This was an excellent Vinci mirror with radically different playstyles colliding in an intense 52 minute death match where the game goes both ways, twice, until a surprise and (in my opinion) premature end. FaiTH, the determined cyan defender on our right uses his early economic advantage to pull a near impossible turn-around after Everborn's devestating protorush cripples his early game capabilities. Everborn, the viscious aggressor on the left uses a multitude of moves to keep FaiTH on his toes until the very end. Steam cannons, clockwork men, pirata, heroes, infantry, fly about the map, followed closely by bits and bloody pieces of all the above. Read on for the full summary of all the exciting action you won't want to miss!
Everborn Vinci
Pros: + Excellent raiding and harrassment, kept FaiTH guessing the entire game. + Very aggressive at all points of the game, putting FaiTH into a rare defensive position (rare for him). + Gave his all the entire game, pulling a number of strong moves out at unexpected moments. + Nice late-game economy, despite only two mines in uncontested territory.
Cons: - Poor use of Giacamo. He didn't make it past level 2 until Super Armor, nearly 50 minutes into the game. His rare heals weren't enough to justify the cost of resummoning him after his first death, in my opinion. - Frequently lost resources to buildings, districts, etc. in progress when captured or destroyed. (Although losing the first Steam Fortress was hardly predictable). - Clockwork Spiders were late, and could have turned the game in your favor very easily after Large City.
Player score: 7.5/10 (Replay reviewer question: is this a subjective number, or should I have looked for specific things?)
FaiTH Vinci
Pros: + AMAZING use of the Doge, quite easily making him the star unit of this A+ show. I've never seen a fort under construction destroyed, that was a very powerful early-game move. + Held Everborn back with inferior forces at nearly every point of the game, a sign of strong micro and a healthy mix of units. + Fort placement at the north vault was excellent, although this goes without saying
Cons: - Resource management suffered at nearly every point in the game, which over the course of 50 minutes was a significant weakness. - Did not adequately respond to most raids. A simple tower at that mine (you know, the one he hit maybe 80 trillion times), would have saved you a significant amount of time and resources. - Threw away your momentum when it was strongest: you needed more pirata or Lenora to give a finishing blow, but opted to queue 3 pirata rather than build a second aerodrome.
Player score: 7.5/10
Educational score: 9/10 - overall very inventive play, with strength carried out throughout the game; point docked for mistakes. Entertainment score: 7/10 - the length hurts, as well as "Yet Another Vinci" mirror, but the all-over gameplay really helps keep this game entertaining. Game Score: 8/10
[I suggest you watch the game first, to avoid spoiling the adventure...this is definitely a must-see replay.] I watched this game primarily from Everborn's perspective, as I felt early on that he would be the underdog in this match. A little misjudgement on my part, as both players act this role very nicely...several times...over the course of this game! You will see however that most of my notes focus on Everborn's play, regardless, because I found FaiTH made very few mistakes which, while small in number, overall lead to a much greater loss. Everborn made a number of very small mistakes, but because he constantly kept the ball in his court through frequent raids and harrassments, he was able to counter these quite nicely and keep the game going in his favor for a good deal of the time.
Everborn began this game with a classic protorush, but rather than aiming at crippling FaiTH's economy as per the norm, he makes an interesting move which determines the flow of the game from this point on. He focuses all the attention of his CWM/infantry protoarmy on FaiTH's prototype factory, destroying it before FaiTH's industrial district is able to complete. Meanwhile FaiTH is busy wittling at Everborn's decent sized army by a combination of infantry, attrition (0.50 DPS at this point), and his hero (Doge). With some nice handiwork, Everborn saves both his sniper and spider, in fact walking the sniper right past the Doge and two infantry with only 8 measily health. He begins to retreat his full army shortly after, as the effects of 0.50 DPS spread across his entire army becomes very obvious. FaiTH picks up a vault and five Dune Walkers at this point, sealing the retreat and saving himself from a uniquely successful protorush.
