FSA should stop boycotting battles, that's all I gotta say

I'd love to see what all those top-knotch players could do in battles if they set their minds to it.

I showed you what we/I can do.

TO be honest, I find battles pretty much boreing. Individual strategy is a small part of the game. The game is pretty much decided by the beginning troops. I knew I had you beat when I seen your line up. I just needed to make sure I did not make a fatal mistake. I did make a few small ones but not enough to be brought down by inferior troops selection coupled with your inferior battle skills.
Now I am not saying that if you find yourself at the loosing end of an R/P/S battle you cant turn it, but against a quality player, it just has a low chance of working.

I could do standard troops start games, but when your game is decided by a blind start strategy, it's boreing. I'll say again as I have before, a top campaign player can be made into a top battler rather easy. But if your just a battler, dont even walk into a camp game vs quality players.

Boe, we don't boycott battle games. First it requires an hour or more of constant gameing, I just dont really prefer that, second .... well see above.

Want to know a fact, Sage. My troop selection was identical to the one Kyrion used on me in the battle tourney. I liked it and I saw what it did to mace and the fact that a marks cant kill a squire in 1 shot made it very inviting. Plus. my troops selection was the butt of your jokes with Mog and Nightstalker in the beginning of our game, funny at how you thought I had the advanatage basically because of that troops selection at the end.

And look, if you dont want to admit that I was level 53 and you were level 148 and I simply kicked your ass, then fine. But.. well... that's what happened. Just make an excuse if you want, if it makes you feel better.

You didn't show me what you're completely capable of. If you were as good at battles as you were at campaigns, you could have beaten me much, much worse. Your playing wasn't incredibly impressive. You beat me, yes, but so have some level 1 people.

You made quite a few mistakes, and I'm not going to make excuses explaining why I was not able to fully exploit those mistakes. I made mistakes too, and against a mass marksmen strat, mistakes can be very, very fatal. Especially when you have RPS advantage, to boot I played sloppy, and I know if you put your mind to it you could have embarrassed me very thoroughly.

I joked because you were using a mass marksmen strat. Mog has also been using mass marksmen, and I've been trying to convince him to give it up. It was more of an inside joke than anything else. Your troop selection was sound, its just that I frown on mass marksmen strats as a whole.

To close, you didn't kick my ass. You had the potential to crush me, and instead it was close. And I had no illusions of your skill going into the battle, only doubts as to your experience. But as I know from my two clan-mates ^ector and Tal, experience isn't as important as skill. I knew it was going to be a tough battle, BA, and you delivered what I expected. I just wish you had picked a more...complex strat, so that maneuvering was more of an issue. As it was, you just hid behind your wall of squires and shot me to death. It was up to me to find the holes in your defense (which I did find) but I wasn't playing my best, and it wasn't enough to overcome the obstacles.

Usually, I'm good enough to overcome the obstacles

Edit: You said to me that all good campaigners can be decent at battles, but that not all good battlers can be decent at campaigns.

Can you show me a good battler who's not decent at campaigns? Crest doesn't count because he doesn't have time to play campaigns, and he goes inactive in games, which brings his score down.

Seems that most of the top 20 battlers have very decent campaigns scores.

Last Edited : Thursday, 24 June 2004 - 21:52

Guyz...all this is entertaining, but isn't the topic 'Clan Rankings', and not 'the battle game between BA & Sage?

Why not open a thread in chit chat and challenge each others' skill there?

Before I go, I must take the opportunity to agree to a comment made by BA, "I'll say again as I have before, a top campaign player can be made into a top battler rather easy. But if your just a battler, dont even walk into a camp game vs quality players." As BA states further, troop choices made by the two battlers usually determines the victor...not necessarily tactics or strategies.

Anyway, just had to take the chance to agree with BA on something. I'll take my advice and end this post, as I was lured into commenting on your 'off-topic' posts.

I'm sure REQ will provide a means for properly ranking our clan games soon.

Hey, Sugarleo, YOU want a piece of me?

Well, sage is right.
Pretty much all our great battlers here are good campaigners.

Battles are a quicker way of identifying good players. A good player can attain a good battle rank in a relatively short time as opposed to months and months in a campaign.

Last Edited : Friday, 25 June 2004 - 07:43

I disagree. The ranking program for battles is a ladder style, which can mean you just play alot of games. If you want to see who is the best battlers divide rank by games played.

Except for the fact that experience is very, very important.

Lets look at prancer, for example. He's only level 28. He's had almost 200 battles. If skill was determined by rank/games played, then your average level 28 player would be able to kill prancer. However, prancer's 200 battles of experience would come into play, making him able to defeat an average level 28 player.

Well, the battle ladder rank is skewed because players start at 1 and can't go below 1 in a loss. Also, it takes at least a dozen or so games to even start to accurately rank a player. So, to stay on topic, while ranknfile.waronliner.com also uses a ladder style 1) it didn't get skewed 2) but no clan has played enough clan games to be sure of where things will really fall - presently it is only a suggestive hint of which clans (as a collective group of players) are more skilled than others.

