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Advance Campaign Mission 15: Andy Times Two! AC (or "Hallowe'en Horrorshow") Youtube video (35m48s) Appropriately enough for Hallowe'en (hey, a day and a half late ain't too bad), we have a tale of terror. A tale of weaponised human clones, a tale of horrifically imbalanced fighter battles, but most importantly, a tale of mediocre Advance Wars player so determined to win that he would sacrifice anything - anything - to see that victory screen. Joining me on this trip into the abyss are Sockerbagarn and Assoonasitis.  So, as noted at the end of the last update, there are some nasty changes here. Eagle's air force is nobbled, giving him pretty much zero chance of making it past Day 3, let alone actually beating Clone Andy's air force. Orange Star loses its APC, which as well as meaning that we lose a valuable decoy, means that we have no way to refuel our sub, or rearm both it and our battleship. By the end of the mission, both will have fired everything they've got.  Now, this is a controversial decision but I decided to turtle this one with Andy. I gave Sami one go, and realised that whatever mad strategy you need to pull off to get a quick win on this one is just outside my compass. In particular, with my forces split between a landing force and HQ defence I couldn't see a way to achieve anything (and, as discussed waaay back in the Max version of Naval Clash!, splitting forces up is rarely a good idea). So instead I decided to (yet again...) pick Andy, consolidate my forces and grind my way to victory. Once Eagle's down for the count, Andy's fighters become useless and will eventually run out of fuel, so it's just a case of taking down the land and naval forces. At least it's thematically appropriate. Andy vs. Andy, and all that. But boy is it slow. Very, very slow. This update isn't called Hallowe'en Horrorshow for nothing, folks.  Eagle shows that his planes can still land a pretty strong punch.  But much of the extra damage his souped-up planes put out gets repaired by our cloned foe.  And ultimately, he just can't deal with the sheer numbers advantage that Black Hole has here.  Meanwhile, our own Andy's just getting set up ready for the inevitable wave of tanks.  Eagle, we need a futile gesture.  Yessir! Well, there he goes. Nell seems oddly happy about this turn of events... but yeah, this is the generic message you get in, say, 3- or 4- player games when a side falls. Typically in multiplayer maps, and I believe also in The Final Battle. The good news is, at least Eagle was able to take down Clone Andy's bombers. If one of those had stuck around, we'd have been in real trouble. As it is, Clone Andy's fighters are now an irrelevance - they can't attack us (well, aside from the T copter that I'm mostly ignoring), we can't attack them, and they're going to fall out of the sky eventually anyway. Eventually...  AI submarines, not understanding just how vulnerable they are when surfaced since 2001.  Allow me to demonstrate. I figure that the 3HP cruiser isn't likely to be too much of a threat here - I mean, it only has 3HP, right?  God dammit, Clone Andy.  I guess it could be worse. The sub's still at half health, and it'll get some fixing up once we get our own Hyper Repair.  Down goes the offending cruiser, as the sub continues to chip away at battleships. And with Clone Andy's main army coming in, it's time to get our chokepoint straight. Medium tank on the city makes for a defensive powerhouse.  Original and best. Accept no substitutes.  Looking good. Using the battleship to attack land targets is perhaps questionable given that I can't restock it with shells here, but we do need to keep those enemy middies under control.  I believe we're up to Day.... 6 now? Clone Andy's fighter is helpfully providing us with extra chokepoint support. AIs and chokepoints, seriously.  And that's his third Hyper Repair to our one. Cheap knock-offs...  All these Hyper Repairs are making taking down these battleships even harder. And with limited ammo to play with, we may hit trouble soon. That sub's already looking worse for wear...  ... and there we go. It's out of ammo. At least by now we're down to 1.1 enemy battleships remaining.  I attempt to use the now useless sub as a decoy. Can you spot the problem here?  Yep, the problem is that it was in range of these rockets as well as the enemy battleship.  At least we get our second Hyper Repair now.  And now it's time to put that last battleship in a good ol' target saturation situation. I'm guessing it'll attack the rocket launcher because of its weaker defence, but either way it'll give us a good way to get an HP advantage on that battleship.  Like so. Thanks to the rocket being in a forest, it's survived long enough to provide a bit of extra chip damage on this turn.  And even with the clone getting off another Hyper Repair, we still have an HP advantage here.  Like so. Your sacrifice was not in vain, Mr. Rocket Launcher.   Skipping ahead a few turns, as the first two of Clone Andy's fighters fall from the sky.  Day 19. The rockets are down, and I make a pretty silly mistake here. I could move the infantry unit onto the HQ, begin capturing and be done by Day 20. There are no units that can possibly pose a threat to it - all the clone has now are a couple of fuel-depleted fighters, that missile launcher and a lander.  But nope, gotta keep bashing that missile launcher as though Rout's the only victory option here. Durrrrrrrrrrr.  By Day 21 I actually realise that HQ capture is an option...  ... but by then, the final fighter is already falling out of the sky. Victory, but at what cost?    At quite a cost indeed. Wow. My first C-Rank in the entire LP, and a completely empty speed bar. Chances are, the extra turn that an HQ capture would have saved wouldn't really have helped avoid this, but it's still sobering. I guess this is the consequence of ignoring the whole Advance Campaign conceit of actually trying to win this stuff fast, and just grinding out a win. I'm kind of surprised that this is my first C-Rank, in some ways - consider the 33-day victory on Sami's Debut, which earned me far more Speed score than this - but I'm guessing the devs were expecting a much quicker win here. Oh well, now you get to see what colour the C-Rank symbol is. It wouldn't have been a complete LP without it. Doesn't that orange fill you with a warm glow?  Still, here's hoping we get a smoother ride with Enigma - although the first thing you'll notice is that once again, we've come across a map where the fog of war's rolled in for Advance Campaign. Our troop distribution from Normal Campaign hasn't changed - as per usual, the NC view is in the little picture-in-picture thing - but Sturm does have a bunch more stuff out there, including some extra medium tanks. His naval and air units are still the same, which means that a single Max (well of course I'll be playing as Max  ) submarine should still be able to mess him up, but those reefs will gain an extra edge in the fog. As in Normal Campaign, one bit of good news is that we don't have to deal with Meteor Strike this mission. I guess we'll see how it goes - nearly there now!
