[Replay] [Commentary] Double-Bombshell on Sharkfood Island

[nivra0]

Fun game with Onofre's Arm. I get promoted to Super-Titan after this

Replay

Commentary:

Turn 1: I have FTA, so I bank 2 wits, and leave myself exposed.
Turn 2: He has the same idea, but he's second player. Banks 4 wits.
Turn 3: My bombshell comes out. 0 wits left.
Turn 4: His comes out, he has more wits, so can move and buff it. 0 wits left.
Turn 5: I see an unguarded Wit Hex and a medic kill. I'm losing an unbuffed runner one space away from spawn(2 wits) + 2 wits to move and kill. Total: 4 wits. He's losing a Medic 2 moves from spawn(but 2nd move is inconsequential, so call it one move. He also has to use one wit to kill me. He also loses one wit from the wit hex, and has to move another unit onto the hex to retake it. Total: 5-7 wits. I also gain scouting, and it may slow down his medic buffing. 0 wits left.

Turn 6: He shells up on his wit space. He banks a wit.
Turn 7: This runner I plan to keep around for vision, so I buff it. I haven’t buffed my bombshell yet. I don’t feel the need. I know where his units are, and he can’t reach me yet. Bank 3 wits. Knowing where his bombshell is, I decide to take a more central position and control the middle, cutting off his forward recruiting path, while protecting the vertical line in front of my base. I feel this will give me a more direct recruiting pattern and put pressure on his spawn while still holding a strong defense. It also keeps his heavy which is way up top away from the front.

Turn 8: Banks another 2 wits. 3 wits.
Turn 9: I use up my extra wits to set up an offensive. At this point, I made a mistake with my front. I haven’t used bombshells enough, and forgot that they can bomb empty spots 3 hexes away, and splash to 4 hexes. I setup my front line 4 hexes away where he can splash me. I also screw up and forget to buff my bombshell. 0 wits left.

Turn 10: He splashes me, then uses 2 wits to reposition medic and heavy. He doesn’t yet know I have a bombshell there(although he probably could’ve guessed). Recruits a heavy. Good decision considering I had two 3 health soldiers, but I think it costs him down the road. He uses 8 wits total. 1 wit left.

Turn 11: I’m stuck. It’ll cost way too many wits to move my front back, but at least I can splash his front too, so it’s not too bad a position. However, his medic is positioned to heal his front whereas mine is back at my spawn. I take the easy kill, and then decide to press the attack rather than trade splash damage with the medic positioning disadvantage. I choose the 2 health runner so he can’t splash it to death. Trade analysis post-splash: He loses a medic + 2 moves and a soldier + 2 moves, and uses 3 wits to kill my units: 11 wits. I will end up losing a heavy + 2 moves, a buffed runner + 1 move, and 4 wits to attack: 13 wits. Not an attack I would normally choose, but again, he had a medic advantage on me. 0 wits left.

Turn 12: He uses 5 wits, and optimizes his position, splashing my soldier. 2 wits left.
Turn 13: I’m at a disadvantage. A straightforward attack would kill his heavy, but leave me with almost no forces left. I decide to pressure him with my soldiers, keeping them out of shark range, but within striking range of his bombshell. I choose not to splash him, as I figured 2 soldier hits would kill a heavy anyways. Bad move on my part. 0 wits left.

Turn 14: He maneuvers to protect his bombshell and splash my soldiers again. I would’ve positioned the top heavy out of splash range, and the runner apart from the bottom heavy so they won’t both be splashed. Bank 1 wit. 3 wits left.

Turn 15: My soldiers are almost dead. Time to do some damage. But to what? I have two choices: (1) I can bring his base to 1 hp, and then runner spam to try and get that last hit. This will likely force him to wall-up to prevent my runners from going around, or (2) I can take out the heavy. this is where I rue my decision not to splash him. A 3 hp shark could be splashed and killed with one soldier. I keep recruiting, even if only a runner to keep up the pressure. I have the unit advantage. Gotta keep it. 0 wits left.

Turn 16: Retreat and Heal. I like the shark retreat. I’m not sure I like the medic. I would’ve considered a soldier here. 3 wits left.

Turn 17: Soldier spam time. I have a numerical advantage, so pumping soldier helps me hold onto that. I space them out so he can only splash one at a time. I also keep them within threatening distance of his bombshell. 0 wits left.

