Team games: Spawning apart vs. Megabases + Cult Strategy

I don't really have anything to say to the strategies discussed here, just thought I'd put it out there that I really enjoy seeing Cult online for some good team games. I think it's great that you guys are trying your own ideas and getting some fun game play in. I enjoying playing against you and chatting with you in game. I hope to be able to play heaps more epic PA with your clan.

I'll keep this simple.
I like that you guys are *branching out,* per se. I do not like that you are being completely stubborn about it, despite proof and multiple demonstrations to the opposite.

A centralized *megabase* on a single-planet system will only work in one instance. ONE strategy. One purpose. The only way to win is to give control of the entire army to a single player on the team until the micro becomes too much. Until then, that player has to use an aggressive bot rush, attacking from the very start, using the bot clumps to shield the engineers. You might even say they would need a complete and utter mastery of teamwork to win against a clan in this tourney who uses the spread spawning tactic. They would have to be better than any player I currently know in PA or SupCom.

The primary currency in this game isn't mex, or energy. It's map control. In this patch, map control is measured by how many units you have and where they are positioned. When you start out in the same *megabase,* you start (in a 3v3) with three times less map control than your opponent. This changes over time, but because you have three times less map control, we can logically presume you will expand three times slower than the enemy.

Thus, you need to raid your opponent for a 3:1 mass trade each engagement in order to break even. This is only reasonably done by applying overwhelming force (to the point of absurdity) in every raid, and avoiding all other engagements. This sometimes involves losing mex in an unfair engagement, but hopefully, your micro hive queen will prevent this. This assumes, ofc, that you have a micro hive queen with a better grasp on the mechanics, tactics, and strategy of this game than anyone currently in the clan wars tourney. It might as well be a 3v1.

On the other hand, you could just spawn separately and work together to guard your areas, concentrate your forces on weak points, and use overlapping radar stations for maximum intel coverage. And, use the spawns to capitalize on your allies' strengths and minimize their weaknesses.

Is anything unclear? My previous post clears up the other, less logical, but more strategic side of things.

I agree with Mered along with my point posted here before: Map area control is in fact the amount of economy. You need a large area for a lot of mexes, no? Well, you start off with 5 mex in 1 point, and a seperate spawning enemy starts with 5x3 because they use all their spawns.

Well, using 2 of the 3 spawns (in case 1 is seperate and thus possibly a deathtrap) at least gives you 10 to your enemy's 15 and if you scout real early you can even possibly comrush 2v1 one of their commanders. Using all 3 if real close together, you can use your spawn points to "triangulate", start seperate and each expand 1 fabber torwards the geographical center of your 3 spawn points and 1 fabber torwards each teammates spawn. In this way, you secure everything in the center, God have mercy on an enemy commander that spawned inside because you can triple comrush him after first factory, rarely happens though, more likely 3 of you form 1/3 a fence and attack outwards.

The big advantage, is the metal in 3 spawns instead of 1, the metal in the empty area between your close teammates spawns, and the enemy defending 2 directions leaving you to focus on a mere 120degree angle of attack. NOTE: 120 degrees is less angle to defend against than a "corner" of a flat map RTS, being 180 degrees.

Well, another strategy, is if your spawns are in fact close, you can "rush" the empty spawn after opting not to spawn on it, especially if you think you see a close enemy spawn you can jump. Just send fabbers to your empty spawn, possibly an army rally or a teleporter.

when will CULT next be online, or when are you typically online? - If you let the Realm know then there is normally enough people about to do an impromptu 4 player both going with mega-bases as you suggest.

its unlikely to be the Realm A-Team unless fully planned date is set but there is a fair amount of depth there that could test out the strategy as you suggest and put up a good fight. If the more experienced teams cant get it to work I think that says a lot for the strategy - more than reams of text and debate, the proof is in the pudding. Plus you could watch the replay to see how they do it, and if that's any better than your technique.

So, to be honest I think how specialized your players are is a bad strategy, much easier to attack on several different fronts and expand on several different planets if you share the roles. I have a pretty high apm and find it hard to micro all my units on one planet the way they should be.

As for the not splitting up part, I don't think this is a good idea as I explained to dom after the promethian and team burning game. It is so much easier to squeeze your team and deny expansions than if you were in several different positions.

