youre both right fred was talking about head to head youre talking about a team game

I've only been playing 1v1 games, and in many games Scandinavia seems to be the key to winning precisely because it has nothing valuable nearby, so it should remain unmolested in most games till the end. Not having to defend that 3/turn income is very valuable. In multiplayer games, Scandinavian advantage should go down.

Just play better than the other person

It's biggest advantage is that it's the only startign point where you can get a bonus on the first turn. If you encounter your opp somewhere else at the start of turn 2, you've got 8 and they have 5. That's enough to take out one of their startign positions and determine the game. Happens often.

duke i think im about to be destroyed by you ;P

and 1v1 on big earth scandinavia is indeed an advantage, europe can be taken within 3 turns or so,

EU? NO! Europe, Antartica, greenland, south america, australia, east russia, and Canada are all very bad moves in the early game (ignore them until you've taken all the easier bonuses).

40% of the bonuses on the map are in Asia, you need at least a blocker there and if you don't start there you need to head there early. Ceding it without a fight is tantamount to surrender. Which is why putting everything in Africa is a disaster. Holding Iran, you can take the rest of Asia without really being disturbed. As I did in our game EmpZ.

It's not complicated, just look at the number of territories in the bonus and the amount of the bonus - obviously India and Causacus are the best two bonuses (divide bonus by number of territories in that bonus, rank by highest to lowest). Strategically you may not be able to take and hold the best ones early, but that doesn't mean you can ignore them and let your opp take them either. The next best are CA, Scan, East and West Africa and East China.

Of course if you know your opp is going to go for these spots, you can counterpick and time your attacks to frustrate them and prevent them from getting the bonuses. I had one game (on profile - best of the best - First championship game), where I blocked my opp from ever getting a bonus the entire game.

You ought to post the link to your game so the community can analyze it.

For those too lazy to go click on my profile (e.g. Fred), here's the link:

http://www.warlight.net/App.aspx?GameID=1020828

well i mean thats extreme example because A its four spots not three and B judging by how you played you knew he has mexico and india and probably either knew or assumed caucus. iran is very good with 4 and 5 spots but with 3 its awful

im still in awe of Dukes elite skills :O i thought i was actualy fairly decent at 1v1's :/

And there are lots of players who regularly beat me. It's a steep learning curve to be competitive with the better players.

Pink - You don't have to guess how I knew, just look at my picks and his picks and I knew 2 of his 4 spots. MidEast was my 6th pick. I went east to stop India and thereby discovered he had Causacus. I was lucky in that game too, I've never blocked all bonuses in any other game.

But it shows how effective playing counterpicks can be. waya is doing it to me in a game right now. He didn't go for the best bonuses, he went for counterpicks adjacent to them and then delayed his attacks, so I'd expend my armies clearing the bonus and then he arrives with a stack the same turn to bust it. Works great when you can predict your opp will go for the best picks (and expand everywhere quickly and evenly).

I looked at the board and thought, "what the hell, I got all of my picks?". Which should have tipped me off. I've been playing too many players who pick weak starting spots and missed an obvious (in hindsight) set-up for counterpicks. By counterpicks I mean West US (CA), West Russia (Scan), East China or West China (India).

Here's a basic tip I regularly see players missing: ALWAYS pick the number of starting spots as the total number of picks for all players. If two players and 4 spots each, pick 8. If 4 players and 3 spots each, pick 12. Gettign your last pick may seem like a bad result, but if you do, you know every starting spot of every other player and can plan accordingly.

You shoudl also note that each of those counterpicks - West US (CA), West Russia (Scan), East China or West China (India) - allow you to arrive on the border in one turn in position to attack TWO territories of the target bonus. That makes it very hard for the opp who just took the bonus to denfend it.

And that's basically everything I know about (1x1 Big Earth map) WL strategy in one thread.

This is all a testament to why I avoid 1v1 games - It's too algorithmic, and I don't have the patience to micromanage every turn and glean every possible bit of knowledge about where my opponent is or what kind of deployment he has, so I end up losing to someone more motivated. If you want to succeed against the best players 1v1, it's definitely a mental commitment!

If you think Chess is algorithmic, than I suppose it is. I love games where I have to stop and think through my moves and I like micromanagment games (I was a hopeless Civ addict). I also prefer games where luck is minimized. I play only occassional big FFAs and I mostly avoid games with random picks or high luck settings.

Most of the time, I find the FFAs are decided by alliances among other players or the starting spots. High luck settings produce bizarre results that I find annoying.

Chess is in fact algorithmic, but at such a level of complexity that actually applying those algorithms in any reasonable amount of time is pretty much a hallmark of total lifelong mastery, or of being a supercomputer with logic designed over decades by extremely brilliant people. The upshot is that I like Chess despite it's algorithmic nature since anyone I'm likely to play with is going to be in the same boat as me, with the ability to see maybe 3 moves ahead, and a tendency towards occasional mistakes.

Warlight's algorithms are simple enough that someone with time and dedication can actually apply them consistently to the game, giving them a huge edge over someone who doesn't care enough to delve that deeply into the underlying math. Not to say that you don't deserve that edge for the work you put in, but it makes it pretty un-fun to play 1v1 with you since my choices are either to lose or to put so much work into the game that it no longer seems gamelike to me. Meanwhile, my thousands of multiplayer games of Magic: The Gathering have sharpened my diplomatic skills (whether direct diplomacy, or just psychological manipulation) to the extent that I can hang pretty well in FFA's and large team games without having to exert myself overly much, so that's the kind of game I favor.

duke sorry im going so slow in our games ive been busy at work and id love to play you in chess as well. and i use east china as a bonus, not as a screw you spot.

duke sorry im going so slow in our games ive been busy at work and id love to play you in chess as well. and i use east china as a bonus, not as a screw you spot.

i think i agree with most of this except duke's point about looking at a players past games and mimicking their strategy. If you go for exactly the same territories as your opponent normally goes for you're placing the outcome of the game on a coin flip.

i dont ever remember getting mexico or scandinavia when they were somebody else's #1 pick too. i just think its dangerous and you could end up with territories you really dont want while your opponent gets all their favoured ones.

if you see somebody picking the same territories every game, i find it useful to try and surround them at the start and focus on taking one of their preferred picks, even if you rate it #1 and dont get it.

only other thing i'd add is never have one strategy. you need multiple strategies depending on who you're plaing against and what the game type is