Speusippus

Join Date 01/2004

Two Strat Q's: Gold Hoarding, and Where to Push

In a game I just played (in which my team won) one of our team-mates kept lambasting me for what he believed were poor strategic decisions. I in turn thought he was making poor decisions.

Based on the end game statistics, he seems to be a better player than me. (I took far more flags than him, but killed fewer buildings and far fewer grunts. We each killed a demigod twice and died once. It should be noted that I was UB (spit concentration) and he was Rook (tower concentration).)

But I am not convinced he was right about strategy. In fact for the most part, I ignored his demands, and followed what I believed was the best strategy--and we did win. Doesn't mean it worked, though, there are various ways in which we might have gotten lucky.

Anyway, here were the two points of contention.

At one point, all three of the enemy demigods were on the leftmost lane, and I and one teammate were in the rightmost lane. (This was Cataract I believe. Three lanes.) I do not recall where the Rook in question was--middle or left--but he started telling us to come engage on the left. I said I believed it best to push on the right when they are all gathered in one place on the left. If my partner and I move left, then the three opponents are making progress while the two of us are walking. Meanwhile, if Rook came over to help us on the right, then we (my partner and I) would be making progress while only one team-mate (the Rook) was walking. Less wasted time.

Rook disagreed in absolutely no uncertain terms. Very vociferously. Quite angrily.

But I still think that, in general, if your opponent has left a lane, it is best to push in that lane and not to engage him where he's going. (This is a defeasible principle--it always depends on particular circumstances of course!) I think it is best to keep up pressure, and the best way to do that is to attack him where he is not, or in other words, where he has not set up a defense.

If he's attacking elsewhere, it's because he has reason to think he can win over there. All the more reason not to go there. Push elsewhere instead.

Does this seem sound? Or was my Rook team-mate right that when all three enemy DGs are gathered together, we should generally close in on them and engage them where they have chosen to make their stand?

The other point of contention was this. Early mid-game, I think, I said "What's our cit. upgrade plan? I have 5000." His response was "Why the fuck did you hoard so much gold?" No advice about cit upgrades.

A few minutes later after a battle against the opponent, I went to citadel and again asked for a plan for cit upgrades. His response was "Are you serious? Get priests now!" We did not have the warscore for Angels and Catapults, and my impression has always been that it's best to at least get priests and angs at the same time, and whenever possible, get them together with cats at the same time. Otherwise you risk simply feeding the opponents exp and gold. (Always situational. Priests are better than many give credit for, IMO, at taking down enemy structures.)

The cit upgrade question is not actually what I'm asking about. I'm actually asking about gold hoarding. Was there any basis for this Rook's comment? Is there something wrong with "hoarding" gold? It seems better to me to fight as long as one can, making as much money as one can, only returning to shop and cit when either one simply has run out of the means to fight, or else when some urgent cit upgrade is needed. (It occurs to me maybe the Rook thought I should have bought Priests already, he thought of it as urgent, while I did not.) Usually I just stay on the field of battle until I can't fight anymore. This maximizes the gold I bring to the upgrade table. This seems, generally, to be a good idea, at least to me. But am I wrong? Is it often important to go back to cit even when one could stay and fight for a while, so one can get certain upgrades right now?

In typing the last, I've started to convince myself that maybe the Rook was right--maybe I should have gone back to cit earlier even though I could have stayed on the battlefield and pushed some more, making more gold. But what do you think?

About the first issue--where to push--I still remain convinced my idea is the right one. But am I wrong about this?

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In terms of gold I always hoard gold after I upgrade myself with some good, cheap armor. (Hauberk of Life, banded armor, and unbreakable boots, of course there's more to buy if you're mana dependent) By the time I've upgraded I do what you do and save for all the way to catapults, otherwise you do in fact feed the other team unless they have absolutely no aoe damage. It sounds like that rook didn't know what you were talking about.

In terms of the lane push, it depends on characters. If you had no towers left, then you should immediately drive them off to avoid them capping the portal. If you do have towers, you should still drive them off because you have the advantage of having towers, unless you are confident you will soon break their defenses. After you push them away, just advance down that same lane and do the same push to them while they are recharging. It's pretty much a big tug of war.

