But have you noticed that EVERYBODY talks shit now? It's ridiculous. We're talking trash talk of CS proportions here.

I mean, I retired from ladder a while ago, but just looking back and wondering why I lost when I did, the rock, papper, scissors analogy is what comes to mind first.

In TFT, massing unit unit = death for you

TFT is a lot, lot different than RoC in that you must keep your strategy liquid, keeping yourself balanced and with as many options as possible so you can react to something unexpected

You can't just "tech to casters" or "tech to wyrms" and then expect to make those until you win.

It's not "lame" since that is how the game always should have been. if you teched for a single unit and didn't leave yourself with any other options, yes, then when that unit is countered you should lose.

[ 08-08-2003: Message edited by: Vorago ]

I was orc, he was NE...

I scout with a peon, sure enough, keeper

I would have bet my bank account that he would be headed right for me to entangle harass my grunts

So, grunts + wolves go kill gnolls, farseer waits at base for keeper

Sure enough, keeper arrives. I whip out a fresh set of dogs and begin pounding him... he does a circuit around my base and leaves
"Wait, no grunts?"

I don't bother to reply, send the farseer back to save the grunts from the big bad gnolls and send one of the dogs to scout...

Incoming keeper with 4 huntresses in tow
Well shit, that was fast

Lumber peons go in burrow furthest out, I wait off-screen to the right a little...

Hunts begin poking my shop (Seriously, those things like like 200hp, they might as well just self destruct when an enemy unit gets too close), burrow starts messing up a hunt (Dear god unarmoured on hunts is nice), he goes to shift to the right to get out of range... GRUNTS!
He backs up from the grunts, then remembers that burrow again, much dancing ensues as he tries to get into a good position but I stay tucked away in my base inside of my burrow's range. He tries to finish off the shop, but I have been repairing it! Huntress dies, he hauls ass out of there.

Meanwhile I have been upgrading my great hall

He swarms with another wave of huntresses, I beat them, barely, outside of my base. Far seer gets away at 85hp thanks to a scroll of speed. He retreats having lost most of his hunts, I have a pair of grunts both critically red, one currently entangled. Healing salve saves the day for the 139222th time. Bestiary finishes, wyverns begin. Couple more grunts, work on beserker strength. I go to clear my mine, hoping to get an exp up to overpower him. Creepjack! Luckily he jacked me as I was finishing the creeps, but it still wasn't a great situation to be in. Shadowhunter finishes and I start tossing around heals like candy bars. Things were going his way... until my just finished 4th wyvern and friends come in and start laying into the huntresses. One by one they pop, rapidly. He turns to run... scroll of speed! Chase him allll the way to his base, only thing left alive on his side is his keeper.

Unfortunately he has a bank of full moonwells and double ancients churning out shiny new archers

Shit, back to my base I go!

Supply is dangerously low again, so I swap out the wyverns for raiders and keep up my grunt production. Expansion starts building and my three surviving wyverns check his exp. Creeps are still there. One hangs around within sight for a potential creepjacking if he tries and take it, and I just hang back getting my heroes drunk on clarity potions and more or less dipping my army in one really big vat of healing salve.

Toss up a spirit lodge near the back of my base and start working my way to Bloodlust, hoping to catch him by surprise (IE : No Dryads)

Big swarm of green arrives in my exp, shit.

That is when I notice his Keeper is lvl 6 "Well, that is certainly news to me"
But then I notice my farseer is lvl 5 and my shadowhunter is lvl 3, so it wasn't THAT surprising afterall.
Much havoc ensues, keeper tranquilities in a bad spot and I'm able to surround 180degrees of him and begin beating him down through the ultimate. he has to TP out. Raiders do such bad things to huntresses it is wrong. Especially with ensnare and proper micro.

So now I have lvl 3 chain lightning, lvl 2 healing and a blademaster for extra damage and a ground force that is finally at a state of "Impressive" and not "Dead and Dying"

Shamans start churning out, and here he comes again with the biggest swarm of hunts/archers yet!