Well I challenge you all to prove it, BA, sugar and Fanatic. If you can achieve a battle rank of 1 within a couple of months then I will eat my words. None of you were in the battles tournament or got past the first round.. There have been very few upsets in the tournament and the semifinals will be filled with top battle players--which shows its not merely luck, but SKILL.

did not say it was luck anywhere in my comments. And I don't have the time or desire to try to get to the number one rank battle. But the fact is that both battles and camps are part of wol, I choose to play mostly camps as they are a better use of my skills, combined battle tactics and resource management.

I simply felt it necessary to show Sage that I am not all camps, that I can play battles also. He still sems to credit his loss to my luck though, so ask him to prove it luck.

Haha, I can't prove it was luck. I didn't play my best, but I can't prove that. You, however, played rather sloppily...you protected one of your marksmen with nothing more than a 2 pop squire and a 1 pop falchioner (or maybe it was a 1 pop squire and a 2 pop falc...) In your original attack you split your troops rather than keeping them together, so that after I broke through the first wall of squires I was able to ZoC the survivors in and move onto your second wave. On one occasion, you unneccessarily moved your marksmen before shooting me. The heavy calvary that was potentially threatening them didn't survive through the round.

Don't you think as beta testers to the game you should be testing all of the game rather than only half of it?

Oh, and in response to a comment you made in IRC. No, you were not the best level 52 player I've ever seen

what ever sage, Fact is, you lost. Tactics are opinions.

Yup, I lost.

And thats sorta embarrassing now that I find out that your tactics intentionally include unneccessarily exposing the backbone of your force, reducing the effectiveness of your defensive wall, and diminishing the killing power of your strongest troops.

I made mistakes too, but I've seen myself play often enough to know that I don't make them often. With you, I have insufficient data and so out of sheer laziness I just assume that you played like you do every game.

My biggest mistake, though, was letting you get the first hit. Oh well.

boe I meant no discredit to you. I was merely explaining that it takes some time for a players true level to show from the battle ranks. Which I then went on to further explain that the current unofficial clan ranks are not yet decisive by any means either. You've certainly had enough battle games to prove your rank is based upon your skill. I have no interest whatsover in battle games - when I have that much free time all at once (and I'm not sitting around bored at work ) I've got other things I'd rather do.

sage, you beta test the battles so I don't have to . I'll test the campaigns so you won't have to if you don't want to.

Last Edited : Saturday, 26 June 2004 - 00:31

As I see it Battles magnify mistakes that are made.

If you start a campaign and you pick the wrong part of thr R/P/S compared to your nearest opponent it isn't devistating, you can still beat him reasonably well because:
A) You get a defensive bonus when in your castle
B) You can change your troops being produced (and therefore the make up of your force)
C) You can find someone else to help protect you

In a battle if you have the wrong part of the R/P/S then you are in trouble. Assuming all else is equal you are in a much bigger uphill struggle


Also, in abattle a wrong move is rather bad against a skille dopponent, as they can take advantage, in a campaign (maybe less slow in slow...) you can just log on an hour or two later and (if the opponent hasn't been on in the interum) move back.


In the end a campaign is down to skill once players are past the "half your opponents are inactive, lets grab their stuff" stage, there isn't much where an unskilled opponent is going to beat a skilled opponent (note: Skill here refers to diplomatic skill too, so excluding multies and clan mates gang-banging isn't relevant to this example)

A battle, however, can be put down to "luck": a failure to correctly predict what the opponent has, a failure to predict where their main force will be, some unfortunate damage rolls (where their blocking troop is put down to 1 health, for example): All of these will generally be the downfall of someone to another of less combat skill.


In the end, though, you can't say that battles are due to chance, you pick your troops (except auto games, which few seem to play), you can see totd, you should have some idea of your opponent. It's down to second guessing.

Sometimes you'll get it horribly wrong (ha, I've managed it enough ), but in general you should have as good a chance as your opponent of having the upper hand.

Oh, and if you take Orphaths I'll have to kill you


Kyrion

Updated the actual topic of this thread.

Warlords moved up a spot in the battle rankings over FSA, which pushed FSA down a spot in the overall rankings, and moved CoC up.

Edit: CoC moved up to level 46 in campaigns, putting them ahead of 3K on the campaign charts, above the Crusaders on the overall charts, putting us in at number 4 overall!

Last Edited : Saturday, 26 June 2004 - 17:40

erm,... BoS should actually be in 2nd place in campaigns ranking list as Boe suffers from technical difficulties with his computer and his name and scores are NOT in the BoS total. It doesn't really change the Clan rankings though will probably give BoS a 2nd+2nd=4 points, rather than 5.

Last Edited : Saturday, 26 June 2004 - 12:01