Oh one more thing, because I cant remember reading it in this thread:

When you spawn at one point, all of your expansion is towards the front lines because you are likely to get surrounded. When you spawn apart you can close the gaps and expand into safe spots (away from the enemy or towards friendly bases). You deny yourself these "safe zones" if you spawn together.

I think your specialisations could use optimised a bit better. Mainly the general and the eco guy need to swap the factory building and defence building roles, as per below. Seems a more natural distribution of roles to me if you want to go that route.

• 1 person does the base, factories, and energy – they know best what your build capacity is so let them do most of the building – let them choose to pause factories if need to get eco back on track etc.
• 1 person does raiding and mex – takes micro and flitting around, but mex expansions are relatively light on building so no really micro or eco drain – give them the bots and air, sets bots rally points. Is useful for scouting out weak points in the enemy – so needs to talk to general and attacker lots.
• 1 person does attacking their bases – concentrated attacks, give them the vehicles and orbital, only thing they build is radar and teleporters, sets vehicle factory rally points but doesn’t control what is built by them – can make requests – highlight areas that they are having trouble with for the general to set up a turret defence/attack area
• 1 person be the general overseer – doing defences (at mex, at base, and aggressive tower creep), controls air rally points – this person is looking around as much as possible so is ideal for deciding where to build defences as they view the overall picture, and is also best placed to send in the bombers to plug holes and commander snipe.

First up, a big thanks to all at Exodus who made the clan wars (and hence this discussion) possible. This is one of the first times I've seen team-based RTS play being explored in detail in a public forum: it's a very cool feature of this game, and this community.

Having watched through both games a few times, I'm disinclined to rule out the idea of spawning at the same location for team games. A lot of people have pointed out (from the casters to the players themselves) that what was missing was execution. Had the execution been better for CULT, they might have made a good showing, especially in the map with orbital expansion options. I think it might be nice to focus in a little on where that execution went awry, rather than try to argue from the rather vague general principles that seem to be floating around. I know much of this will be obvious to the strong players who’ve already made their thoughts known earlier in this thread, but I’m hoping that this will clarify a few things for newer players so that they can join in and perhaps ask useful questions.

For me, the key moments in the games were as follows. Times refer to the time in the youtube vids on Zaphod's channel.

1. Game 1, 9 mins or so: CULT is losing the intel game. They have the locations of all the enemy bases, but beyond that their intel situation is looking bad. Their planes are sitting idle, as are their armies of bots, so they’re not gaining info on the locations of vulnerable enemy targets, like exposed fabbers and mex, and they’re certainly not applying pressure to those targets. They need those bots running amok in the expansions of VoW, not defending: they have 4 coms to defend, if it comes down to it. Worse, they've lost the opportunity to properly drive wedges between the separated bases of their enemy, greatly reducing their chances of defeating their opponents in detail. They've surrendered the initiative, and now they're waiting to be surrounded.

2. Game 1, 12 mins: CULT's responses to VoW's pressure is completely out of whack. They have a large army gathering to fend off a trickle of dox coming through the lake, while just north a sledgehammer of a force is assembling from VoW that will (after various probing attacks, and fending off a botched encirclement) eventually deal a killing blow. They've surrendered the air now as well, meaning that VoW bombers are starting to make big dents in the once-formidable dox blobs. They have no vehicle production, so their large armies have little staying power in the head-on confrontation they are now inviting. This is very bad news for CULT.

3. Game 1, 14.30: CULT have gambled on breaking the northern VoW army and its static defences, and because this effort has drawn their units north they are now looking very vulnerable on the southern flank as VoW units apply pressure there. Worse, the attack in the north turns into a fiasco for CULT as their dox skirt around through the outer limits of the VoW tanks’ attack range, whittling away their numbers. Instead of taking the initiative and trying to swarm the tanks, perhaps forcing them to turn their turrets to track the faster dox and bringing down their dps – the dox blobs stay on the fringes, taking losses from bombers and tanks chipping at range while the VoW force pulls back. It’s soon too late for the dox to swarm in. VoW loses some static defences; CULT lose their last significant mobile force, and the game is over.

4. Game 2, 2 mins: CULT have an orbital factory substantially faster than their opponents. They’ve conceded a moon to VoW, but they have a chance to make up for it by grabbing orbital expansions. This is a good reason to make a group spawn: pooling commander build power to make a fast orbital or T2 play. Their first orbital fabber comes off the line at the 2.03 mark, which is nice and early: it’s looking like it could really work.

