You know, I'm trying to learn here, too. I don't see anything good about last turn. I'm not trying to "I told you so", and I thought we were done with the personal stuff, so let's leave the "histrionics" comments at the door and have a productive conversation. From my perspective, that turn was an absolute disaster. But you seem pretty upbeat about it, after a move designed specifically to do what happened last turn, and you said that's what you were trying to do. Help me understand what's good about it.

You mentioned our income advantage. We were going to have that whether we were in Brazil or Colombia. Would you prefer to be in Brazil right now? Or is Colombia just as good? I have a strong preference for Brazil, which is why we moved all those armies into Brazil two turns ago, and I feel like we just completely wasted that.

You mentioned that we have an income advantage, which is great. So how do we use that income advantage? We can use our income advantage to try to fight him in South America, but then how do we get Canada in three turns without spending income up there? We have to blow through five 2s and a 4, and we have six armies in position right now. And he can get Australia in four turns without spending an army using his big stack, at which point our income advantage will be lost if we don't have Canada yet, and he'll have some leftover armies in position to start working Indonesia.

You mentioned that we should attack Venezuela this turn - is your plan still to try to take South America outright? According to the move you're suggesting, you're not trying to do that in one turn, so do you think you can do it in two? Three?

And when he gets Australia and Indonesia six moves from now, which is a done deal at this point, and possible South Africa, then he'll have an income advantage, unless we've grown somewhere else. Where will that be? South America?

Your plan is so opposite mine that I honestly don't understand it, and I'd like to learn more about how you play since you're clearly a good player.

By way of comparison, here's the move I proposed last turn:

1. Bostonfred: Place 6 in Greenland. Place 4 in eastern Antarctica. Place 2 in southern Greenland. Attack with 12 from Brazil into West Africa. Attack with 4 from Antactica into the left of the two Australias. Transfer only all but 7 remaining armies from Brazil to Argentina. Attack with 4 from Brazil to the center of South America. Take the last piece of Greenland. Attack with 3 into northeastern Canada. Transfer other Greenland armies towards Canada.

We would now have the same 17 income, five armies in Argentina, 2-3 in the center of South America, 10-11 in Nigeria, and 2-3 in Australia. We would NOT have blockaded Siple.

So this turn, we would put 8 more armies in Nigeria, six in Siple, two in Australia, and one in Greenland. Our first move would be to attack towards East Africa with 19, bordering his bonus with a bigger stack. Even if he order priority attacked into the same spot, we'd take it, even at 19 vs 11. Our second move would be to transfer-only our armies in Argentina south into Siple. There would be risk of giving up Antarctica, but he'd have to guess right. Our third move would be to send our remaining armies in Brazil to the center of South America, where we would blockade. We would also head into Canada and move further north towards his India bonus.

We'd be deep into Africa, we'd have an income advantage and a stack on the border of the bigger of his two bonuses, we'd have blockades in South America and Central America preventing him from doing much up there, we'd be deep into Australia, preventing him from taking Indonesia, and he'd have nowhere left to go.

real quick Eitz -- Do we know if Imp had some failed orders? Like he tried to transfer from Venezuela to Colombia and also a failed late attack from Colombia to Brazil? This would be some good knowledge thinking if he had intent to slide over and block while trying to take brazil out.

Thanks

All orders are listed in the list - failed or not.

Bostonfred and Duke -- I think the differences in your strategies are clearly Aggressive and Conservative. Duke is the conservative type that goes for the slow for sure play of building up income, withholding income from the opponent, and taking a look at the overall game strategy. He uses this 'income advantage' to win in army count and make less options for Imp.

Boston is playing the Aggressive role where we take some risk and run with it. His mentality is to get to Imp's homeland to divert income, withhold shared bonuses, and sacrifice a little to gain a lot by breaking bonuses. This strategy has us fighting on multiple fronts as once and having the opponent choose which 2 of the 3 fronts to defend and hope that try for the two that they have chosen. Basically make it a guessing game where if the defender guesses wrong once, they are screwed.

I think both roles are great in their own and I've seen both work. We have to remember that Imp plays a conservative game and he is very resilient on giving up bonuses (he'll almost never let one go so every encounter you can guarantee that he'll at least make sure you don't get the bonus yourself). I think Duke's knowledge of Imp helps because as we've seen, he's deployed almost all of his income to the South America front making sure we don't get it from him. He sees the importance in that spot and is willing to fight it out.

I like to have a mix of the two and would have liked to see us make a move into Africa to at least get him thinking that we're going there and also withholding SA from him.

