Scenario: “Tame the Khan”

[resieg]

Anybody played “Tame the Khan”?
It’s a 3vs1. Khan has 10x higher starting points (lots of cities and units).
I played all three opponents for a couple of turns- also hotseat – fun.

It’s a pity that I am not allowed to play as the Khan against 3 AI.
I know there are alternatives (random…), but this map is really interesting. Is there a way?

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

No, but there is "return of the ancients" which is meant to have 1 strong player defend against 3 weaker ones.

There are also various scenarios on the workshop to discover, some of which offer some very interesting asymmetrical challenges.

[resieg]

Thanks Iguana, "return of the ancients" is an example of the "alternatives" I was talking about. Will definitely play it some day (looks good).
___________________

But yesterday I played vs Khan again, with Drakons again.
I put down the difficulty lvl for Khan from Emperor to Lord - to have a chance.

It turned out (turn 13), that I have no chance at all.

Did any of you succeed with that scenario?
And if yes, did you play default (with Khan as Emperor?)?

I happily was creating some 1st lvl units, when Khan came with 7(!) third lvl units.

This is like playing chess with a King and 2 Pawns, against an enemy with 16 Queens (Queens who can jump like horses too). And it does not help much to get an additional Pawn every 10 turns.

The only chance (I guess) I will have is when the Queens RNG "forget" to attack :(
(and give me a chance to get strong enough - until turn 50 or so).

Sounds to me like the "evil lottery" what Mc mentioned.

Does not make much sense to me to play again this scenario.
Even when I put the Khan down to Squire, he still will have his starting units (aka his "16 Queens").

[Gladen]

I think I beat it it many years ago. But the focus is fight him sort of directly.

Attack the north west city as early as possible. Then move north to challenge his positions.

Your a.i friends will react on your rampage and start pushing themselves as soon as they believe they are winning.

Typically a Triumph rush creation of a map. Weakning the economics of Urlagh is also a good way to follow the quests provided. But if you dont push his forces back early like 15 he will overrun you

[resieg]

Gladen, you mean turn 15 ?
May be I had just bad luck (and he lucky RNG), but all I could do such early (until turn 13) was to take 2 of his cities, build 2 myself and create like 6 low level units. Thats nothing to overrun him or weaken his economics.

With capitulation we can see the points.
Khan has about 16 000, the 3 opponents (2 AI and me) have 1500 each.

Early rush seems to me even less promising and likely than waiting for his "not moving" with bad RNG.

If you really managed this scenario, - congrats.
But I still think there is less than a 0.01% chance ...

[resieg]

Originally posted by Gladen:

Attack the north west city as early as possible. Then move north to challenge his positions....

Btw. did you play as humans and attack the north west isle - with gold?
Or did you play as drakons and rush to the north west city next to my capital?

I did the last. But what to do when he comes with tons of lvl 3 starting units from the north?
There is no way to counter this imo.

[Gladen]

Orc are generally weak to magic. Finding the momemtum to research poison knowledge and just blast every Orc with fire and poison.

Shock troopers are not that scary. However its necessary to raze all Orc cities except the one close to you which you migrate.

I think its possible to at least rush to his most outer cities.

I do remember it was alot of reloads to not lose anything before its start to get worse.

However playing with the Dwarf underground is also much easier as Draco and Rogue tends to be more difficult in blighted terrain.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

It's been ages and ages since I played that map, but I do not recall it being that difficult.

I had another look at the map and it doesn't look too bad. You do start with a pretty strong army. (I tested twice and both times started with 2 tier 3 racial units, 1 tier 2, 2 tier 1 and a settler.) If you avoid losses you should be able to expand pretty quickly with such a force.

Considering that, it would probably help to start with a race-class combination that's strong in the early game and good at fighting Orcs. Note that you don't have to use the default leaders if you don't want to. (I never use the defaults for anything, creating your own is far too much fun.)

You could also consider starting as player 2 (starts underground) or 3 (starts on an island) to get a more defensible home base. As Gladen mentioned, if you're a Dwarf starting underground you have a nice advantage.

The default player 1 is a Draconian Rogue, which probably combined my least favoured race and least favoured class. That's mostly me, but I find that rogues lack muscle.

Early rush seems to me even less promising and likely than waiting for his "not moving" with bad RNG.

Waiting is a losing strategy. Always.

The formula for growth is exponential. It's something like cities * growth * time = armies. And against emperor AI, all those factors are bolstered by another 50% or so.

The enemy starts with more AND grows faster. So every turn you wait his advantage becomes bigger.

Your advantage is that most of his armies start far away, he is not decisive and cannot react well to changes. (And also cannot reload the game.) So you need to use your initial force to expand enough that you can keep up with his growth in the medium term.

[resieg]

Thank you both.

I guess I need to collect more xp to try this again ;)

It is totally clear to me that "waiting" is without chance, but my thought was that rushing is even lower chance ... hehe.

