Winter Duel endurance brawl
[Ed. note by Cyde Weys: In this post we depart from our usual fare of showing matches between experts and show more of what an average ranked match is like. There is a lot that can be learned just from watching this replay.]
Download the replay of this match (v3223).
Oh man what a match! I really enjoyed playing this fellow (or lady) because the outcome never felt in my favor. From the beginning I slipped up and my patience never paid off until the very end. I will go into detail further along in the post, but I want to say once and for all that ranked play is a blast. Sure it is for those with a competitive spirit, but there is nothing more fun than a victory, especially after being punished for nearly most of the match!
Alright then, let’s see where we start off. I begin with the classic two power gens, two mexes, and a factory. I chose a land factory because the “sky slammer” AA vehicle can fend off any air attacks he throws my way.
Before I go on with the rest of my base plans, let me discuss my unit build order. First I like to get land scouts out into the field. For a larger map I would use a few more, likely getting them at a later time, but for now I queue up two. Next I usually order a handful of light assault bots so that I may pester his engineers and prevent him from expanding too rapidly. After this I usually order five or more engineers, and depending on what I see with the radar, I will add mantises in. If and when I have enough engineers I will simply put the factory on repeat with a mantis in queue.
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| Mantis Mex Rave! |
The base build order is nothing all too special. I wish I had built a second land factory and focused on early pressure, by mantis, and expansion with engineers more. I ended up wasting a lot of time and economy waiting for additional mexes to come up and running. Viewing the replay I notice that my opponent did not make enough power generators and suffered a long eco stall, fortunate for me as my fumbling should have lost me the game. My opponent is also not making good use of his engineers. I usually try to queue orders long enough for an engineer that I am set for 5 minutes or so. You can tell by the little timer how much time is in their queue, but this changes if you have mantises or other units assist with their building. Another great economy trick to use is to have your engineers always end their queue by assisting a factory. This way whenever you need to find a spare engineer, if there isn’t one already screaming to be used in the upper right hand corner of your screen, you can find them at a factory.
My initial volley of hunters manages to take out his scout ( Critical! ) and simply hides in the north for another engineer. I cannot stress enough how important radar is, and how overpowered scouts are. If you think about it, a unit you can build in two seconds can scan almost half of the map, tell you what is coming, and even the unit type, if discovered by an air scout passing over. When he is flying blind, both here and later in the game (I think, yet to check) it creates large opportunities for me. Remember that units such as artillery and turrets are much more efficient with a radar.
The first bit of real action comes when we both begin to turret our separate mounds. My opponent is able to get his up first securing him a pretty powerful position in the map. My bizarre economy is holding me back. I went for a tier 2 mex before I had all of my tier one (What was I thinking?) and started placing mass storage even before that (yeah…). He is able to place his turrets faster and effectively counter my positions almost completely back to my base. I thought by now it was clearly over. I had fumbled on my mass, my energy, and my unit production. I know this may seem a bit harsh, but Sun Tzu has a famous saying that applies here:
“Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.”
So I am pressed back far into my interior, my opponent completely dominating two thirds of the map. This is not good for me at all. At this point I would again like to mention the strength of our economies, and more importantly, how we are using it. My economy is in dire ruin, with my mass low and my energy stalled. I am aggressively working to solve this problem while still trying to maintain a front. On the other hand, my opponent has full mass and energy, but he is not using it! If you ever have a full mass bar its time to build another factory, upgrade a mex, or upgrade something! He could have easily hurt me here. He saw my commander somewhat open and did not act upon it.
For the next few minutes we build up our separate armies. I fix my economy and slowly get the war machine going. He harasses my forward outpost with a Viper mobile missile launcher. It works in getting my commander to retreat, but does little else. I begin to build bombers for a small attack against his commander, without taking note of all of his sky slammers. I use the bomber to scare him, but it does little else for me. While I am again wasting my resources he is building a Gunther artillery piece on his mound. I don’t really know why he did this, being Cybran, it wasn’t his most effective move.
