121 The Battle for Gobwin Knob, Page 109

[CaptC]

Anyone else notice how big a boop Weibnar is commiting? He sees a scout fleeing, and he amasses his forces to pursue it. Despite just surviving first hand the kind of diabolical traps are in the tunnels. He has to realize there's a good chance he's being lead into another trap, or he's an idiot, which I didn't think he was.

"Angry and aggressive" is not automatically equal to "blinded by rage and stupid." Webinar knows he has a HUGE numerical advantage, and he wants to be Grant instead of McClellan. Pursuing the enemy is to his advantage, as it keeps his forces engaged to wear down his enemy.

The Russians defeated the Germans in WWII not because they were brilliantly led in any particular battle. They just never stopped fighting battles, and could afford to trade 20-1 (and often did.) Eventually there weren't enough Germans in front of them and the Russians rolled forward.

Webinar most likely knows he's gonna take casualties to traps. But he's (ruthlessly) accepting those casualties so he can keep killing his enemies.

[Emo Samurai]

I think the Unspoken Plan Guarantee doesn't count if it's spoken of as the plan is coming together. For reference, watch "Speed Racer."

[headhoncho]

Speaking of ruthless, I was musing about how Parson could kill Webinar and Dora, uncroak them, and then send them to attack the RCC HQ hex.

Wonder how Ansom's allies would react to THAT?

[Clamps]

I think the auto-attack rule is in play entirely. The city's one Hex, and you can move in it freely, but the infantry would be unable to leave the hex unless the fight was won (or leave Webinar still there at the end of the turn?)

[CaptC]

Speaking of ruthless, I was musing about how Parson could kill Webinar and Dora, uncroak them, and then send them to attack the RCC HQ hex.

Wonder how Ansom's allies would react to THAT?

With a quick re-croaking?

We have no evidence that supposes Webinar or Dora wouldn't be immediately identifiable as enemy units if uncroaked. I don't think they could go in as assassination units.

If Parson supports Dora and Webinar with troops, such that he comes out behind his fortification, he surrenders his advantages and will almost certainly be defeated in the open field.

If he kills and uncroaks Webinar, he would best be used as another Warlord on the walls. (I don't think Dora is a warlord, she's just a named grunt so far as I can tell, and thus probably isn't worth uncroaking.)

[headhoncho]

With a quick re-croaking?
We have no evidence that supposes Webinar or Dora wouldn't be immediately identifiable as enemy units if uncroaked. I don't think they could go in as assassination units.
If Parson supports Dora and Webinar with troops, such that he comes out behind his fortification, he surrenders his advantages and will almost certainly be defeated in the open field.
If he kills and uncroaks Webinar, he would best be used as another Warlord on the walls. (I don't think Dora is a warlord, she's just a named grunt so far as I can tell, and thus probably isn't worth uncroaking.)

No no, not as assassins, as a message to the RCC that Ansom's entire force in the tunnels has been WIPED OUT.

I suspect it'd be more dramatic flavor than strategic masterstroke.

[CaptC]

It would be a unique way to send a message, indeed. As long as Wanda isn't busy (she will be) and uncroaking doesn't take very long. Wanda had overnight to work on Jaclyn.

[Fafnir13]

Just gotta say that was one of the best war cries I've ever read.

[teratorn]

Is this the first strip where we see Parson's nifty belt?

Then what stops the heavies from engaging the gobwin scouts? In both cases you have a scout going up against a non-scout.

In this strip the gobwin is sort of hiding when looking at the marbits in panel 7. Webinar is engaging the scout. The most important thing is that scouts can flee the fight, and work as bait. Parson clearly hints at that when he says "lead them"

EDIT: Oh, and the "track them" doesn't make sense if they are forced to attack. They can follow other units, at least as long as they are not seen.

Bats on the other hand should be ok when scouting ground troops, even when seen, as long as they avoid archers.

[Grubsnik]

Hmm, see a lot of confusion about how some of the erf-mechanics seem to function. So i'll try and clear things up a bit. It's speculation, just like everything else in this thread, but most should be simple deductions based on prior comics.