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Nov 2, 2013 08:27
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Pssst, Paul! Your video's set on private.  C rank, really? That's kinda painful.
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Nov 2, 2013 08:49
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Yapping Eevee posted:Pssst, Paul! Your video's set on private.
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Nov 2, 2013 08:59
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C-rank or not, that went much cleaner than I thought it would. Your chokepoint didn't threaten to buckle once.
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Nov 2, 2013 16:12
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Anyone should be proud of clearing AC, C ranks or not. And it's nice that players have some flexibility and other options if they don't feel like going for S ranks.
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Nov 2, 2013 19:41
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How *would* you S rank that mission? Maybe some kind of trick with using Andy's forces to shield Eagle's bombers from the clone's fighters, enabling a few Lightning Strike/Bomber attacks?
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Nov 3, 2013 01:48
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Fangz posted:How *would* you S rank that mission? Maybe some kind of trick with using Andy's forces to shield Eagle's bombers from the clone's fighters, enabling a few Lightning Strike/Bomber attacks? I would imagine it more involves a tcopter rush using eagle as fighter bait and some method of clearing the hq/protecting the infantry as it captures. rush captures seem to be the theme for ac s ranks
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Nov 3, 2013 17:24
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leather fedora posted:Look at what's finally hitting Japan: http://club.nintendo.jp/rank2013/famicomwars/index.html Other way around. The European script was more-or-less a straight translation from the Japanese one, while the US one was a more liberal localization. Yes, despite the game never coming out in Japan, it has the whole Japanese script done and available inside the game data. Admiral H. Curtiss fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Nov 3, 2013 |
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Nov 3, 2013 19:00
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Fangz posted:How *would* you S rank that mission? Maybe some kind of trick with using Andy's forces to shield Eagle's bombers from the clone's fighters, enabling a few Lightning Strike/Bomber attacks? Use Sami, get lucky with your lander and/or t-copter, unload, and get Double Time at the right moment to rush the HQ and block the Med Tanks from hitting you so you can get the capture. You'd have to use the b-ship and sub right away and probably sacrifice them so that the transport survives. I know Paul.Power probably tried something like this, but I think it would eventually work.
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Nov 3, 2013 19:29
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I'm surprised you managed to take out an enemy force like twice as strong as you, regardless of how fast it took. Looking forward to seeing how things change with the fog of war in the next map.
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Nov 6, 2013 06:49
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Another Very Brief Intermission (Vector Madness) Hey guys. I've gone through Enigma, and the video is ready to record commentary on... but I've had a bad cold the past few weeks, including losing my voice at one point. While my voice has now recovered, I still have the cold - and as Enigma's the longest video to date (standing proud at 44m44s... which is still a significant cut down from over an hour of raw footage) I feel like I should probably be fully functional again before I try to talk over it. In the meantime, have something very silly. See, there's this program called Vector Magic that's designed to turn bitmap images into smooth-lined vector ones. While its ability to do this with any kind of accuracy or common sense when confronted with good-ol' pixel art is debatable, the results have an amusingly impressionistic quality that I thought you might like to see.  Here's an example I posted in the Sandcastle, using the version of the software on the Vector Magic website. It's probably the best quality one of the bunch, to be honest - for the later shots, I downloaded the free trial program and for some reason things didn't come out quite as well. They're still pretty entertaining, though:  Here's Andy beating up some of Olaf's tanks. All of these pictures (including the first) were done on the medium detail setting, as high detail left a few too many blocky pixels to really "look" properly smoothed.  Here's another map shot - and yeah, things don't really look as smooth as they do in that first shot. Ah well. These first three shots were from It's War! NC. Vectorised arrows still seem to come out fairly well.  Max's B copter takes on Grit's missile launcher, striking revenge for all air units everywhere. From Sniper! NC. Looks like Grit's sweatdrop made the transition in one piece.  Sami's rather long-faced mechs get to grips with Sonja's tanks in Sami Marches On! NC. Note the crazy explosion clouds - some of the vector curves can't work out which way they're going.  And finally, Eagle's crazy A-10 "fighters" take on a very blocky-looking Sturm's bombers during the "Operation Golden Ending" variation The Final Battle! NC. A bit of a silly aside - I'd just seen Vector Magic and similar programmes crop up a few times in the Sandcastle and the Experimental LP thread, and wanted to give them a whirl. I hope they were worth a look  .
Paul.Power fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Nov 27, 2013 |
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Nov 27, 2013 20:43
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It certainly gives those pictures a very "artsy" feel. Thanks for demonstrating this.
