Defensive strategy is best.

[Haelix]

I'll admit, I'm relatively new to TAO. I've been here for about a week. In that time though, I've garnered a 16-0-0 record on Armageddon, even though I didn't read the instructions before starting my first game. I just mentioned that to show that I might be competent enough to write this.

Basically, I think that the defensive strategy is tops in the non-gold games (i.e. no special units). This is because of the recovery time. It is not possible to move units up to attack simultaneously, however, a properly constructed defensive formation can meet every attacker with many defenders.

Secondly, I think that people underestimate the value of running away. They'll think that a unit that has been severly damaged is dead anyway, and run it up to "at least hurt the opponent" before dying. If they instead ran it back behind the lines, after a few cleric heals, they'll have a fresh unit again.

Thirdly, I thought about fighting an army of 10 properly played knights with my current army, and shuddered at the thought. I think I'd get devastated. They can just deal out damage too quick and are too tough to kill with that 25% armor to stop.

In all of this I could be wrong, and I'm waiting to be enlightened by you, so respond.

Haelix

[AzN_GuY]

yea, ten knights... with a few enchantresses, yes

lol, this is where the enchantress would shine. you get even two of those units out there and half the knights are down, with a few support units, the knight army is helpless.

[Haelix]

Do you use 2 Enchantresses in your standard army? :]

[AzN_GuY]

dont have 2

[whiteyjason]

I agree totally with the Defensive strategy, it seems to work for lots of people.

[MasterGolem]

I usually do for offensive and have to opponet on the run. I kill his cleric with my witch, then use my dragon to kill his witch. While he try to kill the amazingly atrong dragon, I attk his knights and kill 1 and get the other to about 15 health. Then i use my knights and scouts to clean up the rest healing every 3 turns. I got about 86 wins and 14 loses so i think this works. (Of course dragon came out today so...:D )

[Eldar[TN]]

I've *never* lost to a defensive strategy opponent, my magi slaughtered them.

[xyxaxyz2]

Some of you seem to never have played a really good player. I have, they all use defensive strategies and they know how to win.

[AzN_GuY]

Back on the idea of not moving, you need to draw the enemy to you, it just doesnt work to try and run the enemy off the map... minor incursions are one thing, but overall offensives get you killed

[Choi]

I like to start defensive and draw the other player in if I can, but use a layout that is flexible enough to go on the offensive.

[Eldar[TN]]

Well I'll try starting with a defensive formation and playing defensively o0

[Haelix]

As AzN_GuY mentioned, you have to provoke your enemies into attacking you. The scout is excellent at this. Picking off magic units that are initially unprotected, or the ones that try to attack you is his main purpose. Because of his range he can stay close to your defensive wall. I imagine Gold accounts would be even more deadly like this because they can have two scouts.

Once a couple of their magic units are dead, they have no choice but to start an offensive with their knights and move them up into the range of your lightning ward.

The only problem is when you have two defensive players facing off. :] You get a very slow game.

[Eldar[TN]]

I have about the same win : loss ratio with an all out rush and a defensive formation. The only diffrence is the defensive one makes the game take twice as long.

[teh_Sheep]

At the moment I'm using a rush form, and it only works against newbies who are easily overwhelmed. Against a seasoned player I can hold my own, but I'm just prolonging the inevitable, the 'inevitable' being my loss.

[Link_X]

Right....
it is just about imposible to even get 10 knights so dont even worry about it:cool:

[Eldar[TN]]

I just played a guy with two clerics...

rushing w/o a cleric is still my best option.

[AzN_GuY]

The defensive formation works because you can use it to drag enemies into you. After a sufficient distance though, there's an advantage to countering.

[Eldar[TN]]

If he can heal his knight 12hp/turn basically and I can't really counter to kill his clerics...rushing works better.

[darkdelirium]

I've won one game against a two cleric person.

... god its intimidating.

The trick is in making it so he has multiple units to focus on, rather than making a kill on any one cleric threatening unit. verbose example...

Rush assassin. He spends turn and moves to attack assassin, hopefully misses. Rush dark magi. He has a choice... kill magi, or kill assassin, one will make a cleric kill. If you were so lucky your assassin blocked, ur at advantage. if not your at same mellee abilities. If he hit your assassin, heal, as youll have a turn between assassin recovering after hitting their cleric and magi getting recovery (2 to move).

