Lets talk FFA strategy

[SteppinRazor]

The unwritten rules of peace and not creep jacking are not always enforced in ladder, leaving a truer sense of "Free for All".  The scales of balance are always shifting, maybe you are a lesser skilled player but this game get a fortunate spawn, can expand more freely and shine.  Where as the other player that would normally tome you has a tougher early game thus balancing the scales.

I do agree that the 'randomness' factor adds some amount of enjoyment to FFArena-type games especially when you are actually facing good opponents.  I do love FML games, but there is almost a script that can be written to near exactness as to what will happen in any given game.  I like the posts that soso made, however, about analyzing the dynamics of the game as it relates to different skills (micro/macro, decision making, manip etc.) and how you have to use some of them more depending on the style of game. 

[Peregrine]

I have to agree with seksi - mostly. Ive played way more ladder FFA, from back in the bnet days, than ive played FML (obviously, theres only a few games per season) - and its what addicted me to FFA.

FFArena is still filled with a lot of noobs, but they will get better in time

The only real problem is that I dont have enough time to mass games to reach the top of ladder like I used to in highschool

[Ugrilainen]

I like those comments, it gives me plenty of motivation to improve ffarena

I agree they will get better : when playffa was independant, we wouldnt get that many w3arena player on. Now many w3arena regular players are playing on the ladder and these are guys with decent micro usually.

Like fetta, junkerzam, cumulo, sweet or tleilaxy that were terrible when we first created playffa, they got better and improved to the point that they could win the league or reach the final for some.

Im sure we will get more and more of those guys and that they will join fml in S23. We will promote the next season on w3arena and that will increase the numbers of candidates : playffa integration to w3arena is really beneficial

[Dovekie]

When would you use tier 3 ghouls in FFA?

I tried using them like 5 games today and they were good in all the games (weird, right?). However, in theory crafting they are bad against:

Elf: Panda (BoF), Chimera
Orc: Tauren, TC (Stomp)    (I'm talking unbelievably bad against both Orc and Elf in Theory Crafting)
Human: Clap, Blizzard
Undead: ... Nova/Carrion (kind of...but not really)

However, in game, they seemed a bit better than I gave them on paper.   I basically replaced each frost wyrm I would have had in my army with 4 ghouls instead (within reason.. Not if they weren't gonna work), and went for Vamp instead of Carrion.  So whereas I might have had an army of 15 garg, 2 frost, 2 destroyer, I had 15 garg 10-15 ghoul, 1 destro.  My overall feeling was that it gave me a better early game, much more hero damage, better at fighting tanks, breakers, fiends, and WAY better at killing bases.  They also were fine when fighting Orc without Tauren or level 4+ TC.  I wouldn't make ghouls against chim until I won a battle and I was attacking buildings.

Other things I noticed:
-They get about 10 health per attack, and attack almost exactly once a second.  Combined with statue and unholy aura, and well timed heal scrolls, I was able to keep them alive.  They get 20+ health per second and whenever they get AoE'd you pop a heal scroll.  You can also revive 6 of them invulnerable with DK ult.
-They really overwhelm people, because of how fast they are and combined with sleep.  I mentioned counters from each race, but sleep lets you temporarily cut out one of those counters while you overwhelm them.  I mean they are really fast, especially when combined with Unholy aura. Great collision size too, kind of like sc2 zerglings.
-Versus Undead, it was almost directly better than having a frost wyrm.  I did the math just now and 4 ghouls do 3x the dps against heroes than a frost wyrm. They also surround things almost instantly.
-It was more expensive to get the other upgrades, and I felt more reckless on my first pushes because I would be in a worse spot than I otherwise would have if my pushes failed. They didn't fail, but I felt more reckless nonetheless.
-It was fun just having the option to make them. Obviously I wouldn't make them against all the time, and many times ran around without them, but if I wanted a full control group of ghouls it took no time at all to produce them and send them across map. They are so fast and build even faster.

Now we can talk about Undeads weaknesses for days.  On Ladder, Undead is generally pretty strong because they are a great race early game, they have a naturally tough base with minimal investment, and you can put people on a clock with quick, high hero levels and 100 food 3-3 air.  Now the biggest weakness of Undead on paper is late game.. It's very hard to fight late game Elf, Orc, and Mass TP with tank, but in Ladder these disadvantages are 2nd to the biggest disadvantage I face. My #1 problem with Undead is after I kill someone, it takes me an exorbitant amount of time to kill peoples buildings.  If the player leaves, awesome, but if they don't, I just keep pushing the game later and later by having to kill someone's buildings until they leave, generally making it more difficult to win, and making my match ups worse and worse as time goes on.  What I am trying to get at is ghouls alleviated this for me. Ghouls kill buildings very quickly. Is it better to have 4 ghouls or a frost wyrm? Idk, probably a frost wyrm most the time. Could I do just as good with ghouls? Well today, yeah, I could.  So the difference was building kill speed and hero kill speed was increased a lot, and this took strain off me, being able to kill buildings WAY quicker.