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Nov 27, 2013 21:02
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We regret to inform passengers waiting for the arrival of the train from Enigma that this delayed service has encountered a further delay... Hi guys, sorry it's been so long. Unfortunately, it's going to be a bit longer - I was all set to record Enigma with Socker and Sylphid just now, but turns out that I'd managed to dub the audio for Andy Times Two! over the video, and somehow not noticed this. Welp. The good news is that hopefully there'll be a new update soon anyway, as we're going to record commentary for his run of Sonja's Goal! instead.
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Jan 10, 2014 21:09
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Advance Campaign Mission S3: Sonja's Goal AC (or "Miniterranean") (Image edits by Sockerbagarn himself, a particularly fine job this time )Youtube video (16m44s) Man, it's been a while. But Socker's here to kick the LP off again, rolling through the final Sonja side-mission. Joining him are Sylphid and myself.  Here's Socker's strategy notes: "Compared to the previous Sonja mission this one is more straight forward. The strategy I'm going for is an HQ capture and there are a few conceivable approaches. I felt like using a lander to transport my infantry to the HQ was the safest approach, but there are a few things you need to take care of before you can send the lander. "First we have Sonja's air force consisting of a couple bombers and copters. She is very aggressive with all of these so you can just let her come to you. "Second, navy. Submarines and battleships are an immediate threat to your lander and have to be destroyed before passage is safe, to make this easier the master of intelligence managed to park one of her subs in battleship range at the start of the mission. "Third and final is her medium tank that's safeguarding her HQ, if you can get your md tank and battleship up there they can easily tag team it. What I've failed to mention are the usual omnipresent rocket barrages you'll have to endure in fog of war maps, make sure you don't do anything silly like losing one of your key units to them." Once more, a nice clean S-Rank for Socker... and so attention turns back to me. Right, well, I've been putting off editing the audio commentary for a 45 minute long video for far too long now. Time to steel myself.
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Jan 30, 2014 21:28
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This thread is certainly not getting enough love. It's certainly interesting to watch, I know I would be immensely frustrated and fighting each battle like a soviet commissar.
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Feb 1, 2014 06:10
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What better way is there for this thread to return to the realm of the living than seeing a "master strategist" get whooped by a kid who doesn't know what an airport is?
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Feb 1, 2014 06:23
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I don't have anything substantive to say, but I'd like to thank you for keeping this going. So thanks!
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Feb 2, 2014 07:00
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I only discovered this thread a few weeks ago and crawled through it. I say crawled, because I can only read so much Advance wars before getting bored, but I like your style Paul which is why I kept coming back. You have a very nice balance of humor, info and arrows. Thank you thus far for the nice LP.
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Feb 3, 2014 08:59
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Advance Campaign Mission 16: Enigma AC as Max (or "Zero Punctuation") Oh wow it's been a long time. But the finish line's in sight now...  Youtube video (44m44s) The continuing enigma of the one mission title in this game that contains zero punctuation (yes ok, that was perhaps a title pun stretch too far). Looks like it really did set the template for Advance Wars 2... but moving on. After the big ol' C-Rank nightmare of Andy Times Two!, do I have any hope for redemption? Well... maybe. Though not if the length of this video is anything to go by. Three quarters of an hour, the longest video so far... and bear in mind that this is after editing: the video was over an hour long to begin with. But on the other hand... Enigma's always been a pretty long "bash your way to the goal until you can completely overwhelm Sturm" sort of mission, right? Maybe the Advance Campaign S-Rank Day Limit Gods will look kindly upon me this time. We can only hope. Joining me are Sylphid and Senerio.  Between NC and AC there is one massive difference: the fog of war. Fog always spices things up, and on a map like this that deliberately has a whole bunch of forests and reefs to showcase Sturm's ability to ignore terrain movement costs, there are plenty of places for Ol' Teapot Dome (and us, for that matter) to hide. But other than that, there isn't as big of a change as you might think. Sturm has a few more ground units to play with (most notably a couple of extra medium tanks that are obligingly set to defensive so we don't have to deal with them until the midgame), but his navy and air force are unchanged.  This makes the naval game - run around with a Max submarine smashing Sturm's cruiserless (until he gets that drat port) navy up - as easy as ever, while fighting off Sturm's initial fighter and bomber force is reasonably straightforward. As before, Sturm doesn't get to use Meteor Strike for Enigma (now that would have been a twist worthy of Advance Campaign...), so one can feel free to unload everything into him here. Speaking of Max, was there really any choice with this one? His ability to just mash Sturm's lowered-defence units to a pulp is most welcome, especially after using Andy for five missions straight.  Opening moves are pretty similar to Normal Campaign, loading up the transports and sending them on a journey to take the facilities here.  Meanwhile I fiddle about with infantry and APCs in the west, as before.  Day 2. As in Normal Campaign, using the lander to spot Sturm's first sub - but with a slight difference this time. In both NC and on my first attempt at this mission, I moved my lander into the square indicated by the dotted line - and consequently got the lander exploded by a battleship. It didn't amount to much, but this time I thought "wait a minute, I have fog of war and reefs now. I can save the lander!". So I started over and moved the lander into this reef. The result? A lander that lasts a few more turns. It's something, at least.  