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Using Light Infantry in ALB (Light Riflemen, Mountaineers etc)

This is written for Wargame: AirLand Battle (ALB), and doesn’t factor in changes made in Wargame: Red Dragon.

 

The sentiment among some Wargame players seems to be that this class of units is useless, or at least pointless to actually use. The argument goes something like this:

  • They’re outclassed against tanks by their dedicated anti-tank counterparts.
  • They’re outclassed against infantry by stronger standard infantry or Special Forces.

While both of of these points are true, some experimentation has still found an excellent home for these jack-of-all-trade infantry squads in my decks.

US Light Riflemen and East German Leighte Schutzen are two of the handful of Light Infantry units available in Wargame: AirLand Battle.

Continue reading “Using Light Infantry in ALB (Light Riflemen, Mountaineers etc)”

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Patriots and Generals: Everything You Need to Know

Most veteran Rise of Nations players are aware that Patriots / Generals are an essential addition to an army at virtually every stage of the game.

Among less experienced players, it can be common to see these units conspicuously absent within an army, greatly reducing the army’s overall strength. However, even when included in an army, their full potential is often left untapped, and strong tactical maneuvers (..and exceedingly entertaining cheese strategies) are not utilised.

Let’s run through the fundamentals and then move onto some more advanced uses for these powerful units.

Continue reading “Patriots and Generals: Everything You Need to Know”

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MR Itemisation for Tanks and Fighters

For armor itemisation, check out the previously written companion post covering just that.

 

Many a time a player has asked “What should I buy?”

Perhaps more specifically, you might ask “This Singed is dumping on me in lane; what should I buy?”, or “Corki is wiping the floor with me every fight; what should I buy?”

If you play tanks / fighters (bruisers), then fret no more! Consider this a guide made just for you. It covers any magic resist item you would or should reasonably consider purchasing in the game. If you don’t play either of these two classes, the article may still be of assistance, just somewhat less applicable.

Continue reading “MR Itemisation for Tanks and Fighters”

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Down the Rabbit Hole: Troubleshooting an Abrupt Outbreak of BSODs

Bonus points for the title because I have pet rabbits.

My sister and I both have our computers in the same room. This is important because it means that when something exciting happens while she’s playing a game, I usually notice.

In this instance that “exciting” thing was Terraria glitching out1 and then crashing (and blue screening?) her PC. I’m a little fuzzy about whether the first blue screen was now or later.

After that, the save was essentially corrupt – loading it either didn’t work or would crash the game. Also fuzzy about which of those it was, but you get the gist. My sister wiped that save, made a new world, and everything was fine.

..At least for a while.

At some point either that day or the next, the computer blue screened (again?).

An example of the Windows 10 blue screen. Image credit: Microsoft

Continue reading “Down the Rabbit Hole: Troubleshooting an Abrupt Outbreak of BSODs”

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Hidden Power: Attack Animations and Projectile Speed

Unique units are generally intended to be a stronger version of the unit they replace. They typically have superior stats and/or are cheaper or faster to produce. A few (such as American Marines) gain a unique ability.

The Korean-specific Royal Hwarang, which replace Crossbowmen, have +10 hit points and +2 attack strength. Despite these benefits, Royal Hwarang actually lose a fight to an equal number of Crossbowmen.

Fire Lances, a Chinese unique unit, are one of the strongest units in the game on paper. Compared to the Elite Javelineers which they replace, they boast +1 attack strength, +4 attack range, +3 line of sight, and a +33% damage boost against all units because they qualify as being gunpowder infantry. Despite their vastly superior damage, they usually only just outperform Elite Javelineers in non-melee combat when you discount their range and line of sight advantage.

Let’s explore why. Continue reading “Hidden Power: Attack Animations and Projectile Speed”

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Armor Itemisation for Tanks and Fighters

For MR itemisation, check out the companion post covering just that.

 

Many a time a player has asked “What should I buy?”

Perhaps more specifically, you might ask “I’m against Tryndamere in a split-push and need some durability; what should I buy?”, or “Tristana is wiping the floor with me every fight; what should I buy?”

If you play tanks / fighters (bruisers), then fret no more! Consider this a guide made just for you. It covers any armor item you would or should reasonably consider purchasing in the game. If you don’t play either of these two classes, the article may still be of assistance, just somewhat less applicable.

Continue reading “Armor Itemisation for Tanks and Fighters”

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Yet Another “Unsealed Spellbook Sivir” Post

 

A quick disclaimer: I’ve only analysed a single full Unsealed Spellbook Sivir game: SKT vs ROX, with Sivir played by Bang.

I am by no means the first person to write about this subject.

However, the writeups I’ve seen fail to adequately explain why you specifically use this setup on Sivir, not other champions that may at a glance also meet the criteria for this build according to those articles.

Taken together, these posts say that this works on Sivir because:

  1. Sivir has good pushing
  2. Mostly as a consequence of her pushing ability, Sivir’s generally safe in lane
  3. The meta is somewhat slow

These points aren’t wrong (they’re very much correct), but they’re missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. It’d be like assembling all the ingredients for a pizza and then leaving it uncooked – you’ve got enough there to still call it “a pizza”, but the last step is needed before anyone’s actually going to eat it.

That last step? Sivir’s team fighting.

Continue reading “Yet Another “Unsealed Spellbook Sivir” Post”

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Everything is Roughly Balanced

This concept is applicable near universally: games, economics, computer parts, whatever. If the category exists, the things within it are almost certain to be roughly balanced.

For “quick and dirty” comparisons between two things, this concept is incredibly valuable to understand. When you just need to know roughly whether something’s worthwhile, you can save a lot of time by keeping the deep analysis for later.

Let’s use some examples to illustrate.

Continue reading “Everything is Roughly Balanced”

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So Like, How Do You Build an Army Fast?

This question was originally posted on the RoN subreddit, and this article has been adapted from my reply.

There’s two things that this question could be tackling, either rushing, or general unit production. For the purpose of my answer I’m assuming the latter.

In that case, there’s 3 bottlenecks:

  1. The speed at which each individual unit is produced.
  2. The number of units being produced at the same time (i.e. 2x barracks will pump out infantry at 2x speed).
  3. If you have the resources to continue building with no downtime.

Continue reading “So Like, How Do You Build an Army Fast?”

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Army Strength Scales Non-Linearly: 1+1=3

Armies are greater than the sum of their parts:

2 Dragoons go even against 2 Dragoons.

4 Dragoons will beat 2 Dragoons twice and then some.

An army that is twice as powerful as its opposition — whether due to size, unit upgrades, General/Patriot buffs or something else — can deal with a half-strength army more than twice. An army that is ten times as powerful (think Machine Guns vs Crossbows or something) can face the tenth-strength army a near-infinite amount of times in practical terms.

The application of an army’s power against an opposing force does not scale linearly with the army’s apparent power. Whenever you increase an army’s strength, you increase its fighting capability by more than what you added. Army strength increases non-linearly.

This simple concept is one of the most important aspects of successful combat in RoN, and is applicable to both symmetrical and asymmetrical fights. Continue reading “Army Strength Scales Non-Linearly: 1+1=3”