So what I learned:
-Ghoul + Garg is pretty nice in mirror.  One Frostie deals 20.6 dps to a hero while 4 ghouls deal 67.3 dps to a hero.  They didn't die quickly due to their massive HP gain per second.
-8-10 ghouls helped fighting human that didn't have big heroes yet. Helped a lot.
-Rushing people with 8-15 ghouls in your army is really fun, and no one really has a counter this early in the game other than lots of towers or chimeras.
-Ghouls alleviate the problem of Undeads inability to kill buildings quickly. DnD is confined to a small area and a long cooldown, while necrowagon is extremely immobile. Ghouls don't have either of these problems (except against spiked barricades).
-It made sleep seem better. I don't know how to completely articulate why exactly, but ghouls are just so fast, and they can go ham in a short amount of time.

[DV-]

Ghouls are only good early game, vs fiend push or htrt gay push with rifles.
Heroes kill them too easy late game.

I also use them to finish noobs builds aroud the map when they are not leaving, dps is good.

[Dovekie]

Early game as in before 12 minutes or before tier 2 or before 3rd hero is level 2 or before people have 100 food or what?  "Early Game" is really vague.

[FML|Renaud]

About the "saving your main gold mine" strategy

The point is not to save it until late game where you might be able to mine it at 50 (it's great when it happens, but you will most likely just get teamed for it). 

The point is that you expo as much as you can, and then IF you don't have enough workers for all your mines, you should mine the one away from you first, because it's easier to defend the ones closer to you once the fighting start.  Usually this means removing the workers from your main and sending them elsewhere.

[Dovekie]

Yeah it took me a while to realize it was about being greedy with your food, not your money. Say you only want to invest 26 food into workers, 20 on gold, 1 shredder, and 2 floaters, then it would be better to put the 5 of those workers from a safe spot (your main or natural) in as risky a spot as possible, because it will be safer to mine closer later. Its food greed first, and $$ greed second.

[Tleilaxu]

By mining the outward bases first you are also denying your opponents possible income.

[Dovekie]

If you're into playing long crappy games than that's true.  I like denying my opponents gold by smashing their faces in.

[junkerzam]

a crappy game would be a game where you don't need to think about crippling your opponents income, but sure if you are smashing the faces of ladder noobs that approach is fine.

[Dovekie]

For the first 15 minutes of a game you generally mine close to your base, maybe if your elf you can get away with a far away expo.  Those mines take like 20 minutes before they run out.  So then after I mine my mines, and maybe a few in the center, I need to start mining my opponents mines for 20 minutes, so that for the next 20 minutes they will have less available gold to mine? Games where the map gets mined out are both the most terrible games to play and terrible games to watch. Winning before that happens has nothing to do with how good people are.  Sometimes you have people who refuse to let a game end and insist on a continual transfer of power till it goes to an hour, hour and half, 2 hours—those are the crappy games. Maybe you think they are more skillful? They are ResidentSleeper personified.

And Junkerzam, the better the player, the more intelligent of an idea it might be to go for the throat, rather than having this 40 minute plan of crippling an economy.  If I'm fighting a good Orc I'm not gonna pick at his economy for 10 minutes, I'm gonna go straight to his main with 100 chims again and again until he suffocates.  The economy game is a gamble, and frankly a less intelligent one in this case.

[Lightweight]

Guys i have a questions about what is better.

1) Enemy breaks 50 first and goes to 80 or 100 + attacks, you probably lose all your expos, but you see his army and can build a proper counter.

2) Be the attacker yourself, destroy all enemy expands before he decides to TP or even fight you.

Its better to be the aggro player or the defensive one?

[Dovekie]

You gain nothing by killing someones expos other than that player will have less money later in the game—the experience gained is negligible.  Losing all your expos is much worse even if you can beat the player afterward.

So being aggressive is better IF the other one is sure to happen. But you don't know if all your expos are going to die. If you did know, you wouldn't be at 50 food anyway. 

However, both the situations can be alleviated by going straight for the enemies main.  You get to fight him while up on food, gain experience, and prevent him from being able to really retaliate apart from harass.  Which is why you play a good race like Orc or Human where you can easily defend your expos from harass with towers.