dear piggy,
i want to eat you

+1
i'll butcher you too

nobody thinks it's funny that my last name means butcher and yet i can't even beat a dead piggy :(

Ugh, no more spam please.

Dear piggy,

1. Why do you hate spam? Spam is made of dead piggies like you!

2. Why do my "Ask ___" threads fail so badly? I am jealous of yours :(

Love you long time,

Ozymandias melancholia

Dear X,

I don't want spam in this thread because I think it discourages people from posting questions, and from reading back through other's answers. I don't think the other "ask" threads fail, most of them have as many replied as this one.

Love you too,
Piggy

Dear Piggy,

Why is Fizzer so harsh when it comes to suspending players?

Cheers

Questions about strategic 1v1s only please green.

Dear Platypus,

Sorry, it took me a while to answer your question, I've been thinking about your game a lot because I struggled to put my finger on the general theme of what you did wrong, rather than a list of small errors. Here is the game link http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=3630845 . I think this question is the most important yet because you suffer from the same thing many new players suffer from.

Your picks were nice, your bad luck in Baja was no biggie. The problem was that you used your armies very inefficiently in your expansion.

turn 1: left 3 armies idle in EChina.
turn 2: left 4 idle in CA and used 2 more than you needed in EChina
turn 3: left 2 idlle in CA and used 4 more than you needed in EChina and 2 more than you needed in SA.

A little bit of inefficiency is inevitable, for instance when you don't know if you will bump into your enemy, but this is too much. In turn 2 you didn't use more than your entire income for the turn. In turn 3 you need to leave yourself the option of completing a second bonus by the end of turn 4 or else when you hit your opponent he will be a whole bonus up. It's much easier to win by having a higher income than by ambushing. In this game you try to ambush F bombs in indonesia but when you get there you do not have an income + stack high enough to break him.

And one other small thing; when you have a first turn bonus making contact with your enemy sooner is better. There is no reason not to attack in EChina on turn 1.

Thanks for your question,
Piggy

(:(=)
Teach me how to play.

I agree with you on East China, but I didn't want to attack too early on Venezuela. Also, I knew he was in Indonesia, so I wanted to hit that as hard as possible.

You attacked at exactly the right time in venezuela. I wasn't saying attack sooner, I was saying expand. You could have seen that you were not going to be able to break indonesia from turn 2. You were simply too far away, and needed to try and complete EChina.

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks for your advice.

Dear Piggy,

http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=3639348

I tried really hard, but I still lost this game. What did I do wrong?

Dear Piggy,

http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=3626900

Obviously not a great game by me in the later turns. But I felt like I did pretty well early on and had the advantage on Tagg and gave it up on Turn 6. How would you have played Turn 6 if you were me? And would you have played the rest of the game like I did or played it differently?

PS: Thanks for this thread. There's some pretty good information on here if you read between the spam.

Sincerely, JSA

Dear Croagunk88,

Do you just want me to list the individual faults? I'm not sure that would be helpful, or very friendly. Instead I will list a few general rules that gave me easy wins when i started playing autogames.


1. pair your picks so 1,2 are in joining territories and 3,4 are in joining territories. this gives you a little safety and lets you finish bonuses more efficiently.
2. do not make picks 1,2,3 in 3 joining territories.
3. you only get 6th pick if you did not get 4 and 5 so use it to counter one or both.
4. complete a bonus by the end of turn 2 if you don't start in contact with the enemy, turn 3 if you do.
5. use 3v2s when you are in contact with the enemy. finish the last 2 or 4 neutrals in a bonuses with 4v2s.
6. as soon as you have completed your starting bonuses, decide where the enemy is and move towards him with a 4v2s every turn until you make contact.
7. Do not expand in more than 1 place at once.
8. if you are in contact with the enemy use your reinforcement card as soon as you get it.
9. do not start a new bonus when you are in contact with the enemy unless you are at a stalemate.
10. If you want to take a territory and you dont know if your enemy will be attacking it the same turn, attack first move with 6.

Extrapolating from those rules, this is how I was prioritising my income: completing 1st bonus, not getting eliminated in an area, completing 2nd bonus, breaking an enemy bonus if in contact, completing 3rd bonus, making a 4v2 towards the enemy, expanding into 4th bonus, attacking the enemy. This will work very well for 9/10 automatch games and I think the exceptions will be obvious to you.

These rules often hold true for top ladder games. Check this game between the old and the new no.1 http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=3504533 even they follow most of these rules most of the time. Learning when to break these rules is the next stage, but for now try them out and tell me how you get on =).

Thanks for your question,
Piggy

Jsa,

it wasn't a bad performance. I'm not as good as piggy, but heres what i thought.

It certainly wasn't over in turn 6. You lost it on turn 8. Why did you decide to use your 13 to attack borneo? You knew you would never be able to get the Indo bonus, so why waste troops on a risky attack? You should just have attacked phillipines, to keep your presense in the region alive, attack solomon islands to check on the wastelandless north america, and then blockade papua new guinea, and so you only have 1 front in australia to defend. Then you can slowly expand in the enemy free African continent.

Dear Piggy,

Can you explain why red lost this game? http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=1414076

Thanks for your insight,
Lance

Dear Lance,

Two drunken donkeys had a race. One of them stumbled a little more and was a little slower, and he lost. That was Red.

Kind regards,

-Wally Balls

Dear JSA,

You know you got lucky turn 2? 11v7 usually hits. Completing antarctica with a 4 was a little greedy.

Here is my thought process looking at turn 6: At the start of the turn I really dont know what he is going to be deploying, I will politely assume he has completed EChina. and it also seems that he has not used his card yet. I am set to complete australia so can I be extremely cautious and let my higher income next turn do the work? No. If he deploys all but 3 (for russia) and attacks from indonesia late he is going to break australia no matter what I do. He probably doesnt know this, do I take a chance on it?

This turn is his one chance. If he doesn't either break aus or eliminate me in the north with his card he is done, he cant compete with 13 income. I will deploy 8 in moscow and attack Murmansk with 12 first move and finland with 2 last move. If he goes hard in aus I can eliminate him in the north, if he tries to eliminate me in the north I will complete aus. =)

As for the following turns, You have a much higher income and bigger stacks, these are short term advantages so it is time to play extremely aggressively. Pink cannot complete russia for 2 turns and without a little bit of his very small income. You have 2 turns to crush him, and you will be deploying a lot more so get stuck in. If you don't maim him before he finishes russia you shouldn't expect a win.


Thanks for your question,
Piggy

Dear Lance,

I am trying my best not to give my opinion on someones play without them explicitly asking for it. It might annoy red for someone he doesn't know to be passing judgement on his play. The only exception is ladder games because theyre already posted up for everyone to watch. Do you have a question about one of your games?

Thanks for your question,
Piggy