Posts from [TYPE: TOURNAMENT] Shakti vs. Gunnar Auto-translated

Piterius surrendered at the end of the second week playing as red Gunnar: he said he never found any caches, hollow logs with Griffin Conservatories, and didn't know what to do. We played 8mm6 on light. On day 121 I took my Necromancer town as a secondary, there was only 1 Angel at that point. By the time of the surrender, red had scouted 4 Dragon Utopias, but again no Dragon Fly Hives, no caches, no Griffin Conservatories except for the single one on the first map. I planned to break through on the third month with native troops: Shakti had leveled up Armor, Offense, Earth Magic, and with Ciele we had captured 2 rings of +1 to health, but it wasn't meant to be.

8:6 Gunya is gaining the upper hand.

Loi played 3 matches in the third round and won them all! :smile20:

8:6 Gunya is gaining ground.

Loi played 3 matches in the third round and won them all! :smile20:

We still have a save with Vik on 8XM12 - let's see if Gunya will overtake Tazar. Although, it's almost a joke: in the first week, Gunnar had more troglodytes than Shakti.

=Stinger=(Gunnar)def WLK777(Shahti)_127 2sm4d(3)

It happened. The generator continues to mess with Shahti, each generation is worse than the last. In the latest one, everything possible is blocked (one of the secondary resources is Gold Ore, the second is Snow, where there's not much good except for Maxicon, and the treasure is blocked with 50 unique creatures at the entrance) - I gathered what I could, but it wasn't enough. And Stinger is lucky as always: stables right next to the capital, a Castle Zone behind the mountains, and a Helmet +12 to Knowledge near the Cyclops, so everyone got what they could. I got 6 Angels and 6 Ducks, and my opponent got 26 Ducks, 5 Angels, and 30+ Crusaders. It's funny, even my red Dungeon was almost always underground, while my opponent's was on the surface. Thanks for the game.

We still have a save from 8XM12 with Vik – let's see if Gunya can overtake Tazar. Although, it's almost a joke: in the first week, Gunnar had more troglodytes than Shakti.

Why immediately Gunya... Malekith! And Gunya is just providing support.

Piterius surrendered at the end of the second week as red Gunnar: said he never found any dragon fly hives or Griffin Conservatories with griffins and had no idea what to do. We played 8mm6 on light. I took my Necropolis town as 121, at that point there was only 1 angel. By the time red surrendered, 4 Dragon Utopias had been scouted, but again no Dragon Fly Hives, no dragon fly hives, no Griffin Conservatories except for a single one on the first. I planned to break through on the third week with native troops: Shakti has Armorer, Offense, Earth Magic leveled up, and 2 rings of +1 to health were taken with Ciele, but it wasn't meant to be.

Well, it's not like he found nothing. There were 2 Dragon Fly Hives on the sand somewhere God knows where. But that's not the point. A teleporter half a move from home, but at the exit of the lot, a stack of upgraded Vampires holds a vial of life +2 and some other object. In the other direction, two more moves away, a path on the sand to a village is blocked by a pack of upgraded Unicorns. And there are no restorers left. And so, basically, after crawling through the sand all of the first week, I gathered enough army for the Vampires only by the middle of the second. A couple of turns later, gut feeling said — not worth dragging it out!

wowa (Gunnar, Gunnar) def Loi (Shakti, Shakti), 134 @2sm4d(3), slow roads

That's correct. After all the re- one road, I tried to bait the re 116, assuming that the opp would still go take the adjacent zone of the dungeon along the road, but — to my regret — Gunnar had other business to attend to :)
Thanks for the game.

Wic (blue, Dungeon, Gunnar) def Preds (red, Dungeon, Shakti, Tazar) @ 8xm12a, 143, TE-Light

Tests revealed that Gunnar is not just playable on this template, but probably even surpasses Shakti.

This is because the guards on the respawn are weak (about one and a half times weaker than usual guards), so there are no particular issues with breakthrough. Plus, there are no guards on many minor objects (Griffin Conservatories, minor artifacts, level 1 prisons, etc.), meaning you can often run through the entire respawn with weaklings without stumbling into guards. This also results in a lot of money, ease of building, scouting, and capturing external dwellings.