By this point neither of us are being very aggressive. I am shelling my base in, still recovering my bobbling economy. This sets the pace for most of the game until much later. I begin to build a significant fire base at my northernmost mex and rush to tier two. I eventually have two shields, multiple tier one and tier two turrets, and a few walls. I also build a tactical missile launcher which I use to moderate effectiveness to harass his artillery and formation of units. I try a few little tricks here and there, such as using my scared mound as a place to move a few tier one artillery. I take out his Cerberus turret, but this is to no advantage as he has three tier three bots in the way now.
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| My fire base. Such pretty shields :-). |
It is only when tier three arrives that the heat turns up. By this point I have a single factory at tier three, the other factories making medusa/mantises and occasionally harassing him. I use air scouts every so often to check on what he is building. It is sacrificial to fly them over, but they do a great job in collecting what I need to know. He eventually tries to push, but by this time I have established considerable defenses on the hill. Couple the turrets with a radar and I am able to weaken even a group of siege bots before significant damage is done. I abandon my mound and fall back to factories at my base. Though he never kills the two forward land factories, I consider them unusable, save for tier one units, because he could strike them at any time (his two unused tactical missile launchers anyone?).
The game breaking decision came when I remembered SupComTalk’s first free for all. Sure I was one of the first to die, but I learned an important lesson. Besides intelligence gathering, using mobile tech 3 artillery is vastly underrated. I begin using my lone tech three factory, assisted with a few engineers, to pump out tech three artillery. The effects are noticed immediately. After using my northern fire base as much as possible I rush my ten engineers to build a quick shield at my mound. I move my eight or so t3 artillery there and continue to pound. By this time most of his forces have been massacred, not once attacking, and I am pretty proud of myself. I do a routine air scout run and find that he is building a spider bot. I am curious as to why he needs such a large weapon to take out my moderate defenses, but so be it. I make another shield and move my artillery forward once more. By this time my land factories have been fully upgraded and are beginning to pump out a few siege bots. I run another air scout run and notice he is nearly undefended. This is when I close the deal.
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| My first artillery volley. |
I use by siege bots as a distraction while I attempt to build a fire base on his mound, making my artillery in sight of his base. Although my siege bots handled his base before my artillery was effective, it would have made for a nice backup plan.
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| The End. |
The big lessons to be learned:
Radar is key! – if you don’t see whats coming the end will be right around the corner
Adapt Adapt Adapt! – constantly stop yourself and think “what could I do better”. This is something I see with better players, such as Cyde, who quickly adapt to weakness. Throughout the game my opponent sends little bomber raids. It takes me a healthy bit of time to respond. Though I get light defenses up, if he had expose that weakness further I bet I would have been in a lot of pain.
Economy is your lifeblood! – yes, I know I stressed this enough, but economy is absolutely essential. You can make a great base economy for yourself, but if you wish to continually expand and develop you will need to do the same with your economy. Of special importance is mass, because unless you are at tier three already, the positions on the map where metal is available will be taken.
Ranked games are fun! – one of my favorite things about these complicated games is their dynamic community. There are so many strategies going around it is almost as fun to lose to one as it is to win. I also would like to say that ranked games usually inspire more creativity. Though this is counter to psychology’s perspective, the custom games seem to nurture a closed mentality (not just a turtle defense either). Because there is a lesser consequence, for good or bad, players seem to adapt less.
May 5th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Great after action report! Interesting and exciting to read, nice pictures! 10 of 10 :)
May 5th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Why thank you. I would like to emphasize once more Cyde’s note.
[Ed. note by Cyde Weys: In this post we depart from our usual fare of showing matches between experts and show more of what an average ranked match is like. There is a lot that can be learned just from watching this replay.]
This is by no means a glorious example of how a game should be played. There are so many errors I could double this response in length. There are even some tricks Cyde has just informed me of could have been useful, but those will hopefully come in later comments.
May 5th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Wow…. I wish I could still play games where t1 bombers were still effective 30 minutes in… Good replay (:
May 5th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Sweet. Or in Spanish: Dulce!
May 6th, 2007 at 1:01 am
Wuped: The bombers acted as little more than annoyance, but yes, the game was moving incredible slowly.
May 6th, 2007 at 1:20 am
Ugh, I feel illiterate. The previous post was supposed to say “an annoyance” and “incredibly slowly”.
May 6th, 2007 at 1:25 am
But I thought t3 mobile arties were “fancy” units with no use in ranked matches :-)
May 6th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Baddox: Does this look like a normal ranked match to you?!?!?!?!
