I have compiled a list of my favourite posts from the "Acts of Cunning" newsgroup. The Gackmasta suggested that I post it to his site. I take absolutely no credit for any of this (except for maybe my excellent ability at ctrl-c ctrl-v). Names that I see throughout include Rning, Hoodo, Battlemage, GandalftheGray, Vippid, Chaelian, Athiator, Loki Lokison, RyanG and Rman. I’m sure more deserve credit but I have lost their names reading the entire newsgroup. I hope all newbies will benefit from the wise words of these warriors like I have. You may notice that many of the suggestions contradict eachother. But I think that’s the point. ;-)
Good luck to all!!!
…from the light side of the ember moon
- Don't fury farm. Fight battles on more than one front at the same time to even out the fury gains
- Cast a BB in your enemies path
- Cloak forms, temples and forts
- Shiny Objects can blind your enemy. "Uncloaked structures attract enemies (protect it with cloaked forces nearby)"
- Don't select a religion, take temples from enemies
- Ant Swarm--small armies taking lots of regions rather than big armies duking it out
- Ally with someone and each pick a different religion and then build temples for each other
- In Elim games, just blast the first 50/50 lessors straight at an opponent's home territory
- In a cutthroat game, leave a native next to your home and threaten to Suckerman him in if real opponents don't stop attacking
- In Blitz games, use IM or something instead of E-mail, otherwise communication can take too long
- Don’t be too hasty to attack (control the battles)
- Don't throw away lessors in an enemy's path to try to "slow him down" unless they can win a battle--if they can't win, you're just wasting lessors (I think the type of curve that maps to the results is called a hysteresis--you lose by a little, you lose by a lot; if you win by a little, you'll win by a lot)
- Use a battle calculator. Figure out the strength of your force. Or better yet, figure out if casting certain spells will gain you more fury.
- Don’t use a battle calculator. Learn through experience. ;-)
- If you have lots of forms of the same type, name bunches of them the same, e.g., 14 wooden's named "Tree". That will make it harder for those trying to track your forces, since they'll have to rely on EXP and Health to differentiate.
- "You may want to have some uniquely named. If all your forms are named the same, they may not know for sure where they are, but they know they're being tricked. Just not how badly. Sometimes you can get the perfect punch when they have no clue that they're being tricked." Rning
- There is also the technique of casting a Grunch Guard on a mountain and sending troops into it, then cancelling the GG. This is especially efficient against a sneak attack on a fort/temple. If the enemy GG's the mountain to come over it at you, your troops meet his (or hers) on top of the mountain with a big surprise! You are also not out any fury this way! Even though the spell is cancelled, your troops are still ordered to the mountain/lake region. They will only go there though, if your enemy casts Grunch Guard. Your lessers are not picky about who casts the GG spell. If no one casts the spell, then no one moves.
- In an ELIM game, turn your home fort into a temple so you can summon form after form to protect yourself from impending attack. This is a later stage tactic
- Using the combination Optic terror on an enemy's home region and a Vision nerve on your forces allows you to take a home region with fewer lessers AND it’s not as expensive as a suckerman slide (you also don't have to control two opposite regions from the home region to make it work).
- As a counter, HydroMide all the regions around your home. Lessors won't go in so it's more effective than a Terrible Slobber (which would have to overbid the Optic Terror).
- Terraform to increase your chances. For example, let's say you have a colossa and no troops being attacked by 300 lessers, magma and a black dragon. Terraforming the region where your colossa is into a Frozen Sea - will only permit the Black to attack - which your colossa can easily kill.
- Change an enemy’s tower region into a swamp. No more structures, plus visibility of forces.
- When your home region is in jeopardy in an ELIM game, use whatever terraforming spell forces the Forms out - like turning your home into a mountain if being attacked by a Collossa, wooden, magma. (or Frozen sea if Iron Hulk).
- If you think you're going to get suckermanned and can't win, sacrifice those troops instead
- Manage Fury and Resources. "Amateurs study tactics, professionals logistics." Don't spend more fury than you'll gain unless there's a real, real important reason.
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The problem with cloaking your temple, then your form, is that you can only get one form out before they see your temple, and start doing some math on your force strength. Here is a way around it.
