Want to go from Noob to Decent Quickly? Read this Strategy Guide!

This strategy guide offers learning through scenarios, in which a skill is particularly trained against a single AI. Some scenarios put you at a disadvantage, but that is how you learn. Here is a link:

http://tinyurl.com/wlStrat

Credits

- JSA, for teaching me a lot, and giving some advice.
- ppface, for helping me edit it after the first draft.
- Master Jz, for playing in the screen-shotted game on the last page.
- Norman, for writing a strategy guide in which i took some parts of.
- Mannerheim/Odin, ditto.

Edited 1/24/2016 05:17:09

you want to keep good territory:income ratio. If you look at the rest of the map and ratios are 2:3, 3:4, 4:5, 5:6… then it is inefficient to pick a bonus with a territory:income ratio of 2:4, 3:5, 4:6, 5:7…

You say territory:income ratio, but this is a income:territory ratio I think

Edited 1/23/2016 18:43:46

Thanks for the link :)

I've also been reading this one I found: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B024HXqzvoGCejhhajNFa1ZOVlE/edit?pref=2&pli=1

@Gazer, correct, thanks for the fix!

@Jai that guide uses very complicated language, and most of it is about before you meet your opponent.

The guide is based on Strategic 1v1? So that is based on the new settings?

If so, Should Szewenigen be mentioned in your list of top players to learn from? As at Szewenigens time it was WR :)

Edited 1/23/2016 21:31:08

xD I am watching you guys type.

@Gold: actually all of those are from WR time (except for this Gui alt) :P

Summer's recent game were SR.

Brilliant idea, and a fine start at it.

Feedback:

• On the second scenario about picking (https://www.warlight.net/SinglePlayer?TemplateID=753590), if there is a way to do it, I would recommend changing the scenario so that the player *always* has the ability to get his first pick. I made my pick but the AI got it (still beat the AI, of course :-) ). Perhaps use a custom scenario with 'slots', and allow the player to pick within his particular slotted area? Like give player picks within Europe, Scand, Caucasus, West Russia, Central Russia, and give AI slot with everything else. I don't know if slots work like that, though. I'm not that familiar with them.
  
• Is it possible to make a scenario for Level 2? Without one, it kinda ruins the idea of 'levels' that you complete. I'm not sure how such a scenario could be made, though.
  
• On level 3, https://www.warlight.net/SinglePlayer?TemplateID=760632, when I started we both had the same income (14), though the challenge reads, "At first, the enemy will have more income than you". I would suggest making this statement true, start the player with lower income, so that they psychologically overcome the bias that 'higher income always wins'.
  
• The double-border scenario (https://www.warlight.net/SinglePlayer?TemplateID=760638) is perhaps a bit hard for a beginner player to win (at least, to win it quickly), if they don't know how to use stacks, or how to beat the AI on equal income. So, maybe you could include sections about these skills earlier than this scenario.
  
• Also, perhaps using a different double-border would be good. E.g. a very typical example of this issue is when you have Antarctica and your opponent has Australia. The Scott territory in Ant. double-borders Tasmania and New Zealand. And Australia is +5 vs Antarctica at +3, but if you build a stack on Scott and time your attacks right, you can break Australia from Antarctica. Again, a lesson on building stacks prior to this would be beneficial here.
  
• I would suggest an early tutorial on using the "Attack or Transfer" dialog, with the (kills X) note and the Analyze button, so that you can have the player use these kinds of calculations in later tutorials.
  
• In the bottleneck scenario, the AI will never attack until it gets twice as many armies in its stack as the player has. Therefore, the player is not in very much danger at all, and can effectively out-wait the AI forever, even if he gains no income. Therefore, it would be more challenging if the player starts with *less than half* of the AI's income, so that they *must* expand to avoid being over-run.
  
• Also, it says "There are two bonuses you can pick to win", but actually you have access to four different bonuses (and indeed they lead to almost the entire rest of the map), and you are in no particular rush to finish any of them, because of the previous issue about the AI never attacking. So you can pick from any of the four to win the game.
  
• Nice usage of the Pangea Ultima map, BTW. Never played that one before. Seems fun.
  
• This is just a minor aesthetic nit-picky kind of thing, but when writing the math stuff, you might want to use the letter 'x' for multiply instead of the more computer-sciency '*' symbol. Alternatively, if you wanna go really pro, you could use some of the Unicode math symbols (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_operators_and_symbols_in_Unicode) such as the Multiplication Sign (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplication_sign) which is Unicode U+00D7 or HTML × which renders as: ×
  
• In the defensive double-border scenario, the AI (as far as I know) will randomly pick where to attack with the big stack, so there's not really any point in trying to 'predict' its psychology like you might a human. Also, you can guarantee a win simply by deploying everything to Ufa and making sure you never lose West Russia. Kind of defeats the 'challenge' aspect.
  
• I agree with Jaymer's point about the "Defense with Disadvantages" scenario. It's not clear what strategy/tactic is expected of the player. Therefore, it's not so much a 'lesson' as you'd expect from a 'guide', and seems more just like a random challenge scenario.
  
• The Defensive Delay section could use an example scenario. Using delays against the AI is particularly useful if you know where the AI is going to attack, and the AI has several expansion moves it can make.
  
