disaster. I got run over by the galloping train called star (1st place on the ladder as I write it), in damn SIX turns! .

At this point I knew. Enough is enough. It's not for me, it's not fun, I don't like it. Maybe I could beat star in a rematch, because what he did was something I saw as one of the viable strategies - but not the most fun to employ. But I was wrong. What I learned with that game was that in reality - it was the only one viable strategy for this map (not sea-serpents but the dwarf city in the center) in a highly competitive ladder game with a first-class player. So if wanted to beat him I would have to play exactly like him and more-or-less let dice decide. Where's fun in that?

You see small maps are quite one-dimensional. There's not enough room there for marshaling an elaborate strategy. It's all as elaborate as an axe-sweep . Later I realized that even Rivalry felt like that when played 2vs2 instead 1vs1. I decided, ladder be damned, I need a breath of fresh air. I created (or joined) a bunch of casual games on interesting big maps (Hadesha! ) that I hadn't played on before (at least in WB) and to say fun-having days are back would be an understatement. I'm not saying I won't ever play ladder again, just my dreams of being "HOT" on the ladder are over. I'm not dedicated and determined enough (to sacrifice fun when needed) and I probably never had enough free time (as ladder games are far more intense and time-consuming) for it to begin with.

[LPhillips]

Interesting life story there

Welcome to the Warbarons Invitationals.

[ezras]

yep, that pretty much sums it up. there should be a limit on how many points you can earn on a certain map. or a way to see an opponents win loss record on a certain map before entering a game.

[hungrytales]

@LPhillips: Thanks. Reply sent.
@ezras: yes, that would definitely be helpful. I also got this idea (already passed to piranha) that it would make a great feature for subscribers (following the design strategy of "more fluff" for subscribers - in this case more meaningful fluff)

[Argammon]

I am not a lonely island expert. What I can, however, say is that what has been said about that map is not true on some of the other small maps. Both on "ice showdown" and "hammer mountains" I know of at least 5 different winning strategies that work well. Only because one of them is more obvious than the others does not mean it has to be the only one that works.

An obvious strategy on "hammer mountains" is to pillage 2-3 cities and to buy 1-2 yetis or a mammoth to control two crucial choke-points: the 2 towers located on ice. That is a strategy the "Knights of the Ukraine" have often employed against me. I admit that it is pretty powerful. However, there are alternative ways to play the map which are less obvious and work just as well if not better...