Order up a temple and fractal hooka as usual. At the same time, bring up a newbie form from another temple. When the form is next to the temple, bring out a form with the same name as the one you brought up. Fractal hooka your temple again, and cloak the one you brought up. To the observer, it just looks like you moved up your form. The next tick, bring out another form, while you move the one you just created together with the one you brought up, cloaking them. Again, fractal hooka on the temple. Now it just looks like your form hovered for a tick, and you've got a stack of two cloaked forms.
Repeat as necessary.
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The BEST thing you can do to survive, is instead of preventing an attack, make the enemy BOTCH their attack. It is hard to get the momentum or morale to strike again. Making the enemy botch is the best thing you can do (speaking from having botched a couple times myself.) -Rning
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I sometimes just simply abandon forts for the enemy to take - they often spend 125 F on OT or even overbid it passing 160 F (cost of suckerman). Then I have a cloaked form(s) nearby and also some lessers and hope they will order full 500 lessers into the newly taken fort...then I suckerman all for loads of fury + take the fort back next tick - if he does not starpierce it - which is all the same to me (waste another 50 F LOL)
Hoodo
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We all know it's usually more complicated trying to capture an adjacent fortress and temple than a lone fortress or temple.
I've noticed the effect is multiplied if you build a second fortress to complete a tripod formation as a defensive move. As long as each structure's region touches the other two, it becomes insanely difficult for an opponent to plan an attack with confidence.
At any given tick with superior resources you can move 1000 lessers + forms to any of the other structures. Usually one structure will be shielded by the other two (especially if placed in a confined area), so the "Suckerman slide" manuever is still possible but much harder to pull off. Optic terror becomes all but useless, Slappy bombing is less effective if one structure is shielded, etc...
It costs 50-100 extra T to set this up, not a big deal in most games past tick 15 or so. Now take into account the manic starpiercing some people use. They are now using triple the fury to pierce three structures, if they can do it at all.
Imagine the impossibility of overtaking a tripod formation of structures against an (equal resource income) opponent if they are all forested. Now lets pretend that the forested temple can produce Woodens. Now what? You’re flying almost blind.
Obviously you can’t find many triple adjacent woodlands, but you might even terraform to make it such in certain situations.
The possibilities of this tactic are almost endless I think. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it’s impossible to counter this manuever. It seems like the natural way to defend the "highground".
Battlemage
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Fractal Hooka your opponents structure.
IF it works that way (you can "hide" an enemy's fortress/temple from them), then that could be used as a great strategy. If the player is not too observant (doesn't notice one of his structures disappearing, OR doesn't notice the lack of a starpierce spell in effect), you could potentially have found a way to take over that structure - with less resistance.
GandalfTheGray
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Own a mountain or lake in the path of an enemy onslaught. After enemy surrounds that region, he probably won't recognize that you own it and you can cast spells on adjacent regions within his lines - Vippid –
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I just finished the Das Boot game that has huge water regions across the map. I found that conserving fury and using flying forms in conjunction with one another, allowed me to move up the ranks from around 12th to 4th in the last 8 ticks.
Since mountain regions were not as immense as the water regions, I used dragons for them. The water was more easily taken by Grunching them and spreading lessers accross them. –Rman
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When dealing with a superior force, stretch it out. That is, give a couple regions, letting them rush forward, while their forces are stretched out.
Meanwhile, you are retreating to a point where you have several cloaked structures and forms. You should also be pulling out visible forces at a reasonable rate, if possible.
Then when the time is ripe, ambush! Slappy the entire train, and pick off a couple clumps, or let them walk onto a bear trap.
Another twist is to only uncloak a portion of your forces for the ambush, then ambushing again because they think they've seen everything... :)
One method for stretching out forces is to sneak a small form or a few lessers toward the middle of their supply line, and cast a slappy/OT or two where they probably won't be casting spells, since they know they can beat your small force without them...
The way around this strategy, of course, is to always scout well, but when a big player is rushing for regions, they often fail to do so. Also, some token resistance will force them to bring out the big guns -- can we say "bait"? <grin>
RyanG
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When you manage to slip a small group of lessors behind enemy lines and get one tick away from pursuit, think about laying down a temple or a fortress. It'll take a tick for the hunters to close in, TS the next tick and your fort or temple will pop up.
