Beating IG

[Maktaka]

Replays as SM (with ASM), Tau, Eldar, SoB, SM again (with Sniper Rifles), and Necrons for use in http://forums.relicnews.com/showthre...oulstorm/page5

[Pseudonymn]

Likewise, 2 games played on Moonbase; SM beating IG, and Tau beating IG. I added a third file that I played today, SM beating an 8 way FFA on Rhean Jungle, which was crawling with Necron toward the end of the game. Killed off my Eldar and Ork neighbors straight away whilst fending off Necron and IG harrassment forces, the latter of which managed to make it into my base and take out/decapping an LP1, but not much else - superficial damage that they payed dearly for.

Went on to destroy one Necron base, encountered a second Necron Walk of Doom, and was in the midst of pushing them back from whence they came when I was surprised at center by the same IG forces that I had thought destroyed by one of the Necron armies beforehand. Instead, they showed up on my flank with a T3.5 army just as the next Necron wave was marching in. I decided that if I were going to survive the encounter, I needed to pull back and flatten the IG base first. I felt I could do that more effectively than trying and hold back the Cron's WoD with IG forces picking me off from the rear (Necron armies move slower with shorter range, therefore easier to avoid). And I absolutely did not want the IG getting that Relic they'd need for a Baneblade up the arse for my troubles, so I dropped the hammer on the IG base and used their choke points to crush the pursuing Necron forces. It was pretty much over by that point, I just had to mop up. It's decent replay to watch, if you have ~63 minutes to spare (45ish with high speed replay).

ForTehEmprah_and_TheGreaterGood.zip

[Edit] And apparently it's been so long since I last added a replay, that I've forgotten how to attach files properly.

[Danustar]

It happens :P

[Deemer125]

Here is a game of me, tau vs IG hard with DoS on the map Railway. I think I uploaded it right.

[Maktaka]

Here's a replay of mine of that same matchup. I did take advantage of the reversed positions at the end there to flank the IG base, something you wouldn't have been able to do in your game because this map is not balanced (and boring and short on resources and just generally not very good). Had the start positions been reversed, I would have either tried pounding on the HQ for a while or I would have had to wait for PF to show up so I could snipe any TPs healing it.

I also got kinda lucky nailing that turret on the west LP before it was completed. Had I been 20 seconds later I would have needed to go to the "wait for PF" plan above so I could outrange it.

[Deemer125]

Thanks, but doesn't the IG turret outrange FW by 5 even with PF?

[Maktaka]

Nope, the Heavy Bolter Turret has a range of 30 while the Fire Warrior Team has a range of 35, 40 with Advanced Pulse Rifles. The problem is you don't have anything that can spot the turret without getting shot by it as well until Pathfinders.

[Arbit]

OK, here are three Tau vs IG games. One on harder, two on insane, all using the AI mod. Spamming firewarriors and fighting around an LP2 does the trick it seems.

[Pseudonymn]

@Deemer:
Just a comment on your use of snare traps here. I noticed that you're trying to either throw them really far ahead of yourself or into a mob of enemy units. The thing to bear in mind with that is A.) They don't immediately cloak themselves and are therefore vulnerable and easily destroyed, and they AI will take them out every time. B.) If there is a Psyker in the command squad, or any other detector unit in the area that can spot cloaked units, your snare traps are, again, toast before they can be useful, and you've wasted the 25(?) power that it takes to place them.

Instead, try to think of the snare traps as an anti-melee device that you can use to protect your FWs and/or your Commander. If you throw those snare traps in their midst at their feet, they will have all the time they need to activate, cloak, and discharge on any melee unit that's foolish enough to get within melee range of the units you're trying to protect. This will buy your FWs enough time to back away, if you like, and shoot the melee squad full of holes. You might even get a second trap under the snared squad if you're quick and lucky enough with power to spare, especially commanders with a retinue of followers who almost always survive the first snare trap. You can often lead squads back to a snare trap for similar results. Rarely will a forward snare trap survive long enough to ensnare a squad that stumbles upon it.

Putting a second builder on a construction project only reduces the remaining build time by 33%, not the 50% you might assume from having twice the workers. It is rarely worthwhile. Have builders work on separate projects unless there's nothing better to do with the second one. This being the beginning of the game, a better thing to do would be to get that second SS out before the builder to start getting map control a bit faster or possibly using it to build a generator to get your power income started while the first works on the barracks and LPs.

I was intrigued by this when I first read it and as I'm always on the lookout for more efficient paths, I labbed it on that Railway map using your replay as a control sample. I found that, during the opening minutes of the game at least, it is indeed more productive to have two builders assigned to the same project. The reason for that was due to unproductive idle builder time, accounted for by insufficient resources to start and maintain separate projects.

I used the time that it took us both to capture the first SP and Relic with the first SS team as the start/end time for each lab experiment as it was common to both our BO's, falling somewhere around the 2m:10s mark, give or take a second or two for differences in our micro/macro. Your BO yielded +50 Req by that time while my BO yielded +56 with both my builder units in position to start a new LP1 at the Relic long before I had the resources to build it.

