Cisz

Hi there, welcome to the board. Hey, don't think we are not interested in your replay. I can't get enough of them.

That replay is a special case. We had like dozens of tries before we managed this one. All you see in it is totally rehersed. Most of the time I play random, and in that there is little to plan. Normally I build as much as I can and pray. Only the early waves are plannable for me at the moment. From about wave 20 on I just try not to leak. Here: 1466 (4pb vh sr cm) lwd.w3g

The browser version is about as similiar to eletd as a cat to a bengal tiger. Anyway, welcome to the board. And I like cats.

When playing multiplayer there are three mayor things to consider, and all have to do with timing. You are connected to the other players by one rule only: If one player clears all creeps in his sector, the next wave starts. So the fastest player dictates the timing for all his oponents. The first question is: Are we playing with each other or against each other? If you all try to beat the map, but not the other player, if you are good friends, finally trying to get to ronald, you agree on a place to play and slow down if your partners are in trouble. The areas, ordered by their speed are: 7 long pass (tough to pull off) 5 long pass (very common) 4 two pass (very common) 1 long pass (very uncommon) 3 two pass (long second pass) 6 two pass (to slow on non extreme if your oponent knows what he is doing) You understand the terms "long pass", "two pass"? You know where "4" is? But if this is about humiliating your opponents, dominating them and smash them to pieces, the other two problems come up: The most obvious effect is, that if you don't finish your wave fast enough and someone let's loose the next wave, you might leak. This is especially true if you use single target towers on two pass and with little or no slow. If you slow the creeps a lot and use splash dmg, than to some extend it doesn't matter how many waves you are fighting at the same time. Theoretically you could kill all waves at the same time, as splash hits an area. In eletd 4.0pb the minimum speed of the creeps was increased, so slow is less powerfull nowadays, but still, slowing builds are a little more resistant to a creep spamming opponent. But if you play single target towers, you willl probably be forced to two pass them on the higher difficulties. With a two pass build you should be very carefull to choose your location. 4 is tough, as it's a little under two pass, so you will need slowing. It's also almost impossible to not leak mechs with a two pass single target build at 4. At 3 you get a long second pass, which is great against mech and elementals, but you are slower. If your opponent makes his kill at 7, you might get two-sided at 3. Anything slower as 3 is unwinnable if your oponent plays at 7. (All of this assumes you don't play extreme.) So: If you play multiplayer and expect to be raced, play with slowing and at 7, 4 or 5. 7 is the hardest but fastest choice. 5 is medium, and 4 is slowest and easiest of the three. You might notice that playing at 4 or 5 can be really tough, so maybe you need to drop the difficult-o-meter or seek out weaker oponents. The last issue is interest. If your opponent spends all his money to race at 7, but you hold all creeps at 5 without having to spend all your gold, you get interest and he doesn't. So as long as you don't leak and keep more gold than he does, you might get an advantage out of a creep spamming player. This is not entirely true if we are talking about early game or random though. In these two cases selling your towers and rebuilding them can be used to gain extra interest, and you will probably have a hard time to keep up with your opponent, if your placement is slower than his and he is on a high difficulty (so the next wave comes after like 3 seconds). When he starts the next wave and you are not done yet, he can allready sell and rebuild (assuming he is a top level player at 7 or a good player at 4 or 5). He can even time the last kill to match the interest timer by forcing his towers to hold fire (by pressing the "s" key fast and often). By the time you are done with the last wave, the next creeps are on their way, and it's likely that you won't have time to rebuild now, unless you are playing a similiar fast placement as your oponent. If you are not fast enough for stuff like this, forget the bit about rebuilding and play wherever you are able to not leak. If you indeed are playing a fast paced early game or random, and selling/rebuilding/relocating is happening all over the map, another issue comes up: Where to build for what wave with which towers. With selling at 100% you can more or less move your entire build for each wave for a big portion of the game. On a samerandom with earth first, it's not possible to not leak wave 9 at 7 on very hard (afaik..). So even if you managed to play at 7 till then, for 9 you have to move to the next best thing, which is probably 4-5. While with fire as fist ele, playing 9 at 7 is a must if you are out to smash the opposition. So where to play can totally change for every wave, and if you can sell at 100% you can take advantage of that. If one wave allows for a faster kill, you can try to push the speed up. And if one wave is tricky, you can play more defensively and as a result kill quicker as your opponent that tried to race it and failed. Here are some replays: 1424 Eletd (4pb avh sr cm) died.w3g Tournament Round 3 Final.w3g

I'm not sure if that trick works, because I am to slow for that.

The builder is not slow. He almost never is not where he should be, and if he is, it's my fault.

Ronald gets stronger till 1500 ronalds and stays the same after that. Ronnies hp can be about infinite, as they are manipulated by triggers. It's all a big trick, he has way more hp than the maximum allowed.