With the sub spotted, Max does his thing. Getting one-shots (or at least, 98%) from what would normally be a 55% match-up is amazing. Aside from that, I love the subtle changes of expression in Sturm's mask as he realises that his sub's a goner.  Back on land, the convoy continues its forward journey, with much infantry/APC messing around and a light tank taking point.  Capturing the base and port as Sturm's bomber and battleship wander up and try to project some force.  Running straight into a trap, in the battleship's case. More obligatory Max craziness.  In the south, everything starts building up around Sturm's fighters. There's a T copter hanging around in missile range off the top of the screen.  And the T copter falls. It's not a Sturm mission without at least one shot of him blowing smoke everywhere.  Sub and lander continue scouting, and espy Sturm's next submarine just chilling unsubmerged in open water. Ah, defensive AI.  While the missile launcher deals with that fighter from offscreen, a light tank takes care of its opposite number, and the medium tank and other light tank press forward - into a trap!  Then again, Max's attitude to traps is that once you're in them you may as well commit to them fully and see if you can't just blast through them with superior firepower.  And speaking of superior firepower.  BOOM (also: final battleship spotted).  The APC decoy is hard at work distracting that bomber while I scramble AA defence.  Maybe not making as much use of Max Force as I might've liked, but it's something. The 5HP medium tank got trapped by the AA, by the way.  And I start capturing the base. Probably shouldn't have left that APC in the woods, now I think about it. Hidden from sight, it's not going to be able to decoy that rocket launcher.  And the result is heavily damaged infantry. I get plenty of revenge though - although sadly, a 5HP Max medium tank isn't quite enough to one-shot a rocket launcher (expected damage 94%  ). Most other stuff gets one-shotted though. Remarkably, Sturm's infantry in the mountains decided that it didn't want to finish off my capturing infantry. Thanks for that. Sturm's final battleship falls, as does his bomber. We're making good work of securing the north, but there's a new problem - Sturm's port is now online.  Dealing with paratroopers dropped behind my lines, joining infantry together to help with the capturing process, and taking down a 7HP light tank at the bridge.  The first thing that Sturm's port does is produce a cruiser. Lander takes up blocking duties to protect my sub, and I crank out a cruiser of my own, ready to take out that defensive fighter.  'Course, the one thing about port blocking is that it does leave the lander open to attacks from ground forces. This light tank can only do chip damage, but I suspect that there may be heavier brethren hanging around. Meanwhile, the low-on-fuel sub heads back for supplies, and I build and load up a lander ready to take the airport.  In the south, this is a fairly routine chokepoint-busting situation for any CO, not to mention Max...  ... but there is a surprise extra artillery hanging out that I can't reach this turn. APC decoying and rocket outranging will help with that, though.  We're up to Day 9 now, and it's time for Max to unfurl a second CO Power.  Not that he really needs them, especially against Sturm. But still. Lander takes a break from port-spotting duties, to allow my cruiser to take down that fighter. The skies are clear, and we can send troops in to capture that airport and deploy a crazy Max bomber force. The sub makes it to port so it can resupply (should be out of cruiser range this turn, at least).  In the south, once again a 94% shot that fails to one-hit-kill holds up progress - this time with my rocket launcher not quite finishing off a light tank. Dammit RNG, I just want to murder an APC! Okay, fair enough, a 94% shot only has a 40% chance to one-hit kill, but would have been nice to have at least one of them succeed. Ah well, at least that artillery's down.  Day 10, and the tanks roll on through Sturm's infantry and APC hordes, while our own infantry horde starts catching up with the vehicles.  Strollin' on through, and building another medium tank to help with that big ol' forward push.  Some controversial decisions in the north. I only drop one of the two mechs from the lander on the island - fair enough, the airport's the only property to capture up there, and there are no threats - with a plan to use the other mech to sneak a grab on that port. Speaking of that port, I use the cruiser and lander to block it up. Fair enough, right? Well, that's reckoning without Sturm's ground forces...  ... which are quite significant. Hoo boy. Thank goodness those medium tanks can't reach this airport.  The tanks push onwards, although they've now entered that awkward narrow road that dominates the middle of this map. Progress through here is pretty slow.  I'd say "this is an incredibly stupid plan" but frankly I'm not even sure if it qualifies for being a plan. I really should have waited until the ground forces had caught up with this position. If it helps to explain my thought process, my initial idea was to drop the mech by the port... but turns out that all those reefs meant I couldn't reach it. Ugh. Now no-one's got the port covered.  And so, in the resulting carnage, Sturm gets a submarine built. At least I have a battleship now - even Max battleships are still very solid units. Most importantly though, that airport's been secured. Not long until bombers, now...   Taking down that missile launcher charges up Max Force. Well, may as well use it.  Max versus Sturm, in a nutshell.  Granted, that battle shot was more impressive in terms of how much damage that crippled cruiser managed to put out than crazy one-shots or whatever. But for that, we have Max's middies messing up mechs (and rockets and infantry, but they don't alliterate). Shame about leaving that one tank in arty range, though...  Day 13 now, and taking a turn to regroup.  Sturm doesn't care for that though, and his sub and cruiser work together to spot and swat my submarine. That sub's been on a grand adventure, but sadly its journey ended here. At least I get some spot 'n' swat revenge from the cruiser and battleship.  A mix of the sublime - rolling through Sturm's forces at the bridge - and the ridiculous - moving my rocket to let the medium tank attack that infantry, and losing sight of it in the process. Welp.  Day 15, a-INCOMING MAX BOMBER SPAM  Offscreen shenanigans from the AA and battleship, while one of Max's medium tanks crushes its opposite number. Good ol' Max.   BAHAHAHAHAAAA   "This turn brought to you by the percentage 234" - Senerio.  