This type of structure is a one shot deal - the enemy is going to be able to take it back. So, if it's a temple, you might bring out that big form and overcast the slappy with a starpierce. That'll put a crimp in just about anyone's style.
It it's a fort, it probably doesn't matter if you pierce or not. I imagine that you'd probably reap a pretty good benefit even if you didn't put anything in the fort at this point, since your enemy is pretty likely to slappy, suckerman, or generally waste fury trying to pin down the men you could summon into the fort if you wanted to.
The goal of this type of operation is to get the enemy to reinforce heavily in his interior. That'll suck most of the power off his front line and allow an advance.
Loki
I like this idea and would combine it with an army of ants. Once inserted into your enemies regions, your small force could spread out and cause your enemy to have to send many troops out to retake all of his own lands back.
This would also futher weaken his front.
Rman
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This has got to be one of the old standbys:
1) Move wooden adjacent to fortress
2) Cast Optic terror and move wooden in
3) Cast suckerman and buy maximum lessers
4) Set small amounts to expand outwards, along with form
5) Buy lessers and cast sacrifice?
Is this a common combo everyone knows, or is this worth posting?
How about this one: as a counter to this tactic:
1) Have a forest adjacent to the fortress, and move in enough troops to kill a wooden
2) Buy the same amount of troops in the fortress
3) Each turn, move the troops from forest into fortress, and from fortress into forest....
This way, an optic terror scatters the garrison, but the guys moving in kill the attackers. And because amounts are the same, this tactic is undetectable.
When people post ideas, they should also post the counters to them...
Rning
You can also defeat this by overcasting an Axe of Nergal to out fury the O.T.. It will cost you a bit of fury overall, but it will stop the Woody dead in it's tracks.
Check the calculators for needed lesser amounts to beat the Wooden, depending on your upgraded lesser type(since you are in a fort). Order at least the minimum needed to win. Besides, an enemy might have lessers with that form!
Also, order more lessers after defeating the Woody and suckerman any troops that may be following the Woody. Preferably, suck onto their region. You may just make up the fury you lost fighting the Woody;)
If nothing else, you at least took the oomph out of their forward advance, and they are out a woody and the fury spent on an O.T. spell that was overcast.
Rman
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If you happen to have access to a large form temple for some reason, consider choosing a weak religion. The first cool effect is that you'll get two form types to work with. Personally, I recommend choosing bork as the weak religion because of the cloaking effect.
Cloak the temple that will let you produce the strong form and keep it cloaked. I know - 25F overhead per tick. However, it's worth it when a colossa comes out of a measly wooden temple with no warning.
You can judiciously recloak both the temple and the form at crucial junctures to keep future opponents from realizing what you have available.
If you happen to also be able to move your strong forms with a wooden, consider keeping the form group cloaked at all times, if you can spare the fury. The woodens will mask the battle reports from interested eyes and your strong form will remain a secret from all but your current opponent and his close friends.
Loki
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Okay, I just slappied a collossa and his accompaning 280 Amra, my only forces in the vicinity are a lone collossa. I suckerman his troops into my collossa, they die in the border battle, and at the same time increase my collossa's health:
I cast a garanapult on his collossa to ensure my victory.
I walk out with a collossa with near 600 exp, while giving him only 23 F.
The obvious counter to this would be overbidding my suckerman on his own collossa, but in this case he had only 10 f to work with. As a side note, I caught this collossa on his way to a shiny object, hehe.
Chaelian
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The End!!
I'll be updating this as new acts of cunning appear in the newsgroup and as much as gackmasta will put up with me. :) So if anyone wants credit for any of the above or perhaps would like credit removed so you are not known for the trick then email Emberson in the EN lobby.
Anyways, I would recommend reading the newsgroups, the other articles on this site and the book of zolton. You can learn as much from Acts of D’oh as you can from Acts of Cunning. Knowledge is power. And remember the best way to learn is to try. I’ve learned a few new tricks of my own that I certainly don’t plan to post here. ;-)
Good luck!!
Emberson