Selling/rebuilding and farming interest is one of the mayor features of the map. It is absolutely intended by the maker(s), it even has an interest counter to allow timed selling. I did about +10%-20% networth in 3.0 (should be similiar in 4.0pb). So farming is one mayor source of income. Farming is one of the reasons that it is not enough to know a build. In rts you need to actually pull it off in time. Having heard of a good build does not make up for no skill.

We allready have 7 x 5 = 35 different type combinations, thats so many that we can't even have 2 levels of each, so I see no need for more creep variation.

Hm. Are you sure that mech is really to hard? It's meant to be hard and there are ways to counter it. Play single target at 3 and you will be fine. Have you tried to relocate elemental arrows from 5 to 9 for wave 32? Or play impulse, light or dark at 5. What is your evidence for mech needing a nerf?

900 is to little. I can do 1000 gold till wave 16 in a normal multiplayer game, so I loose to much if I play short mode.

Grats. I watched the replay and will comment when I have time. Many people play the map. Only a few ask for help. Only a handfull is persistant, practices, asks again, and finally, slightly shreddered but alife, beats vh. Nice job with the learning.

This sounds like the normal behavior if you don't have a recent version of tft. What's your version number? 1.21b is the latest (april 2008), but 1.20e will do. And the map belongs into the /maps/download folder, but that shouldn't make a difference, it's just annoying if you share your replays. Fix that too plz. Please come back a tell us your results.

Ofc this is a bit of theorycraft, as those two towers take 12 picks. But still nice finding.

That's a tricky question, as some towers dmg highly depends on their placement, some need to be properly microed, and some have special abilities that do most of their dmg.

No, I really leaked to death. Though the fact that it was like early morning at that time might have helped a bit.. The ronalds came to the second pass sometimes, so it happened occaisionally that i was two sided, and so I leaked every couple of minutes.

I don't like that extra levels, and I don't like to even play short mode but: The game is too long to play, so I am a great fan of having short mode (even though I'm not playing it enough). So I would vote yes for having a "very short mode" in the "special mode" section of the game types, allthough I would rarely use it.

Your suggestion would work with pick too. Have you played tournament random? Two elements are removed, it's an sr, and the kept elements are voted on. If you play that with a lot of people it's basically a "two elements removed" and a "I don't know which ones are missing". I like your idea, but it would require a new entry in "special mode" and a follow-up menu. I'm not sure if thats to much trouble.

What's the current maximum of interest? Is it 3? I'm not sure about making the setup menu longer, maybe reducing the max in random to 2 interest would be a better way to improve the game. I don't mind getting 3 interest. If it's ar, it's luck anyway, and if it's sr we all die a happy but rich family. But I don't need 3 interest on random. Is there any player that wants or needs three interest on random?

Good point impulse. Apparently the best way to handle this would be to ignore all creeps but the ones of the current wave for purposes of this calculation. And afaik the map does not work that way. So with the current way leaks are handled, 8 players can start 8 new waves in like 2 seconds, if the leak the right way, or even more: Imagine a player leaking an entire wave: First creep leaks, wave 2 starts. 2nd creps leaks, wave 3 starts... ...and last creep leaks, wave 31 starts. If that can't be prevented properly, my idea is dead. Thanks for pointing out.

Interesting question. I never thought about that. Hm. My main reason for having this "explode"-thing would be: It feels like something big has happened, it's a mayor bump, to point out something is going on. It's a strong way to show a player has lost. And to look for your mistakes, there is the replay: You can save the entire game afterwards and watch it again, as many times as you like. You can even post your replay int the strategy section and ask for help. If you are lazy you could even go as far as to never watch your replay yourself and wait for professional help.

Ups. I didn't notice I was sounding angry. I guess I was. Sorry for that. Maybe it is possible to translate it into a non hostile form: I guess what you are worrying about is mainly a single player issue, so maybe it's not that important. I'm not sure what goal your are aiming for. Do you want to remove stalling from the game? Your method would make stalling harder, but it's still possible, just more costly. It's possible to be much more strict against stallers. For example: Double leaking could result in a loss, taking too long for a wave too. Is that what you had in mind? The rule you suggested would rarely change anything in a multiplayer game, right? So basically you are suggesting a change of single player, agreed? I personally like the possibility of cleverly cheating in a game, especially if it is very easy to spot and of no value in multiplayer. So could you explain more clearly what the problem is you want to fix and what result you had in mind? I assume you are enraged about the leak/releech strategy? How was that? Better? Sorry again, must have had a bad day on the first try.

Besides: 4133 Ronnies. 1452 Etd (4pb vh) leak 4133.w3g

Congrats to your win. I didn't do a proper hunt yet, not even 100 so far. But tell me, on what difficulty was that guy? Easy? Very easy?

Nova can be pretty effective. Consider a ldfn situation. Mass trickery and one nova vs dark.