May 6th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Baddox: Read my previous post more carefully. I never included tech 3 mobile artillery in my group of what I consider fancy units. They are vital in ranked play on certain maps, especially Winters Duel.
May 6th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Great read. Despite both of you guys making some critical mistakes, it really goes to show what a good adaptive strategy can do to what would ordinarily be a stronger opponent.
May 6th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Hmm.. I really didnt think this game was very good skillwise. The eco’s were horrible and the game was moving so sloooow. Maelos just sat there with his TML-4 and had open shots on the enemy T2 Arty and stuff, but no, he didnt feel like taking them out? And whats up with the really slow t3?.. I mean.. Maelos firebase would easily have been taken out with 10-15 sabs. And then the other guy starts building a Liberator AND a monkeylord (although he quit the liberator project) when he doesnt even have that many units or defence…
Sorry but I really dont get why this game was so good…
May 6th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Im sorry if my reply was focused on the skill when the game was supposed to show an average ranked game. But If this is an average ranked game, I should really start playing more supcom online :P
May 6th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Svett: I found the match interesting because I’ve never before seen anyone get so close to a monkeylord in a ranked game. That’s the kind of thing you’d never see in higher levels of competitive play.
May 6th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Honestly that game was horrible. The only reason why there was even a chance of a Monkeylord in that game was due to ineptitude on both sides–on the one side for building it in the first place, and on the other side for wasting enough time and resources for the opponent to attempt it. This match doesn’t really teach us anything except to use your resources and units, and don’t just sit there while they get bombarded to death.
PS The only thing that was kind of neat was a late game Cybran Medusa raid that was pretty effective. If either side had been building Medusas from the start the game would have been over a lot quicker.
May 6th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Cyde Weys: My bad. You listed Tech 3 artillery as a fancy unit, for some reason I encoded that as T3 mobile artillery in memory.
May 6th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
I haven’t read the article but i did watch the replay. Maelos, you won because your opponent tried to build a ML, it drained is eco. I guess the good thing is that you managed to see it and you went for an assassination before it was done.
When you only have 3 or 4 bombers and your opponent has mobile AA, don’t go for the commander, go for the eco buildings.
I like the fact that you used T3 mobile arty instead of T2 arty or SAB.
You need to work on your eco, you should always be building a power gen or a mgen or updating a mex.
Cyde Weys, you should do that more often, it was a good exercise (watching the replay and thinking what he could have done differently; it’s harder to do that with a pro replay).
May 6th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
I wrote the article, and reading the reviews I seem hesitant to do it again. I stated several times througout the essay that this was not be best game, even saying far from it. If you view any of my other replays via GPGnet, specifically the two previous matches on Artic Refuge, you will see that I was not up to speed.
This being said, I found this match to be interesting due to the length and determination of both players. I titled it “endurance brawl” because it was not pretty, was not professional, and was certainly not short. I am sorry if my glaring mistakes offended you, I knew all too well what I was doing wrong. I, as a non 24/7 gamer, am trying my best to learn little by little. I am often stubborn so some ideas are only learned after repeated mistakes.
I appreciate the comments though. I didn’t really care about the outcome, the length, or the skill, I just found it to be a fun comeback.
May 6th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Svett: I did take out the arty. I took out several things with the tactical missles. After a point, however, it was no longer of use. The primary concern became the siege bots and any advances he was making with his engineers. Even from the very beginning the artillery caused me minimal damage. I again would like to say that I am by no means a top ranked player. I would like to think that I am decent, and that this was a horrible example of my ability. I thought that a few of you would be able to transcend your current experience and “skill” in order to enjoy an underdog fighting back. I hate to be in a negative tongue, but I feel as if I need to refute many of the comments. I was, however slowly, testing out solutions. My goal is not to have everyone play hour matches on Winter Duel, but instead to not how my expanded match (due to horrible slow economies) may have introduced flaws not otherwise noticed, or possible. My next reviewed replay will hopefully be of much higher quality, if I wish to do another one.
May 6th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Despite the negative comments, it is invigorating (and disheartening in my case, as I have yet to play the game) to know that there are players who can watch a replay and readily dissect it.
