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Topic: concentric circles win??

LeightonMan
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Posted at: 2017-12-21, 11:33

Hi, I'm playing barbarians on concentric circles map. Is it still possible to win? It takes so long to build a port and ship that the enemy on the first ring is well established with a barracks and training facilities before I can construct a colony. This means that, in a rush attack, I run out of soldiers before I can defeat them. Alternatively, if I build a training camp before attacking, I first need gold and other resources so, by the time have defeated and occupied the first ring, there are no coal or metal resources and it takes so long to replenish the supply of soldiers that the second ring is fully colonised and there is no port space available. I'm really enjoying the challenge BTW!


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2017-12-21, 18:35

LeightonMan wrote:

Hi, I'm playing barbarians on concentric circles map. Is it still possible to win? It takes so long to build a port and ship that the enemy on the first ring is well established with a barracks and training facilities before I can construct a colony. This means that, in a rush attack, I run out of soldiers before I can defeat them. Alternatively, if I build a training camp before attacking, I first need gold and other resources so, by the time have defeated and occupied the first ring, there are no coal or metal resources and it takes so long to replenish the supply of soldiers that the second ring is fully colonised and there is no port space available. I'm really enjoying the challenge BTW!

I did win it with barbarians before they were significantly buffed. I always win a challenge map before posting it, so yes, it is winnable, though barbarians is the thougher case

The starting strategy is to make an arena. The AI won't be able to churn out many promoted soldiers, so with careful application of them you should take out the first ring with only minor losses. Now, there are very few resources on that ring, but they are enough - barely - to get 3-4 fully promoted soldiers, by micromanaging the training sites. The AI does not micromanage fully promoted soldiers, so by judicious use of them you should be able to kill the second ring without losses. From there it's a race to kill the third and fourth rings as soon as possible with enough resources left to kill the 5th. If you can conquer the 5th ring, winning is only a matter of time.

You will have to deal with a moving economy too, and I don't want to give advice in case you wanted to figure out the best ways for yourself


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LeightonMan
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Posted at: 2017-12-23, 12:42

Many thanks for the reply. I have tried again and succeeded in reaching the second ring and establishing a fortress but now I have run out of metal resources and the enemy has fully promoted soldiers while mine have level 1 or 2 health and level 0 attack making it nearly impossible to defeat a sentry position!. I suppose my question should have been: After Barbarians are significantly buffed, is it still possible to win?


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2017-12-23, 23:40

LeightonMan wrote:

Many thanks for the reply. I have tried again and succeeded in reaching the second ring and establishing a fortress but now I have run out of metal resources and the enemy has fully promoted soldiers while mine have level 1 or 2 health and level 0 attack making it nearly impossible to defeat a sentry position!. I suppose my question should have been: After Barbarians are significantly buffed, is it still possible to win?

well, barbarians used to be much weaker than they are now, and it was possible to win then. After barbarians were made stronger, it's not only still possible, but also easier to win with them. Unless the AI was significantly improved since the map was made, soemthing I cannot guarantee but I am pretty certain it wasn't buffed enough to make the map unwinnable.

Judging by your replies, however, I fear than you still miss many of the pieces needed to win. By your short reply I can see several large mistakes you are making

  • establishing a fortress is completely useless in this map, at least for the first four rings. A fortress is for putting large numbers of soldiers there. That's not what you do. You have a small number of strong soldiers and you want to conquer fast. You have better chances building a tower for its better sight range, putting your handful of strong soldiers there and advancing as fast as you can.

  • now I have run out of metal resources: this means you were far too slow. You should conquer the first ring in about two hours (game time, not real time), and from there proceed immediately. If you are fast enough, your mines in the first ring are still running when you kill the second.

  • the enemy has fully promoted soldiers: again, this means you are too slow. The AI takes some 4 hours to get fully promoted soldiers on an ideal starting location, and those narrow rings with llittle building space are not ideal locations. Someone correct me if it was improved significantly. By the time you reach the second ring and engage, the AI should still lack fully promoted soldiers.

  • you don't have fully promoted soldiers: this is the most important thing you are missing. It is possible to micromanage the training sites so that you can get a fully promoted soldier in 90 minutes of game time. there are several threads explaining how it is done, the best I can find is here https://wl.widelands.org/forum/topic/2075/?page=1#post-17447

Knowledge of how to get those supersoldiers fast and with little resources is vital in most of my challenge maps, where you always find yourself with little time and little resources.

