Aleksandr wrote: ↑Mon Feb 21, 2022 5:19 pm
lost all the relevance ... really pathetic result, and it wasn't even that much entertaining gameplay, as the core was badly thought-out and horribly managed ... Absolutely uninspiring final fame
Never surrender, Aleksandr!
I started playing ‘2x aux + (aux/archer) + aux cav’ fairly earlier in my legatorial career. Have played as extreme as 2x aux followed by 6x archers; and four of each with alternating purchases. But I always come back to 3x aux followed by 3x archers: introducing an archer or archers early (ie as third and fourth units) puts the third aux a long way behind in development. It will get slaughtered in its early battles, and need nursing for a lot longer.
While getting a couple of archers on the pitch early in the game gives them the
possibility of gaining megabows, it will only be for the final couple of battles and won’t make a difference. It’s an ‘all or nothing’ tactic: while megabows are fantastic fun, no-one has ever said ‘if only those archers had been L25 instead of L22’. Whereas auxilia improvements seem much more tangible.
I suspect that your pre-patch campaigns have left you archer-centric. They’ve been largely neutered, and you have to learn to let go!
I can’t see myself deviating from ‘3 aux followed by 3 archers’, with or without aux cavalry on top, from now on. That’s if I can ever tear myself away from the BRIO TRIO.
Speaking of itemization, I had a bit of a brain dead moment when I spent a lot of gold for unnecessary W+A upgrade, and then I struggled to purchase the Odd Bows + Ach. Armours. I obviously porefered the bows, so my auxilia were behind a battle or two, and the delayed elite items might have resulted in few more preventable deaths. I'm not really sure about the maths, but it seems like A6+W6+H3 needs to be the whole purchase, anything above that is just waste of gold. Yep, I bought them the lvl3 Dr. Martens again and I was disappointed... again.
In a 3+3 game my aux end up W6/A8 or W7/A7, I think. The TRIO are obviously W8/A8, and have been since #58 End of the Dream. Don’t know how much difference there is between grade 6 and grade 8 in terms of ‘real life’ (heh) performance, but the values still visibly increase in the stats chart, at least! Always annoying when you find yourself hitting L26 with only 745gp in the bank. But shoes? Yeah, shoes suck. Agility feels like an unimplemented attribute.
Isn't this related to the high level of Legate?
I’m starting to wonder if there actually
is a problem of if I just imagined it. The order points regeneration column is buggered, but that’s it. I’m still sort-of convinced there was at least one instance where it took ‘forever’ for an order to be given, though. In the last couple of games I’ve stopped promoting the Legate once he hits 100 and gets all the Mithraic goodies, and it’s been fine.
I'm honestly surprised with your high results considering the "meme" nature of your runs. I think that this is due to your mastery of the game, but partly also due to a mismanagment on Slitherine's side: these result shouldn't be possible, imho, at least not at Very Hard setting. What do you think?
I can probably answer this with my latest campaign...
BRIO TRIO v5
1.145,335, a 180 point improvement on TRIO v3’s previous high score. One loss, Vercellae, requiring two replays.
Went balls-out on the infantry skills: at L34 these guys were GM3 anti-inf and GM3 protection from inf, with zero cavalry-specific skills. Bought my very first anti-cav before #54 Aquae Sextaie. Despite this they lost very few points in comparison to other builds at the horse-heavy #38 Cannae and #39 Dertosa, and gained significantly at #49 Arausio.
Squeaked through GIANTS first time (which was the main purpose for my anti-inf obsession) but tripped up at Vercellae; won by five seconds at the third attempt. The clock at Vercellae is looking to be the real IRON MAN killer. This was the *only* lost battle.
Interesting score trajectory. From #46 Avignon onwards there was a ~1000pt swing in TRIOv5’s favour when compared to the highly balanced alternating anti-inf/cav purchases of the first two TRIO attempts.
A good chunk of this swing – over 400pts – was from #60 Divo onwards. I’ll walk you through it!
Having lost the IRON MAN I allowed myself some fun with a HERO UNIT and some losses over the last nine battles, knowing that all nine are essentially unlosable.
DIVO: heroes hide in the woods, obviously.
ALESIA: I aim the heroes, in offensive formation, straight into the middle of the opposing horde. Result (at fourth attempt) as follows...
PHARSALUS: hero offensive hold on the scrubby margins of the beach (which is my regular tactic)
NICOPOLIS/ZELA: even my heroes can’t win these alone, so the other guys get a look-in
AFRICA: back to just the heroes. First time I’ve tried this, and it was a first time win. Simply walk them onto the ridge and the entire opposition cavalry force with be broken in melee. Just 18 casualties. Would have had GM2, possibly GM3, protection from cavalry at this point, but no ‘stand firm’ and no ‘missile protection’.
THAPSUS: legate distracts elephants, heroes slam into target, all over for 2 casualties.
MUNDA: heroes lurk in woods and (offensively) smite everything that comes at them for 10 casualties, while legate takes out enemy archers.
PHILIPPI: heroes take just 13 casualties in seeing off the opposition; again while legate takes out archers (second attempt; first time around the legate failed to rout archers within time limit). The heroes have master missile protection by this point, which seems to make a real difference (ranged armour of auxilia with A8 is 27; master missile protection takes it out to 47) . As previously mentioned, it’s possible for my equally-brave-but-slightly-lower-level heroes to find themselves routed purely by pila.
So... nine battles, seven of which required the use of just a single unit of troll paladins. I mean auxilia.
I think that answers the question re RPGing?!
Yeah, auxilia are overpowered even if you take no interest in scoring and therefore discount the ‘half price healing’. In the open, they stand up to cavalry (in particular) and heavies better than they have any right to. In rough terrain, opposing cavalry and heavies are doomed.
