122 replies to this topic

[thudo]

UPDATE: Okay its now up! I've been playing it with all my changes since Monday and today's changes by Larkin. Result = HARD as hell. Chaos is real tough to beat. He pushed me back badly with his early massive infantry rush. Then the Defilers showed up and it was soo game over. Very cool.. Bloody bastard though... more testing but sofar = WOW!

Edited by thudo, 15 July 2005 - 02:17 AM.

[oozish]

OK, I got it, going in now!

[thudo]

I'd love to see your style of play.. can you play a FFA HARDER (Standard Resource Collection) on 4p_Biffys Peril against one Chaos, Eldar, and Ork player? I play this on SM and get soooo owned its not funny. Usually, Chaos dominates since Chaos was buffed in v1.30.

Also, play on 2p_BloodRiver against Chaos/Eldar/Ork.. they should make vehicles. They did for me and if it was Chaos it was a bad scene. hehehe

Llet us know.

[oozish]

I'll give blood river a go, I (only 1x or 2x) have played the multi team maps, but it might be fun for an experiment. I'll play 2p blood river vs. chaos; I think last time I played that they did make vehicles.

I just tried vs. Chaos on valley of korne and was disappointed with an easy victory and no vehicles built. I'll let you know about the blood river today.

[LarkinVB]

Please send the valley of khorne replay to hbs@viciousbyte.de. I want to check your playstyle to see why victory was easy.

[oozish]

Larkin, I didn't save that, and I don't have the log thing turned on now. However, I did just save and upload the blood river battle vs. chaos on harder. There is no log file, do you guys want that again?

This blood river thing was a let down too, with no vehicles built...I'd say it was pretty easy too, considering my poor management of resources I could have won alot faster but I was micromanaging and messing with the criticals and stuff; that said I guess I didn't really need more squads to do what I wanted.

Normal resources and on harder. Here is the replay:

http://www.flypictur...one&id=qt3wl6o=

Edited by oozish, 15 July 2005 - 09:15 PM.

[LarkinVB]

Complete analysis why chaos played so bad would be lengthy. Some problems are pure low level AI we can't fix, other can be improved.

We will work on it.

[oozish]

Here is Valley of Korne as requested, not the same game as earlier but I just played one since you were interested. Here I'm playing much better I think; (my goal would be to have resources and energy about level most the time in early game). Anyway, you can see the chaos didn't put up much of a fight except early on, and there were no vehicles built.

This build shows how I built an effective 3 point defense in base with a turret between 2 LP's. I figured this out after playing standard DOW AI so much and the early Commander/Squads rush was always killing me. Here I draw the enemy in there with some scouts and a squad of marines and they usually can't withstand it, especially by the time my FC comes out.

http://www.flypictur...one&id=qt3wl6Q=

Edited by oozish, 15 July 2005 - 11:08 PM.

[Excedrin]

I played 3 skirmishes with v1.2RC3b, it played ... not so good. It was on harder difficulty for the first two games, insane for the third.

Ork vs Eldar, it made reapers
http://lerp.com/~sic...0715.194546.rec

SM vs Eldar, I figured maybe a bigger map will help it, but it made a ton of banshees.
http://lerp.com/~sic...0715.200012.rec

SM vs Eldar: I figured maybe with it on Insane difficulty, it will do better. I played horribly, floating req losing scouts, etc and it just kept spamming guards and banshees. It really needs to try to keep squads alive better, I guess the dancing code was removed?
http://lerp.com/~sic...0715.201727.rec

[thudo]

Okay.. I just don't get it. Something is royally screwy here. I play those same type of games and get summarily owned bad especially by Chaos now. Eldar even techs super-fast now to get vehicles so why no vehicles being reported? This is totally not making any sense. You guys must be absolute DoW pros or I'm the worst player (which I doubt as I playtest all the time). Anyone figure why my gaming experience is totally different? I am running v1.30 so its not like its something game code related.

I'm not at home at present so can't view the replays.

Btw, I upped a new build with more fabulous Larkin changes (Thanks Larkin a ton!). Give it a shot..

Larkin.. let me know remotely here what yer analysis of the recorded games are. Very curious..

[Excedrin]

sm vs chaos insane, in this matchup it did reasonably well, but even my poor micro (watch my marines shoot buildings while being shot etc) was enough because it doesn't attack en mass.
http://lerp.com/~sic...0715.223207.rec

Ork vs Eldar insane on meeting of minds. I actually watched this replay, it built a webway gate way too early (well before it was going to hit 10/10 pop), then had a guardian squad sitting in the base doing nothing, FS pops out and sits there doing nothing, then it tries to make banshees vs ork.
http://lerp.com/~sic...0715.224357.rec

I'll play a few more games if there's any specific race matchup that you'd like to debug.

[thudo]

U guys are obviously playing different games.. FC and Guardian squads sitting in the base? Never ever saw that ever!! What is going on? Now I'm wishing I were home able to see these. You SHOULD NOT need to play on INSANE in order to get challenged. That is SOOOO wrong.

These are just not my experiences and I consider myself a good player.

Okay questions then..

1) Do you ever see an enemy AI's vehicle building but never vehicles come out of it? If so.. there is something seriously wrong. Every time I play an AI once the vehicle building is build vehicles are immediately built from it. I mean, right away.

2) How often do you "push the line" when being aggressive in conquering territory? Within 4 mins you always have half the map secure and never give it up? Fortified with some turrets?

3) Do you tech at all? Any frill research or just the raw basics to get u thru?

4) Do you totally micro your units' special abilities like a god?

If yes to most of the above then u guys must be ladder players in competitons playing for money akin to the best Starcraft players. Shhheshhh!