There are exactly 60 units of iron in the first ring, and if you kill the AI fast enough, there should still be at least 40 for you. those plus the 12 units of iron you start with are enough to make 3 fully promoted soldiers if you handle your buildings properly (unfortunately some of the metal is spent to train the blacksmith). All that in no more than 3 hours, and you can kill the second ring with those 3 soldiers before it gets its own supersoldiers.

Unfortunately, if you can't manage to do that you can't win the map. And doing everything all right for rings 3 and 4 is even harder.


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LeightonMan
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Posted at: 2017-12-24, 12:33

Ah! Again thank you. It seems that the underlying problem is that I still lack sufficient knowledge of the game! I will practise some more.

It took me 4 hours game time to conquer the first ring and I was left with about 14 soldiers, mostly trained to evade level 2. That is why I built a fortress on the second ring. The enemy was near and I wanted to get as many soldiers as possible onto the ring before I was overrun. That worked but I ran out of resources.


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2017-12-24, 14:20

don't feel bad. I am the second strongest player of this game, and I make my challenge maps to be very difficult for me. I'd be surprised if there are more than a dozen people who defeated them.


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LeightonMan
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Posted at: 2017-12-24, 16:35

I don't feel bad, thanks. I'm enjoying the challenge! 160mins. game time to destroy the first ring HQ this attempt. So I'm getting better...slowly face-smile.png


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2017-12-24, 18:26

LeightonMan wrote:

I don't feel bad, thanks. I'm enjoying the challenge! 160mins. game time to destroy the first ring HQ this attempt. So I'm getting better...slowly face-smile.png

You need to build two farms first thing when you start, so you can work a microbrewery to a brewery. Also start building an arena early. You should be able to train soldiers in evade after about one hour, and by that time you should also have a foothold in the first ring. After you have two boats you also should dismantle the shipyard and rebuild it in the next ring close to the outer edge. eat through the stones as fast as possible while you pull all your promoted soldiers in the first ring, and attack with your promoted soldiers as soon as you can see the enemy. You must also manage the warehouses (including ports and headquarters) so that you have building resources always close to your front. Otherwise they will take forever to be sent there, and it will slow you down a lot.

Once you conquer the first ring, you immediately build a port there and start settling the second ring; meanwhile, you build a metal economy (you should build some more farms, wells, hunters/gamekeepers and such in all the new terrain you get in the meanwhile) and a training camp. Use the micromanaging trick to get a few fully promoted soldiers while you are eating through the stonewall and forest of the second ring, and be ready to attack the second enemy as soon as you see it.

You may also want to try the map with atlanteans first: still very diifficult, but much easier than doing it with barbarians.


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LeightonMan
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Posted at: 2017-12-27, 16:46

Thanks for the tips but I'm still not making much progress. It takes me 35 minutes game time to produce a ship and about 40 to train a master brewer. I get to the first ring in under an hour but it takes a long time to break through the stones so it's nearly 100 minutes before I can engage the enemy and they have trained soldiers by then. The limiting factor seems to be supply of logs but I don't see what I can do about that as I need so much infrastructure to get this far. I have two lumberjacks and three rangers near the headquarters but they don't produce enough. I will keep experimenting...

I haven't tried any games with atlanteans yet so this may not be the best challenge for a first attempt face-smile.png


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2017-12-27, 20:04

king_of_nowhere wrote:

If you can conquer the 5th ring, winning is only a matter of time.

Sure? By this time the purple player can already have a very huge army, and so he could stop you long enough, so the white player can block the port space?

LeightonMan wrote:

Many thanks for the reply. I have tried again and succeeded in reaching the second ring and establishing a fortress but now I have run out of metal resources and the enemy has fully promoted soldiers while mine have level 1 or 2 health and level 0 attack making it nearly impossible to defeat a sentry position!. I suppose my question should have been: After Barbarians are significantly buffed, is it still possible to win?

I guess that the map is winnable in trunk. The AI didn't improve that much for the first rings (maybe it didn't improve at all in comparison to build19 face-wink.png ) but now it has got a new weakness: If all of its soldiers are fully promoted and if there are at least 10 soldiers in warehouses, the barracks will stop, so the military power stays constant. For comparison: In one of my matches, white and purple players already have 2000 military points, while 45 fully promoted soldiers mean only 500 points approximately.

king_of_nowhere wrote:

LeightonMan wrote:

Many thanks for the reply. I have tried again and succeeded in reaching the second ring and establishing a fortress but now I have run out of metal resources and the enemy has fully promoted soldiers while mine have level 1 or 2 health and level 0 attack making it nearly impossible to defeat a sentry position!. I suppose my question should have been: After Barbarians are significantly buffed, is it still possible to win?

well, barbarians used to be much weaker than they are now, and it was possible to win then. After barbarians were made stronger, it's not only still possible, but also easier to win with them. Unless the AI was significantly improved since the map was made, soemthing I cannot guarantee but I am pretty certain it wasn't buffed enough to make the map unwinnable.

