Date: Fri, 15 Aug 1997 19:15:54 +0100
From: Tournament Headquarters (by way of Robert F. Heeter)
Tutorial #4B: How to use WarBOT Correctly and Effectively
*** Tutorial #4A summarized the combat system. This Tutorial explains
*** how to use WarBOT and provides a number of very helpful tips for fighting
*** effectively. Tutorial #4C provides some critical info on battle bonuses
*** and some additional tips.
Lesson A: The Hero Bonus
This was covered in Tutorial #3B. It's important enough that we'll
repeat the important part:
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!
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!)
[...]
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! :)
Lesson B: The Fight Order
This part is easy: units in WarBOT are entered from highest in the fight
order (on top) to lowest in the fight order (on bottom). In other words,
the units on the bottom of the list get killed first. You choose what
you lose! All units of the same type must go together, of course,
but you can order your blessed units of a given type to fight earlier
or later than their unblessed brothers. You can also choose to "save"
the units with the most movement remaining. We've discovered that
a stack which is going to win a battle will do so no matter what the
fight order is, but the "50% level" depends on the order, so that
you can lose with more or fewer units depending on your fight order.
So arrange your units in order of desired survival probability rather
than strength when you put them into WarBOT. Just be sure you
rearrange the fight order in Warlords to match!
Here's a simple example: Suppose we have a griffin and 3 light cav
attacking a city defended by 3 light cav. A novice player might
run the attack with the default fight order, giving you this:
WarBOT beta 9
Armyset: Tournament b1-4
WL version: Mac Classic
Intense Combat: Off
Terrain: Enemy city 0,1,2 prod
Hero Bonuses Non- For- TOTAL Minus Fly
Natural Item Hero tify City Cancel BONUS Enemy Item
--------------------------------------------------------------
ATT: 0 0 0 0 *0* 0 No
DEF: 0 0 0 0 1 *1* 0 No
Entered Final
Attack Units: Strength Strength Survival %
--------------- -------- -------- ----------
Griffin 6 8 0.82768 <-- Lives!
Cavalry, Lt 2 2 0.21728 <-- Dies..
Cavalry, Lt 2 2 0.08492 <-- Dies..
Cavalry, Lt 2 2 0.01557 <-- Dies..
Defense Units:
---------------
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.17232 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.06570 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.01146 <-- Dies...
Attacker wins with 1 unit(s) remaining
It's an easy win, but here the attacker loses three light cavalry.
A veteran player would look at this and figure out that by
having the griffin fight first, he can win the battle without
losing any units at all:
WarBOT beta 9
Armyset: Tournament b1-4
WL version: Mac Classic
Intense Combat: Off
Terrain: Enemy city 0,1,2 prod
Hero Bonuses Non- For- TOTAL Minus Fly
Natural Item Hero tify City Cancel BONUS Enemy Item
--------------------------------------------------------------
ATT: 0 0 0 0 *0* 0 No
DEF: 0 0 0 0 1 *1* 0 No
Entered Final
Attack Units: Strength Strength Survival %
--------------- -------- -------- ----------
Cavalry, Lt 2 2 0.82768 <-- Lives!
Cavalry, Lt 2 2 0.74875 <-- Lives!
Cavalry, Lt 2 2 0.65401 <-- Lives!
Griffin 6 8 0.55127 <-- Lives!
Defense Units:
---------------
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.17232 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.06570 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.01146 <-- Dies...
Attacker wins with 4 unit(s) remaining
A true expert would go one step further and not use the Light Cav
in the battle, because they aren't even needed and they can probably
be more useful in another battle somewhere else. At a minimum, they
waste movement by attacking the city (2 movement points) when they
could just march in after the griffin takes it (1 movement point).
Lesson C: Minimizing Reverts
If you fight a battle and do worse than expected, you have no choice
but to revert. But if you do better than WarBOT says you should,
you can avoid reverting. Just go into the "Orders" menu and use
the "Disband Group" command to disband the extra units that were
supposed to die on your side.