[Excedrin]

In the last replay, at 2:30, I had killed one guardian squad, at 3:30 the FS was dead and another guardian squad was running with morale broken and 2 members left. At about 3:45, some banshees popped out and immediately start attacking my 3 slugga squads and bigmek. At 4:03, the LP I was bashing on was upgraded to a LP2. At 4:24, the LP2 and banshees were dead and another guardian squad was out. Another guardian squad was capping the central critical location. At 4:32 I got my first nob leader, I hadn't lost a single squad yet. At 4:59, I have 4 nob leaders and bigmek killing some banshees. There's two LP2s, but I stay out of their range and kill the aspect portal, power gen and 2 webway gates by 6:13. The AI is building another webway gate and aspect portal, but it has almost no units. Just after 7 minutes two more shoota squads arrive (one with NL, one with NL building). The game was already over the instant the AI researched the banshee stone in my opinion.

[LarkinVB]

first quick analysis of Excedrins games is :

HE WAS NOT PLAYING OUR LATEST MOD !!!

There is proof for this :

1. Wrong initital build order with webway gate.
2. No troop dancing
3. No fleet of foot
4. Lots of banshees
5. Generator build far from home.

I guess you check the install, Excedrin. I'm pretty sure you played vanilla AI ;-)

Edited by LarkinVB, 16 July 2005 - 07:25 AM.

[Excedrin]

That would make sense, but I'm not sure what I did wrong install wise, I'll take a look in a bit.

Oh... that sucks fixed, I'll make some real tests in a bit.

Edited by Excedrin, 16 July 2005 - 07:59 AM.

[LarkinVB]

If you did fix the problem please also send replays against latest AI on same maps so I can compare with your replays against vanilla AI.

Edited by LarkinVB, 16 July 2005 - 08:10 AM.

[Excedrin]

Ok, I had time to play on MoM, so... I tried it on harder, it was much better than the vanilla AI, but it tried to make turrets, I think that's a bad idea. So, I tried again with it on insane and it was a pretty decent game. I think the build order could use some tuning, but it's at least challenging. It's also neat to see how some of the other Eldar stuff works vs Ork (seer council, banshees, rangers, etc).

http://lerp.com/~sic...0716.013551.rec
http://lerp.com/~sic...0716.014926.rec

Tomorrow I'll try some other race matchups, but I think this is pretty good, I liked seeing the WS jump away and guardians had FoF on constantly trying to stay out of melee.

[LarkinVB]

AI can't stand early attacks.

[oozish]

first quick analysis of Excedrins games is :

HE WAS NOT PLAYING OUR LATEST MOD !!!

There is proof for this :

1. Wrong initital build order with webway gate.
2. No troop dancing
3. No fleet of foot
4. Lots of banshees
5. Generator build far from home.

I guess you check the install, Excedrin. I'm pretty sure you played vanilla AI ;-)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nice one!

[oozish]

U guys are obviously playing different games.. FC and Guardian squads sitting in the base? Never ever saw that ever!! What is going on? Now I'm wishing I were home able to see these. You SHOULD NOT need to play on INSANE in order to get challenged. That is SOOOO wrong.

These are just not my experiences and I consider myself a good player.

Okay questions then..

1) Do you ever see an enemy AI's vehicle building but never vehicles come out of it? If so.. there is something seriously wrong. Every time I play an AI once the vehicle building is build vehicles are immediately built from it. I mean, right away.

2) How often do you "push the line" when being aggressive in conquering territory? Within 4 mins you always have half the map secure and never give it up? Fortified with some turrets?

3) Do you tech at all? Any frill research or just the raw basics to get u thru?

4) Do you totally micro your units' special abilities like a god?

If yes to most of the above then u guys must be ladder players in competitons playing for money akin to the best Starcraft players. Shhheshhh!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thud:

1. When I initially complained about the lack of vehicles, the enemy AI would make the building and no vehciles (maybe 1 by end of game). NOW, what I've noticed is NO vehcile building is built. I don't think I've seen a building yet, yet I've been able to get far into tier 2.
2. I try to do this, and fortify with turrets ASAP. I try to monitor and decap criticals as well, more so than capture them, but capture if possible. Then I work my way to decap the enemy LP's as possible with ASM's or infiltrated scouts. Just decap; or hit and run with ASM's. The two work together.

3. Yes, i hate just using raw units. I usually only use a few units, but tech them considerably (barracks upgrades like heavy weapons and accuracy). I win most games with only 2-3 marine squads and 1-2 ASM squads....I go heavy on the vehciles and try to get a squad of 3 dreads or 2 dreads and hellfire maybe artillery. Once those are established I go for landraider and then pred/artillery lastly. Tier 3 is almost never necessary for a win, but I'll try to get there anyway.

4. I don't micro like the pros', and alot of stupid things can happen under my watch, but I think I do micro alot in small battles and definately use my units effectively (since I only have a few, they last a while). I really try to preserve my units and I try to always back them up with LP/Base defenses (luring the enemy in if possible); if not I'll use cover to my advantage and use the various stance modes to the best of my ability...changing frequently depending on the proximity and makeup of the units. I'm getting alot better at this I think, using units like ASM/Dreads in the front line backed up with my ranged units effectively in battle.

Also, something I've always found with AI is crucial to win is to go after their LP's as early as possible; such as the LP's right outside their base...if you can get even 1, at least decap it, the AI is really at a disadvantage (obviously). I haven't done this as much in my recent replays because frankly I haven't felt the pressure to do so and I"ve sat back a bit to allow the AI to develop vehciles if possible

What I've seen is no vehicle buildlings now. This contrasts to my earlier complaints when we first made a fuss about this problem.

Edited by oozish, 16 July 2005 - 01:18 PM.