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That rook is an ass.

Also, hoarding gold is good if your team has the clear lead. If you're battling tooth-and-nail for dominance, it may be better to use the gold immediately and establish dominance.

Regarding whether to push an empty lane or defend a full lane... I'd recommend splitting the team. 2 guard the full lane and prevent the enemy from taking a tower. They should play very safe - not die. The goal is to halt the enemy. They need to be comfortable with the fact that they aren't going to gain any ground and they aren't going to kill any DGs. They're just going to protect their tower and, hopefully, kill some creeps with AOE.

Other two should push empty lanes. They can team up to take down towers or they can split to maximize XP/gold.

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Quoting lukkas_ROCKUS,

reply 2

That rook is an ass.

Also, hoarding gold is good if your team has the clear lead. If you're battling tooth-and-nail for dominance, it may be better to use the gold immediately and establish dominance.

Regarding whether to push an empty lane or defend a full lane... I'd recommend splitting the team. 2 guard the full lane and prevent the enemy from taking a tower. They should play very safe - not die. The goal is to halt the enemy. They need to be comfortable with the fact that they aren't going to gain any ground and they aren't going to kill any DGs. They're just going to protect their tower and, hopefully, kill some creeps with AOE.

Other two should push empty lanes. They can team up to take down towers or they can split to maximize XP/gold.

That's a good idea defending, if I could add to it you can use a universal gadget to heal a tower easily, annoying the other team to no end.

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At the end of a game I usually compare my teams combined stats versus the opposing teams combined stats. Your score versus a team mates score doesn't always indicate who played better but if your team is consistently better than the other team you can say your team outplayed the other team.

I don't think there is a hard and fast rule about pushing lanes. I don't think the fact that you have to walk to the other lane should stop you from doing so if you think there is a tactical advantage to doing so. It depend on how easy it is for the 3 opponents to take down your defenses and how effectively you can blunt their push.

As for spending gold I have certain target numbers to save up to like 1200, 1800, 3000, 3500, 4500 which coincide with certain purchases. It is good to know in advance what upgrades you need both in terms of equipment a citadel upgrades so you can hoard just enough to purchase those upgrades. Far too often I see teams lose because they failed to get certain citadel upgrades. This is clear at the end of the game when you compare overall stats. If you upgrade your citadel and your opponent does not, they get an early advantage because of better equipment but eventually the citadel upgrades counter their early game advantage so long as you didn't feed them too many demigod kills in the mean time. On the flip side, if they get the wrong citadel upgrades at the wrong time the same can happen. A prime example is getting reinforcement upgrades too early and feeding you opponent xp and cash that way.

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As some have said, defending is important. The key thing to note is it takes fewer demigods to halt a push than the number who are pushing. Defenders have a tower advantage and are closer to support structures. Also keep in mind against any push there are better demigods to defend against it than others, depending who is pushing and where, etc. Use this to your advantage.

In your situation, I'd say have two defend against their three and have your third on another lane. First, they are only gaining xp and gold from one lane. If your towers aren't dying you are gaining an advantage every second, nevermind the potential destruction of your pusher. You should also have a huge flag advantage if their three are in the same place.

Basically, if you sucessfully defend any location with fewer demigods than they are using, then the match progresses in your favour.

With gold, you always want to spend it as quickly as possible to gain benefit from it. The problem is you can't carry a shop around with you. It's a balance of cost to return to base against cost of not having new items. If you are noticing your gold is beginning to accumulate, don't sit around. Try and "do more" so your hp/mana is being used for something good and then go back to base at an opportune time. For example, blow your mana on making someone retreat to their crystal, then teleport back yourself. Ideally, you won't lose a flag or anything because you pushed someone back.

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Just a quick note with regard to gold and cit upgrades specifically: while the strategy you choose is determined by the situation, keep in mind one immutable fact - the sooner you purchase an upgrade, the longer you gain the benefits therefrom (and consequently, the more 'valuable' it is). Nowhere is this made more obvious than with gold upgrades; with respect to the remainder, you need to consider battle-damage aggregation over time.