• In the Attacking Enemies section it states, "In this situation, Light Blue has a strong advantage over Green, because he has much more safe income." But actually, this is not obvious from that screen shot because of the fog. The green player could potentially have at least +17 bonus income (I realize it's not all safe income), whereas the light blue player has only +13 bonus income. If you redo that screenshot without fog, it would be clearer to the reader.
  
• Also, it says "Light Blue should deploy all, and attack the Teal 2 Bonus, the territory with 5 armies on it." However, it is not clear that this is the best attack strategy. For instance, green could (potentially, with delays) allow the blue stack to take that territory, but follow up with small attacks that capture the entire Green +2 bonus which will be undefended if the whole stack moves into Teal. The net income change for light blue is zero. Still not a great position to be in, but I'm just saying that it's not entirely obvious from that screenshot which is the best attack(s) to make. Perhaps a more obvious example would be better for learning purposes.
  
• For the "Working armies" section, you could have a scenario where the player has less income than the AI, but has a bunch of armies left over from expansion, and perhaps a reinforce card or two, which could be used to finish capturing more income to turn the tide of the battle. Or, use the armies to build up a stack to defend a crucial territory. Or use them to break down a wasteland (to finish a bonus). Or something like that.
  

Done with feedback for this edition of the guide. There were some other more-minor things I noticed, but better to fix the big things first, IMHO, than to have a huge list of little nit-picks. Great job so far. Hope you continue with it! :-)

Edited 1/24/2016 01:23:01

@Gold Yes, most definitely. I will be teaching 0%WR in that Strategy guide, and will use *s to show the WR vs SR and both sides of the debate.

Not bad, I like the idea of putting example scenarios in.

In this part...

Defense with Disadvantages
It is said that “The best defense is great offense”. You are going to prove that with this challenge: https://www.warlight.net/SinglePlayer?TemplateID=760663

...it's not really clear what's supposed to be shown by the challenge. I assume it's about sacrificing one of your 2-bonuses to break the AI's 3-bonus and even up the income, but a beginner might not get that that's the point.

Personally Ben, I think this strategy guide has came to soon, Imo I think you will eventually if you stick hard on it long enough be one of the greats of Warlight. Though I have to ask why did you make it? What makes you think you are able or qualified to write a strategy guide?

Bluntly thinking, I would wait till I was a fully developed player (2000+ Rating) as back up. I would've spent your energy + time on improving yourself instead of writing this strategy guide. Wouldn't that be a better invest of your time + energy?

But you did a good job of the strategy guide! I just hope extra-activities like these aren't fully draining your time meaning you are slowing your development rate.. I would much prefer to see you a developed player than writing strategy guides! Just my thoughts as a friend...

Writing a strategy guide is in itself an exercise in improvement since you're codifying and expressing a set of rules that you can then improve upon. I wouldn't take Ben's guide as gospel but it is at least helpful to player with <1450 ratings on the 1v1 ladder.

Gold, I disagree. There is an interesting phenomenon that one of the best ways to *learn* something is to *try to teach it* to someone else. It forces you to put your ideas into words that other people will understand, and by doing so it helps you to clarify those ideas for yourself as well. Sometimes you can develop sudden insights into things you 'sort of understood' for a long time, and suddenly you 'really get it now'.

You don't need to be an expert to write a strategy guide. You might not end up with a great guide at the end of it, but in the process of writing it, you will almost certainly improve yourself.

There are some flaws in Benjamin628's guide, sure. It is missing things, could be longer, could be better written, etc. But I am still pretty darn impressed by it. It's about 10 pages longer than any strategy guide *I've* ever written, so there's that! And also I like the target audience he's focused on and the idea of having levels to go along with it is cool. I say, "Keep going man! Good job so far!" :-)

Though I have to ask why did you make it? What makes you think you are able or qualified to write a strategy guide?

That was a problem I saw, and I think that someone around our skill levels would take very little out of it. It was made for people in the rating range of 1000-1500. I, while 100% focused, play at around 1800. But you are right I suppose, I should try to develop my skills to become a 2100+ rated player.

I just started to read, and ran into barrier in an instant - the line "you can't use this template because of low level" appeared at the very first test :/ I like the idea, but this is huge flaw, ruling newbies out just at the start.

I really like the guide, it helped me alot thx buddy :) <3

@Gold
Though I have to ask why did you make it? What makes you think you are able or qualified to write a strategy guide?
ctrl c + ctrl v and a tiny bit of rewriting.

Just a random example:
M'Hunters guide:
There is probably no (maybe a negative?) correlation between playing strength and your income position at the end of the game compared to your teammates.

Benjamins guide:
A lot of people think that whoever on your team has the highest income at the end of the game is the best player, but there is no correlation between playing strength and income at the end.

As I said just a random example appropriately representing the whole guide. Would have been nice if the guides (mainly Normans and Odins) where he took stuff from had been referenced appropriately. Here you see them nicely listed: https://www.warlight.net/Forum/109508-tutorialguidestrategymastery-skill

@Ben, Don't pay attention to the trolls ._. This guide was very helpful, and I'm going to re-read it when I pay more attention to the 1v1 ladder. Thanks for making it. You're a very helpful asset to the WL community, despite what Norman and (to a lesser extent) Plat think.

@psykkoman:

I just started to read, and ran into barrier in an instant - the line "you can't use this template because of low level" appeared at the very first test :/ I like the idea, but this is huge flaw, ruling newbies out just at the start.

Which scenario was it (you can copy the URL from the guide and paste it here)? And did it say which feature in the scenario was unavailable to you?