It does seem counter-intuitive that three auxilia without archer support can take fewer casualties than three auxilia with archer support. After all, if all everything goes right, those archers will a) kill 20-30 or more enemy each, and b) suffer zero casualties while doing so. But with every TRIO victory, the TRIO are progressing a little bit further beyond the three aux in a larger army, and are becoming a little bit more stabby and stab-proof.
From GIANTS onwards the absence of archers starts to hurt (see 'bonus content' at end) but not as much as it should. And prior to GIANTS the more advanced progression of auxilia skills and equipment more than makes up for the lack of missiles.
I think the problem stems from play-testing. Given the sheer volume of Slitherine games, there won’t have been thousands of hours poured into identifying possible exploits. The two ‘kill general’ battles where the enemy leader isn’t the target suggests there weren’t even hundreds of hours spent in play-testing. It’s only obsessives like you and me (possibly just me, now?) that will discover this sort of stuff.
It would be less of an issue if there were a few more battles that force the auxilia out into the open, although in late game a TRIO unit is an absolute juggernaut regardless of terrain: hero-ing the Siege of Alesia, for example, really shouldn’t be possible.
I really don't wanna sound bitter, in fact I'm totally not bitter at all
You sound bitter
I guess that the main reason is the post-battle experience bonus. It is such a huge boon to the few units that they get out of hand and proportion really fast. I doubt that this results would be possible in the old patch.
Have got no basis for saying this, but I think it’s more the division of *earned* experience points between a limited number of units that makes the difference. If there are 300 kills up for grabs, then three units killing 100 each obviously progresses them faster/further than six units with 50 kills each. Although the experience gained from killing a ‘L5 Heavy Infantryman’ is significant for an L1 auxilia, but minimal for a L40 auxilia.
Not sure what conclusions (heh) can be drawn from these Conclude the War results (just pressed 'go', no thought of scoring). Other than that Legion Arena appears to be incapable of dividing 875 (the experience figure on offer that you see in the battle set-up screen) by 2/3/4. Oh, and that a single aux gives a 'cheaper' victory than 2/3 aux...
No idea about the patch, because I’ve been playing with this patch forever. The patch obviously neuters archer progression; do you think auxilia actually got a boost from it?
So maybe a lo-pi run on next weekend?
Go for it! I’d definitely recommend a crack at a five or four unit aux-only run too, in preparation for your own TRIO!
BONUS CONTENT!
Wrote the following but can't make coherent sense of the 'lessons' it contains, although it basically reinforces things we already know about the
power of the aux...
I’ve completed five BRIO TRIO campaigns, and I’m comparing the stats with my last five ‘three aux, three archers, one aux cav’ campaigns. TRIO games benefit from a semi-scummed start (from campaign #2 onwards) which gives them a head-start by #16 Conclude the War. But the final five SEVEN games benefited from lessons learned over the course of a dozen earlier attempts with the same build; the TRIO was a ‘cold start’.
TRIO average final score was 1,144,974; SEVEN was 1144,357. That’s 617pt difference; take away the 246pt head-start and the TRIO are 371pt better between battles #16 – #68.
Between #16 Conclude the War and #46 Avignon, the SEVEN are ‘cheaper’ in just nine battles.
The battles in this sequence which the SEVEN do best are Messana (average heal 143pts vs 216pts = 73pts cheaper). Dertosa is 38pts in favour of the SEVEN, Bagradas and Etruscan Treachery are high 20s, the others are marginal.
Cannae is interesting. I’ve always thought it was a case of ‘auxilia desperately hold up the cavalry while the archers bail out their arses’. In actuality, the presence of four decent archers in my campaign saves an average of 13pts (111 vs 124). And this is the only battle where auxilia have to stand up to a significant cavalry force in the open.
The five big swings in the TRIO’s favour are Pydna (116pts), Aggreigentum (96pts), Sentium (69pts), Cyno (67pts), and Cisalpine Gauls (61pts). The basic rule at this stage of the game is that ‘tougher auxilia outperform weaker auxilia plus archers’. Aggreigentum also benefits from being able to pack the TRIO into the rocky area; it doesn’t surprise me that Messana is the battle where the TRIO perform worst, because there simply isn’t the terrain for them. They can reach the central lateral ridge, but will *always* spill out onto the open plain in mid-battle.
Avignon is the high-water mark for a TRIO: they trudge off the snowy fields a whole 900pts up on their SEVEN counterparts.
Battle #47 is GIANTS. This battle is (as I might *just possibly* have mentioned previously) a bit of a nightmare for a TRIO. Average heal is 311pts, versus 228 for a SEVEN. It’s one battle where the archers really are missed!
Between #47 GIANTS and #68 Philippi, the TRIO are ‘cheaper’ in just six battles.
So... after #46 Avignon the TRIO are 900pts up. After GIANTS it’s 817pts. After Philippi it’s 617pts. So a neat 200pt drop in the final 21 battles.
The worst is #63 Nicopolis - a 103pt dip (269 vs 166). My very best TRIO effort was 235 points, still way off the SEVEN average. Trying to hold in the rough can get perilously close to a defeat; have taken to lining up the skirmishers from the left and charging, which takes heavy casualties but (so far) has never looked close to an actual loss.
Other than GIANTS and Nicopolis there are no significant swings in ‘normal’ battles: 43/41/34pts in favour of the SEVEN at A Small Victory / Alesia / Zela; nothing more than 14pts in favour of the TRIO. It’s just a regular drip of ‘excess deaths’ for the TRIO. The ‘abnormal’ battles are Aquae Sextaie and Thapsus. I now know exactly who to target, which I’m not sure was the case for both battles when I was playing the SEVEN. The TRIO are therefore an aggregate 122pts better than the SEVEN from these two.