As most will note and point out, the one aspect where this is most questionable is in creep-additions (priests, angels, cats, gigas). While there is a point to be made about their ability to push against an opposing creep wave and DG with more and better units, problematically this can aid the enemy by providing the AoE DGs with excellent EXP gain (eg: Fire Nova TB) and Minions (EreOak); so with respect to creep-additions at least, consider the enemy and their tactics first.

Lastly, with respect to structures - consider the state of your structures first =p It goes without saying that as time goes on, structural upgrades are increasingly less valuable (except in certain game modes, where the HP of the goal is in question). As towers and forts get destroyed and creep waves become stronger and larger, those upgrades provide increasingly less value - having trebuchets are sort of pointless if you don't have any more forts (unless you really want that random lightning bolt). If most of your front line towers are destroyed, then you are merely investing in a last ditch defense - in short, prolonging the inevitable.

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those stats do not indicate that one player was better than the other. Rook will nearly always have more buildings and grunts killed then beast since he has abilities that are suited for those tasks. Beast will nearly always have more flag caps than Rook since he runs alot faster.

re: what to do about a 3 Demigod rush in one lane

you are correct, your team-mate was wrong.

in general the thing to do is take the other 2 lanes and outmaneuver them. it becomes a racing situation, you want to make more gain (via warscore and exp) then they do during their push. they'll probably knock down more buildings than you will. this usually doesn't matter very much unless they're pushing through the very last wave of defenses in that lane.

i would only risk the head on confrontation if failing to do so would put you at risk for immediate loss. i.e. they're about to push to right in front of your Citadel. if their push will naturally wind down when they've taken enough attrition from buildings, creeps, and expending mana, then just let it wind down and go do something more useful with your time than walking into a meat-grinder.

if you really want to interfere with their plans do this:

-run back to shop as quickly as possible. buy a teleport scroll and a flag lock. teleport to the flag they're pushing towards and wait for them, you can act as bait so they get over-eager and push faster than they normally would want to. Lock the flag just as they arrive and then GTFO. you'll have spoiled their plan for 45 seconds.

re: Hoarding Gold

yes, its usually bad. the only reason to hoard gold is if you had a VERY good reason to stay in the field instead of going back to shop to convert gold to advantage.

there are plenty of good reasons to save up and they are all dependent on game situation. none of them is "so i can buy an Artifact".

In general I will try to spend gold very fluidly until the following citadel upgrades are purchased: Building Health 1, Building Damage 1, Creep Armor 1, Experience 1, Gold 1

and also until i've got the key low level items that my build for my Demigod requires (its very commonly a Boots of Speed, Nimoth Chest Armor, and Vlemish Faceguard, and either Priests Idol II for a general or Wyrmskin Handguards for an assassin).

once those bases are covered i'll start saving up gold for game ending pushes like buying an artifact or upgrading to Catapults.

re: Buying Priest Creeps

you're right, its situational. however, its almost always wrong to buy them as soon as you hit war rank 3. the same 1800 gold applied to Gold Income upgrade is worth a whole lot more. at low war scores you aren't going to get THAT many towers down with your priests and you're definitely donating extra exp and gold to the enemy.

priests are still important but i usually don't buy them until War Score rank 5 since the creep waves that spawn at that rank are much more likely to actually destroy towers. no point in giving away free exp to the enemy before the priests will actually help your side all that much. buying them for personal health recovery purposes is always a retarded idea. just get some potions if thats your situation.

re: Your Team-mate

in my experience, bossy and rude team-mates are usually deluded and trying to compensate for their own lack of skill by assuming their problems are the result of people not listening to them. "if only they listened, then we'd be winning easily" is what he's thinking. what he should be thinking is "what should I be doing right now to best support my team."

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Rook should have stayed in the left lane and slowed the enemy push using towers while you continued to push unopposed into their base. Rook's defensive power makes him good at resisting pushes 1vX so that was the perfect position for him.

