Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 23:19:44 +0100 From: Tournament Headquarters(by way of Robert F. Heeter) Tournament Tutorial #3B - Hero Survival Tips >From a practical point of view the following WarBOT tip may be the most important thing you learn in any tutorial: *** Lesson A: The Hero Bonus As everyone knows, heroes have a command bonus (the "Hero Bonus") which raises the strength of every unit in his stack (unless the enemy has a "Cancel Hero" unit, like an Archon or a Devil in the Tournament Armies.) But the way this bonus works is tricky, and the WarBOT isn't very intuitive, since the Warlords system is a little quirky. In almost every playtesting game, someone has made a bad hero bonus calculation in WarBOT, even though WarBOT tells you exactly what it needs (and it's in the documentation too). But getting your hero bonus wrong makes it likely your hero will be killed, so remember this warning: WARBOT ONLY WANTS THE TOTAL OF YOUR HERO'S *COMMAND ITEMS*. The most common mistake in playtesting was to mistakenly enter the wrong value for the Hero Command Items. If you're lucky, someone else will make the mistake first, and you'll be smart enough to avoid it yourself. If you're average, you'll mess up an attack calculation and have to redo your turn. But if you're unlucky, you will goof up a defense calculation and find your only hero coming home in a coffin because his bonus wasn't what you thought it was. It's not a pretty sight! So learn the following by heart: * Using the Base Strength, WarBOT calculates the hero's "natural" bonus. * All you enter into WarBOT is the Base Strength and Command *ITEMS*. * Use the "Inspect Heroes" command to see the ITEMS and hero strength. * Only count command items, not battle items. Look for "+1 com". * DON'T DON'T DON'T use the "View Stack" command to get any hero info! (The view stack command only reports the combined natural and item bonus, but it's not always right!) Here's the explanation: The hero bonus comes from two sources: you get a bonus from just having a hero with a given strength, and then you get an additional bonus if that hero carries items with a command bonus. Consider a new hero, such as the one in your current game. If you do a view stack command, it says you have a +2 hero bonus. But if you do "Inspect Heroes" you see that you only carry a single +1 command item, your Standard. Now if you drop your Standard (a +1 command item), and check the View Stack command again, it will say your hero is +1. This +1 is coming from your hero's "Natural" bonus, which is due to his strength. A Hero with base strength 1-3 has no bonus, strength 4-6 has +1 bonus, strength 7-8 has +2 bonus, and strength 9 has +3 bonus. This is true even if you have no items at all. If you run WarBOT and make an attacking stack with your hero, you should first enter the hero's base strength in the blank next to the word "Hero" (the default is 5). Then you should go to the "Cmd Items Total" box, and put in the *total of all command items carried by your hero*, the items shown in the "Inspect Heroes" window. If you dropped your standard, you would put +0 into the "Cmd Items Tot" box, because you have no items. If you pick up your standard you can put in +1 for "Cmd Items Tot". But DON'T put in +2, unless you have another item besides your standard! You don't have a +2 command *items* bonus! Your total hero bonus may be +2, but only half is from your items; the other +1 is from your hero's base strength. WarBOT knows about the "natural" bonus from the Base Strength already. If you make any defending stack you like, you can fight battles with various values of hero base strength and "Cmd Items Tot", and figure out that the total hero bonus which WarBOT uses is always the sum of the "natural", strength-based bonus, and the "Cmd Items Tot" bonus. For instance, if you have a generic hero with strength 5 and a standard, and you correctly enter in "+1" for his command *items* (just a standard), then the WarBOT output will include this: Hero Bonuses Non- For- TOTAL Minus Fly Natural Item Hero tify City Cancel BONUS Enemy Item -------------------------------------------------------------- ATT: 1 1 0 0 *1* 0 No ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ WarBOT figures out your +2 hero bonus for you! If you screw up and put your total hero bonus into the "Cmd Items Tot" bonus, WarBOT will add your natural strength-based bonus anyway, and as a result it will overstate your Total Bonus. That means your units get an extra bonus they don't deserve, and you either win battles that you shouldn't, or else you get a false sense of security about your hero's odds of surviving an attack. Not a good way to play! :) Here's a more complex and realistic example: Suppose we have a hero with one blessing, 16 experience, a standard (+1 command), a +2 battle item, and another +1 command item. The hero starts at a base strength of 5, but the blessing makes it 6, and the 16 experience puts him up a level, bringing him up to 7. If you drop all his items and do an "inspect heroes" command, that's what you'll see. Now if you pick up the *+2 battle* item, you can discover that the hero's *base strength* rises to 9. That brings his "natural" bonus up to +3. Now pick up the standard, and the hero gets a "command items" bonus of +1, so his total bonus (natural plus command items) is +4. Finally, if you pick up the last +1 command item, the hero's "command items" bonus rises to +2, and the total bonus rises to +5. The correct way to put this into WarBOT is to use a hero with base strength of 9 and command items of +2, which give you this in the output: Hero Bonuses Non- For- TOTAL Minus Fly Natural Item Hero tify City Cancel BONUS Enemy Item -------------------------------------------------------------- ATT: 3 2 0 0 *5* 0 No ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ WarBOT figures out your +5 hero bonus for you! So now you know *how* WarBOT handles hero bonuses. But, you think - QUESTION: "Why doesn't WarBOT just take the total hero bonus?????" This is a good question. There *is* a reason, and a good one. The reason WarBOT works the way it does is because when *two* heroes are in the same stack, the total hero bonus used in battle is *not* the sum of the total bonuses of the two heroes. (The View Stack