I am curious as to know what players use as their preparation strategy in ladder games or really any games for that matter.

I find that I check for common games first, otherwise I just look at the last 3 ladder games to see picking tendencies. I only look for about a minute, usually just checking for cluster picking or spreading out. In tournaments I find I do this for the semifinals or later. I doubt I'll ever be the best with such limited preparation but was wondering what others thoughts were on this.

Do you look deeper into picks?
Do you look at play tendencies?
In team games do you look for unorthodox plays? Such as gifting at unexpected times? (If you're curious about this, check out our (ema and I) 2v2 game against noob and richard, the gift in australia really threw me and ema for a loop) http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer.aspx?GameID=2932887

Thanks

I think that they won't say the truth just to don't uncover theriselves :D

I personally try to look at the new players i'm facing, just to do a distincion between a good player that could think like me, and that in my opinion is easyer to predict, or a new player which doesn't make such complicated reasonments. I explain better.

Let's suppose that i came strong near an enemy bonus, for example from india, under the orange russia. As we all know, most of good players plays that defensive turn by deployng 2-3 in the territory near norway, and the the others in west because we all think that the attacker thinks scandinavia is predicitible. So it become a: i think that he might think that i might think to attack there. A mindfuck. That helps me a little when i have to make such decision. Trying to read the enemy and being unpredictible at the same time.

That game we knew you had surrounded him, and he ended up with two +5 bonuses. We spoke and came to the conclusion the only way we had a chance was to gift right off and try to surprise you guys. Worked well for the surprise, but we lost in the end.


I tend to actually look through all the ladder games played by people who are at or above my rank on the ladder right now, seeing what I can learn from them. Then when you are paired with them you can do a quick refresher on how they pick and such, and try to pick near the same (or something to counter it.) This way you can both over-pick them and end up knowing where they are, or can attempt to use your knowledge of their style against them.

I have no idea about 2v2, I'm quite bad at it, but it's a work in progress.