Of course, it's not all fun and games. Sturm has a lot of AA and missiles lined up for the final leg of this. A lot.  But, with a little ingenuity we can work our way through it. Battleship cripples AA down to 1HP, 1HP bomber finishes off. Full health medium tank destroys artillery, 7HP medium tank rolls through to blast a light tank down to 1HP, rockets finish off.  We seem to have the port area under control now, but that (formerly) 7HP medium tank took a beating from a rocket. A light tank scouting ahead manages to observe its position, on a bridge to the south.  Well, we know how to deal with that, don't we? BOMBERS. MAX BOMBER SPA-  - ah. Yeah, as previously noted, Sturm's kind of ready for bombers. Still going to keep building them, though - the fact that the airport's closer to the front lines than our closest base, and that bombers beat out medium tanks for speed and manoeuvrability, are bigger issues than their cost and fragility right now. In other words, we can pump 'em out faster than Sturm can knock 'em down.  Day 19 mostly consists of moving things forward to see what Sturm's welcoming committee has to offer.   Quite a bit, as it turns out. Still at least it means that Max Force is charged and ready again.  Battleship provides entirely inconsequential fire support for a bomber than can kill its medium tank target twice over, and my own medium tank returns the favour by taking down an AA. This is still hardly a safe land for bombers, but every little helps.  And there are always more bombers.  Saying that, somehow I got through Sturm's last turn without losing a bomber. Maybe his forces really are on the wane...  ... or maybe I deliberately hid in his missiles' range shadow. It's hard to tell when I'm actually trying to be clever, writing this up so long after I played through the mission  . Either way, that missile launcher's down and I'm really illustrating my point about being able to out-produce Sturm here - with three bombers now on the field, he's going to have a headache dealing with all of them.   ... then again, maybe he has two more anti-air up his sleeve. drat it, Sturm. Still, at least it's more grist for the Max Force mill (we really are showing here just how crazy things get when one army has access to its CO power and the other doesn't... see also Campaign "mode" Sasha in Advance Wars: Dual Strike).  My remaining bomber yells "WHY DON'T YOU SOD OFF AND DIE?" at one of those AAs. Other than that, I'm putting my damaged units to good use - 6HP rocket takes down 5HP mech, 3HP AA takes down 2HP APC, and 1HP medium tank scouts out Sturm's rocket launcher, ready for the full-health middie to marmalise it.  Which it promptly does. APC blocks up a base (in hindsight, perhaps I could have transported some infantry down in it, if only for some extra meatshields. But oh well), and a lander from ages ago rolls in with that airport-capturing mech (remember him?) to provide a human shield for the bomber.   Which it does admirably, surviving with 2HP. Bomber destroys APC, medium tank destroys light tank, the 2HP mech goes scouting ahead to find a rocket launcher (if you're wondering what happened to the AA... well, that rocket launcher's what happened to it) and another mech. APC retreats a little to distract the artillery, while I knock a couple of hit points off of it with the 1HP middie.  Rocket down, artillery down. All that's left are these two mechs...   ... which fall predictably. Victory!   And what a victory: an S-Rank. My first Advance Campaign S-Rank that hasn't either been a) mandatory thanks to a "survive for X days" time limit or b) gained through retrying because dammit I wanted an S-Rank (as with Battle Mystery!). Sure, this mission has a lenient time limit: 25 days for an S-Rank, when the previous mission reckoned that 21 days merited a C-Rank. But I'll take it. It might just be the only succour I get from here on out...  ... yeah. Feels silly to say it after how long I spent on Enigma but... this might take a while... Paul.Power fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Feb 6, 2014 |
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Feb 6, 2014 21:40
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Additionally, thanks for the nice comments guys. Dragging myself back into gear is a lot of effort, but it's always worth it for stuff like this .
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Feb 6, 2014 21:48
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Wow, this matchup was pretty brutal. It's nice to see you getting back into the action, so good luck with the final mission of Advance Campaign. Who will be commanding each flank by the way?
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Feb 6, 2014 22:35
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sheep-dodger posted:Wow, this matchup was pretty brutal. It's nice to see you getting back into the action, so good luck with the final mission of Advance Campaign. Blue Moon - Max Green Earth - Drake
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Feb 6, 2014 22:39
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You know, this video kind of showed me just how flawed enigma was. I never noticed when I was playing, but once you grab the port and factories on your side of the map(usually pretty early), you've conquered the hard part of the map and are pretty much guaranteed victory(unless you somehow let Sturm grab that airport). At that point you've smashed the offensive portion of Sturm's forces and heavily out produce him, but you have this giant slog through half the map without any production structures remotely close leaving you leading a conga line of tanks towards Sturm unless you just spam bombers at him. It just seems odd that the map has that landmass with the narrow pass by the mountains, it doesn't seem to serve a point other than padding out space between you and Sturm's rush, both naval and on land. On an unrelated note, look at all the friends that Andy gets to meet next mission!
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Feb 6, 2014 23:25
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It's been a long time coming, but who cares, you made it! The Final Battle AC! Good luck. 
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Feb 7, 2014 02:07
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Paul.Power posted:Additionally, thanks for the nice comments guys. Dragging myself back into gear is a lot of effort, but it's always worth it for stuff like this Here's another one - I saw your AW2 LP on the archive and that got me back into SRPGs in a big way as well as inspiring/influencing my own LP. So keep up the great work! On a related note, I've finished getting up to speed on this one and can't wait for AC The Final Battle. It's gonna be brutal.