As for "hoarding" gold, I try to spend all the gold I can every time I come to base, but I avoid going to base as much as possible (lost XP/flags/kills = bad). Since I always buy Heart of Life, and I rarely die, this means that I sometimes have 10k+ gold before I finally go to base to spend. However, once I go to base, I immediately spend all of my gold, unless I am saving up for something expensive. Gold sitting in your inventory does you no good.

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About the first issue--where to push--I still remain convinced my idea is the right one. But am I wrong about this?

you always want to make sure they dont destroy any of your towers, especially in conquest mode.

Is there something wrong with "hoarding" gold?

no, just try to use gold hoarding to you advantage, waiting until you can buy catas and giants at once really is GG.

you also want to stay in battle for as long as possible because time in battle = more xp/warscore

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Quoting StAcK3D_ActR,

reply 9

This thread has been very educational, thanks for the comments so far everyone.

Regarding the comment quoted above, do you not consider it a fair tradeoff if my team destroys as many, or more, towers of their own? It's situational of course, but in a very general sense, if I push where the enemy isn't and as a result destroy as many or more towers than him, then shouldn't I be okay with this?

Having asked that question, I agree with the people in this thread who are saying the best thing to do would have been to send one defender to help and use the third team member to push elsewhere. Neither the Rook nor I were advocating this. We were both wrong! But I was more right.

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do you not consider it a fair tradeoff if my team destroys as many, or more, towers of their own?

tbh, there should never be a trade off to gaining an advantage in the game.

here is a hypothetical situation:

3v3, cataract

in one lane they out number you 2 to 1, and in the other far lane you outnumber them 2 to 1

if both teams decide to push and get towers... you are still even

if the 2 people pushing decide to teleport back and defend your own tower, the situation becomes 3v2, they are outnumbered, you can get atleast 1 kill (remember gold for assists), and you save the tower. then assume for the next 30 seconds the game is atleast 2v3(because of death penalty). and since you are all in the same lane... you can then push safely

always remember teamwork wins.

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Re: priests,

Gold upgrade in most situations should be a higher priority, but there are certainly situations where you want to buy priests early. On a map with several generals (especially if one of them is Sedna), the combination of multiple types of priests all on seperate healing cooldowns can make demigods easily capable of stunts that'd normally not be feasable without signifigantly better gear and levels. In my experience, Sedna can melee down towers at low levels without needing to use her own mana with just her own summoned priests and the re-enforcement priests healing her.

Didn't sound like that was your situation, though, so that rook was probably just being an idiot.

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RE: Trade off

I think what the OP meant is more like "net gain" rather than strictly speaking a "Trade off".

In response to OP, I think it depends... specifically in this case, where those towers are. If you are able to destroy towers around portals, I think a net gain is acceptable, especially if the towers you lose are not in the path of enemy creeps.

That is to say, You don't want to lose towers in the direction enemy creeps are pushing. Unless you have a large net advantage as a result, it's too touch-and-go... whether the net advantage in terms of towers translates into a real advantage will turn on your team and skills.

On the other hand, Losing towers elsewhere... not necessarily so bad.

On your end, I think it's preferable to destroy enemy towers around portals you are trying to keep over enemy towers near flags in general. Creeps that die a few seconds after running out of the portal aren't the most useful. By removing towers near portals you are claiming, you shift the point of confrontation (with enemy DG's attempting to contest the flag) further back towards the enemy base. This is overall advantageous.

So really, you want to weigh what towers you are giving up and which towers you are taking away, in both number and location. These things are not always something you can control, so ... tread cautiously.

In the end, it's the creeps that do the winning... Clashing with enemy DGs and blowing shit up is fun (very fun), but really your job is trying to get as many of your creeps, as strong as possible, into the enemy base to overrun the enemy.

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it depends if you 2 guys left alone are able to actually push and cause real damage on enemy base. If yes then the two of you bash the enemy base while the rook slows the 3 enemies down.

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By the by, my original post didn't show... strange.

