The way I see the philosophical side of the game, there are at least four philosophies inherent to warlight:

1 Art of War: based on historical battles, wars, strategies, tactics, etc. from Chinese and Western sources (me) 
2 Game Theory (sze) 
3 Systems Theory: engineers, programmers, others think like this based on their educational background (unknown, fizzer?, hhh, faith, saladin, retro) 
4 Daoism: for flow of game and balance (Chinese art of war is intimately linked to Daoism) 

Ultimately, I think the essence of all four are more or less the same. Only the perspectives differ, which accounts for the differences in how we rank our options and what we eventually decide to do. None of us fully represent these theories, however, so our imperfect adoption of these ideas also accounts for differences.

Do you agree? Which school of thought do you prefer? Do you follow a different philosophical system?

(Maybe go to wikipedia and read up on these four schools of thought before positing a new one.)

I don't know much about Daoism, so I'll skip this one. 1 and 2 are indeed very similar, the only difference is the language that goes with both. 1st is easier to apply to real-world problems since it is mostly composed of either historical data of success/failure of certain methods or general guidelines like the works of Sun Tzu and Sun Pin. Game theory works well in places like poker or warlight, it provides a language that is easy to work with when it comes to numbers, sth you can methodically quantify. 3 is too general imo, so I'd need some clarificationn about it. There are things from our background that might help in warlight, but not necessarily when it comes to educational background. When it comes to philosophical side of the game you might only search for analogies to external sources and I guess you can find a lot of them differentiating from player to player. For example chess background might help since you'd be able to understand quickly how to use space, how to prepare and execute an attack etc.. As you said before I am in favor of game theory just for the fact that it provides a language in which you could explain how the game works and how to search for effective strategies.

Systems theory from the perspective of their educational background focusing on systems analysis...They tend to see the big picture, the macro-strategies, how the board has a certain logical system to it. This is how I think of the players I mentioned.

catholic dogma is also inherent to warlight (no girls at the top).

http://warlight.net/Profile?p=461933632

:)

glad to be mistaken.

It seems to me that a player's comprehensive strategy (like picks, expansion, etc.) falls under systems theory, while specific moves during fights relate to game theory, although both are similar. Although the premise of fighting an actual war is entertaining, it doesn't seem very applicable to Warlight. I know very little about Daoism.

i think that the art of war by sun tzu is more who i play by

i miss chang :(

I look at daoism as the final aim of the gameplay.

In order to reach it, there is the need of both systems and game theories.

Art of war is more a technical weapon in order to keep the advantage that the balancement and flowfulness of daoism should naturally bring to your side.

Me philosophy is only be fair if being unfair is unfair to me.

you're forgetting the hacker mentality types, as in the persons who are just obsessed with finding easy solutions to complex problems and gather their knowledge from the system itself, from trial and error and deep research. in warlights case, by playing alot, studying their mistakes and other players games.

and the metas, the folks who take their ideals from multiple schools of thought and change their way of play according to their opponent or bad mood or whatever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGFf3SRP1bE

unpredictability is such a strong weapon.

x.apex's catholic dogma is funny :) I don't know is it true in warlight but I personally do love girls on top :))))))))))

I think I enjoy alot in warlight by applying the "Sunzi Art of War" when playing warlight. :)