The Imperfect Valley Campaign

[DoomCarrot]

Sunrise has mounted an effective defense, but he doesn't have any means of actually doing anything more than mere harrassment.

Orcs populate like crazy, and humans finally finish their castle, but refuse to use it to shoot the orcs.... So I am sending help their way, although it looks like sunrise might attempt to intercept me. Or just set up a position West of the river to shoot at my troops with impunity. Either strategy I have a contingency plan for.

[General Brave]

Good thing you almost finished with that mansion, it will keep them away for a while. But that healer seems to be a problem.

[DoomCarrot]

Yes druids can be irritating. Probably my favorite elf unit when I occassionally play them.

Irritating units usually seem to be good units.

[Sunrise Samurai]

Good thing you almost finished with that mansion, it will keep them away for a while. But that healer seems to be a problem.

Neverending wolves

[General Brave]

I don't think the wolves are the problem, it the healing ability.

[DoomCarrot]

I just made a terrible terrible mistake.

My strat was to use my lich to use hell of pain on his dryad to destroy it, then resurrect it and continue on my journey.

However, I forgot that dryads are immune to ALL spells, and now I basically just self-destructed my reinforcements for the humans, so no doubt they will be overrun, coupled with the human stupidity of not using their castle.

[DoomCarrot]

Good thing you almost finished with that mansion, it will keep them away for a while. But that healer seems to be a problem.

Neverending wolves

I remember one game I played against esley a while ago on island, I made like 5 druids and basically just spammed wolves so hard that he literally couldn't advance with his orcs. I had an entire line of like 10 wolves on the frontline, and he didn't have enough troops to cut through them and reach the real threat of the elf archers behind them in a single turn

wolf spamming is a pretty effective strategy against everything but humans and other elves. The best way to counter it with orcs I have found is to make hamletbacks and uruk axeman, as the uruk can pretty easily cut through a horde of them, and the hamletbacks send you a thank you note every time you attack them with a wolf.

As for undeads, I am still working on a counter for them lol. I haven;t really seriously played undeads until the last week or two.

[Sunrise Samurai]

The biggest danger wolves have to undeads is their obnoxious capacity for denying corpses. Summon on a corpse, step on another, plus block, all without giving one when it dies.

That mistake with the lich was disastrous. I was already considering sending a few archers to snipe some more irritating humans and assist the orcs. You mentioned I can't do anything more than skirmish, but that may yet be enough, if I can tip the scales with the ai battle.

[DoomCarrot]

Well, it looks like my human AI is pretty much defeated lol

And yes they are insanely effective at countering undeads. I think the fact that they do not give a corpse is what makes them so effective like you said. I am not sure how to feel about that, but I think if the blood hound is ever implemented it may be a good idea to make wolves leave a "dog corpse" upon death that can be ressurected into a blood hound.

It would make wolf spamming undeads a little more difficult, and something that you can't just do casually, or else the undeads will just throw those same wolves back in your face but stronger.

I haven't played undeads or elves enough to say whether or not its really unbalanced as of now, but I will admit I have no idea how to break your wolf wall with my undeads, and skeleton archers are too weak and undependable to effectively kill the druids themselves behind the wolves.

And I believe druids have spell resistance, which means they are also immune to any of the other undead range attacks, which are mostly all spell based.

With humans, fortresses and upgraded archers and catapults can usually annihilate druids/wolves no problem. Orcs have pretty solid swarm counters, but the undead have no range option, and their counter to swarm armies is their ability to raise the many corpses, which the wolves absolutely negate.

Can we just appreciate for a second how amazing this looks though?

[General Brave]

The Undead need to hold back a bit, they need to make one powerful unit to break through. Perhaps a fireball or any of the skeleton monsters will do.

[General Brave]

The Undead need to hold back a bit, they need to make one powerful unit to break through. Perhaps a fireball or any of the skeleton monsters will do.

[DoomCarrot]

The problem is that one powerful unit cannot break through. It would just get stuck in a swarm of wolves and not be able to move more than 1-2 spaces per turn. By swarming him I can kill all his wolves each turn and keep pressing forwards. It also keeps his archers a bit more occupied. Focusing 5 fire archers on one big monster is a lot more effective than trying to shoot 4 different swordsmen.