5. Game 2, 3.18: the orbital fabber that CULT worked so hard to accelerate off the production line... is sitting idle. Where seconds could make the difference between discovery and having a SECRET MOON BASE, wasting them is a terrible idea. The orbital fabber here should have had a build queue already set, perhaps with orders to move to several other planets – or it should have simply been deleted to hide the teleporter’s presence. The casters say as much at 4:15, and they are 1000% right.

6. Game 2, 5.09: VoW’s teleporter opens outside CULT’s base and units start streaming through. CULT missed this going up, despite having dox nearby. Having committed to a rapid expansion play off-world, CULT needed to buy time, and stopping that tele would have bought them lots. Also, this is a situation where I’d consider using walls to give my units cover and delaying the inevtiable crushing of the home base.

7. Game 2, 5.39: CULT have an idle teleporter on the ocean planet, quite possibly the most defensible planet in the system. CULT should be rushing into the water here to build the mex and supporting naval installations, protecting the available land with umbrellas, and generally getting dug in like an Alabama tick. VoW have invested heavily in mobile units that currently they can’t use, and CULT needs to prevent them from effectively using those units for as long as possible. The wasted seconds here, and the mismanagement of this planet in general, put a big dent in CULT’s chances of doing that.

8. Game 2, 9.24: the first CULT commander goes down. This was a complete débacle for CULT, with a commander arriving too late on a planet, his position being highlighted across the entire system by the idle orbital fabber sitting over his head. Worse, because (as far as I could tell) CULT had no DSR of their own, he couldn’t even see the fabber coming in to open a tele next to him... and he goes down without firing an ubercannon, or, more importantly, running away into the water. Had cult attempted to control the orbital game in some meaningful way with 1-2 avengers, they could have delayed this assault. Even worse, VoW have started their invasion of CULT’s moon – again, apparently undetected and unopposed.

9. Game 2, 12.14: another CULT commander dies unsupervised. What makes this particularly troubling was that he was building a base that was not going to make that much of an impact on the game: VoW were focused on hunting down the CULT bases, not on taking over all the planets in the system. This base could only be one of two things: hidden, or strategically worthless. It became option 2 very fast, and consumed resources that really should have helped CULT defend their moon, or colonise the water planet.

10. Game 2, 12.29: the situation on the moon is now completely unmanageable for CULT. There’s too many units streaming in for VoW, and CULT have nowhere to run. In general, it feels like they needed to keep a very close eye on the orbital game, and if possible to control it, to catch a win here. They needed a player with the system view in PiP, constantly monitoring the signs of a chase from the VoW team, and informing his/her teammates on how best to counter it. Likewise the isolated commanders going down shows the poor operational control that snowballed from this weakness in situational awareness.

To wrap up, then: hindsight is 20:20. I want to personally applaud both teams for playing such an interesting and entertaining match, and I think a particular congratulations are due to VoW for attempting something interesting and exciting. If I’ve sounded down on you guys, it’s because I think your strategy needs to work well, and there’s no point sugar-coating places where real improvement could make a difference. Very best of luck to both teams in their remaining games, and I hope you go on to annihilate many more opponents in enjoyable and clever ways.

The people criticizing our strategy fail to take into consideration all THE OTHER things I've said about us. They still keep thinking of us as players on their level, or as players who COULD be on their level if they trained a different way.

But we are not on your level.

And, quite probably, we could not get to your level even if we tried.

I played a 1v1 game yesterday and I was utterly destroyed in like 5 minutes. And I don't like the idea of what I would have to do (learn all keyboard shortcuts, copy build orders off the internet, and micro like a monkey hopped up on speed and crack) in order to improve.

If you thought we lost quickly with the megabase, you have no idea how much quicker we would have lost if we had spawned apart. We might as well not have played the game at all and just said gg before the game had even started.

But you will keep denying and ignoring the above, just as you will keep denying that the first video showed clearly that we were 5 or 10 different decisions/clicks away from winning (against far more experienced players to boot). So you will excuse me if I simply refrain from replying to many of your posts that are saying the same thing over and over again, and I continue forging on ahead with improving and refining the execution of a strategy that seems to have so much potential (and is moreover, and more importantly, 1000 times more fun for us to play).

Now I'm no narcotics expert but I'm pretty sure having both of those in your system at the same time would be lethal.

Look at the commentary of silenceoftheclams on the second game. All he is saying is UNSUPERVISED, UNSUPERVISED, UNSUPERVISED.