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Feb 10, 2014 03:56
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Paul.Power posted:Orange Star - Andy Should we rename the coming mission as "Max strikes and those other guys are there as well"? It's going to be a slaughter isn't it?
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Feb 10, 2014 09:16
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Rank 74. Good lord, how many times do you have to play this game to get to rank 1?
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Mar 4, 2014 17:58
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Advance Campaign Mission S4: Captain Drake! AC as Sami (or "That sound Zoidberg makes when he scurries off to the side.") Youtube (11m36s) Here it is, that mission that gave me so much trouble when I tried it for myself. Can Sockerbagarn beat it? ... well, presumably, I mean that's why there's an update and all. Joining him are ScotchDK and myself.  "The first time I played through this map I thought I was making decent speed and ended up with a B-rank! The slog through the forest took too long, especially since I kept getting pelted with blizzards. I realized that trying to optimize the normal approach was not going to be enough to get me that S-rank. Yes, this is another of those property capture maps where you don't want to take the lion's share of the cities. "As you've probably heard, when it comes to properties location is paramount. That's why we're going to ignore those poorly positioned houses on the central island and go for the grand prize of this area. I'm of course talking about the beautifully located Green Earth HQ. "Drake has a big navy, but it is divided on each side of the bridge that leads to his HQ. Thus if we just head south we can avoid most of it and with some clever positioning eliminate his naval forces in that area. Drake being focused on the wrong objective will attempt to take control of the central island, hopefully allowing us free reign over his starting island. However, his attempts to win by property capture will not be in vain if we fully ignore the central island. Drake will capture enough properties to win before we can take his HQ if we do not slow him down. Landing some troops up north before both landers are sent south will allow us to disrupt any attempts to capture the properties on our side of the mountain pass. "As usual when fighting Drake, you're not just fighting his troops. The weather is also on his side in this match-up. Oddly enough the weather you'll be hoping for is rain and not snow. If the blizzard hits, your navy will be slowed down to a crawl (the slow kind you do on land, not the fast kind you do in water!) This may give Drake the time he needs to fully take control of the central island and dash any hopes of completing the HQ capture in time. "Smooth sailing S-ranks or bloated blundering B-ranks? Only the RNG knows." Fun times. Incidentally, some addenda: here's a screenshot from that alternative history where Socker decided to win by property capture instead. He got an impressive army together...  ... but sadly it was only fast enough for a B-Rank and well, since that plainly isn't good enough for Socker, he re-recorded for the HQ-capturing speed-run S-Rank you see in the video. But this run did give us something else:  Yep, that's a Drake submarine in port, with Drake's innate two-star defence bonus combining with the port's three-star defence to make a five-star defence bonus. Bask in its sheer tanky absurdity.
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Mar 25, 2014 17:26
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Goddamn, that was impressive. In a game that has trained you to kill everything for maximum points in the past, realizing that you can do it with almost no casualties on either side and actually DOING that is hard to do.
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Mar 26, 2014 09:31
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 Two and a quarter hours of using every cheap, dirty trick in the book (mech spam, lots and lots of  , lucky chip damage, exploitation of Max's sheer Max-ness) to finally tell Sturm to  for good (or at least, until the sequel that's an LP prequel).Now I'm just wondering how I'm going to edit said two and a quarter hours of video into something watchable. Probably best to split the update into two parts, maybe? e: Couldn't come up with an April Fools' joke this year, sorry. Although it's a sobering reminder that it's been a year since the start of Green Earth Hard Campaign and two years since the start of Green Earth Normal Campaign. Paul.Power fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Apr 1, 2014 |
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Apr 1, 2014 15:49
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I'd say that your AW2 LP, Paul, was a near-impossible act to follow, largely because you did such a great job of it but partly because I feel that AW2 was the most well-balanced experience of the 4 AW games that come out for GBA/DS in the west. I don't want to start another pissing contest like what happened months back, but watching the Advanced campaign of AW1 basically just reminded me of what a better game the sequel was. I still think that AW1 is gimmicky and poorly balanced, and the fact that you stuck to that and saw it through is really impressive. I tip my hat that I'm not wearing to you.  Cheers!
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Apr 1, 2014 20:06
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Paul.Power posted:e: Couldn't come up with an April Fools' joke this year, sorry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sJFQmjUupo
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Apr 2, 2014 01:22
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Can Of Worms posted:Don't worry, I've got you covered! Unsettling, yet beautiful.
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Apr 2, 2014 05:35
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How's this for a belated April Fools joke? Advance Wars is now on Virtual Console!  ... for the Wii U. 