[General Brave]

Best way to breakthrough is using Horseman, there are not able to be caught on fire. But I suppose that the least of your worries.

[DoomCarrot]

No, al unded catch fire but cemetary reapers. I have been using golden horsemen, but he typically pins them down with wolves and burns them, but they do draw a lot of firepower from my swarm.

I have begun using bone golems to hopefully push through, and am finally breaking his defense, but now the orcs will come in 10-15 turns, so unless I can take samurai's capital in 10-15 turns, I am in trouble. His great tree may be a problem.

[General Brave]

It seems like the elf may lose it, let's hope they have something to handle those tougher units.

[Sunrise Samurai]

The golems aren't the problem. It's the death knights. Fortunately, I predicted it and evacuated half my troops. Unfortunately, the other half still got bombed. Mostly, the fire archers survived, though the druid's left behind didn't. I expect to be able to hold out for reinforcements.

[Sunrise Samurai]

Interesting. It appears the Doom is playing catapult with his death knight. Hit, then retreating to recharge. Might be effective, but he may have been better off pressing the temporary advantage he had.

[Sunrise Samurai]

The mansion is down. Without the added production, Doomcarrot will have trouble pumping out the strongest units in his arsenal. Bereft of the covering fire, he may also discover factories are more vulnerable than before. He lobbed a fireball and a few knights at the Western front, but that shouldn't be too much trouble.

I did have to ignore a few troops to kill the mansion, however. Probably going to face a harsh retaliation in return.

[DoomCarrot]

Sunrise and I continue to battle back in forth with no clear winner yet. The orcs creep forwards in massive numbers, but they are not very intelligent, and their corpses have been feeding my undead army more than hurting it.

[General Brave]

Very good Doom, you're holding yourself very well. It seems you may take them down. Let's see what tactic they use.

[Sunrise Samurai]

Yes, I'm beginning to notice that the orcs feel more like my enemies than allies. Without their interfering, I'll soon overrun Doom. I control the west pretty firmly, and am continuing to build new great trees. The end of my long research period is in sight, soon to have dodge melee and dodge arrows in hand. I actually ignored dodge counter though. When I have nothing more to research, I shall have to devote more production to troops. Doomcarrot struggles to build a new mansion, not quite getting the point it takes but a little application of fire to bring it down yet again.

[DoomCarrot]

Yes I am very much in trouble, and I am slowly being beaten down.

However, every once and a while some stupid orcs will move in bad positions and I kill them all and raise them back to life, which has kept sunrise busy for the last few turns.

[General Brave]

But for how long? How are you going to break the siege.

[Sunrise Samurai]

I don't think he has a chance left. Elf dragons aren't nice when they get a chance to slip past your​ troops and hit factories. As of the end of my last turn, I killed 2 factories and sidestepped into a tc within range of 2 more factories. I've also begun burning workers. I estimate 2 death knights hiding in those middle tcs, making them incredibly difficult to capture, but they will be overrun once I eliminate the main base behind them.

[DoomCarrot]

It is pretty much over

Sunrise has utterly broken my defences, and so many orcs are coming now. I expect complete victory for Sunrise in T-5 turns

[General Brave]

They should have made more maggots.

[DoomCarrot]

The humans invaded. The doom swept the land. The Elves fought valiantly. The orcs rallied. Together the valley folk drove out the invaders, although much blood was shed.

[General Brave]

Then a wagon filled with catapults appears out of nowhere and wreak havoc.

[Sunrise Samurai]

That was a very fun game. I think I should have begun with ents and dragons much sooner than I did though.

And a wagon full of catapults would quickly discovere fire archers are really not fun for wooden units.

[DoomCarrot]

I should have focused more on death knights. Their speed/range/immunity to fire makes them one of the only undead units that can break through the tactic you used early game. Had I figured that out sooner, I think I could have broken your druid wall/fire archer support.

I think if we had a rematch sunrise, knowing what we do now about undeads vs elves, it would be even more interesting..... Care to rematch?