06-11-2005, 09:41 PM
Fin,Jun 11 2005, 09:22 AM Wrote:14+ hours for a single round??? urgh
The thing about Alterac Valley is that you shouldn't really expect to "win" in the sense of finally beating the main commander. It's supposed to be a long hard-fought war. I guess I'm used to games like this, because of my experience of playing the old network game, Netrek. It was very difficult in those games to get a complete genocide against your opponent, and it took great coordination and skill to do so. Meanwhile, though, there were lots of minigoals to accomplish during the battle -- stopping the enemy from retaking a planet, getting behind the lines and bombing that planet that just popped armies, retaking a planet that had just been lost, etc. -- so it's not like there was nothing to do. And when you did actually fully win, the win felt all the sweeter, because you really did something extraordinary. I like Alterac Valley for this same reason. You can't just be a little better than your opponents. You have to really coordinate your pushes and employ as much NPC power as possible to break through and destroy one of the enemy's main base bunkers. If you don't, then you don't win. It's that simple.
My advice is to not focus so much on the all-or-nothing end goal of beating the enemy commander but instead enjoy the minigoals -- taking a graveyard, destroying a bunker, getting your ice lord or druid-guy up, ordering a wolf-rider/ram-rider cavalry charge, stopping your opponents from taking your graveyards or destroying your bunkers, killing that annoying mage who sheeped you, etc.