Post by juigikario on Apr 22, 2004 2:53:32 GMT
Warning: If in the likely case you don't know who I am, I am a Fire Emblem fan who watches KND anyway. When I said Fire Emblem as in "Fire Emblem fan", I mean the series, NOT THE GBA GAME THAT CAME OUT HERE! Although I only even heard of FE because of SSBM, I'm veteran enough with FE to have actually beaten one with challenging conditions BEFORE FE7 (the FE that came out here) even came out in Japan (which was only a little less than a year ago). In any case, this post may have spoilers for the FE games past the quote I'm putting here.
"My first and only complaint with this episode is that it is yet another where the Kids get attacked in their own home. I thought these guys were supposed to be an active group? Yet they spend almost all their time improving their home defenses (as seen here) and it seems that for every one time they're out on a mission, there's another time where they're here. It's no wonder they get attacked so often, then... back when I
was big into strategy games (particularly Warcraft II) I learned the hard way that if you spend all your time building up your defenses, that's just inviting an attack because it allows your enemy to build up as well, and if they've got more initiative... suffice to say, if the KND were out attacking more often, then logically they would not be attacked in-house as much because their enemies would be constantly recuperating from their assaults, giving the KND the upper hand. And now I'd like to thank me for making this ultimately pointless tangent about combat tactics. Basically, yea, we should
see these kids going out and attacking more. Seeing them as the targets themselves is getting very annoying."
I can see that you have some valid points. In FE, if you don't go on the offensive, then some villages could be burnt to a crisp, and then you could lose some valuable items. This is definately true in Chapter 22 of Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryuu To Hikari No Tsurugi where a (pretty much) required item can be obtained by warning the village around the northeast corner of the map, but your entire faction starts at the south end of the map. Of course, just using a Warp Wand to have the village blocked from the Theif (the unit that can destroy it if allowed) isn't going to help you, because the unit whom it is used on isn't going to last forever (unless it is Tiki boosted with both of the Dragon Shields you could have recieved, but you probably would have some good characters in your roster who would have needed the Physical Defense boosts).
However, typically, with a less powerful or small faction under your command, defense is a better option 60-70% of the time at least. The problem with a head-on assault is that you could easily end up walking into a trap. I wouldn't be surprised if Talis, the smallest kingdom on the whole continent in FE1, had to fend off Dolua, which had already taken over about the rest of the continent at the time, to protect Prince Marth of Altea. No, I'm not talking about the Garuda Pirates' sudden attack, because 2 years (separating the subjugation of the kingdoms of Altea and Akanea, which were the biggest threats to Dolua's plans, from the Garuda Pirates' attack) is too long to search the Akanea continent (don't get this confused with the kingdom of Akanea) and NOT expect to find prince Marth, especially when it takes LESS than a year for an Altea Army to go through the continent to fight back and eventually bring down Dolua. The point is, Talis must have been attacked by Dolua. Unfortunately, Dolua has MASSIVE numbers, as all 3 of the chapters where you face it as the main enemy faction proves. (In each of those 3 chapters, they release ridiculous amounts of reinforcements total, even beating out Grunia's reinforcement number total in Chapter 8!) With a small army, Talis sending ANY amount of soldiers on an attack mission would have been completely foolish, because Dolua can have 20 of its soldiers slain and 40 more would take their places easily, making a kamikaze attack or full scale offense backfire instead; the former would have left Talis with at least one less troop to work with, which would have horribly hindered their defenses, and the latter would have just annoyed, exhausted, drained, and ached the Talis army, leaving NOTHING to make sure Marth would have been safe.
And in case you need another reason to regard defense in Fire Emblem, here's one: you get a limited amount of troops in your army, and any defeated troops ARE NOT automatically able to fight on your side again after ANY victory; they'll be treated as dead in terms of gameplay. You need to revive them to be able to use them again, of course, but that's only possible in the first 4 FEs, and in those FEs, you can revive only a limited number of times AND usually VERY late. Of course, the enemy usually outnumbers you anyway even if your troops HAVE ALL survived, and as I mentioned, making an outnumbering more severe than it already is is a terrible idea.