We don't have the micro capacity to supervise two bases at a time per person. We barely have enough to run A SINGLE base efficiently, even when we all land together and specialize. Your huge systems with more planets than players are a NIGHTMARE to us. We would never DREAM of playing in such a system in the MP lobby. We HATE playing on them on Clan Wars. The only reason we are playing on them is because we HAVE TO, in order to also be allowed to play on our sensible system with fewer planets than players.

You think the lack of supervision on our part is a STRATEGIC error, while it is plain that it is BIOLOGICAL. Do you seriously think that we didn't WANT to supervise all of our bases more closely?

Sorry for all the caps, but I don't seem to be getting through to people, so I figured maybe they would help.

Maybe we should withdraw from the tournament and Exodus could start another one for us where it would be A RULE for all team members to spawn together. Small (not in map size but in planet numbers) systems of 1 to 3 planets, where specialization and more efficient coordination would be the key.

But I say give us a couple more fixtures to try our ideas a few more times before we completely throw in the towel. What does anyone have to lose if we try this?

So the reason you guys spawn together is you don't have the micro and knowledge to spawn alone? that and you feel more like a team. I see how when you are more reliant on somebody else, as you said some players only know units another factories Buildings etc. This I feel could severely hamper your chances if one player was sick. Or have you 4 subs that specialize in each department?

We have subs who specialize, but they have far fewer hours in the game than us. There are basically 5 A-players, and we hope that by the time our second and third games come along we'll have a couple more. If worst comes to worst we'll use B-players (i.e. people with less than 30 hours of game time), and I dread the kind of commentary we'll get if that ends up happening at some point.

We ARE also trying to become more rounded in the meantime. My 130 hours in the game have all been as a production specialist with a little orbital thrown in (it was me on that gas giant in our second Clan Wars match), but just the other day I took over the army command for a couple of games, and didn't do too badly (while still needing someone to handle production and economy for me, of course). It will just take us several months to make sure that each of us has specialized in two or three roles, as opposed to a single one now.

Don't worry about the commentary too much. I often hear lol commentators rant on about bad play even though the players are the best in the world and far better than them. They are there to commentate and be unbiased. Try use their critacism as a way of looking at what you can do better.

Games are way easier as a spectator

We are online more or less every day, but usually only a couple of people at a time. Only in the weekends do we get to play as a full team, and even then, not always the A-team. There's no point in seeking you guys out on a weekday if it's just going to be a 2v2 with me and a person who needs to be taught how area commands work or what the L key does when selecting a factory.

And if we don't have the A-team, I am sure that your commentary will blame our strategy while disregarding the fact that the game will essentially be a 3v4 or 2v4 in your favor. There are VERY few games on record in which we have our full A-team. One of them was the Cult vs. Realm match in which we took out one of your commanders lightning-quick, and that was almost two months ago, when all of us had less than 100 hours of playtime. Another was the game on Saturday against VoW, in which we could have done a whole lot better if we weren't scared shitless and playing like p*ssies. From my perspective, our efficiency in this game plan is improving, and with all the suggestions I've got so far in this thread, I am sure I can improve it even further, and come up with a few more variations for use in multi-planet scenarios. The latter will still be hopeless, but maybe they can be made a little less hopeless. And we DO have one player coming up in our ranks who seems to be able to play self-sufficiently. He even seems to prefer it (infernovia -- he is also on the 1v1 ladder, though very low of course). So maybe we can throw him in the mix at some point, and have a 3-person megabase and a wildcard running around alone and mixing things up.

In any case, we have Realm's TS address, and next time we have our A-team together I'll come on it and try to set up a game.

Or maybe a couple of the good unaffiliated players in this thread would like to join my clan and help us out on Clan Wars? We have a window for the next week or so where we can add 2 more players. Does anyone feel like putting his money where his mouth is?

The only problem is that you would have to accept me as overall strategic leader, and you would have to pay a one-off fee of 35 euros. But note that I love to discuss strategies with clan members pre-game (we have a huge thread on our forum that is used for that purpose), and that your money would be well spent because I am using it to rent our Mumble server and also will be contributing to colin's community server and eventually renting a cutting-edge Cult-dedicated server from Brian when he makes them available.

So, whoever wants to see some cooler action in Clan Wars, jump in and help us make it happen. Otherwise we'll keep trying our stuff until Exodus and the viewers have had enough of us and kick us out