Both players at this point fail to get a strong economy ramped up, with Everborn's attention focused on massing a very impressive army of 5 CWM, 6 infantry, and the spider/sniper he saved earlier (and let's not forget Giacamo, although it was rather easy to forget about him this entire game.....). Compare this with FaiTH's 5 infantry and doge at this point, and you begin to see a great plan unfolding, as those infantry and doge are all that stand between Everborn's army and a capital with 4 districts + 1 palace, but NO military! After a minor scuffle in the center of the map, he retreats to sit below an aerodrome for 90 seconds while he builds an aerodrome and then supply dirigible to support his already full health army. This was Everborn's largest mistake, which IMO caused the game to drag on an additional 40 minutes (although think of all the action we would have missed without this mistake, so I attribute this poor decision to fate rather than Everborn ). He finally attacks once his supply pops out, but after more or less destroying the few units that FaiTH already had, he RETREATS. Woops! During the first of these two scuffles, he fires Giacamo's heal off about 15 seconds too late; if you'll notice, timing the heal sooner would have hit his entire army rather than just the forward Clockwork Men it eventually covered. This is just a symptom of an overall very weak use of Giacamo throughout the game. Comparitively, FaiTH's use of doge at all points was exceptional, surprising even myself (an avid Doge user) several times. This was a significant part of FaiTH's ability to hold Everborn back and, eventually, push his own offensive.
Which he did. After popping a steam fortress within firing range of Everborn's vault site, he follows it with a steam cannon which rolls unimpeded to Everborn's capital and commences a devestating offense. Meanwhile, Zeke hovers idly at FaiTH's vault on the opposite side of the map. Oh, and Everborn had researched piratas at this point, but failed to build any. Either option would have worked well to push the seige back, but Everborn instead chooses option number 3: ignore the seige, fight within FaiTH's territory, and retreat once it's too late. The one benefit of this aggressive move was to drop FaiTH's Doge with a clever pincer attack: pushing him south with his army, while his two pirata at this point move up to finish him off. It works, and Everborn retreats to his capital after it is reduced, losing 4 units to attrition on the way. This loss, unfortunately, is substantial enough to leave him with inadequate forces to meet the Juggernaut now defending that lone steam cannon I mentioned earlier. At this point, FaiTH has a massive wealth advantage but no aerodrome... once your opponent demonstrates he is going to be using piratas, it's generally a good idea to build some of your own
While Everborn is stretched thin to meet this small seige part to the north of his capital, FaiTH moves in with another small seige party on the east, hitting the Fortress with Seige Laser and finishing it off with three CWM. Ultimately (and inexplicably), Everborn is able to recover and pushes back into FaiTH's territory with a superior army, but NO seige! His single seige unit is busy trying to die at FaiTH's fort to the north, woops. Obviously he has to retreat yet again, this time losing two units to Industrial Devestation on his way out (but saving two more with a quickish heal from Giacamo). After some harrassment from Faith at the vault Everborn had captured in the south, Everborn decides to build a fortress to protect it, at the hefty cost of 350 Timonium. Because this was more important than getting Great City, which FaiTH has been using for a few moments to overpower him with a mass of Super CWM. After he recovers the timonium spent on this misplaced fort, he puts the 450 into Great City. I say misplaced, because as it turns out (and should have been obvious), the actual weak point of his defenses was his CAPITAL, which had already been seiged once, and as it turns out becomes seiged in the same fashion again. Consequently, the 450 timo he spent on Great City goes to waste when the capital is again reduced. Don't let this happen to you kids: place forts responsibly.
Meanwhile, Everborn has massed a hefty pirata force, which he uses to raid a camp of timonium. Normally a very responsible move, however he neglected one important aspect: the Seige Zeppelin wreaking havoc in his territory just north of the capital. Woops He finally returns to drop it, after his attempt to build a Bunker just north of his capital fails.
Post mid-game, both players suffer the same ailment: no matter how many resources they seem to gather, their armies fail to reflect that strength. This is suffered by both players until the game ends quite a while longer, but neither comes across a decent solution. Everborn had that misplaced fort and a barracks just south of FaiTH's capital: ANOTHER barracks here, with double the number of units flowing into FaiTH's weakest location, would have forced FaiTH into a very expensive retreat. As it stood, he was able to ignore your CWM and what have you coming in. Also, you could have resummoned Giacamo here for some added oomf. I didn't see him reappear for a while, actually. It was probably for the best, he was little more than a distraction, hm?
FaiTH makes another collosal mistake here and sends his 6 pirata after 3 of Everborn's pirata... which happen to be parked below a 2-mili Large City and the glass fortress site. Suffice to say, he loses 5 of those 6 pirata. This mistake is compounded heavily by the fact that once Everborn was restricted to the two southernmost cities, he build an impressive air-only army. This caused a drawn-out standoff which is only broken by a stream of seige reducing FaiTH's capital over and over... It's exceedingly expensive to repair, and thus FaiTH loses a significant chunk of his economy cap (and thus income). Building merchant districts at your two protected cities would have been a Good Idea, imo, although repairing/defending the ones you had would have been better. Those 80-some CWM you had could have split up quite easily, as one option In FaiTH's defense however, Everborn has been playing very aggressive harrassments such as this throughout the ENTIRE game, and I would be quite fatigued responding to them at this point. FaiTH actually calls a "GG" about 10? 20? minutes too early, assuming that the mere loss of a capital would cause Everborn to resign. That assumption proved wrong in about 30 seconds or less.