command is WRONG about this, as we discovered by running about 100 actual battles and looking at the statistics of the results.) Warlords actually uses the *larger* "natural" bonus of the two heroes, plus the *total* of all command *items*. For example, suppose you have two heroes at strength 7, who thus have a +2 "natural" hero bonus, just due to their strength. If you put them together, the View Stack command in Warlords says they are +4. But if you fight actual battles, you discover that they are only +2!!!! Furthermore, if one of them is carrying a single +1 command item, they fight at +3, and if they are each carrying a +1 command item, they fight at +4. Individually the are both +3, but if you put them together they are +4, not +6 (or +5)! Because of this subtlety, and the fact that we will have rounds where players have more than one hero to work with, WarBOT needs to track *both* the "natural" bonus *and* the command *items* separately. Just putting in the total bonus shown in the View Stack command doesn't give it enough information to figure out the actual bonus that is used in the battle. So WarBOT needs to know the natural bonus (from the hero base strength) and the "Cmd Items Tot". It does *not* want to know what the View Stack command says about the Hero Bonus, because (as we learned to our surprise) the View Stack command is often wrong about the total bonus! (We tested WarBOT by actually fighting lots of battles and figuring out the statistical odds, once we learned that the Warlords combat routines don't always do what the View Stack command advertises, or even what the internal Military Advisor says!) To sum up: * WarBOT gives the "official" battle odds - but only if you use it right! * Enter in the hero's base strength and his/her command *items*. * Double-check the *bonuses* that WarBOT displays in its output, not just the battle odds! * If you make a mistake and lose your hero, don't blame us! :) Here are some useful hero tips: * Study the ruin map before the round starts, to plan your hero's advance. Gold and Ally ruins are very valuable in the tournament. * Because of the WarBOT, you should *never* lose your hero by accident. WarBOT tells you whether or not your enemies can kill your hero. Since heros are scarce and games are short, the loss of a hero can be a fatal mistake (although it may be a brilliant move too). Learn all the ways that heroes can be killed, so it doesn't happen to you: The Warlords Hall of Shame ======================================================================== A Record of Heroes Foolishly Sacrificed in Playtesting [ From most to least stupid. Names abbreviated to protect sore egos. ] 1. F. made his hero into a navy, losing all bonuses. (Ack!) 2. B. forgot that an opponent had an extra command item. (Doh!) 3. M. didn't realize an enemy hero was actually in range to attack. (Pain!) 4. B. forgot the units that could attack the "back door" of his city... 5. M. forgot that a new unit would be built in range to attack. (Oops!) 6. S. forgot the enemy's stack could get a blessing before attacking. (Ouch!) 7. G. didn't enter the base strengths of his blessed attackers into WarBOT correctly, and paid the ultimate price... ("My hero's dead???") 8. G. Lost defensive bonuses by not leaving stack on good defensive terrain. 9. B. didn't consider that an enemy hero was due to arrive - and, as it happened, within range to kill his own in a suicide attack. ("S*&%!") 10.M. and B. didn't realize that an extra unit could attack from almost out of nowhere, since the Warlords movement tool is sometimes wrong. Enemy units went through cities instead of around them, saving enough movement points to attack. (Aauugghhh!!) 11.B. didn't realize that a hero over mountains or water with flying units in his stack does not fight last, even if he has a flight item. One of the flying units always comes after the hero to keep him in the air. (Nooooooooo!!!!!) 12.J. and I. knew their heroes were vulnerable, but felt their enemies would not attack since the cost of killing their heroes would be very high. But their enemies thought otherwise! Words of Wisdom from the Playtesters: The best way to make sure your hero is safe is to open up everyone else's turn after your own move is done, pretend to be those players, and see how they can kill off your own hero. You have to be as clever as they will be! If you find a way, you'd better go back and redo your move, because you can bet that the other players will find a way too. And even if one player won't figure it out, their allies might - and explain it to them in a diplomatic message! The biggest mistake playtesters (including most of the moderators and Headquarters) have made is to be careless in checking what their enemies can do to their hero stacks. Finally, if you aren't sure whether you are using WarBOT correctly, send a query to your Moderator (it can go outside the Remailer) and ask if you have a situation properly analyzed. As one newly hero-less player wrote: "WarBOT is the sole decisive element in each and every battle, and many losses due to carelessness in this game will not occur on the battlefield, but in manipulating WarBOT. Poor strategy will not help you in this game, but getting WarBOT wrong will get you killed." -- Tournament Headquarters P.S. A final note on some strange Warlords quirks: In playtesting we discovered that Warlords does some strange things when you have heroes with flight items and/or mixed stacks of navies and flying units. The official tournament policy is generally that "Warlords is as Warlords does" and we just live with whatever strangeness there is. However, there is one situation in which we overrule Warlords: In a "Classic" game the hero is allowed to "plant" his standard and vector to it. If a hero is killed while standing on his planted standard, Warlords tends to crash after the battle is fought. If this happens in a Tournament game the offical rule is that the defending hero *is* dead, but because of the bug in Warlords the battle must be "faked". If this happens in one of your games, contact your Moderator and the official rule will be explained. (Basically the attacker plays as though the battle was fought and won, and then the defending hero must pick up the standard and do a suicide attack on the attacker, to drop off the items.)