Marble tournament/province

[Mykan]

I have uploaded a guide on the marble province here
http://crazywizard.info/en/bb_provinces_marble.html

comments are always welcome.

To avoid derailing the other thread I decided to create a new post in battle help section.

I personally prefer mages for marble tournament as they are strong against 2 of the 3 enemy unit types rather than just 1 like light range. Heavy melee and heavy range are good assistants and I find only rarely do I go all out on light range. Plus I often have a surplus of mages from the prior tournament

Actually tried a combo mage/archer in a strong heavy melee fight and got creamed but 5 mages walked all over it, the duel effects of mages at level 3 seem to be very effective.

Anytime the enemy unit type is almost entirely 1 type with only 2 units that are different I just go 5 of the best counter unit. For example 6 dryads and 2 knights I would go 5 heavy range and hit auto.

Edit: I expect to overhaul this first post to summarise tips for marble provinces based on the discussion below.

 

[Sir Squirrel]

Yes, I found the same, with priests as the best troop for human players, added mortar (heavy ranged) for dryads/mist walker if there was more than one. Very minimal losses with a priest at level 3 and mortar level 3. At least that was what worked best for me.
Edited for mortar level.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

To avoid derailing the other thread I decided to create a new post in battle help section.

I personally prefer mages for marble tournament as they are strong against 2 of the 3 enemy unit types rather than just 1 like light range. Heavy melee and heavy range are good assistants and I find only rarely do I go all out on light range. Plus I often have a surplus of mages from the prior tournament

Actually tried a combo mage/archer in a strong heavy melee fight and got creamed but 5 mages walked all over it, the duel effects of mages at level 3 seem to be very effective.

Anytime the enemy unit type is almost entirely 1 type with only 2 units that are different I just go 5 of the best counter unit. For example 6 dryads and 2 knights I would go 5 heavy range and hit auto.

Can you give more information, I am quite suprised by this.

Are you playing human or elves?
What where the enemies?

I lack a bit of experience with human fighting, trying to pick up pace with another account, but my elves town is taking up a lot of my time.
but with elves our sorceresses usually get creamed especially at higher levels.

When using archers our losses where minimal. (as long as there were not a lot of cannoneers around)
I tried archer on my chapter 4 human account and it worked pretty fine for me.

are you both playing humans?

 

[Sir Squirrel]

I am playing humans, and enemies were Cannoneer II, Knight II, and Mist Walkers II.
I found the Orc stratagest good against mist walkers as well, but they are level one while my mortar is level 3, ( I know I said level 2 , but just realized they got a promotion recently).
Priests have buffs against heavy melee and heavy ranged.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

Ok seems that the priest is in a different league indeed, while I just tried out some fights (my unbuffed crossbowmen did just fine btw) (see pics)
So if you lost it must have been some whacky AI map (we had plenty of those last week where the AI went beserk and could not win at a fairly simply fight with minimal losses on manual mode)

The priest seem to do a little bit better, (an in some cases a lot better)

As I had to make up this guide I slightly compared it to my experience with my elves. and since it seems to work just fine I didn not really pay much attention to the priest (my mistake)

Unfortunatly I am used to battle the odds with the elves and less experienced with humans. (battling 9-16 round 6 provincies on a saturday is enough cant handle the same load for humans as well.)
So I have to rely on feedback from people like yourself.

For elves the sorceress simply lacks range with 3 range every enemy troop will hit her unlike the priest who can stay out of range.

The archer has an 80% bonus vs H. Melee, and defence breaking power, if you combine that with Needles you get an awesome damager.



How would you handle a fight with 3 mistwalkers, 1 canonneer 3 orc generals and a knight?

 

[DeletedUser2862]

lol and what about my army of 906 against 1750,,,,, any ideas on that one Sir

 

[Sir Squirrel]

You should take a look at Mykans combat guide provinces 1 and 2 under his signature, they will help with your human battles.
As for the combo you asked about, it does depend on the level of your troops as the mortar isn't that good a level 1. but 2 mortars and 3 priest at higher levels would work or switch motar for orc stratagist. dogs are good for the mist walkers as well. That combo was the hardest I found this tourney.

As for your fight @moonlightbluesmurf I would wait until my tecs caught up, or just continue to negotiate.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

You should take a look at Mykans combat guide provinces 1 and 2 under his signature, they will help with your human battles.
As for the combo you asked about, it does depend on the level of your troops as the mortar isn't that good a level 1. but 2 mortars and 3 priest at higher levels would work or switch motar for orc stratagist. dogs are good for the mist walkers as well. That combo was the hardest I found this tourney.

As for your fight @moonlightbluesmurf I would wait until my tecs caught up, or just continue to negotiate.

Yeah picked this fight for a reason because it's a hard one and unfortunatly a common one in this tournament

I am pretty sure if you dare to field 3 priest 2 mortars (or strategist) the mistwalkers will go for your priests and kill many of them in round one before you can do anything. so at high levels you wont win this one.

Mycans guide how well written it is, just states the obvious, looking at last tournament I should have used mostly mage units, well there have been some fights where the blossom mage made me win the fight but ther is no way I would have aquired 30k tournament points following it.

Most times the clue is hidden in the non obvious. so for the gems tournament the unit I used the most was actually the treant.
The sorceress is only good on paper , just as the banshee will most likely be, and the blossom mage is yet still to weak.

so 2 golem 3 treant was the base for success, or 1 archer 4 blossom because mistwalkers always attack the archer in round one, saving your meekly blossom mages.

