War3 Replays Part 2
Posted by TimothyJul 16
2smass | 3smass | ltmayhem | aggresssion
More replays. Instead of spoiling each individual game I’ll just summarize what I’m slowly having to re-learn.
There are pronounced differences in the way 2’s and 3’s are handled. Maybe I never really explored the idea as fully as I should have in the past, but it’s much clearer now. Obviously the smaller size game type the more diverse the individual must be. You can play 3’s and 4’s with a large array of unit types, but it seems like your team will be much more successful if you each explore only 2-3 types of units which best fit your synergy.
Along with this, for War3 in particular, you don’t tend to see 6 barracks like you would in Starcraft. You don’t tend to see more than 2 really unless in extreme situations. I’ve finally realized with the way Krib and I play, our best plan of attack is dual rax, at least for me anyway. Usually I’m broken up over the speed of my teching coupled with how many units I need to make in tier 1. Krib usually prefers to fast tech for his second hero and for demolishers. As orc it might not be so bad since grunts are generally so durable. But when I’m caught teching with a single barracks it’s a painfully slow recovery. When faced with double massing opponents it’s very difficult to overcome unless our level of skill is notably higher. A few of the games I didn’t post highlighted just how well dual rax is for both of us since we tend to skip creeping and focus on keeping tension high on our opponents.
When we raced up the 3’s ladder there was only one strategy that we could not beat. Maybe we beat it once or twice, but in general, our success rate against the strategy was always losing. It was double NE/UD with both NE feeding money to the UD for fast tech while they harass with their heroes. The UD would get fiends and go to wyrms. Once the UD was fine on tech or they cleared his expansion, the NE would focus full out on huntresses. It’s funny to hear that Starcraft 2 will not allow resource trading. I think in extreme circumstances it should be allowed, but after struggling with that particular stategy, I feel a sort of vindication. Our other partner in 3’s and my 1v1 tactics were just too poor to handle the NE harassment which led to our repeated demise. I never spent a lot of time dwelling on it, but I think if I had, we’d have eventually found a way around it.
When assaulting a base, one really needs to think about the buildings they attack. Krib and I know exactly what hurts the most to lose, however often times when attacks come in on us and we haven’t yet run in or TPed yet, it seems like the enemies more often than not, choose poorly in the buildings they choose to attack. If you suspect an opponent teching, destroy the dependency buildings. Often times it seems like farms are good to go after, but only if you know the opponent is near his population limit OR if you know you can kill enough farms in the time allotted that will actually hurt him. In War3 the shop is a very key building both for tech and for defense when fights occur in your town.
I feel like tonight was either 50% for wins or less. It wasn’t a great night but we also threw some 3’s in the mix with a guildy that isn’t familiar with non-DotA play so he’s going through a vicious crash course in War3. Much of the night I thought about how great Starcraft 2 will be. It’s freeing to think outside of one massive army all the time. War3 feels slow and clunky now. It also looks huge. I want to zoom out a bit more than the game allows. Hopefully in the weeks coming ahead I’ll be crashing my zealots in the field of battle instead of my footmen.
2 comments
Comment by Mike on July 17, 2009 at 9:52 AM
Alright, the lost temple replay had me at the edge of my seat most of the game. It was really intense. Well played and I don’t have too much commentary. I think I would have built a farm and and my altar in kribs town instead of getting a TH off in the middle of nowhere, because if they found it that was your last peasant.
Red had no base and no peons, so he was microing his hero dota style. Your 4 remaining spell breakers would probably have been better focusing the bears down instead of the blade master since he would protect it so well, but you guys won that battle anyway, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.
I don’t normally advice tons of towers, but given the fact that you had lost most of your tech and they would probably been back soon, it probably wouldn’t have hurt to go for a few extra arcane towers after you lost the first chunk of your base and drove them off. The take home lesson from that battle is probably early unexpected siege can win games!
One other thing: If your mountain king is dead, I think you can refill krib’s heroes mana with your blood mage. Not sure, but if it does work, but there were times when yours was full mana and krib probably could have cast more healing waves.
The Aggression replay wasn’t quite a good but it had some really awesome elements in it too.
Few things to note. The undead guy pulled all his off his mine to repair his shop. The shop is almost worthless, but i think if you have the time it is worth pulling just your hero off the building and have it attack the guys repairing. If you send all your guys at their acolytes they notice right away and pull them back plunging all your guys into their base, but many times you can get away with your hero picking one or two off, which slows gold growth, because they usually don’t have time to train more acolytes while they are microing their units in their base.
Krib had his cats hit the human castle with his cats when you guys arrived in his town. Bad call in my opinion. It worked in LT because he knew exactly where the defending player was (in your town). In this case you wouldn’t know how long until the defending army would arrive, and the castle is the most armored hardest to destroy building. Not to mention there are tons of peasants that can repair on a moments notice. Like you mention above, hitting tech probably would have been more useful. I didn’t feel like they were as good of opponents, the human kept wasting his gold on health/mana pots for the dark ranger.
No time to comment much on the others. Teach Genbok how to build like you do as human for better defense. You have it down to an art.
Oh one last thing.
Tell krib to research pillage. It usually pays for itself in 10 seconds of melee attacks, and would have more than paid for itself in EVERY game he played.
Comment by Timothy on July 17, 2009 at 2:44 PM
Yeah the LT replay was pretty crazy. I find that without spoiling it, you become a more interested watcher. However, there’s tons of stuff still annoying me about how I play. My BIGGEST real weakness is that I don’t pick off low health units very well. I have no net connection so I rewatched our games this week and it seriously kills me inside when I see 3-5 units all with 1 hit worth of damage all running around. Kills me!!!!
You’re right I also noticed that instead of trying to keep my MK full, I can keep the AoE healbot full. It does work.
I mentioned pillage to him a long time ago, I dunno if he forgot or what, but that occurred to me as well.
It was a bit harder to pull replays out this time because I don’t feel we had any real post-worthy ones except for the LT one. There’s one more as well maybe, but I can’t post it until I have my home connection restored.