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Apr 8, 2014 13:21
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Hi all - the next update (part 1 of 3 for The Final Battle) should be going up tomorrow. The post's ready to roll, but I'm planning to upload the video to YouTube overnight since it's so big (I could have uploaded it last night, but like a derp I forgot).Keiya posted:How's this for a belated April Fools joke? Advance Wars is now on Virtual Console! But if nothing else, that announcement gave us this Brawl in the Family comic
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Apr 16, 2014 15:38
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Advance Campaign Mission 17: The Final Battle AC (or "cryingandy.gif") - Part 1 Youtube video (39m05s) So, here we are. Note that this is a 39 minute video, and it's going to be part one of three. Yeah. Raw footage for this mission came out at two hours fifteen minutes, though that includes stuff like the credits roll. Part one will cover the first six days, as we (especially Andy) get battered by the brunt of Sturm's initial assault. Joining me are Fedule and Sylphid.  So, what extra stuff does Sturm get for Final Battle AC? Let's start with the obvious things: he gets forward groups of a medium tank and two infantry on each flank, and a medium tank and five mechs going down the middle. The left and right COs especially have to hurry to deal with those infantry before they can grab the bases and airports nearby. Sturm also starts with two extra bombers in the mountains, and two extra medium tanks in his HQ area. Painful, needless to say. At least Our Heroes don't get any units taken away from them in the AC version. Then again, that would be fewer units for Meteor Strike to smash up...  Andy is, let's face it, going to take one hell of a beating. I've heard so many Final Battle AC tales of Andy's forces getting wiped out and the other two COs having to pull off victory without him that I was fully prepared for ending up in that sort of situation myself. Either way, the plan for Andy is simple: mechs mechs mechs. He has the funds and property to pump out three mechs a turn, most turns. It's going to be a case of whether that keeps up with Sturm's damage output, but we'll see. The plan is also for Andy to take the first Meteor Strike. In Normal Campaign that'd be absurd, because of the Power and Technique scores hinging on the guy, but this is AC: Power and Technique don't matter (Heck, Speed doesn't really matter, given it's not like I'm going for an S-Rank here). That which does not kill Andy will make him stronger. I mean, provided it doesn't kill him... Max is, well, Max. You know Max by now, and we just got a pretty good reminder of the carnage he can unleash on Sturm. Controlling his third of the field will be easy enough, which means that a big part of his job will be to help Andy out - smash stuff up for him, yes, but also provide some decoys (especially in the form of good ol' ) and, should the worst come to the worst and Andy falls - be ready to capture his properties before Sturm can. An important thing for Max to do early on is stop those newly-deployed-for-AC infantry from grabbing the airport and/or base that I've circled - if Sturm got those, we'd be in for a world of hurt.With Drake, as pretty much always, it's all about those Tsunamis. Every little helps in the battle to grind through Sturm, especially when it's sucking up his funds through repairs. Other than that, Drake's solid all-round ground troops are a welcome addition to the team, even if we won't be getting much out of that airport. Like always, he can provide support to Andy and take some of the heat off him, as well as building up some kind of force for the mid- and late-game. As with Max, those infantry by the circled airport and base are an early priority.  Andy's opening moves - capturing as usual, building some mechs to get the mech flood started early, and bunching everything together in preparation for that meteor strike on Sturm's Day 2. APC left where it is partly to cover that airport capping infantry, partly for a bit of I guess. Max's opening moves - rushing up to deal with the incoming planes, middie and infantry. Off-screen, I build a light tank.  And Drake's opening moves - similar to Max, only a bit more slowly since while Max is full of light tanks and AAs, Drake gets two missile trucks to lug around  . Day 2, and the initial carnage begins - ultimately this stuff is all here to fuel an early Meteor Strike, but we've still gotta deal with it. Missiles take down one fighter, AA cripples another while the other AA nearly takes out a bomber. Thank goodness for Sturm's defence penalty.  B copters and medium tank work together to take down Sturm's middle middie (if you follow me). Those B copters are not going to be around very long at all with all these fighters hanging about the place, so may as well make use of them while they still exist.  Beyond that, it's mostly just Andy bunching up to take that meteor to the face, as you can see in the right half of this screenshot. In the left half, Max gets to work. One bomber down, and medium and light tanks combine to take down Sturm's left-hand middie.  Taking it out frees up the AAs to move forward and annihilate Sturm's other bomber and infantry on this flank. There's one other bomber to deal with over here, but once again Max is showing that as far as he's concerned, The Final Battle is still a cakewalk in the park. Or something.  Drake makes his own contribution to the war effort, and while he can't just OHKO everything like ol' Maxie over there, he's still doing good damage.  No-one saw this coming at all.   (I have no idea why I didn't think of doing adaptations of the crying APC for COs sooner. I've even had those little war room tiny-head sprites around for ages. I should totally have done one for Olaf during Operation Dunderhead. In fact, here's one, belatedly:  ). Yeesh.  Well, at least we can do something about this. Let's make several people rise from the dead.  A bunch of unit joining later, things have improved a bit. Another nice thing about mech floods (and single-unit floods generally, I guess) is the ease of joining units.  Taking out Sturm's last eastern bomber (which took out one of Max's four starting AAs) and moving the rest up to intercept part Sturm's army before it can hit Andy.  Don't worry, Andy, Max is on his way! (what no of course that infantry and APC aren't there to start capturing your stuff if you get routed)  Drake gets busy. Sturm's three 1HP bombers from last turn all merged together, letting Drake's damaged missile launcher take them out in one hit (I think that's the only action those missiles see this mission. Aside from being decoys, anyway). 8HP middie finishes off 4HP middie, one AA helps Andy out a little by taking out a B copter for him. And AA and medium tank work together to remove Sturm's capturing infantry from that base.  