Turn 18: Gotta protect the bombshell. 2 wits left.
Turn 19: The power of splash damage. I can kill a 5hp heavy with 2 soldiers and a splash. The second soldier should’ve been positioned bottom left, so that his soldier couldn’t hit it without moving.I grab his spawn, forcing him to either retreat his soldier or bomb my runner.

Turn 20: I would’ve bombed the runner, move the 4hp soldier above the blue 4hp soldier, summoned a soldier to take his place, and then killed the 4 hp soldier, and buff the new one. Both the base and the bombshell can take a hit and the medic can heal the bomb. That would give him two 4hp soldiers, a medic, and a bombshell vs. a 1 hp soldier, a 4hp soldier, a medic and a 3hp bombshell. If he had done that, I would’ve had to retreat/regroup/defend. I think the top soldier would’ve died regardless. He can’t get out of splash range on one turn. Instead, he loses a chance to summon, and still only kills one soldier. bank 4 wits. 6 wits left. That’s the game, right there.

[Alvendor]

Nice game, some thoughts:

Turn 1 saving 2 wits here is perfectly fine. You are in absolutely no danger.

Turn 3 I have no experience with early special units, but something I will definitely try out.

Turn 5 Nice!

Turn 7 Good with a runner for vision on this map.

Turn 9 Three points here:
1. As you know where his bombshell is, put both your solders 4 tiles away from it so you can kill it if opportunity presents itself.
2. For this map, your units become more powerful the closer to his base they are. So you should mostly move them up right not down right.
3. Keep the medic where it is. He has a bombshell and you need to save every unit you can that you have invested wits in to get to the frontline.

Turn 15 Instead if creating a runner, what do you think about moving the soldier 3 steps up?

Its fun too see people make these more in-depth strategic threads. I enjoy these the most.

[nivra0]

3: I was able to do it because scouting revealed no rush.

9: units are more powerful closer to his base? Hmm... I'll have to think about that. Why do you say that? Agreed on medic.

15: Ooh... You're right, I could've taken out his bombshell then.

[Alvendor]

(07-18-2012 01:37 AM)nivra0 Wrote:  9: units are more powerful closer to his base? Hmm... I'll have to think about that. Why do you say that?

I've been thinking of making a longer post about it as it has some interesting strategic implications. The short version is to value units in how much they cost to create plus how much it cost to move them there. You were touching on it when reasoning about turn 5. Killing a medic he has moved out with is better than killing a medic that stands on the spawn point.

If you have a bunch of units close to the opponents base he has to defend both his units and his base and you can force him to make some tough choices.

Your units are also loosing value the closer to the enemy spawn point they are (except when they can threaten to spawn block). You don't want a big fight close to his spawn point as it is much cheaper for him to call in reinforcements than for you. This map is special in that the spawn point and the base are so separated. So in a majority of cases you prefer to move away from his spawn point and towards his base.

[nivra0]

I like that reasoning a lot. Worth ruminating.

[swimj]

This is a ST vs ST match between Zargarsh and me which also involves two bombshells on Sharkfood. It could shed further light on unit positioning.

ST bombshell battle-Sharkfood

Note that he makes his shell a turn before mine, but positions it defensively, whereas I put it in an offensive position where I can hit his base with splash. That seemed to be the difference maker in this game, the positioning. The placement of holes on sharkfood creates a natural placement for the bombshell.

Thoughts/comments appreciated.

[ArtNJ]

Alvendor is 100% right. Units take too long too effectively contest the enemy spawn point, and its much more dangerous to attack the enemy base at the upper quadrant, away from the spawn. When I see units advancing towards my spawn, that is the signal to buy the Scrambler and go all in on the attack up top.

I had a recent Robots v Robots (yes, I did that deliberately to annoy purists) game where the threat of a Scrambler behind the front line was deterring my attack up top. I had no idea how to proceed. Then I scouted and saw a sniper and 5 hp heavy advanced from his spawn. Based on that, I decided to assume he didnt have a scrambler in position, launched my attack and won.

[Alvendor]

(07-19-2012 01:03 AM)swimj Wrote:  This is a ST vs ST match between Zargarsh and me which also involves two bombshells on Sharkfood. It could shed further light on unit positioning.