Warlords
Having a warlord with a stack allows for 2 things:
1. Choosing not to engage (even though the other side might still fight back).
2. Selectively targetting units.

Gobwin knob consists of multiple hexes.
Quite a lot of them in fact. Profs:
1. Ansoms strategy consists of attacking GK from all sides and wait for a breach somewhere in the walls, if it was just 1 hex, this wouldn't make any sense.
2. Parson has noted that defending units do not expend movement points while within moving around inside the city zones. This comment would be kind of a no-brainer if the city only consisted of 1 hex.
3. If GK was only 1 hex, then Sizemore and Webinar would already have fought to the death, since Webinar is currently in the tunnels part of the city.

Fighting and retreating
Combat doesn't get resolved instantly, as most people seem to assume. The first trick Parson pulls in Erfworld is retreating his attacking dwagons before the fights are finished(but after they croak all the siege), proving that if it is your turn, you can choose to stop fighting/retreat when you don't feel like continuing the fight. The downside to this, is that your side automagically counts as the losing side, meaning you don't get any xp for your warlords.

Scouts and auto-attacking.(pure speculation)
In most strategy games, scouts are the exception to the "always engage" rule. This does not mean that they can't engage, or that enemy units won't engage them back, if they see them scouting.

Retreating and pursuing(again, speculation)
Retreating from combat is most likely a 2 step process.
1. Units fleeing have a chance to suffer an "attack of opportunity" from the troops they are fleeing from, relative stack speed will most likely be a factor in this.
2. The victorious stack gets the option to attempt pursuit, again, succes in this is most likely based on the involved stacks relative movement.
For both of these rolls, both absolute and remaining move might be a factor.

Prior situations
Why didn't the doombats just flee if the gobwin scout can?
1. Didn't seem like Vinnie was actually trying to keep it alive.
2. Even the slow Dwagons are reasonably within the 50 move range, which is most likely more than the doombat has. They might have tried to run, but it just didn't make it.
Why wasn't there any pursuers when Parson did his retreat-trick with the dwagons then?
The coalition didn't have any flying units in those hexes.

The current situation
Since the tunnels are within the city zone, Parson can stage strike teams pretty much as he wishes. He is hitting the marbits as hard as he can, since the harder he hits them, the less casualties and losses he will take. The reason he doesn't just use Sizemore exclusively is that he and his golems only have a finite amount of hitpoints, and he wants to save them for when it counts (against heavies and warlords). Normally, the bait and switch maneuver with the scout, would have the scout running out of movement pretty fast, but since this is within the city limits... well.. lets just say it gets a little different.

Thinkamancy backlash
Well, Jack might have restored his sense of self, but not be able to speak normally... After all Wanda had issues speaking after recovering from Jillians backlash.

Food for thought
1. Does Parson gain xp for all combat done in the city zones, or only for combat with stacks he personally leads?
2. We pretty much know how the rest of the turn will play itself out for the tunnels. Any ideas on how he will play it topside with his new airforce?

Well, just my spammage for the night. If it's all gabled and gibberish, then I was probably more tired than I thought

[Suicide Junkie]

The autoengage rule works by stacks:

Originally Posted by Parson, Klog 4
Stacks without a leader are forced to autoattack when in contact with units from non-allied capitals

If fleeing counts as an engagement strategy, the autoattack rule is pretty much meaningless.

"Stacks without a leader", does not necessarily mean the leader must be in the stack, although it does sound quite reasonable.

As far as the autoattack rule, that sounds to me like one of the generic almost-accurate "rules" we've seen so far.
If flee was allowed, then in almost every situation, whomever was not fleeing would win the combat with minimal damage. In open fields, there isn't much room for traps, and there are also much smaller numbers of units in each combat. Mostly stacks of 8 or less, as we have seen.
It would certainly be a common enough situation to count as a soft "rule" I think. In the field, flee would be equivalent to suicide, minus the duty/loyalty check.

If flee is a valid engagement strategy, it would almost never be used... it would also be associated with broken morale and avoided even more strongly.