__________________________
I consider myself a slow and profound Builder. Rushing is a bit - unusal to me. May be I should try this more often.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

It's a principle that applies in general, in reality as well as in games:

If you have a choice between two actions, where one will almost certainly fail, and the other will absolutely certainly fail... then you take the first, even if your chances are still terrible. A small chance of success is infinitely better than no chance of success.

Of course, if you know what you're doing and are facing the AoW3 AI, it's not a small chance of success. It's a pretty darn good one.

Generally the AI is at its best when you give it the chance to slowly build up and then steamroll you at its own pace. It's at its worst when you put it under pressure. This means that it's almost always better to attack than to defend.

Slow and meticulous play is generally... very bad in AoW3.

In most scenarios and random maps (that do not start with such lopsided positions) you do not need to rush the enemy, but you do need to expand quickly by building lots of settlers, conquering or bribing lots of neutral cities, and most of all clearing as many treasure sites and mines as quickly as possible so you can A] get better income when you settle nearby and B] you get the instant gold rewards to pay for those settlers and bribes and armies. (Sell the stuff you find most of the time.)

In campaigns (and scenarios like the Great Khan) that strategy rarely works, because the AI will start with a dozen cities to your none or one. So then you need to rush with your starting troops to even the odds.

It's possible to play defensively, and people have done it in these maps. But it generally involves fighting off wave after wave of AI attackers while you build up strength.

I've personally never tried. My general battle-plan is "throw everything at the enemy including the kitchen sink. Garrisons? You mean reserve attack forces, surely."

[tvance52]

I beat it a long time ago, I think I used custom leader (probably Human Sorcerer).

If you turtle you will be crushed by wave after wave.

I like Rogues, but it takes too long to get Shadow Stalkers for them to be super helpful in this map. The map will be decided in the first 10-15 turns, I think. Either you have put pressure on the Khan and he's scrambling or he's moving 3 or more full stacks at you. I don't think there's much in-between, if you give him a chance to use his ability to turn out lots of units per turn then you will likely get beat.

I personally think summoning help (Arch Druid or Sorcerer) may give you a quick boost early in the map.

Doesn't webbing check against resistance? (Corrected by Iguana in next post).

Orc generally have the worst resistances. A couple early spiders for Arch Druids may be really strong as they level up to Spider Queens, if they can get some kills from webbing units. Never went that route myself, but it just popped into my head.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Doesn't webbing check against resistance

No, it checks against defense. Physical attack.

That's why it works so great against Gluttons. (Great resistance, terrible defense. Web or net them.)

That's why stun is so great against Orcs if you can get it. Human Daze (on their priests) also works great.

But honestly, web works pretty good even against Orcs. Orcs have high hitpoints but their defense isn't that great.

[tvance52]

Originally posted by Iguana-on-a-stick:

Doesn't webbing check against resistance

No, it checks against defense. Physical attack.
...
But honestly, web works pretty good even against Orcs. Orcs have high hitpoints but their defense isn't that great.

Thanks for the correction. I thought webbing orcs worked well, couldn't remember why.

It's funny when you've played something for so long that you forget "why" something works, just that it does.

[tvance52]

Just thought of this: would a necromancer work well with it's physical resistant summons? Or is the Necromancer economy too poor early on? I don't play a lot of Necro, so not sure how it would work in that scenario.

Orcs Warlords are so reliant on physical damage I thought some of the cheap physical resistant units may tie them up somewhat better than similar tier units in the early game.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Necromancer would work amazingly well because he grows his army by killing enemies. It's the best rush-class bar none.

You're guaranteed to start with 2 necromancer heroes, so all you need to do is power-level those in the first few turns to get ghoul curse and you can run roughshod over the enemy. (In fact, it's so overpowered in the hands of players who can/do power-level heroes that the PBEM mod almost completely reworks their abilities.)

Wouldn't rely on lost souls though. They're quite expensive to summon and not that tough. Banshees would be useful but you can't get them that early.

Necromancers are an odd faction in general, though. A lot of their mechanics are different, and if you don't know how to use their special abilities to best effect they struggle a lot.

And if you DO know how to (ab)use their special abilities, they become a bit un-fun to play. So I don't tend to recommend them to new players, and when I do play them I like to focus more on the units they can build.

If you want physically resistant summons I'd just stick with Sorcerer. They get the Phantom Warrior, which is very nice indeed, and also Sphere of Protection for temporary near-physical immunity. Plus all the stunning stuff.

[tvance52]

Originally posted by Iguana-on-a-stick:

Necromancer would work amazingly well because he grows his army by killing enemies. It's the best rush-class bar none.
...

Good points.

If you want physically resistant summons I'd just stick with Sorcerer. They get the Phantom Warrior, which is very nice indeed, and also Sphere of Protection for temporary near-physical immunity. Plus all the stunning stuff.

I tend to forget about phantom warriors as I tend to rush past them, but yes they would be very good in this scenario early on.