Also, the dense road network favors a runner, especially if you need to drag out the game; situations like on 8mm6, where there's one road to the center and you meet your opponent there in week 2, are quite rare.

So Shakti has an advantage either if he found/took a chain of conservatories, a Dragon Utopia with control in week 2, or if early contact occurred, or if Gunnar didn't get money/external dwellings. All of this doesn't happen very often, and over time the advantage gradually shifts to Gunnar...

111 gave 2+3 stacks to the native heroes, so I upgraded the harpies and off we went. I immediately took a minor gnome dwelling, lots of cash, and plenty of heroes too.

I scouted 3 troglodyte external dwellings, collected them all, and ended up with more than Shakti had :). Then I found cat and minotaur dwellings, things got really sweet...

Gunnar levels up magically - immediately Armorer, Offense, Earth, then Wisdom and Pathfinding later.

I went to the center, crushed a computer Castle, built stables, and scattered weaklings across the numerous lifts and teleporters.

117 entered the central treasure zone, where as usual there were just mines plus a cat dwelling :).

121-122 painted all the mines and the dwelling, started building mage guilds. Went into some treasure zone, there was a level 3 Griffin Conservatory, several beehives and Pandora's Boxes, and a Dragon Utopia. Cleared everything by the end of the week; Kalh from the scout spotted a conservatory on the grass respawn, so I grabbed that too (also level 3). Papa got all of level 4 from a Pandora's Box, heavenly...

131 the Dragon Utopia falls - Pendant of +3 All, Red Orb, Torso of +5. Not bad for SoD :).

Cleared the second treasure zone, there were several beehives and a Dragon Utopia (gave some junk).

I keep running further through the center, taking out 3 computer opponents (Flux, Swamp, Ramp), grab a couple of villages, and from a lookout spot I see a treasure zone where red cockroaches led by Tazar have been lurking for several days.

Built the Dimension Door buildings (got lucky, no rebuild needed), bought Air magic for Papa in Flux as the last slot.

The computer Ramp killed my under-hero Das with Earth and Logistics, who was defending the castle. Sad. Quickly leveled Monere, fed him 4 Pandora's Boxes, 2 of which were for XP. Bought him Earth and Air.

141 Tazar stood on angels within reach. I buy everything up, jump over, there are 1+8+1 angels. I kill 6 of them, lose 3 of my own angels, Taz buys himself out. He has about 350 mana and 20+ SP. But I only have 6 Knowledge, and I also spent a Vortex on gathering power and jumping to Taz.

Completely forget about the Red Orb !!! TE habits...

142 Taz jumps over the rock and takes Flux away from me.

Leveled-up Alamar teaches Monere Portal of Summoning, Monere levels Earth to Expert on various guards. I don't want to fight Taz, so I portal to Swamp, upgrade fifty vives, and from there hop-scotch through systems of one-way teleporters.

What's good about SoD is that there are overviews... in TE you can barely get them, too much hassle, but here it's easy. I'll need to think about bringing them back to the guild, they really help with navigation. I ran to the computer Necro. With ~3500 movement points and Dimension Door, you don't have to run for long; at most, you'll get somewhere by the 2nd turn.

While Papa was replenishing mana, a weakling opened an overview and saw 2 Griffin Conservatories and a beehive. Monere portals into the Necro and clears all that good stuff. Almost caught up to Gunnar in leveling - level 17 vs level 18.

143 And then I remember the Red Orb :).

The game ended instantly - Gunnar galloped to Ramp and took it, revealing the orb. After that, the opponent immediately surrendered - being behind in power, all their hope was in magic.

Thanks for the game!

Wic (blue, Dungeon, Gunnar) def Preds (red, Dungeon, Shakti, Tazar) @ 8xm12a, 143, TE-Light
...
Thanks for the game!

Confirmed. As they say: ... war is all about maneuvers. The distances turned out to be too great; neither Taz nor Shakti received logs for too long. And even though Tazar got КВ in the very first Dragon Utopia, also taken on 131, Town Portal looks more effective on this map than 1 Dimension Door per day. Meanwhile, Vic controlled the map very quickly, capturing a bunch of Castles and villages.
Thanks for the game.

Anyone want to play another game?
If not, I guess we can wrap it up.
Score: 9:6

I'll wait a couple of days, and if no one says anything, then that's it.