---

Still, on the other hand, it would make sense for scouts to have another special ability of either self-leadership in addition to the auto-reporting thinkamancy.
All of the units we have seen run away were scout type units.
The "in contact" clause of the rule would presumably have to imply only targetable and visible enemies, I suppose. All of the unled RCC stacks aren't charging around madly to attack after all.
Parson would then be sending the solo scouts to look around, and then the scouts would decide whether to tell their assigned infantry to close their eyes, turn around and go back up the tunnel, or to walk through the doorway, see the enemy and trigger the autoattack.

The Gobwin scout in panel 7 certainly isn't fleeing, but spying.

That original flee idea is looking more and more crazy :)

[tyckspoon]

If Parson supports Dora and Webinar with troops, such that he comes out behind his fortification, he surrenders his advantages and will almost certainly be defeated in the open field.

If he kills and uncroaks Webinar, he would best be used as another Warlord on the walls. (I don't think Dora is a warlord, she's just a named grunt so far as I can tell, and thus probably isn't worth uncroaking.)

Dora is definitely a Warlord- Charlie sends his Archons to escort 'Three commanders and entourage'. The group they were sent to consisted of Dora, Webinar, Jillian, Webinar's mount (same one he's riding in the tunnels), and some gwiffons. The only real candidate to be the third commander in that group is Dora. She's not a very powerful one, but for Gobwin Knob that doesn't matter. Parson doesn't really need high-powered Warlords right now (they'd be helpful, and Webinar would be an excellent prize because of his presumably decent score)- Parson just needs Warlord-type units that he can use to better pick and control his fights. As is, he just has his casters, himself, and a couple of Uncroaked in 'advanced decay' that probably won't last many more turns.

But even beyond Dora's value as a Warlord there is no such thing as a unit that is not worth uncroaking in GK's current situation. Gobwin Knob is outnumbered 25-1 (possibly effectively worse, with Stanley running off with all the best units.) Killing an enemy reduces their count by 1. Uncroaking that enemy doubles the effect: your troop count also goes up by 1. Parson isn't in a situation where he can afford to give up that kind of swing; he'll have Wanda uncroaking anything and everything she can manage.

[Manoftyr]

Well, I'm calling it again...Parson is going to utterly own Webinar in the tunnels and his girlfriend is going to die but Webinar is going to survive...either being the only one or with a small handful of other troops.

And I'm fairly certain this is going to happen within the next five pages give or take.

I could be wrong, but I have a feeling this is going in that kind of a direction.

[Zolem]

But there's still room for personal initiative on his part: Stanley is going to order Jack to do one thing, while Parson has (implicitly) ordered Jack to do another. What will Jack do?

Whatever he thinks is best for Stanly, because as Wanda once stated she is allowed to go against orders if she thinks that another option is much better for her lord.

[Gamebird]

But even beyond Dora's value as a Warlord there is no such thing as a unit that is not worth uncroaking in GK's current situation.

Probably true, but it seems that casters only have a given amount of "juice" each turn. Wanda would be best off uncroaking the most tactically useful units. That sourmander might be a good choice, if it keeps its spit ability. I agree she should uncroak as many as possible. And it might be worthwhile to uncroak Dora and/or Webinar for their warlord abilities or for some psychological ploy against their enemies.

[Wadoka]

I think there must be some sort of special rules for using your troops in your own city. Or maybe even a special ability for Gobwins in tunnels. The city can't be one hex, because then Webinar's leadership would apply to all the stacks...

Shifting to a basic D&D style... moving from outdoors to indoors (houses, castles, tunnels, caves) you always shift from hexes to, say, the everlasting 10'x10' grid.

I'm thinking the same possibly applies here.

[DigoDragon]

Panel 3 of today's strip shows an Archon peering into the tower. While we have no evidence of a thinkagram going on, the hand positions are such that it is possible.

Not surprising since Parson asked Charlie to sit back and watch him work his magic. If I were Charlie I'd be breaking out the popcorn.

[tribble]

so the tunnels are just going to be a gauntlet. I kind of hoped for something more original from parson. the dwagon gambit, amazing, but just utilizing the traps? not impressed so far.