So you won on that map in build 18, or in the old trunk? I guess that the build18-AI is not so strong on that map because you can defeat it easier in the first rings, and this is very important. And if it has been build18 - has the AI been "agressive" in your match, or "normal"? And have they been a team of 7 AIs or whithout teams? face-wink.png

  • the enemy has fully promoted soldiers: again, this means you are too slow. The AI takes some 4 hours to get fully promoted soldiers on an ideal starting location, and those narrow rings with llittle building space are not ideal locations. Someone correct me if it was improved significantly. By the time you reach the second ring and engage, the AI should still lack fully promoted soldiers.

I played two matches recently and in both the AI already had one elite-soldier in the second ring (build19), and I've been quite fast. I could not continue the first match (barbarians), as the green player blocked the port space under the yellow HQ with a castle : /

LeightonMan wrote:

Ah! Again thank you. It seems that the underlying problem is that I still lack sufficient knowledge of the game! I will practise some more.

It took me 4 hours game time to conquer the first ring and I was left with about 14 soldiers, mostly trained to evade level 2. That is why I built a fortress on the second ring. The enemy was near and I wanted to get as many soldiers as possible onto the ring before I was overrun. That worked but I ran out of resources.

If you run out of ores, you can use depleted mines which still offer some resources. But now I made the experience that this is not the best strategy for the first rings, as one has rather to focus on fast expansion...

king_of_nowhere wrote:

LeightonMan wrote:

I don't feel bad, thanks. I'm enjoying the challenge! 160mins. game time to destroy the first ring HQ this attempt. So I'm getting better...slowly face-smile.png

You need to build two farms first thing when you start, so you can work a microbrewery to a brewery. Also start building an arena early. You should be able to train soldiers in evade after about one hour, and by that time you should also have a foothold in the first ring.

I don't play like that with barbarians there face-wink.png

After you have two boats you also should dismantle the shipyard and rebuild it in the next ring close to the outer edge. eat through the stones as fast as possible while you pull all your promoted soldiers in the first ring, and attack with your promoted soldiers as soon as you can see the enemy. You must also manage the warehouses (including ports and headquarters) so that you have building resources always close to your front. Otherwise they will take forever to be sent there, and it will slow you down a lot.

Once you conquer the first ring, you immediately build a port there and start settling the second ring; meanwhile, you build a metal economy (you should build some more farms, wells, hunters/gamekeepers and such in all the new terrain you get in the meanwhile) and a training camp. Use the micromanaging trick to get a few fully promoted soldiers while you are eating through the stonewall and forest of the second ring, and be ready to attack the second enemy as soon as you see it.

You may also want to try the map with atlanteans first: still very diifficult, but much easier than doing it with barbarians.

Barbarians have some huge advantages on the map: For example, they are the fastest expanders face-wink.png

LeightonMan wrote:

Thanks for the tips but I'm still not making much progress. It takes me 35 minutes game time to produce a ship and about 40 to train a master brewer. I get to the first ring in under an hour but it takes a long time to break through the stones so it's nearly 100 minutes before I can engage the enemy and they have trained soldiers by then. The limiting factor seems to be supply of logs but I don't see what I can do about that as I need so much infrastructure to get this far. I have two lumberjacks and three rangers near the headquarters but they don't produce enough. I will keep experimenting...

What about using five of both instead building other stuff? By the way, I once defeated the black player with barbarians and while destroying the ocher player, the match crashed all the time, so I don't continue it face-wink.png

Maybe the evasion training is not that important, one can also cause a lot of damage with the starting soldiers. It's no problem to victimise a lot of them, as this can mean faster expansion, and faster expansion means more iron, so more elite-soldiers, so more power face-wink.png

I haven't tried any games with atlanteans yet so this may not be the best challenge for a first attempt face-smile.png

Lol. It's the most difficult map ever, so no face-wink.png

Edited: 2017-12-28, 14:48

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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