ST bombshell battle-Sharkfood

Note that he makes his shell a turn before mine, but positions it defensively, whereas I put it in an offensive position where I can hit his base with splash. That seemed to be the difference maker in this game, the positioning. The placement of holes on sharkfood creates a natural placement for the bombshell.

Thoughts/comments appreciated.

Very similar style to how I would have played the game. A few thoughts:

You like to setup your units in an excellent position. Just be careful that your good position is worth the wits you are spending to archieve it. I'm thinking especially on turn 6, 14, and the soldier on turn 20

I love your aggressive positioning on turn 18.

Assume you just forgot to heal your bombshell on turn 24?

On turn 8, would you consider leaving the base open for the heavy so he can attack once but you get a lead in units?

[swimj]

(07-19-2012 10:35 PM)Alvendor Wrote:  

(07-19-2012 01:03 AM)swimj Wrote:  This is a ST vs ST match between Zargarsh and me which also involves two bombshells on Sharkfood. It could shed further light on unit positioning.

ST bombshell battle-Sharkfood

Note that he makes his shell a turn before mine, but positions it defensively, whereas I put it in an offensive position where I can hit his base with splash. That seemed to be the difference maker in this game, the positioning. The placement of holes on sharkfood creates a natural placement for the bombshell.

Thoughts/comments appreciated.

Very similar style to how I would have played the game. A few thoughts:

You like to setup your units in an excellent position. Just be careful that your good position is worth the wits you are spending to archieve it. I'm thinking especially on turn 6, 14, and the soldier on turn 20

I love your aggressive positioning on turn 18.

Assume you just forgot to heal your bombshell on turn 24?

On turn 8, would you consider leaving the base open for the heavy so he can attack once but you get a lead in units?

Positioning-yes, I have wondered that myself sometimes. I think I do it more on sharkfood because of how quickly runners can take out my medic.

24-yep I forgot to heal it. I was focused on moving my bottom soldier over to potentially spawn block/add pressure. It didn't work really well and I should've assumed he wouldn't let me do that. On the other hand sacrificing the shell put his heavy right in the mouth of mine so I didn't feel too bad about it.

8-hmmm...I've seen a lot of the best players do this, but I don't think I'm at the comfort level yet to take 3 base damage to kill his heavy. Because that would require me to be very aware of where his runners would be the rest of the game, something I cannot do yet.

Finally, I have a general question on dealing with opponent's attacks. If I am facing a rush in which I know I can't kill all units at once, how should judge which ones to kill? For example, if there's a runner 4/5 spaces away (which can attack medic/do base damage), a heavy 3 spaces, a soldier going to take a wit space, and a soldier 3 spaces away. I don't need a specific list, but just how do you decide what to attack?

[Alvendor]

(07-20-2012 01:00 AM)swimj Wrote:  Finally, I have a general question on dealing with opponent's attacks. If I am facing a rush in which I know I can't kill all units at once, how should judge which ones to kill? For example, if there's a runner 4/5 spaces away (which can attack medic/do base damage), a heavy 3 spaces, a soldier going to take a wit space, and a soldier 3 spaces away. I don't need a specific list, but just how do you decide what to attack?

Hmm thats a good one When you are in an actual game with a specific situation I don't think there are any hard rules. A lot of if comes down to list in your mind all the possible moves you can do and all possible moves he can answer with and go as deep as you can and then choose the best option.

That said, I guess there are some things to keep in mind. When you are defending you should do it as close to your base as possible without risking bonus squares or base. Concentrate on killing the expensive units that have travelled far. If both you and the opponent looses a heavy at your base you actually gain a lot of wits as he had invested 3-5 wits just to get it there.

You often don't have to worry about runners picking off the medic when defending. Think of it in wits. It costs him 1+1+1+1 to create, move, move again, attack to kill the medic. If you can kill the runner without moving (or while moving out a unit you would have moved anyway) it costs you 1+2+1 to get back to the original position plus you get the option to change your placement of the medic so not a bad trade.

Medic is also less important when defending as it mostly just cost one wit the get new units into battle. Remember, units become more valuable the more you move them towards the opponent's base. Its much more important to have high health on the units you go on the offensive with.

Does that make sense, or is it just me rambling? =)