[Ganurath]

so the tunnels are just going to be a gauntlet. I kind of hoped for something more original from parson. the dwagon gambit, amazing, but just utilizing the traps? not impressed so far.

You do realize, of course, that this means that there's even more that we're missing that will totally thrash Ansom.

[Cadrys]

I note Jack's face is much more 'normal' in this strip than the previous one. I think that's an indication hearing his name *did* help.

[SteveMB]

Prior situations
Why didn't the doombats just flee if the gobwin scout can?
1. Didn't seem like Vinnie was actually trying to keep it alive.
2. Even the slow Dwagons are reasonably within the 50 move range, which is most likely more than the doombat has. They might have tried to run, but it just didn't make it.

Vinny's bats have 22 move. That's less than half the 56 Move score that separated the two groups of dwagons, which suggests that it's probably slower than pretty much any dwagon.

[Arkenputtyknife]

Ask Edison how he invented the light bulb sometime.

He bought it.

The electric light bulb had already been patented twice by the time Edison got his hands on it.

[ishnar]

Gobwin knob consists of multiple hexes.
Quite a lot of them in fact. Profs:
1. Ansoms strategy consists of attacking GK from all sides and wait for a breach somewhere in the walls, if it was just 1 hex, this wouldn't make any sense.
2. Parson has noted that defending units do not expend movement points while within moving around inside the city zones. This comment would be kind of a no-brainer if the city only consisted of 1 hex.
3. If GK was only 1 hex, then Sizemore and Webinar would already have fought to the death, since Webinar is currently in the tunnels part of the city.

This is still not necessarily true.

I reference Rome: Total War a lot lately, but it actually seems to fit the mechanics of this game more each day.

Strategy is turn based. On the country map there are hexes. So each unit's move = how far it may move on the country map. But it does not apply to the tactical map when units engage. The tactical map has no hexes.

Thus. The city and it's immediate surroundings is ALL ONE HEX. When a battle is fought, movement is restricted to within the hex, but otherwise units have speed, not movement.

1. I still have to create a breach in the city walls.

2. Covered above. Movement within a hex uses no "move" Move is strictly how many countryside hexes a unit may move per turn.

3. Being one hex does not mean units are automatically adjacent on the tactical map. Both sides usually stand behind their armies. And when defending a city, behind the castle walls.

[Grubsnik]

This is still not necessarily true.

I reference Rome: Total War a lot lately, but it actually seems to fit the mechanics of this game more each day.

Strategy is turn based. On the country map there are hexes. So each unit's move = how far it may move on the country map. But it does not apply to the tactical map when units engage. The tactical map has no hexes.

Thus. The city and it's immediate surroundings is ALL ONE HEX. When a battle is fought, movement is restricted to within the hex, but otherwise units have speed, not movement.

1. I still have to create a breach in the city walls.

2. Covered above. Movement within a hex uses no "move" Move is strictly how many countryside hexes a unit may move per turn.

3. Being one hex does not mean units are automatically adjacent on the tactical map. Both sides usually stand behind their armies. And when defending a city, behind the castle walls.

Not having played Rome, Total War, I don't know this for sure, but
"If you are in a tactical battle, does your turn end before it finishes?"
My guess would be that all tactical battles are fought until a winner is found.

[Zeku]

Just saw this, and I have to go straight to work, but I wanted to clear something up.

The foolamancer has completely regained his senses, but he's smart enough to not let Stanley know this.

That explains his funny reaction in the previous comic, and both his quotes in this one.

The first is: I'm going to stay as an 'enemy,' ie, mentally screwed, but this is my choice, I'm still 'wise.'

The second is: I'll be able to accomplish more if Tool continues to think of me as an invalid. (If Tool thought Jack was completely restored, he would just start receiving new orders to cast Foolamancy)

Precisely what I'd expect from a master Foolamancer. Bravo. He'll be able to work his magic on an unsuspecting Stanley now.