You can stay an offense fan in strategy games if you want though. I'm not going to force you to be a defense fan. I still prefer to rush enemies badly when possible anyway. Now that's been enough about strategy. We're supposed to talk about Codename: Kids Next Door here, aren't we? Now, about the operation itself, is it true that Kuki teasing Wallabee and then being chased by him similar to what children do? The site certainly says so, and I can't help but think of a certain something.........
"My first and only complaint with this episode is that it is yet another where the Kids get attacked in their own home. I thought these guys were supposed to be an active group? Yet they spend almost all their time improving their home defenses (as seen here) and it seems that for every one time they're out on a mission, there's another time where they're here. It's no wonder they get attacked so often, then... back when I
was big into strategy games (particularly Warcraft II) I learned the hard way that if you spend all your time building up your defenses, that's just inviting an attack because it allows your enemy to build up as well, and if they've got more initiative... suffice to say, if the KND were out attacking more often, then logically they would not be attacked in-house as much because their enemies would be constantly recuperating from their assaults, giving the KND the upper hand. And now I'd like to thank me for making this ultimately pointless tangent about combat tactics. Basically, yea, we should
see these kids going out and attacking more. Seeing them as the targets themselves is getting very annoying."
I can see that you have some valid points. In FE, if you don't go on the offensive, then some villages could be burnt to a crisp, and then you could lose some valuable items. This is definately true in Chapter 22 of Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryuu To Hikari No Tsurugi where a (pretty much) required item can be obtained by warning the village around the northeast corner of the map, but your entire faction starts at the south end of the map. Of course, just using a Warp Wand to have the village blocked from the Theif (the unit that can destroy it if allowed) isn't going to help you, because the unit whom it is used on isn't going to last forever (unless it is Tiki boosted with both of the Dragon Shields you could have recieved, but you probably would have some good characters in your roster who would have needed the Physical Defense boosts).
However, typically, with a less powerful or small faction under your command, defense is a better option 60-70% of the time at least. The problem with a head-on assault is that you could easily end up walking into a trap. I wouldn't be surprised if Talis, the smallest kingdom on the whole continent in FE1, had to fend off Dolua, which had already taken over about the rest of the continent at the time, to protect Prince Marth of Altea. No, I'm not talking about the Garuda Pirates' sudden attack, because 2 years (separating the subjugation of the kingdoms of Altea and Akanea, which were the biggest threats to Dolua's plans, from the Garuda Pirates' attack) is too long to search the Akanea continent (don't get this confused with the kingdom of Akanea) and NOT expect to find prince Marth, especially when it takes LESS than a year for an Altea Army to go through the continent to fight back and eventually bring down Dolua. The point is, Talis must have been attacked by Dolua. Unfortunately, Dolua has MASSIVE numbers, as all 3 of the chapters where you face it as the main enemy faction proves. (In each of those 3 chapters, they release ridiculous amounts of reinforcements total, even beating out Grunia's reinforcement number total in Chapter 8!) With a small army, Talis sending ANY amount of soldiers on an attack mission would have been completely foolish, because Dolua can have 20 of its soldiers slain and 40 more would take their places easily, making a kamikaze attack or full scale offense backfire instead; the former would have left Talis with at least one less troop to work with, which would have horribly hindered their defenses, and the latter would have just annoyed, exhausted, drained, and ached the Talis army, leaving NOTHING to make sure Marth would have been safe.
And in case you need another reason to regard defense in Fire Emblem, here's one: you get a limited amount of troops in your army, and any defeated troops ARE NOT automatically able to fight on your side again after ANY victory; they'll be treated as dead in terms of gameplay. You need to revive them to be able to use them again, of course, but that's only possible in the first 4 FEs, and in those FEs, you can revive only a limited number of times AND usually VERY late. Of course, the enemy usually outnumbers you anyway even if your troops HAVE ALL survived, and as I mentioned, making an outnumbering more severe than it already is is a terrible idea.
You can stay an offense fan in strategy games if you want though. I'm not going to force you to be a defense fan. I still prefer to rush enemies badly when possible anyway. Now that's been enough about strategy. We're supposed to talk about Codename: Kids Next Door here, aren't we? Now, about the operation itself, is it true that Kuki teasing Wallabee and then being chased by him similar to what children do? The site certainly says so, and I can't help but think of a certain something.........