It didn't last long. Raiders on the hunts, grunts on the archers, chain lightning for everyone and heals/micro on the units he focus fires on. Barely lost anything, wiped him and his army out

Then while I was trashing his base we sat there and discussed what we did wrong and what we could have done differently
I love opponents like that, ones who want to know what they did wrong and don't just go "omg u fucking craphack u bitch fagcoxsmokers".
Afterwards we chatted somemore, and apparantly he didn't like me switching off wyverns, hehe. After the first beating with the wyverns he arrived with 85% archers, 15% hunts and that seriously screwed him up since I had stopped making wyverns after that fight and instead threw pure ground at him

Had I continued to mass wyverns like most orc players I've seen would do, I would have gotten smacked seriously down, heh
Three cheers for the multi-purpose bestiary

Looking back, the following things won it for me...
A) Not freaking out at the sign of the classic Keeper rush. Kept grunts inside my base or out of sight whenever possible, and stayed within shooting range of my burrows. Grunts were always within range to bail my farseer out if he bothers wasting an entangle on him.
B) Changing gears frequently. While I kept a good grunt base going (Tier 2 berserker strength rocks, hugely), I kept making sure to change up my back-up unit. The wyverns forced him off from a winning fight until he could make a counter to it, but when he arrived with the counter, I had already switched off it again KNOWING he would have made archers to counter the now largely non-existent wyverns
C) Know what the counters are. I swear, I've never seen an orc use raiders. Ever. They do double damage to huntresses, they do really big melee damage as it is, and archers barely scratch them. Add ensnare in for extra flavour. Hitting and running becomes "Leaving free exp for my opponent" once you get ensnare. Even ganking two units is worth it, free exp and more money he has to spend. A single archers killed by ensnare pays it's cost off right there
D) Your item shop is your crack dealer. You don't buy from him because you want to, you buy from him because you NEED to. Never doubt the power of clarity potions. Them and healing salves. Healing salves are pure gold.
Ditto scrolls of speed. For only 50gold you almost ALWAYS net a few extra units when an enemy runs, which for 50gold is a good deal in every possible way. And when you have to run, it ensures an almost 100% clean run from the fight

[ 08-08-2003: Message edited by: Vorago ]

First game, lvl 4 humans, both...
Double. Paladin. Rush.

It was one of the saddest rushes I've ever seen. My ally didn't even bother helped and just walked into the one human's base and started trashing it. meanwhile I have three full burrows spraying the footmen with pain, and I have my grunts and dogs forming a wall through the 3 space wide passage to my burrows. kept running one of the grunts back that was getting focus'd on, which would cause both armies to spaz out as they tried to fit 15 units through a space the size of a peasant in the wall, heh

I just had to laugh. Smart players would have left 4 minutes ago into this fight. Semi-intelligent players would have left 3 minutes ago...

But these two guys just stayed there until every last footman was dead followed by the paladins.

Granted I was out of grunts by that point. not dead, but all at less than 75hp stuck behind my gold mine on hold position until I could get to my shop, which was on the OTHER side of the rush

But, I lathered them in healing salves, chugged some clarity and checked my ally... who had long ago finished off ALL of the peasents and most of his farms, stopping to pop the lone footmen that popped out of the barracks once in a while

Quitting was followed soon after

Next game was a disconnected opponent, which sucked but the guy just quit rather than wasting out time

Last game was another crazy, crazy fight.

Orc NE vs NE Undead

Well, first rush backfired when I charged in with 7 grunts. Seven grunts? but they only have 4 units each! How did he make so many so quick!? Impossible! RUN FOR YOUR DEAR LIVES!

