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

Dave - My advice about lookign at games on good players' profiles was for people to learn how to play not to mirror the person that they happen to be playing in any particular game.

But it also appears you don't understand how picks work. In a 1x1 game pick order goes ABBCCDDEE..., which means if you get your 1st pick, your opp gets the next two. For example, if you both pick India first, you each have a 50/50 chance of getting it and if you don't get it you'll get your next two picks. No matter what you will get either your top pick or 2 of your top 3 picks in a 1x1 game (also no matter what you will get 2 of your top 4 picks). Which means if you both pick the same top 4 you'll each get half of them (no matter what order each of you picked them).

If you actually knew what territories your opp will pick and in what order you can devise a pick order that will put you in maximum position to capitalize. Which is why I vary my picks and order in tournaments and when I play the same person multiple times.

Devil - you should try playing Settlers of Katan, it's primarily negotiating with the other players for an advantage.

Yeah, I play that all the time, definitely a great game...

Thanks Duke, I didn't realise that

devil, you should try playing webdiplomacy also. it's largely about negotiating.. and i would like to thank matma for pointing this thread out, as i hadn't seen it before, and uh...
bump..?