Now here's a decision that causes pretty big amounts of frustration: I decide to try capturing this base here. Could have gone for the airport first, but no, gotta be the base. I mean, strategically it makes sense given Drake's acrophobia, but check out where Sturm's b copter is. Yeah, anything that tries capturing that base is in for some pain. At least it'll take a little more pressure of Andy, I guess.  Day 4, and Andy continues to take a pounding. But he's doing what he can: AA stalls Sturm's airport capture (shame it couldn't do one more HP of damage, but there y'go) while two mechs work together to put down one of Sturm's own AAs.  Max does his bit to help out too, taking down another AA with the first light tank to arrive at Andy's base. Sturm's fighter that's been chilling on Andy's HQ the last few turns may not be a threat in terms of killing my stuff any more, but drat is it a pain to navigate around. Hope that doesn't come back to haunt me.  aww yiss  To borrow a phrase from the Definitive X-Com Commanders Guide LP, BOOSH!  Okay, I was telling the truth when I said that infantry and APC weren't there to start capturing Andy's stuff. The first inf/APC pair weren't. This second pair, however... let's just say that at this point I was seriously worried about how long Andy was going to last.  Finishing off Max's turn with a bit of wanton violence against an APC. Plan is to draw that northern medium tank out a bit so that Max can repeat the middie-bashing dose next turn. And hey, damage is damage, even if it's just damaging an APC.  Tsunami time for Captain Drake.  Every little helps. As much as Max has been tearing things up, grinding attritional chip damage is the cornerstone of AW, and that's never more true than in this mission. Also, that B copter goes down as punishment for attacking that base-capturing infantry. At 3HP and with no other infantry in joining range this turn, it's going to take a while to finish capturing. If it finishes capturing.  Amid the capturing infantry, that 9HP tank goes down.  Drake's looking in a pretty strong position now. But I can't help but feel like I'm forgetting something...  ... oh wait yeah that.  ughughughughugh  Um... er... yeah, . Andy was a couple of AI decisions away from being routed here. And that airport is pretty much unavoidably in Sturm's hands now.  YOU. SHALL NOT. PASS!!! Welp, fingers crossed!  At least Max can lend a hand.   ... well, sort of. Even with the extra movement point of Max Force, a lot of Sturm's key units are just out of range. Remember when I said that I hoped that that HQ fighter wouldn't come back to haunt me? Well, here you go: can't attack that airport-capturing mech, it's just out of range.  I get some stuff done down here, but not as much as I'd've liked. At least Sturm has plenty of stuff to aim at to distract him from Andy.  In the north, Max's campaign of interdiction continues. Backed up by Max Force, his medium tank defeats Sturm's middie, and his light tank defeats an infantry unit. The AA backs off a little, hoping to strike that bomber if it comes in to take a shot.  Although saying that... I have a feeling that that bomber might be heading somewhere else. Dammit, am I ever going to capture that base?  As Fedule points out in the video, I really should have built an AA (perhaps even two) rather than a medium tank this turn. I'm doing okay for middies, but Drake's only anti-air defence right now is a 2HP AA, and there's a bomber that's likely going to head in his direction on Sturm's next turn. I dunno, I guess I just went "aha, I have enough money for a medium tank, therefore I must build one!"  Yeah... all that capture progress and unit joining, gone to waste . I wasn't even expecting a one-shot, for some reason - Sturm's a powerful attacker, but I thought that the base defence would maybe counter that. I suppose not. On the bright side, Andy begins Day 6 with twice as many units on the field as he began Day 5! Perhaps things are looking up for him. Hope springs eternal, and all that.  Just do what you can, Andy. Taking a break from mechs to deploy an AA: there's a B copter hanging around Andy's base, and since no-one else thought to bring any AA to this party I reckoned Andy should.  Max thumps another couple of juicy hits in, and I notice something very interesting about this APC down here.  Let's drag one of Sturm's middies away from where it's supposed to be (in hindsight, and as Sylphid pointed out, should have moved the APC one square north so that it gets city defence bonus... and, more importantly, so the medium tank doesn't get city defence bonus. All true. I still think this was a cool plan, though).  Yes! Suicide on the bomber for great justice! (oh dear, I'm encouraging kamikaze tactics now)  The plan here, for a given value of plan, is that by scratch damaging that bomber I can stop it from one-shotting capturing infantry - and thus, finally acquire that base. War is hell.  And I still don't build an AA. Granted, this time it's because I can't afford it.  Start of Day 7 and maybe, just maybe, Sturm is starting to crack. He's dumped a medium tank on top of his newly-captured airport, Andy has the luxury of having three units survive until the start of his turn this time, and even Drake's managed to hang grimly on to capture progress. Maybe we're getting somewhere. Maybe.  Either way, time to end this update on a cheesy cliffhanger! Tune in next time indeed for the exciting concl- err, middle part... Paul.Power fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Apr 18, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 07:30
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Will Andy survive? Who will ask about airports if he doesn't? drat your cliffhangers! 
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Apr 17, 2014 08:42
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How much havoc are those Tsunamis doing on Sturm's funds, anyway?
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Apr 18, 2014 06:13
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MR. J posted:How much havoc are those Tsunamis doing on Sturm's funds, anyway? The Tsunami in this video took Sturm's funds down from 32100 to 21500, stealing 10600 of funds. Not a huge amount, but at least by knocking Sturm's funds down below 22000 it leaves him unable to build a bomber. Later on (ooh, spoilers!), a second Tsunami knocks Sturm from 34900 to 27700, stealing 7200 of funds. Somewhat less impressive, I'll admit, but hey, it's the cost of a light tank. Granted, by that point Sturm was being forced back anyway.
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Apr 18, 2014 08:31
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I feel a little sad every time I see you just wrecking one of Sturm's big units because that just means the meteor's getting charged up more.
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Apr 19, 2014 08:19
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