Your advantage to if he has two clerics is you have far more damage potential, and can strategically dominate your side of the board.

always focus on making one kill if you can't get your units through.

its not a very good game though you will always feel at disadvantage because your fighting to raise up to his status, not starting on equal ground...

might i recomend a dragon? You could probably get both the clerics :p

[AzN_GuY]

The thing is taht if he's healing 12 hp a turn, he's not doing damage during that time. and you, assumedly, are. if a 2 cleric person is in full heal mode, they have an attack every 3rd round.... you get 3 attacks. a lot of units can do enough damage in that time to outgrow the 24 damage.

[Eldar[TN]]

Originally posted by AzN_GuY
The thing is taht if he's healing 12 hp a turn, he's not doing damage during that time. and you, assumedly, are. if a 2 cleric person is in full heal mode, they have an attack every 3rd round.... you get 3 attacks. a lot of units can do enough damage in that time to outgrow the 24 damage.

1 attack, heal, 1 attack, heal, 1 attack, move up, 1 attack, heal

you die off a helluva alot faster than he does o0 because you can't move enough units up fast enough to kill his clerics o0

Hence I go back to offensive and tear defensive players apart...it works better for me that way.

[kyrios24]

Nobody's posted here for 7 days, but thats ok... I'm 103-0-2 on armageddon and I put units across the front. I'm sure that if I were gold then my strat would be much different, and my units do tend to shift back a bit when I'm playing a gold, but greys die a horrible death.

Like eldar said, defensive takes twice as long, and I don't even like it that much... my initial formation was defensive when I was a noob myself (well, relatively, since I read the rules and I have seen these kinds of games before). Needless to say, I switched to offensive after about 10 games.

[Haelix]

Ok, I can accept your view, though now that I've been here a little while, I can tell that stats don't mean as much, and am ashamed I put them in my first post.

However, you have given no justification as to why your offensive formation is better, so don't expect me to convert to your views.

[Badredd]

I personally think that one neither too offensive or defensive, but a formatin that is flexible that can adapt to things your opponent throws at you...

[kyrios24]

Well haelix, I'm just speaking from experience. First off, records sort of do matter, although I hate posting them. I wanted to make a point though, and show that your record doesn't make you all-knowing. They don't matter with noob killers, but I'm not that kind of player...

I wasn't trying to convince you to use an offensive formation, and I actually don't care if you die or not. I'm just making a point and disagreeing with a bunch of you for the sake of, well, disagreeing with a bunch of you.

Maybe the optimal formation varies from player to player. I do better with offensive, and maybe you're better with defensive. But you should at least try the other way before you post something about this.

Choi is right, as usual. Wow...thats the second time I'm agreeing with him in like 15 minutes...:cool: He's a KOTR member though. Watch your step Choi.

Finally, any of you defensive-formation people (especially you haelix) should try and beat me. See what you think about good strategies then.

[Haelix]

Who says I haven't tried other formations? I was just trying to get you to expand a little on your point with some justification. Why does the offensive strategy win? How, in your reputed experience, has an offensive formation consistantly overcome flaws in different defensive formations?

I'm a bit disappointed though, because you said you were just disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing. Oh well.

[MinigunSniper]

I tend to use a defensive formation that uses scouts to draw out the opponent. The opponent has to deal with the scouts, as they are usually in the back sniping at the cleric and/or stone golem, depending on the opponent. Hit-and-run tactics with scouts, in my experiance, work great for forcing people to come after you.

[Dragcon]

Although I see alot of merit toward the defensive formations. I just can't see how you could that to work for you all the time. I mean sure pick off his guys and porvoke him but that would only really tend to work if he was newer to the game.
On the other hand rushing isn't that great either. You can get caught with your cleric open and then it's easy to pick off the rest of your people. So instead of picking one and going with that I use a balance that has seemed to work quite well for me. I tend not to use my cleic at all so I sometimes let my oppenant try to pick him off while I take down his knights and dark witch with my scout and assain. I tend to leave my knights staionary until I run out of my more favoured units but the egde to that is if caught unaware then I can use them to hold off defeat till I reorganize.

[Rescorlian]

I personally find it entirely depends on the opponent. For an offensive opponent my setup is one giant death trap. For a defensive opponent I wait for the right holes to be created then freeze the light ward and attack at full force. Has proved strong tactic many times. However my setup has the ability to do both evenly aswell as counter act almost any setup.