I can, however, see how this could be a valuable strategy later in the game on bigger maps when there's tons of float laying around and I'm ready to start auxiliary bases and whatnot. I've been pretty rigid about keeping two groups of builders in pairs performing either field repairs / constructing LPs; or building auxiliary structures. I'll give it a shot and give more feedback at a later time.

In the meantime, I could provide a ~2:30 clip of my lab results, if you like. The rest of our respective games played out essentially the same after that. I welcome your insights.

[Deemer125]

It would be very interesting to see the lab results , although I don't know why in that game/replay that I posted, I had a sudden urge to throw a lot of snare traps, because I usually don't lol

[Pseudonymn]

Here's the whole thing, Deemer. I thought you might benefit from seeing how I deployed snare traps to make the Command Squad my lil'bitch. On another note, I like your use of jump jets in your replay to shuttle your SS teams around. If I recall correctly, and maybe Maktaka can verify this for me on this; as a T0 unit and as capping units in particular, they are one of the slowest if not the slowest in the game both at traveling on foot and capping points. But with no-brainder jump jets and the right micro, they can be speedy, annoying little buggers and gobble up map control.

Tau vs IG Railway BO Lab.zip

[Maktaka]

Nah, nothing specific for cappers, only SM in DoWII have that mechanic with their tacs capping faster than other units (or did that get patched out?). In DoWI you see a lot of racial modifiers though to account for more expensive/inefficient opening units or in the case of Necrons to slow them down. SS also have the standard infantry move speed of 16. If anything, capper units are quicker than their brethren (Scouts, Builder Scarabs).

[Pseudonymn]

I see that you're right. I knew I had seen a page like that on the wiki before, just wasn't sure where to look again. I do know that SM scouts move faster than most units and are especially agile when moving through positive cover. I think they might have at one time had immunity to movement penalties in all forms of cover, which was later changed to immunity only while passing though areas of positive cover terrain. I dunno, I guess the SS teams always felt slower to me for some reason.

[Pseudonymn]

I just finished a 8xFFA game as Space Marines on Burial Grounds with Dark Eldar and Imperial Guard armies taking the podium as the top two contenders this round, the IG army proving to be my greatest threat. It was a marathon at 75 minutes, 44 seconds of sheer micro hell trying to outmaneuver the AI on two separate fronts.

The DE destroyed my first base while I flattened the bulk of theirs along with most of their army. Fortunately, I had a full auxiliary base completed so I was far from knocked out of contention. That is until the IG army defeated their nearest enemies and marched on my infrastructure there. Dreadnaught orbital spam delayed them long enough to get a third auxiliary base started while I made haste to find and sack their base at the same time that they were busy with mine. This of course drew their army out in defense of their territory, but not before I'd reduced their primary structures to rubble and caught most of their army coming through the choke points on the map. With no functional base yet, I was really working hard not to lose any squads as I had no way of replacing them by that point. And thennnnn the remnants of the DE army showed up to reclaim territories that they had lost to me! FFFFFFFUUUUUUUU-

I knew the IG were hurting and it looked like the DE still had at least T2.5, maybe T3 capacities so I made tracks to stop the DE once and for all. But not before the damned Traitior Gaurdsmen crushed my base structures for the second time that round! Fortunately I had a new auxiliary T1 Stronghold completed and lots of resources so I quickly laid down blueprints for all T2/T3 structures that I was about to lose before my T3 stronghold was destroyed (for the third time all in all, Jesus!). I was slowly but finally picking up momentum. Thank the Emperor for Orbital Dreadnaught spam!

I finally cornered the DE army and they were losing what few structures they had left when who should decide to show up? You guessed it, those damned Traitor Guardsmen on my rear flank, pincering my brave Marines in the middle between themselves and the DE remnants! I swear before the Golden Throne that Lord Castellan, General Ursarkar E. Creed himself must have been commanding these lunatics! Hundreds of men lost and equipment destroyed, and yet still they rampage across the map! CREEEEEEEEEEED!! Emperor curse them!!

Fortunately though, The Emperor's Finest prevailed against all comers and the day was finally won when the last of the Dark Eldar scourge was cleansed and the righteous fury of the Emperor's vengeance brought down upon those foolish enough to still carry on with their treacherous campaign! Glory to the Emperor!

[Edit] Extra Hilarity:

At around 1h:12m:30s into the game, look to the east corner of the center area, right near the SP, and watch for a Guardsmen squad there. The last man standing will take a hit from a Whirlwind Artillery rocket, sending him flying high into the air and, to add insult to injury, my Predator's lascannon will snipe him dead out of the air at the apex of his trajectory, leaving his broken corpse to fall into the wall of trees behind him. - hahahaohwow.jpg

[Edit2] I had some trouble getting this replay to load initially. Apparently, the filename that I gave it was too long, causing DoW's replay tool to barf all over it. Fix it by renaming the file to any junk name you want under, let's say, 20(?) characters long. "sdfsdfsdf.rec" worked for me.

[Deemer125]

I had a busy few days so couldn't watch them, but I will give you my thoughts after I watched them