[VariaVespasa]

I dont know why this is confusing to people-

Parsons bonus applies to everything in the capital, so all his units ARE commanded, so they can choose not to engage. The gobwin scout was not forced to engage not because its a scout, but because its under command. Vinnies bats are scout units also (as proven by their natural thinkamancy), but both Bat21 and all the bats used to scout the dwagon donut were unable to flee even from uncommanded dwagons because they were not under command when they encountered the enemy and thus didnt have the option to not engage. Q.E.D.

Webinar and Sizemore would not have already automatically fought to the death if GK was one hex because theyre both warlords and have the option to not engage, just as Jillian had the option to not engage the wounded dwagons and their uncwoaked warlords over the lake. Its rather unlikely that Webinar wouldnt choose to engage if given the option, of course- I'm just showing that its not inherent in them both being in the same hex as at least one poster seems to think. The real reason they havent engaged each either yet is because theyre not actually in the same hex yet per se, but they wouldnt inherently HAVE to fight even if they were, is all.

How the "track them" and "lead them towards Sizemore" thing works remains unclear. Obviously there is some form of multiple hex effect (or there couldnt be any uncommanded coalition stacks in the tunnels with Webinar down there) and movement going on, but what form we dont know yet. Titan, or Rome-TW or something else; the effect is much the same. The "lead them" thing may be as simple and limited as just standing its ground so that the unit which kills the scout has to move into its hex to do it, and thus closer to Sizemore. Or the scout may be able to actually move and lure the enemy after them, either as a function of being under active command, or being in the capital with its 0 movement cost, or something we dont understand yet.

The phrasing of Parsons command about "marbits or unled infantry" is a bit odd, seeming to condone attacking marbits regardless of leadership, even though his next line says to avoid warlords. So I'm wondering if it was just a grammar oopsie, and he meant to say "unled marbits or infantry" or if there is some significance to only apparently specifying "unled infantry". It seems likely its just a grammar error but you can never be sure in Erfworld... :)

[Grubsnik]

Parsons bonus applies to everything in the capital, so all his units ARE commanded, so they can choose not to engage.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0044.html
The fact that Parsons bonus is applied to all units in GK does not implicitly mean they count as having a warlord in their stack.

Vinnie and Sizemore would not have already automatically fought to the death if GK was one hex because theyre both warlords and have the option to not engage, just as Jillian had the option to not engage the wounded dwagons and their uncwoaked warlords over the lake.

Vinnie is in the pass to FAQ, waiting to engage Stanley. Webinar on the other hand you are right about.

It is true that both Webinar and Sizemore could choose not to fight, if they were sharing the same hex. Your hypothesis therefore hinges on the assumption that Webinar moved his army of infantry and marbits, into the tunnels zone of the 1 hex city, and then choose not to obliterate Sizemore and his relatively tiny garrison, and instead end his turn.

It's possible, true, likely? Not by a longshot.

[rman]

Could Erf world work on a large hex/small hex battlemap like a lot of computer games.

You move on the large hex map until you enter battle then battle is fought on a small hex map that represents the terrain of the single large hex. This would explain the reason for intelligence of individual units and the reason for individual unit actions having any purpose at all.

Your stats are determined by the full stack on the large hex, but once combat is engaged it is free movement ala real time strategy on the smaller hex map.
Or maybe the smaller movements are just "artistic license" for the big dice rolls of the titans made on the large hex map engagegments.

[MattR]

Since it sounds like they might attempt to capture enemy warlords... how likely would Ansom be to trade his pliers for Webinar in a hostage exchange setting?

[kreszantas]

Could Erf world work on a large hex/small hex battlemap like a lot of computer games.

You move on the large hex map until you enter battle then battle is fought on a small hex map that represents the terrain of the single large hex. This would explain the reason for intelligence of individual units and the reason for individual unit actions having any purpose at all.

Your stats are determined by the full stack on the large hex, but once combat is engaged it is free movement ala real time strategy on the smaller hex map.
Or maybe the smaller movements are just "artistic license" for the big dice rolls of the titans made on the large hex map engagegments.

Yes this is the correct way of thinking about how the single external map hex works within the internal city map hexs. There can be a cluster of "internal/city" hexes within the one single large city hex that it represents in the world of Erf. Finally someone else that understand... You get a cookie