May 6th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
Ivan recommend giving it a try. Read a few reviews, try the demo, maybe even watch a view videos on the tube. I enjoy the game and the community, though they sometimes reflect the games “cold” mathematical qualities to closely. There have been many discussions over how this game differs from recent titles, such as Command and Conquer 3, but I think most of that information will be accessable on the games main forums: http://forums.gaspowered.com/
Enjoy! If you do plan to purchase, let me know when you get online and we can have a fun game together. I am all playing a few games against computers. No competition really, just a good time. Heck, we could even have a race/tutorial on different techniques. Has anyone ever tried playing Seton’s Cluth 2 human players v 4 computer (or less CPU to reduce computations). Sounds fun to me!
May 7th, 2007 at 2:49 am
I, for one, welcome our giant… er, Maelos’s presentation. It takes far more bravery to display something you know isn’t your best work than something you’re really proud of, but you can learn far more from a journeyman than a master. :-D
May 7th, 2007 at 11:27 am
I agree with Terse, Maelos well done. Don’t worry about these guys bashing you. You are learning just like they all once did how important Econ is to a good game. Spend some more time earlier claiming the natural resources of the game and building up some early attackers and you would have sealed this guys fate early.
May 7th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Maelos im sorry that some of us didnt like your game. I can understand why some people found it entertaining as it contained some stuff you usually never see in a typical ranked game. But I seriously thought I had the wrong version or that the replay was broken after a while since both players didnt do anything. I was just staring at the screen like “WTF why doesnt he build up his eco some more and totally own the guy?! He’s just sitting there!”. That isnt very enteraining in my book, sorry :/
May 7th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
I feel like I have blown my own responses out of scale. I am sorry if my tongue was a bit nasty and I welcome any and all comments. I can assure you my next reviewed replay will be of a greater skill level.
May 7th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
I thought that was good. Just not economy wise. Of course, I’m worse.
May 7th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Meh. After watching the replay, I have to say, the book was much better than the movie. Huge tactical and economic blunders all around, and lots of lapses in the action. Lots of targets of opportunity were missed due to a lack of scouting and lack of action.
Once I saw the strategic missile launcher being built, I had to just cringe and fast forward to the end. That was really sad.
This can’t be the “average” ranked game, as almost everyone I’ve been forced to fight in ranked games is much better than this, and I have a terrible rank and am a terrible player, yet still manage to beat some of my opponents.
May 8th, 2007 at 5:53 am
Maelos, Cyde Weys.
I really appreciate articles and replays like this.
As was stated before, it makes it easier to spot potential pitfalls and go “Oh… i would’ve doen ~this~ here. That would probably have panned out ~this~ way”.
With the pro games it’s often harder to do that.
I like spotting msitakes, as it makes me aware of potential pitfalls for matches that i play.
Now if only i could get a web connection at home, so that i could play online instead of LAN-only
May 8th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
JRPereira,
I would have to concur with you regarding the ‘average’ ranked game. Watching this replay gave me the deluded idea I would be able to go right out into playing ranked games and maybe win something right off the bat. Instead, in my few first games I have been matched against people with more than 100 games behind them and was soundly beaten into the ground.
This is going to take more effort than I thought. :)
May 14th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
When I downloaded this I had no Idea it was against me! Small world huh. And I do agree, looking back on that, it was terrible. That was one of my first online games (maybe THE first) and I hadn’t even completed the campaign or anything. No radar, meager scouting And like all of my first games Horrible , horrible eco problems.
I had seen the Monkeylord in the background movie on the menu screen and the only thing that I wanted in the whole world was to build one. I also had Warcraft 3′itis (“build another land factory? But why would anyone need 2 of the same building ?”)
I was bored to tears at the end because i really had no idea what to do, lol. I know I have improved since then. So if there is a rematch I promise it will be much more interesting. hint hint
May 14th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Haha, awesome that you found your way here. Yup, all of our replays are real, so inevitably we end up using replays with random opponents from GPGnet.
May 16th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Hmmm. I too have improved beyond that game. I have a feeling I may be a bit behind you though, if that was indeed your first game. It was painful, as is to read some of the comments, but I think it was still fun. Give me a few more games to get UEF figured out and I may take you up on that.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Did Maelos and Total_Inhalation ever get their rematch?