Your ally was an idiot. Flags are the most important resource in the game, and should almost always take priority(flags are what cause and prevent comebacks and steamrolls). Towers, DGs, and mooks are all important, but flags have such a huge influence on all of that that they're simply essential.

Also, you were right in waiting to get priests. Unless you wait until you can get cats, all they do is feed gold and exp to your opponent. Nothing but a waste. They can be useful with proper timing, but that proper timing is when they can be backed with enough firepower to help make an offensive. Otherwise, the opponent will have too much fun feeding off them.

Lastly, you were completely in the right for hoarding your gold for the citadel upgrades. If no one on your team has plans or is willing to make a plan for citadel expansion, it's up to you to get ready for it yourself. If I don't have a plan going, I always end up saving for citadel upgrades as soon as I have my 'integral equipment.' It's just so important that you can't possibly afford to overlook it. Games are won and lost by citadel upgrades. Either you coordinate your team, or you plan for your team.

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Quoting StAcK3D_ActR,

reply 9

About the first issue--where to push--I still remain convinced my idea is the right one. But am I wrong about this?
you always want to make sure they dont destroy any of your towers, especially in conquest mode.

Is there something wrong with "hoarding" gold?
no, just try to use gold hoarding to you advantage, waiting until you can buy catas and giants at once really is GG.

you also want to stay in battle for as long as possible because time in battle = more xp/warscore

Not necessarily. Against UB, TB, QoT, Regulus and other AoE Demigods its often a sure way to make them catch up in levels without too much effort (if they'd fallen behind even)... and you just have more clutter occuring on the screen:p

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Quoting TheGuildfordStrangler,

reply 15

By the by, my original post didn't show... strange.

Your ally was an idiot. Flags are the most important resource in the game, and should almost always take priority(flags are what cause and prevent comebacks and steamrolls). Towers, DGs, and mooks are all important, but flags have such a huge influence on all of that that they're simply essential.

Also, you were right in waiting to get priests. Unless you wait until you can get cats, all they do is feed gold and exp to your opponent. Nothing but a waste. They can be useful with proper timing, but that proper timing is when they can be backed with enough firepower to help make an offensive. Otherwise, the opponent will have too much fun feeding off them.

Lastly, you were completely in the right for hoarding your gold for the citadel upgrades. If no one on your team has plans or is willing to make a plan for citadel expansion, it's up to you to get ready for it yourself. If I don't have a plan going, I always end up saving for citadel upgrades as soon as I have my 'integral equipment.' It's just so important that you can't possibly afford to overlook it. Games are won and lost by citadel upgrades. Either you coordinate your team, or you plan for your team.

All of this

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I think you were largely correct in your thought process. If a group of DGs is pushing a lane, it means they are pretty confident that they can handle the push. That leaves the rest of the map open for your team to take back control of all open flags as well as start your own push. Once they see that they are quickly losing the Warscore fight AND their base is being pushed, they will have to widthdraw from their attack unless they already had a huge level/gear/gold/warscore advantage over your team.

As far as hoarding money goes, my answer is no, but not for the reasons your Rook teammate was telling you. I used to hoard up a lot of money too and I often do buy several Citadel upgrades (heck, I usually buy the building health regen upgrade less than 2 minutes into the game since it REALLY puts your opponents in a tough spot. They won't be able to make any real progress against your base defensed until they gain a few levels and buy some better gear). However, I've learned that a better way to manage your money is to spend it ASAP, even on marginal upgrades. Once you are ready to buy a citadel upgrade, sell some of your stuff and buy the upgrade.

Think of it like the stock market. Why have your money sitting in your pockets when you can invest it in gear and have it work for you in the form of damage/health/mana. Once you are ready for your next investment (the citadel upgrades) sell what you have and buy your upgrade.

Last night I had a 3v3 in Cataract as well. Our team was just slightly less effective than the enemy team but we held on little by little. I spent my money as soon as I got it on gear and was able to hold my own pretty well. Near the end of the game, things were looking a bit bad for us as a whole so I sold my best piece of armor and my heart of life and bought giants with that money. 5-6 minutes later, we won as the giants pushed the other team all the way back to their base. Sure, I now had less health and armor as well as no HoL, but instead of having 6k in my pocket not doing anything, I was able to benefit from those two items up until the point I sold them and bought the giants.