If you do that, then you should only need to revert once on
average - the WarBOT odds are exactly at the halfway mark of
each battle, so half the time you'll do better than average
(and disband something) and half the time you'll do worse than
average (and revert). Of course, there's a 1 in 4 chance
you'll have to revert twice, and a 1 in 8 chance of 3 reverts,
1 in 16 for 4 reverts, and so on. Occasionally you find
perverse enemy stacks that practically refuse to die! :)
If you find that you need more than 5 reverts to do better than
WarBOT says, though, you should definitely double-check the values
you've put into WarBOT. There's only a 1-in-32 chance of having
to revert 5 times or more - but there's a similar chance
of making a dumb mistake setting up the battle!
Lesson D: Navies
Battles involving navies have a number of subtleties to them:
1. Remember to set the terrain to "Water/Shore" in WarBOT
2. Now you have to explicitly "check" each unit that
fights as a navy. It is possible to have non-naval
units fighting over water, like if a hero has a flight item.
*** To check which units fight as navies, run a test battle in
Warlords
and look for small blue water splashes under the unit icons
on the battle screen. Those are the navies. ***
3. Be forewarned that units which fight as navies do *not*
receive any bonuses. And navies don't give out any bonuses either.
Nor are they affected by your opponents' "minus enemy" bonuses.
Beware of the many Warlords quirks that come up when mixing
flying units and navies, especially flying heroes, in battle!
4. One of the major differences between "Classic" and "Deluxe"
Warlords is that in Deluxe, navies are not all strength 4.
A Deluxe navy's strength is either 4 or the unit's base strength,
whichever is *less*. Before you fight a naval battle in WarBOT,
make sure the "Version" setting in WarBOT is right!
5. Warlords is very quirky about naval battles, and often does
some unexpected things like convert navies to ground units and
ground units to navies. Be careful!
Lesson E: The "50.1% Win"
Suppose you have a hero with a base strength of 7 (+2 natural bonus)
and a +1 command item, leading a stack of, say, 7 light cav, and you
want to capture a city (with 1 build and thus +1 defense) defended by
a giant bat, 4 light cav, and 3 light inf. You decide to try the
battle in WarBOT. You've mastered Lesson B above, so you only put +1
in the "Cmd Items Tot" box, because you have only a +1 command item.
First you do the obvious thing, and attack with every unit in your stack:
WarBOT beta 9
Armyset: Tournament b1-4
WL version: Mac Classic
Intense Combat: Off
Terrain: Enemy city 0,1,2 prod
Hero Bonuses Non- For- TOTAL Minus Fly
Natural Item Hero tify City Cancel BONUS Enemy Item
--------------------------------------------------------------
ATT: 2 1 0 0 *3* 0 No
DEF: 0 0 0 0 1 *1* 0 No
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Note: WarBOT figures out your +3 hero bonus!
Entered Final
Attack Units: Strength Strength Survival %
--------------- -------- -------- ----------
*Hero 7 10 0.97490 <-- Lives!
Cavalry, Lt 2 5 0.85410 <-- Lives!
Cavalry, Lt 2 5 0.72832 <-- Lives!
Cavalry, Lt 2 5 0.54869 <-- Lives!
Cavalry, Lt 2 5 0.33974 <-- Dies..
Cavalry, Lt 2 5 0.15456 <-- Dies..
Cavalry, Lt 2 5 0.04243 <-- Dies..
Cavalry, Lt 2 5 0.00448 <-- Dies..
Defense Units:
---------------
Infantry, Lt 2 4 0.02510 <-- Dies...
Infantry, Lt 2 4 0.00923 <-- Dies...
Infantry, Lt 2 4 0.00245 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.00037 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.00007 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.00001 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.00000 <-- Dies...
Giant Bat 1 2 0.00000 <-- Dies...
Attacker wins with 4 unit(s) remaining
=============================================================
Now, a novice player would simply fight the battle and
lose four light cavalry, since the odds are good. But a
veteran player would remember that movement points are precious,
and using smaller stacks makes for a more flexible offense, so
the veteran would leave behind three light cavalry, since it
costs 2 movement points to attack a city but only one movement
point to march into a city you own. (Even better, those
three light cavalry are now free to march somewhere else
altogether, if they aren't needed with the hero stack this turn!)