[SPOILER ALERT, DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU ARE GOING TO WATCH THIS GAME] Okay so this game was very long, and very little of interest happens after Everborn loses his capital. He hunkers, or shall I say, Bunkers down with his two remaining cities. Two large, full mines and a Foreman allow more than enough timonium to hold FaiTH back, as well as an armada of caravans feeding his air superiority. Not to mention FaiTH's economy is HEAVILY crippled by the constant seige reducing his completely unprotected capital.
I believe after falsely calling the GG, FaiTH lost a little spirit, because while his play is still quite good, it seems almost lifeless and mechanical. Every action after that point is a response rather than the ingenuity that normally characterizes his play. FaiTH gets Doge Hammer and uses it twice, to little avail, as he is simply not able to put out enough pirata to meet or beat Everborn's. Did I mention, TWO aerodromes. TWO barracks. They're oh so cheap end-game and help oh so much. Everborn builds Doge (lol, another unused hero), and researches Super Armor, which ultimately decides the game as FaiTH runs away while five-ish Juggs pound at his back. They focus their fire on the level 5 Doge, who is reduced to a mere 15 health... but then turn their attention elsewhere.... um, okay? Regardless, the game is over, not because FaiTH's play wasn't on par, but because he lost spirit in what turned out to be a very long and challenging game.
Both players did VERY well, throughout the course of the game, although I was dissapointed to see FaiTH seemingly give up once he had the winning momentum. This is an important lesson: do not call the game a win or loss until it actually ends, because while rare, turnarounds do happen... if you decide a game is over before it actually ends, your opponent may have other plans, and you will always be caught off-guard. You may relax once the screen begins to spin (no, that isn't the blood leaving your head from exhaustion, it's just a sign that you've either won or loss).
Oh, and Lenora would have made a game-winning hero for either player, after about 20 minutes into the game. This is a difficult game to cover completely, as its length and complexity would require at least 3 viewings to cover every component of micro, macro, economy, strategy, etc. I've instead decided to focus on the most obvious aspects that I found in a 1x viewing of the game, which should be more than enough for both players to improve their play significantly. I hope you enjoyed the read, but more important, I hope you watched this game! Ultimately this game was decided economically, but there were so many points that could have changed the outcome that it's important to realize this was not an economic game.
This post has been edited by natey14: Aug 1 2006, 01:02 AM
Link to Original Topic
This was an excellent Vinci mirror with radically different playstyles colliding in an intense 52 minute death match where the game goes both ways, twice, until a surprise and (in my opinion) premature end. FaiTH, the determined cyan defender on our right uses his early economic advantage to pull a near impossible turn-around after Everborn's devestating protorush cripples his early game capabilities. Everborn, the viscious aggressor on the left uses a multitude of moves to keep FaiTH on his toes until the very end. Steam cannons, clockwork men, pirata, heroes, infantry, fly about the map, followed closely by bits and bloody pieces of all the above. Read on for the full summary of all the exciting action you won't want to miss!
Everborn
Vinci
Pros:
+ Excellent raiding and harrassment, kept FaiTH guessing the entire game.
+ Very aggressive at all points of the game, putting FaiTH into a rare defensive position (rare for him).
+ Gave his all the entire game, pulling a number of strong moves out at unexpected moments.
+ Nice late-game economy, despite only two mines in uncontested territory.
Cons:
- Poor use of Giacamo. He didn't make it past level 2 until Super Armor, nearly 50 minutes into the game. His rare heals weren't enough to justify the cost of resummoning him after his first death, in my opinion.
- Frequently lost resources to buildings, districts, etc. in progress when captured or destroyed. (Although losing the first Steam Fortress was hardly predictable).
- Clockwork Spiders were late, and could have turned the game in your favor very easily after Large City.
Player score: 7.5/10 (Replay reviewer question: is this a subjective number, or should I have looked for specific things?)
FaiTH
Vinci
Pros:
+ AMAZING use of the Doge, quite easily making him the star unit of this A+ show. I've never seen a fort under construction destroyed, that was a very powerful early-game move.
+ Held Everborn back with inferior forces at nearly every point of the game, a sign of strong micro and a healthy mix of units.
