Krazikarl

What creeps did they have above soldiers and archers? I think the main problem with that choke point is that the artifact shop is in the base so you can farm like all hell and be able to buff yourself up with artifacts.

That said, knowing the map is part of the battle. It isn't necessarily a bad map it is just a hard one.

This.

All you had to do was go past the chokepoint, and start pounding on their towers or killing their own creeps AT their portal. They would certainly come after you, and thus not be able to hold off the giants. If you did this before they farmed giants for 20 mins and caught up in gold/levels, then victory would have been yours.

If you are practically standing in front of their citadel then here's how to win in about 2 minutes:

Reg&Rook hold the chokepoint (should be easy with tower rooks) and Oak destroys the base.

Oak has to pick Last Stand and, if possible, high shields.

Then let Oak fire up shield, attack the citadel, die, klonk the citadel while in last stand mode.

Repeat twice and the citadel is dust.

Just make sure you can hold the other team in with oak absent.

yeah this doesn't sound like a problem with the map.  this sounds like a problem with your strategy on the map.  cool story otherwise.

Thats the first thing we tried.  It resulted in us all dying and them not dying.

The levels were low enough (all were around level 9) that we couldnt charge through a minefield without it REALLY hurting (and you certainly cant charge into a tower circle under fire from enemy DGs at level 9).  At that point somebody was instantly dead passing through the choke and being focus fired and some others were pretty close even if we pushed through at the same time.  Our first attempts to charge through the choke and take out their tower/citadel was an unmitigated disaster and was clearly NOT going to work.

The point is that if they have proper units (Mine reg is especially devastating in the mid game when mines hurt like hell) you cant charge through the choke.  We arent idiots and we tried this.

But on Exile you CANNOT do this under many circumstances.  I'm sure that if we had been less dominating and been higher level when we got to this point that things might have been easier.  But on Exile, winning by too much is punished because you cant push past that damn choke if defended properly at low levels and if you cant push through, you autolose.

A rook or whatever standing in the middle of a minefield and being focus fired by 4 DGs at level 9 isnt going to last long enough for anybody to rush very far.  And even if people did make it through, they were standing in the middle of a bunch of towers with 4 enemy DGs right next to them and no way to retreat.  Not good.

Because if you had actually understood why we lost you would have realized that your suggestion doesnt make any sense.

Their strategy was to sit at their chokepoint and farm our creeps, which were constantly pushing against their creeps.  They knew that we could not kill their creeps because our giants would kill them long before they got to us.

If we had sat back at our chokes we would have gotten no XP and no gold.  They were getting tons of XP and tons of gold.  Not a good suggestion.

In our desperation we tried to let them out of their base so that we could do something maybe.  They didnt move out and just sat at that choke still, just farming realizing that we could do nothing, including getting XP.  They refused to attack.  This was already said in the original post, so your suggestion doesnt make any sense.

You cant hold the choke against people who are 10 levels higher than you with all artifacts (when people started rage quitting they had gone from being a level or so down to being 5 levels up and they had artifacts - their reg had an Ash when I quit).  And they werent going to leave that choke until they had artifacts and were all level 20 (at which point they could charge through our chokes like people suggested above - a level 20 with artifacts can take out a decent chunk of your citadel per life by himself).

Exile does have a tough final choke, but I've never had the problem listed in the OP.  I think you just had a bad combination of abilities for the situation, and they had a very good combination. It happens.

obviously (you've already figured this out) going to giants so early and in that situation was a mistake. But it's pretty much always the case that you need to push on and destroy the enemy citadel when you have a huge advantage in grunt types, because if you dont the enemy will splatter you. This is particularly true on Exile, since you can't capture any portals to seal their doom.

if instead you went currency/XP upgrades, it would take longer to push them back but you would have an unbeatable advantage in 10 minutes without feeding them xp/gold.

also, at warscore 3(?) their citadel should have had low HP. (~25k). A concerted rush should destroy it, so long as you can force back the enemy DGs.

Bear in mind that there is an upside to the tough Exile defenses. if you controlled the whole map you had:

+30% HP

+15 HP/s

+15 mana/s

+10% damage taken by other team

-15% cooldowns

+2 gold mines advantage

it's not quite a health crystal, but it's damn close.

you might also have been better served by different artifacts, like Bulwark or Cloak of Elvenkind.

As long as you are nearby when the creep dies (nearby being ~LOS?) you still get the XP. You don't get the gold though.

exile is a real simple map, I think it has even less strategy than prison is concerned.    You cant capture your enemies portals so you just have to use brute strength.  It also is notorious for making extremely long games because of the choke points and no portal captures.      Any twisty map with areas next to a health crystal erebus can abuse hardcore this is known already.  

   Your team obviously dropped the ball by trying to rush the win on a slow map.  

   For what its worth though I just won a custom game on exile in 17minutes.  Doesnt happen often though.      

Take two teams:

Team A: Armor and Damage upgraded giants + gold advantage + level advantage + all flags + 7 levels of war rank advantage

Team B: no advantage other than a health crystal right next to a choke

Any map in which Team B can have an unbeatable advantage is flawed to the point of being broken.  Thats all there really is to it.

Instead of trying to win we would have had to sit outside their choke for ~10 minutes just farming levels slowly.  Maps which require this are poorly designed IMO.  Your goal should be to kill the citadel in Conquest, not sit around til you are at least a certain minimum level to overcome a choke and pray to god that nobody on your team is foolish enough to buy giants (if this happens you cant farm levels and you lose).  If buying giants results in an autoloss, something isnt right.

You cant if they have the right DGs at that level.  It takes them a second to get to their health crystal and they can completely jam the choke with mines.  If you cant force back the DGs and you bought giants, you lose.

No its not.  The health crystal provides several hundred health per second (because one of its ticks is much less than a second).  Its easy to overcome 15 hp/sec healing, impossible to overcome hundreds of hp/sec at level 9.

I was trying to duck in and get XP but couldnt consistently do it without dying.  Sometimes I'd get a bit, but like I said they were getting 4 levels to my 1.

Like I said, a map is flawed if having every conceivable advantage other than the map itself means that you are actually at a disadvantage.

I can think of ways of winnng a lot on this map.  But thats not the point.  The point is that a map shouldnt have completely idiosyncratic tendencies that you must follow or you lose badly despite having a superior team.  This one map requires that you follow a COMPLETELY different strategy (it buying giants is a TERRIBLE idea much of the time, dont try and win early on, war score doesnt really matter etc) that arent particularily interesting and arent based on rewarding who has the most skill.  Its based on who knows the map idiosyncracies the best.

And trying to convince mixed teams that us buying giants = loss in many cases is a nightmare.  If one fool on your team gets giants, thats a loss and I cant say that that is a good thing.

yep, you failed.

First: If your Oak would just have fought until he got last stand, then it wouldn't be a problem at all.

Second: You learned how not to play Exile, did you? So don't blame your loss on that map. It was your strategy that failed. By the way, Crucible is even worse in that regard.

Sounds like you guys have lots of weak link in your team, and one or two people was doing more than 80% of the work to push them that far.

I mean... general afraid of mines? Never heard of it. Anyway, I don't know the whole story, I am just poking at the given description.

I do think exile is a horrible map though, it really is quite boring. I think 1 trick pony shine here because there aren't so many strategic option to worry about.

You're doing it wrong.

i think exile is a good map.

dont forces of darkness have more energy heavy characters? all of them r pretty much casters apart from UB.
forces of light have melee oriented characters and to an extend are not as energy dependant.

thats my take on it anyway