[davidsmith]

I think I have defensive formation. But it allows for some flexibility. I've beaten a couple of golds with this formation, and I don't always play n00bs. Even though some might consider me a n00b. Personally I believe it's a preference thing. If you play better with a defensive formation, great. If you play better with an offensive formation, more power to ya. To each his own!

[DWarrior]

I tried to use the Stone Golem with an offensive strategy, but I discovered that sometimes it just gets beat. Perhaps it's just the fact that my positioning was not perfected, or I'm just a defensive player, but I discovered that a defensive tactic using a Frost Golem works better and all the time. Dual clerics aren't really that much of a problem, since I tend to concentrate on 1 unit at a time, to prevent Clerics from being any useful. I also tend to take little to no chances, and usually spend the extra turn freezing or getting around my opponent's unit to prevent blocking.

Also, I was unable to find a tactic where both Stone and Frost Golems were useful. Stone tends to require a Barrier Ward, to prevent getting hit while your units are behind the enemy lines taking damage, while Frosty can do well by moving around your knights to get away from threats. The two, however, tend to get in each others way and one always pushes the other out of a defended area.

[Rescorlian]

Man I found that the stone golem and frost golem went hand in hand. give frosty armour and use it to protect cleric and stoney. I also use my cleric as a shield along with a armoured scout

[loseros]

i agree with u that the best startegy is de defensive one but like a person said: "the best defense is a good attack"

u can't defend all your troops u have to attack. if u hold defending u are just waisting time cause he'll move all his troops against u or just wait untilu do an error or when he finds a hole in your estrategy ;)

what do u think about this?

[Ardorin]

The best thing to do is to concentrate on just about one or two units at a time. Most people won't use their cleric for just one unit, so it'll die pretty quickly. If the dragon's up front it can take out a witch pretty quickly. Once you take out two of their units then they'll be intimidated(if they're a newb). Keeping more units back and having one or two advance to do damage to their cleric or other units in there is quick. That's why I usually send a knight in. It survives long and while his attacks are focused on taking it out I can heal him with my cleric and use my pyros and scout to take some shots at his other units, still focusing on just one or two select ones. They'll either lose or quit.

[Siquo]

Defensive is just being a sitting duck. Pyro's are great to lure your opponent into healing (Hah! your pyro damage is all gone now I just healed!), after which you have enough time to concentrate on one enemy without him having time to heal.

I personally play semi-offensive, going defensive only when the other is trying to rush me, giving plenty of opportunities. Opportunities, like leaving your cleric open for attack by e.g. an assassin, make his attack grow thin, he'll be trying to go for the quick kill instead of a decent offense.

Having weaknesses in your defense is good. Because you will know what your enemy will do, and it is much easier to anticipate on his moves.

[abyaly]

personally, I have played some people who play well offensively, but most of the good players I have seen dont. I've tried both, and the benefit of offense is that you have more control over which unit of yours is targeted, and you keep your opponent occupied more effectively. With defense, you can make better use of ranged units and your cleric


IRT Eldar: 1. the reason defensive strats dont work as well against gold players is that you have too damned many ranged units; you would lose that advantage if you played as a grey. 2. targeting enemy clerics is a very basic strategy and does not work against people who know how to play. unless you have a significant advantage (like gold units)

[xyxaxyz2]

I've found just the opposite-defensive strategies work best against golds, because they have so few actual units. Using a dragon, LW, cleric, enchantress, stone golem, frost golem, the gold only has 4 fighting units. Even if he takes one of the paralyzers, thats only 5 fighting units. If you're using the DSM, plus Pyros to go with it, thats only 1 dragon unusable at the start, three low hit point DSMs, and another unit. If you attack, they'll enchant you, LW you, kill you with the dragon and other units. Forcing them to go on offense very much weakens the stone golem and whatever enchanter they use. And in a defensive strategy, your cleric weakens the DSMs.

[Killer_kev]

i find that ever since i got a stone golem, i have been forced into more defensive plays then ever before.

[Siquo]

I dont get a stone golem, I've played against golds a few times, and every single time at some point I shoot it with my scout (Yeah 7 damage! :)) and there you go, another totally useless unit on the board.

[ArcPaladinZero]

Yup, I agree about the stone golem, as long as I have my scout, that is the most pointless unit on the field. One hit and there goes that armor.