As far as expansion, our Canada will be for us to keep up with his expansion (which isn't much cause his deployment has been going towards defending). We have that Greenland advantage for at least 3 turns which is 15 more armies to play with than him. I think we should focus on each turn as it comes (the votes are by the people) and not dally with the past on should have's.

Do we know if Imp has an Order Priority card? If so, I'm thinking his only move is to get to Brazil very quickly to avoid our stack and to potentially stuff it. That would be his only move now besides expanding a little.

I doubt Imp has an OP still, but next turn we do. So we if we somehow don't go first again this turn, we'll be able to hit that stack next turn with the OO and the +5 reinforcement. We start +8, we have a relative +4 to add to the stack this turn (assuming 1 income goes to Greenland), next turn we have a relative +9 and the OP. That should produce some very nice net gains and leave us well positioned.

R summarized the strategic differences well. Fred and I aren't really arguing about what Imp is going to do. Although Fred tends to think Imp is going to seek new bonuses, while I think he'll continue to put everything into holding SA. So far Imp's been very very conservative.

Fred - I am reacting to all the "if we had only followed my plan" comments. I think people understand that roads not taken. Please focus on the road actually chosen. Ideally our attack would've been to Venezsuela and not Columbia and if it had been Columbia the result would've been a lot better from both our perspectives. But missing his stack last turn doesn't really hurt us as we have the income advantage and the next reinforcement/OP, so we can chase his stack for a turn without losing the ability to make a big net gain. We kill up to 27, and lose up to 23.1 on the exchange this turn. That turns a +5 income disparity to a +9 for the turn. And, of course, it's much worse the following turn when the disparity is that much greater.

People keep raising the concern that Imp is going to have South Africa, West Africa and/or Australia, as if they are imminent happenings. Eventually South Africa and Australia will fall to Imp, but it's gonna be awhile. I think presently he has 1 spot in South Africa and no armies positioned to expand there and he's still one spot away from starting on Australia. He continues to put all his income into SA. So right now he appears to pose no threat to getting a bonus in next few turns at all.

We have been making Imp play our game every turn from the start. He's showing no signs of changing that now.

I'm voting for Option 1. Sometimes the choice is very simple.

I forgot to say that I like option 1 and have voted for it

I'm fine with going with the conservative route if it makes sense to do it. I still don't get what our next few turns look like, though, and as I mentioned, the clock is ticking before he takes Australia and Indonesia and we lose our advantage on income/ability to expand.

So what do the next few turns look like, assuming we attack Venezuela?

Turn 11 (Assuming he didn't move his armies to Brazil before we attacked) - 44 on 33, we lose 27, he loses 23. He takes Scott, we take Nunavut.

Turn 12 - We have 16 in Colombia, he has 10 in Venezuela. We have 4 in Nuuk and 2 or 3 in Nunavut. We have 17 income and a card. If we're going to "take Canada in three turns", we need to deploy about 7 armies in Canada, leaving us with 15 to put in Colombia. We attack 30 on 22. We lose 15 he loses 18. He takes two of the Australias.

Turn 13 - We have 15 in Columbia, he has 4 in Venezuela. We add three more in Canada, and add 14 to Columbia. We attack 29 on 16, losing 11, and possibly taking the territory. He takes two more of the Australias.

Turn 14 - We have 18 in Columbia, and he has 1 in Venezuela. We add three more in Canada, and add 14 to Colombia. We will take Canada this turn. He has a reinforcement card, and he gets Australia at the end of this turn, and has leftover armies in place to begin working Indonesia.

This assumes that he stays put every turn, or if he tries to move his army, our attack hits first. What does turn 14 look like? Do we split our forces and attack him? What are we trying to do here?

Turns 15 and 16, he's working his way into Indonesia. Are we working Western US, even though he has Central America? Are we working Caucusus or some other bonus? Or are we still putting all of our armies into South America?

Does the plan change if he moves out of our way on one or more of those attacks?

I tend to agree with both of you (Duke & Fred) for different points. I don't believe last turn worked out as well as I would've liked to see and there were actually several different options that could have been chosen that would have worked out better for us based on what Imp did. That being said, I voted for Duke's #11 and (like any 1v1 game) there's no point in beating ourselves up for what could have been a better turn. I don't love the fact that we have a very poor position in Brazil at the moment but in no way do I see us "thinking five or six turns to surrender".

I think the huge positive for us out of all of this is that we have a solid income advantage right now, we hold the army advantage over Imp in South America, and he deployed everything he had at us last turn, moved all his troops down into Antarctica, as well as transferred 1 army down from South Africa. Like Duke mentioned, this shows that he has no intention of taking the South Africa bonus any time in the immediate future and he has continued to be predictable in dumping every single resource he has into denying us South America, likewise preventing him from spreading into Indo or anywhere else for that matter.