I think you get back like 80% of the buy cost of any item you sell. I feel it is worthwhile spending your money ASAP and reselling for future upgrades later on. When starting a match as a caster, I used to not spend any of my starting money and then wait until I accumulated 1700 to buy a Vlemish Faceguard. Nowadays, I immediately buy the Scaled Helm and Banded Armor, wait until I have saved ~800 and then sell the helm and armor and buy the faceguard.

There will always be some money hoarding since you won't always be at your base to spend your funds. However, I always buy something if I have to take a trip back to heal or buy consumables. Even at level 10, if I have 500 gold and open item slots, I'll buy the cheap gloves or boots or whatever. I'll then sell them again down the line.

If I haven't been to the base in a while and have saved over 2k, I force myself to go back and sell/buy more upgrades. That's too much money sitting around that is not working for you.

The hardest part about playing like this is having the discipline to understand that, if you are going to buy citadel upgrades, you will take stat hits to buy them as you are selling the items you've invested in to buy the upgrades.

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Wow, a lot of feedback to the OP (which is nice), but too much to read. I'll give mine and my apologies if it's a repeat:

Pushing: As you described, either you or rook could have been right. It depends on what point in the game it was, and whether or not the towers before THEIR portal flag were down. As a group of 3, they would have no problem steamrolling your the towers around your celerity or gold mine flag (depending on which end you were). If 2 of you went while the towers were up, the third could have pushed. If the towers were down it would take all 3 of you to defend those flags. The safest option would have been to all port back and def, especially if they had fort flag capped because that could have been the game right there. Alternatively, you could have sent 2 back to defend and have the third push their side, preferably the side with the extra gold flag, cap the gold, lock the portal and tp back to clean up their push. If no one had scrolls and locks, then there would be no point because theyre going to do WAY more long term damage than you could.

that being said, you're absolutely right that it is all based on the situation and needs a judgement call from someone. The above paragraph is just a list of "if this, then this" arguments, and that's what the game is. Whether or not Rook was right isn't really the problem, if you have two people running separate tactics, you'll lose against experienced/co-ordinated players.

As for gold hording and cit upgrades, the only important upgrade until mid-game is mint imo. Everything else can wait. Priests can be a help early game when towers are still up and assassin heros can hold the lane much easier because of heals. Other than that you're right, they feed. If i dont get priests within the first 6 or 7 minutes, I don't get them until LATE. Gold should be horded by everyone except the designated cit-bitch, which must not be the team's carry (Sedna, after getting a few mana items, is a great cit-bitch). Also, I'm not so sure about the angel/priest duo upgrade... I don't know why the would be useful. In my mind, angels are good for 1 thing only and that is keeping enemy heros from effectively using HoL or other "broken by damage" effects, and even then its not a huge hindrance. Cats/Giants duo is butter in my mind. I lost a pro 2v2 match the other day, when I was 7-1 and my teamate 4-2, because they popped cats and giants at the same time and overwhelmed our mid and managed to lock a port, even though we were beasted with artifacts.

This was a really bad answer, but the gist of it is - it's all situational, and tower rooks are just bad.

Naz

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I put up a guide to priests on the forum. Basically... don't buy them unless you are going catapults, and preferably giants.

They are good against towers... but not if you get the AoE upgrade for towers. For the cost of 500 gold your towers are slightly stronger and make priests a third as useful as they would have been against a non AoE tower, and the priests are still easy gold and EXP.

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i'll second that notion. Tower Damage upgrade 1 is extremely important. towers don't do AoE damage at all without it. but with it they hit multiple targets at a time. helps even 1 lonely tower fight off a creep wave without taking much damage. more important still is it largely prevents a DG from using creeps to screen tower shots so he can go whack at it while it only targets grunts. if its got AoE it will hit the DG while it kills off the grunts.

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Quoting transitive,

reply 21

I don't think I've ever seen a tower of light/darkness not AoE.

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