Needles of the tempest can really beef up the archer / crossbowmen and best of all it's accessable in the early game.
I hope that people will open there eyes that the solution is seldom found in the obvious but in the non obvious.
And that there willing and start to experiment with units they would have never fielded on there own, you will see that the AI behaves in ways that will aid you in your success. not on the easy fights but on the hard ones.

for example: if you start mixing light range with mages you will notice that the mistwalkers will always go for the light melee in round one, this gives you time to deal with those mistwalkers. and at the same time the light ranged does pack a punch against the heavy melee units. and there damage agains the mistwalkers is quite nice.

As for now I will transform one of my cities in a human battleground so I can hone my skills als a human fighter and can revise and improve my guides. guess my ancient human town that I abandoned a year ago on the international server has to go back in action. it's still the most advanced human city (end of fairies) I got and I simply had no time to handle it properly with tournaments on 2 worlds so I lost interest in it, but I guess I can transform it into a human combat town ignoring rating and such.

 

[Mykan]

Can you give more information, I am quite suprised by this.

Are you playing human or elves?
What where the enemies?

I lack a bit of experience with human fighting, trying to pick up pace with another account, but my elves town is taking up a lot of my time.
but with elves our sorceresses usually get creamed especially at higher levels.

I play both races, most of my towns are elves at varying levels, human towns are fairy/wood elve eras. This tournament is definitely the priests playground, I could try crossbowman more but really only needed priests, paladins and mortars.

I still find the sorceress very effective, she struggles a little more at lower levels and I am unsure on her ability come 1.23 as my beta era 4 town is suffering huge losses. I may also have a higher loss tolerance than others, I will try and take some screenshots if possible. For me if the fight is all but one squad heavy melee then the sorceress or archer is a solid choice. When you get more mixed fields of heavy melee and heavy range is were the sorceress stands out as she can handle both while the archer is good on one and smashed by the other.

As to the mist walker, Golems are your friend. I haven't tried cerberus (bad memory) so will have to remember them. Again any fight very heavy in mist walkers becomes an

How would you handle a fight with 3 mistwalkers, 1 canonneer 3 orc generals and a knight?

I would try 3/2 or 2/3 golem/mage.

Mykans guide how well written it is, just states the obvious, looking at last tournament I should have used mostly mage units, well there have been some fights where the blossom mage made me win the fight but ther is no way I would have aquired 30k tournament points following it.

The guide is somewhat simplistic to not overwhelm the reader, I even had to create the combat 101 page as some people where overwhelmed. I realised after I created this post I probably need to make posts similar to this one for each province with in-depth discussion and link them to the guide. It is really the only way to get more rounded information on a fight as well as a variety of approaches and styles.

With all of the variations in combat styles, armies, maps, eras, etc you could easily have a comprehensive guide for each province.

 

[Sir Squirrel]

Yeah in that fight one squad of priests are going to take a hit, but only 1, he is a sacrifice same as your light melee would be at the lower tourney levels. Any combo would have to have a sacrifice troop for that fight I think.
Truthfully at the higher levels in the tourneys I would probably cater that fight as you are likely going to lose a fair amount of troops with what ever you bring in.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

Ok so far for the human

Let me at least show the elves.

What we see here is that in case of the sorceress her damage is the same as the elite archer, they also both have defense breaker 20% but the damage agains heavy melee the damage from the archer on average is much is better.
When we add needles in the mix the archer damage will outshine by quite a bit depending on your needles.

The main advantage the archer has is her range of 4 agains the range of 3 of the sorceress, the range of 3 brings her into the range of every troop on the battlefield. where the archer can at least dodge the orc generals. the archer also has 30% more HP

This is why I made al these calculations so that you can compare troops without all the blurring from weight and fancy attack and defence bonusses that say not much without breaking down the numbers so you can compare them
In my case my archer have a base damage value if 21.42 thanks to the needles making them damage wise a lot stronger than the sorceress
But with needles lvl 1 it's already 18.9 and needles lvl 5 19.8, thats 9% more than the sorceress.

Archer: (with some help from needles)
+so 1 more range
+9% more attack
+ better damage bonus vs heavy melee
+30% more hp (wonder doesnt matter they work on both)
+no weakness to mistwalkers
- weakness to cannoneers
- no attack lowering special powers

Now some action, all done on autofight

2 extremly similar fights on the very first province.

I got loads of cannons in the first batch of provinces, but the latter half was cannon low and she could come back into action.
These are the ones I love the archers for.

this is a 100% autoloss for the sorceress.

Trick the AI to leave your super flimsy blossom mages alone (mostly)

And another autoloss for the sorceress won hands down by the archers.
and unfortunatly 3 or 4 mistalkers arent rare fights

 

[DeletedUser4993]

lol and what about my army of 906 against 1750,,,,, any ideas on that one Sir

Even Steven is best that is a ratio of 1:1. I have found that 2:1 doesn't really work.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

@Mykan @Sir Squirrel
http://crazywizard.info/en/bb_provinces_steel.html
I made this one a bit late, I wanted to experiment more with troops, I hope this one is more accurate for humans, unfortunatly my human city wasnt ready yet to go full out on the tournament. so I had to draw on regelar experience to build up that one.

I will improve on it on the next cycle.

 

[Sir Squirrel]

Looks cool Crazy wizard, the only thing I would add is that later game when your priests are leveled they are a good pick as well if there aren't to many thieves. Other than that it is very good advice and love the way you set it up with the evil troops vs good, lol. Very nice!!