So then we'd have this battle:
WarBOT beta 9
Armyset: Tournament b1-4
WL version: Mac Classic
Intense Combat: Off
Terrain: Enemy city 0,1,2 prod
Hero Bonuses Non- For- TOTAL Minus Fly
Natural Item Hero tify City Cancel BONUS Enemy Item
--------------------------------------------------------------
ATT: 2 1 0 0 *3* 0 No
DEF: 0 0 0 0 1 *1* 0 No
Entered Final
Attack Units: Strength Strength Survival %
--------------- -------- -------- ----------
*Hero 7 10 0.79567 <-- Lives!
Cavalry, Lt 2 5 0.33974 <-- Dies..
Cavalry, Lt 2 5 0.15456 <-- Dies..
Cavalry, Lt 2 5 0.04243 <-- Dies..
Cavalry, Lt 2 5 0.00448 <-- Dies..
Defense Units:
---------------
Infantry, Lt 2 4 0.20433 <-- Dies...
Infantry, Lt 2 4 0.11680 <-- Dies...
Infantry, Lt 2 4 0.05364 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.01717 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.00591 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.00138 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.00016 <-- Dies...
Giant Bat 1 2 0.00000 <-- Dies...
Attacker wins with 1 unit(s) remaining
=============================================================
The veteran player still wins the battle (of course), losing 4 light
cavalry and taking the city with just a hero, but now 3 of the 7
original light cavalry are free to do something else, since they
didn't have to fight. Pretty good!
But the expert player will look at those odds and laugh,
because the hero is winning with a survival percentage much
higher than 50%. That means that the light cavalry are doing
all the work (statistically speaking) and the hero is hardly fighting!
Why fight with all those light cavalry when you only need 50.1% to win?
The expert player will go back to WarBOT and ask if there's a "50.1% Win"
that lets him save some units. The expert would discover this:
WarBOT beta 9
Armyset: Tournament b1-4
WL version: Mac Classic
Intense Combat: Off
Terrain: Enemy city 0,1,2 prod
Hero Bonuses Non- For- TOTAL Minus Fly
Natural Item Hero tify City Cancel BONUS Enemy Item
--------------------------------------------------------------
ATT: 2 1 0 0 *3* 0 No
DEF: 0 0 0 0 1 *1* 0 No
Entered Final
Attack Units: Strength Strength Survival %
--------------- -------- -------- ----------
*Hero 7 10 0.50129 <-- Lives!
Cavalry, Lt 2 5 0.04243 <-- Dies..
Cavalry, Lt 2 5 0.00448 <-- Dies..
Defense Units:
---------------
Infantry, Lt 2 4 0.49871 <-- Dies...
Infantry, Lt 2 4 0.37239 <-- Dies...
Infantry, Lt 2 4 0.24316 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.12721 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.06571 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.02549 <-- Dies...
Cavalry, Lt 2 3 0.00578 <-- Dies...
Giant Bat 1 2 0.00023 <-- Dies...
Attacker wins with 1 unit(s) remaining
=============================================================
Now the attacker is only losing 2 units instead of 4! That
means the attacker is going to take the city, and still have
5 light cavalry free to reinforce the city, fight other battles,
or otherwise make mischief.
Let's compare the three outcomes:
Novice: Ties up 8 units in 1 battle, wins with 97.5% odds, loses 4 units.
Veteran: Ties up 5 units in 1 battle, wins with 79.6% odds, loses 4 units.
Expert: Ties up 3 units in 1 battle, wins with 50.1% odds, loses 2 units.
Now, you can fight your own battles however you like, but the hunch
at Tournament Headquarters is that the player that consistently optimizes
his battles and looks for the "50.1% Solution" is the one most likely
to win a prize! There are more tricks where this one came from -
have a look in the Remailer at the game histories of the playtesting
games (the ones that have WarBOT reports in them!), and see what you
can learn!
Lesson F: Miscellaneous Tips
>From Elam Birnbaum (Mac):
>I have a quick tip that I discovered today, though it may apply only to
>the mac version of warbot. If I position the Warbot window on the
>bottom of the screen, the drop-down can't go off the screen, so it comes
>up pointing to a unit much lower in the list. This makes the scrolling
>faster when you have a lot of spiders and such to plug in.
-- Tournament Headquarters