+ Fort placement at the north vault was excellent, although this goes without saying
Cons:
- Resource management suffered at nearly every point in the game, which over the course of 50 minutes was a significant weakness.
- Did not adequately respond to most raids. A simple tower at that mine (you know, the one he hit maybe 80 trillion times), would have saved you a significant amount of time and resources.
- Threw away your momentum when it was strongest: you needed more pirata or Lenora to give a finishing blow, but opted to queue 3 pirata rather than build a second aerodrome.
Player score: 7.5/10
Educational score: 9/10 - overall very inventive play, with strength carried out throughout the game; point docked for mistakes.
Entertainment score: 7/10 - the length hurts, as well as "Yet Another Vinci" mirror, but the all-over gameplay really helps keep this game entertaining.
Game Score: 8/10
[I suggest you watch the game first, to avoid spoiling the adventure...this is definitely a must-see replay.]
I watched this game primarily from Everborn's perspective, as I felt early on that he would be the underdog in this match. A little misjudgement on my part, as both players act this role very nicely...several times...over the course of this game! You will see however that most of my notes focus on Everborn's play, regardless, because I found FaiTH made very few mistakes which, while small in number, overall lead to a much greater loss. Everborn made a number of very small mistakes, but because he constantly kept the ball in his court through frequent raids and harrassments, he was able to counter these quite nicely and keep the game going in his favor for a good deal of the time.
Everborn began this game with a classic protorush, but rather than aiming at crippling FaiTH's economy as per the norm, he makes an interesting move which determines the flow of the game from this point on. He focuses all the attention of his CWM/infantry protoarmy on FaiTH's prototype factory, destroying it before FaiTH's industrial district is able to complete. Meanwhile FaiTH is busy wittling at Everborn's decent sized army by a combination of infantry, attrition (0.50 DPS at this point), and his hero (Doge). With some nice handiwork, Everborn saves both his sniper and spider, in fact walking the sniper right past the Doge and two infantry with only 8 measily health. He begins to retreat his full army shortly after, as the effects of 0.50 DPS spread across his entire army becomes very obvious. FaiTH picks up a vault and five Dune Walkers at this point, sealing the retreat and saving himself from a uniquely successful protorush.
Both players at this point fail to get a strong economy ramped up, with Everborn's attention focused on massing a very impressive army of 5 CWM, 6 infantry, and the spider/sniper he saved earlier (and let's not forget Giacamo, although it was rather easy to forget about him this entire game.....). Compare this with FaiTH's 5 infantry and doge at this point, and you begin to see a great plan unfolding, as those infantry and doge are all that stand between Everborn's army and a capital with 4 districts + 1 palace, but NO military! After a minor scuffle in the center of the map, he retreats to sit below an aerodrome for 90 seconds while he builds an aerodrome and then supply dirigible to support his already full health army. This was Everborn's largest mistake, which IMO caused the game to drag on an additional 40 minutes (although think of all the action we would have missed without this mistake, so I attribute this poor decision to fate rather than Everborn
Which he did. After popping a steam fortress within firing range of Everborn's vault site, he follows it with a steam cannon which rolls unimpeded to Everborn's capital and commences a devestating offense. Meanwhile, Zeke hovers idly at FaiTH's vault on the opposite side of the map. Oh, and Everborn had researched piratas at this point, but failed to build any. Either option would have worked well to push the seige back, but Everborn instead chooses option number 3: ignore the seige, fight within FaiTH's territory, and retreat once it's too late. The one benefit of this aggressive move was to drop FaiTH's Doge with a clever pincer attack: pushing him south with his army, while his two pirata at this point move up to finish him off. It works, and Everborn retreats to his capital after it is reduced, losing 4 units to attrition on the way. This loss, unfortunately, is substantial enough to leave him with inadequate forces to meet the Juggernaut now defending that lone steam cannon I mentioned earlier. At this point, FaiTH has a massive wealth advantage but no aerodrome... once your opponent demonstrates he is going to be using piratas, it's generally a good idea to build some of your own
While Everborn is stretched thin to meet this small seige part to the north of his capital, FaiTH moves in with another small seige party on the east, hitting the Fortress with Seige Laser and finishing it off with three CWM. Ultimately (and inexplicably), Everborn is able to recover and pushes back into FaiTH's territory with a superior army, but NO seige! His single seige unit is busy trying to die at FaiTH's fort to the north, woops. Obviously he has to retreat yet again, this time losing two units to Industrial Devestation on his way out (but saving two more with a quickish heal from Giacamo). After some harrassment from Faith at the vault Everborn had captured in the south, Everborn decides to build a fortress to protect it, at the hefty cost of 350 Timonium. Because this was more important than getting Great City, which FaiTH has been using for a few moments to overpower him with a mass of Super CWM. After he recovers the timonium spent on this misplaced fort, he puts the 450 into Great City. I say misplaced, because as it turns out (and should have been obvious), the actual weak point of his defenses was his CAPITAL, which had already been seiged once, and as it turns out becomes seiged in the same fashion again. Consequently, the 450 timo he spent on Great City goes to waste when the capital is again reduced. Don't let this happen to you kids: place forts responsibly.