And then they went back to 4 grunts after the 3 illusions ran out, heh

Wand of illusion won the battle, who would have thought? Remember kids, use it outside of their vision first to make them thing they are fighting HUGE LOL ARMEE!@

Well, we went back and forth... after the failed rush we chased the NE into his base, killed stuff, had to retreat to my ally's NE base. Fought there, moonwells + farseer kicked their ass, we chased them back to their base. More fighting, got overwhelmed, back to his base. This time they just chased us till we were there and turned around, knowing full well he had full moonwells for my farseer to chug

They mass up and attack again... but uh oh, those huntresses and ghouls certainly have issues beating those FIVE WYVERNS!
And a shadowhunter. Man do they hate shadowhunters. They BOTH focus fire'd on him and I had to scroll of speed and run him way the hell away, dragged both their armies right through ours, heh.
Game ended shortly after. I got lvl 3 chain lightning rendering the ghouls walking exp for the most part and the wyverns just chewed through the huntresses while our combined ground forces walked all over the ghouls and pair of obsidian statues.
From the first rush it was pretty much non-stop-fighting

I got to kill one creep camp, one of the merchants which dropped the wand of illusion. That was it. game was 18 minutes long.
I love it

[ 08-08-2003: Message edited by: Vorago ]

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How.... Nwizzle Fo' Shizzle.... uughhhhhh:
How my experiences with Elves go; Keeper swoops in while I'm creeping and is slowed down by the nerubian tower. That doesn't stop him though, because all he needs to do is entagle, attack twice, entangle, attack twice, and whoosh there goes two acos. He runs to moonwells, comes back does the same thing. Heals, then comes back with glaives and hunts out the wazoo.

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Yeah, usually my 6th builder acolyte goes and plays guinea pig at the furthest point from my base I am confindent my opponent will pass through to get to me. That way when he comes in and gets slowed, he entangles one acolyte, gets swarmed by ghouls and I chuck a death coil on the acolyte. He has to TP or die, and I spend 150mana on two death coils to accomplish this

Or if I went DL first, just sleep him and quickly micro my ghouls into a pentagon around him and just hem him in, forcing him to TP and waste 350gold. And then future rushes are delayed since he has no more tp scrolls till tier 2, and if he gets surrounded again he is SOL

quote:

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Vorago
I scout with a peon, sure enough, keeper...

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quote:

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Nwizzle Fo' Shizzle
Keeper swoops in while I'm creeping...

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It's worth losing a peon/acolyte/whatever at the beginning to figure out what your enemy is doing. If he can't root it, then it's almost a waste of time for him to chase it down and kill it. If he can root it, then you needed to know that he was using keeper enough that it's worth it to sacrifice a miner. Especially if you're using NE, because you can just pop it so he gets no experience, or if you get close fast enough, drain his mana at the same time.

[ 08-08-2003: Message edited by: Inferno-Spirit ]

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Led had this to say about Optimus Prime:
Great, I have to go get this game now. I hate you all.

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It's fun. Really fun

quote:

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ACES! Another post by Nwizzle Fo' Shizzle:
On a side note, where can I download good replays? ]Good replays. I wanna see how high level players counter various NE rushes.

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quote:

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Nwizzle Fo' Shizzle had this to say about Matthew Broderick:
It's fun. Really fun

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I wish I didn't suck at RTS games, then I could agree with you.

One last thing; does everyone's map preferences reset everytime they close TFT? It's really annoying to have to reselect them every day.

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Nwizzle Fo' Shizzle thought about the meaning of life:
One last thing; does everyone's map preferences reset everytime they close TFT? It's really annoying to have to reselect them every day.

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Known bug, getting fixed eventually
www.replayers.com

Is my site for ubar replays

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Check out the big brain on Sentow, Maybe!
As much as I liked reading the accounts, Vorago, why didn't you save those replays?

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I did save the replay of the OrcVSNE 1vs1 actually, but was bored and couldn't play TFT at that moment (Knew I would be called afk in the near future) so I just typed it up instead

[ 08-10-2003: Message edited by: Sentow, Maybe ]

If I'm home, I'm in IRC, that is where you can always find me