I'm actually kind of surprised to hear Duke and Ruthless both vote for the aggressive smash option. I guess at this stage in the game, I'm more paranoid about protecting Brazil as the gateway to Africa but after reading Duke's last post, I also see the sense in the havoc we can wreak on him next turn with our incoming +5 and OP cards regardless of whether or not we get order priority this turn. I'm not casting my vote on this one just yet but I definitely like our options moving forward.

Fred: I think the beauty of this format is that while it's nice to have an idea of what you'd like to see happen moving forward over the next few turns, we're going to have to discuss and assess every new turn as it comes and determine the best plan of attack as we see the options unfold. In the last 3 turns, I've seen my future plan of attack change 3 times to accommodate for what idea was picked and how Imp responded. I think we just need to be versatile, play with the lead we know we currently have and roll with the punches as they come.

Assuming Imp went along with that -- it sounds great. I would probably put a couple less into canada next turn and more into SA the turn after. Ideally, we max returns in both places. Because of where the 4 is in canada we'll have to put 5-6 there to get that 4 next turn. The turn after we'll have the option of taking Canada immediately or trying to take out what's left of Imp's stack. I expect both our worth about the same amount (+5).

Ordinarily I'd want to take the bonus and use the extra income to hit the satck the following turn, but Imp will have his card that turn, so it might be better to delay and take Canada the following turn (as you outlined), we'll have to see how it goes.

Assume Imp moves out of the way. He goes to Brazil or CA. If it's Brazil, we just attack again as we'd love to end up in Brazil when we finally take out his stack. If it's CA, we have the option of working for the SA bonus and just blocking the stack in CA. For that reason I doubt he goes to CA.

E - generally true, but the game has boiled down to just a few viable options at the moment so projections out a few turns are likely to be more accurate.

I think ultimately right now we want to do the following to ensure victory:

-Slowly expand into Canada, gaining a solid +5 at some point in the future.
-Win the numbers battle in South America. If Imp slips up and sends armies elsewhere to spread into South Africa, Indo, or Ausy, we may even be able to take this set behind him.
-Clean out Central America. This isn't a priority but if we can sneak in a couple 2 on 1 attacks and clear Imp out of Central, we have the option of protecting W US if we go for that after Canada as well as leaving the option open for hitting the 11 blockade and gaining that +3 set.
-Get into Africa. As soon as we sort out the South America situation, we can afford to start sending some troops into Africa to put the squeeze on Imp there and force him to make some decisions.
-Potentially work on getting W US (after Canada and provided things are looking good down South).
-Think about taking Caucasus and/or bordering India. This is really only an option for me if we're doing well on all other fronts. I'd rather not tip our hand to our presence in that part of the world but if we're winning our other battles, we can always have this as an option to increase the pressure on Imp's decision making as well as gain another +5 out of the deal if the stars really line up.

Diabolicus: It looks like you want to do something very similar to Option #4 with the notable difference being you not wanting to go into Africa. If you feel strongly that that difference is enough to make a separate vote option, I could set that up for you but take a look at #4 first and let me know what you want to do.

I like the first 4 -- after that it's probably too far out, meaning the game will be decided before we could take W US/Causacus/India.

I wanted to bust that 11 in CA and retake the +3 too. But we didn't have the income at the time. It's a smart next bonus if we are able to beat Imp in SA. losing 7 or 8 to get +3 is a smart call. and it's a back door into Indo. COurse that's also too many moves ahead at this point.

Eitz: Before reading your post I just voted for #4. The reason why I did not consider going into Africa was that I feel the 12 deployed to Brazil are an easy target for potentially 32 armies shifting from Venezuela there 1st move next turn. In that case we lose all 13 there, while he loses only ~9, and then our move from Columbia with 28vs23 will be a desaster (we lose ~16, Imp loses ~17), so the total outcome would be: we lose 29 vs Imp loses 26.
In other words: deploying 12 to Brazil directly can cost us ~4 armies more, compared to deploying 12 to Columbia and then shifting over. If you consider that a tolerable prize for the potential gain of getting a foothold in EA, then ok.

not EA, I mean West Africa, of course.

I basically didn't like the fact that this thread had fallen off the top lists so I've decided to troll it up ;P

I just find it kind of amusing how last turn I posted 8 options and ended up adding 5 or 6 more ideas to the voting system with almost 70 different posts and this turn I've put up 4 options and people seem relatively content to throw their lot in with one or the other and wait to see what happens.

Our move last turn locked us in to a conservative play this turn. There's not much point in discussing it.