Meanwhile, Everborn has massed a hefty pirata force, which he uses to raid a camp of timonium. Normally a very responsible move, however he neglected one important aspect: the Seige Zeppelin wreaking havoc in his territory just north of the capital. Woops
Post mid-game, both players suffer the same ailment: no matter how many resources they seem to gather, their armies fail to reflect that strength. This is suffered by both players until the game ends quite a while longer, but neither comes across a decent solution. Everborn had that misplaced fort and a barracks just south of FaiTH's capital: ANOTHER barracks here, with double the number of units flowing into FaiTH's weakest location, would have forced FaiTH into a very expensive retreat. As it stood, he was able to ignore your CWM and what have you coming in. Also, you could have resummoned Giacamo here for some added oomf. I didn't see him reappear for a while, actually. It was probably for the best, he was little more than a distraction, hm?
FaiTH makes another collosal mistake here and sends his 6 pirata after 3 of Everborn's pirata... which happen to be parked below a 2-mili Large City and the glass fortress site. Suffice to say, he loses 5 of those 6 pirata. This mistake is compounded heavily by the fact that once Everborn was restricted to the two southernmost cities, he build an impressive air-only army. This caused a drawn-out standoff which is only broken by a stream of seige reducing FaiTH's capital over and over... It's exceedingly expensive to repair, and thus FaiTH loses a significant chunk of his economy cap (and thus income). Building merchant districts at your two protected cities would have been a Good Idea, imo, although repairing/defending the ones you had would have been better. Those 80-some CWM you had could have split up quite easily, as one option
[SPOILER ALERT, DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU ARE GOING TO WATCH THIS GAME]
Okay so this game was very long, and very little of interest happens after Everborn loses his capital. He hunkers, or shall I say, Bunkers down with his two remaining cities. Two large, full mines and a Foreman allow more than enough timonium to hold FaiTH back, as well as an armada of caravans feeding his air superiority. Not to mention FaiTH's economy is HEAVILY crippled by the constant seige reducing his completely unprotected capital.
I believe after falsely calling the GG, FaiTH lost a little spirit, because while his play is still quite good, it seems almost lifeless and mechanical. Every action after that point is a response rather than the ingenuity that normally characterizes his play. FaiTH gets Doge Hammer and uses it twice, to little avail, as he is simply not able to put out enough pirata to meet or beat Everborn's. Did I mention, TWO aerodromes. TWO barracks. They're oh so cheap end-game and help oh so much. Everborn builds Doge (lol, another unused hero), and researches Super Armor, which ultimately decides the game as FaiTH runs away while five-ish Juggs pound at his back. They focus their fire on the level 5 Doge, who is reduced to a mere 15 health... but then turn their attention elsewhere.... um, okay? Regardless, the game is over, not because FaiTH's play wasn't on par, but because he lost spirit in what turned out to be a very long and challenging game.
Both players did VERY well, throughout the course of the game, although I was dissapointed to see FaiTH seemingly give up once he had the winning momentum. This is an important lesson: do not call the game a win or loss until it actually ends, because while rare, turnarounds do happen... if you decide a game is over before it actually ends, your opponent may have other plans, and you will always be caught off-guard. You may relax once the screen begins to spin (no, that isn't the blood leaving your head from exhaustion, it's just a sign that you've either won or loss).
Oh, and Lenora would have made a game-winning hero for either player, after about 20 minutes into the game. This is a difficult game to cover completely, as its length and complexity would require at least 3 viewings to cover every component of micro, macro, economy, strategy, etc. I've instead decided to focus on the most obvious aspects that I found in a 1x viewing of the game, which should be more than enough for both players to improve their play significantly. I hope you enjoyed the read, but more important, I hope you watched this game! Ultimately this game was decided economically, but there were so many points that could have changed the outcome that it's important to realize this was not an economic game.
This post has been edited by natey14: Aug 1 2006, 01:02 AM
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