1 on 1 style vs FFA style

[LPhillips]

So, do your strategies vary in 1v1 games? Certainly on something as predictable as Desert Showdown, you have to adjust your play because of the very limited playing field. But on other maps...?

I find that my strategy differs very little. I grab everything I can as quickly as I can, murdering and pillaging my way through the neutrals. FFA's: Most players ask for a truce on first encounter, which I usually accept from the first player.

Probably the only difference in play is that in 1v1 it's economical to fight your enemy directly and take his cities, while in FFA's it is more economical to conserve your strength and take the neutrals first. Then if you're at the top you take the strongest you can reach down, while if you're not you take your weakest neighbor.

The whole game seems to revolve around two things: early expansion, and cash (hero offers).

[Pillager]

I don't play much 1 on 1....mainly because I find it a bit too linear to hold much interest. FFA adds some unpredictability... which keeps things interesting for me. I'm stoked for team games..which (I hope) will combine some of the best aspects of both.

I think that very fast expansion can make you a target in FFA. I have seen some huge empires crumble due to enthusiastic but ill-considered growth. Don't get me wrong, you still need to grow.. but spreading out in all directions like a cancer will likely make world domination more difficult than it needs to be.

Gold is equally (and hugely) important in 1 on 1 and FFA.

[KGB]

Then if you're at the top you take the strongest you can reach down, while if you're not you take your weakest neighbor.

You *ALWAYS* take down the weakest neighbor. Standard military procedure is to attack weakness, not strength. Getting involved in long battles with strong neighbors is the quickest way to lose the game due to stagnation.

Furthermore, I immediately check to see who my neighbors are. Many players will resign the moment something goes against them (killing their initial hero, capturing their capitol/other cities with bats). I especially target such players hoping to force them out of the game early allowing me to collect their cities / expand into their area. Other players I know will fight to the bitter end and I avoid those players because I don't want to get into a long protracted war that ties up my armies.

I think that very fast expansion can make you a target in FFA. I have seen some huge empires crumble due to enthusiastic but ill-considered growth. Don't get me wrong, you still need to grow.. but spreading out in all directions like a cancer will likely make world domination more difficult than it needs to be.

Strange. I expand as fast and recklessly as I can to knock players out early (in the Bullrun game we just completed I knocked 2 players out by turn 15 by over running them after which came NicIO then you as by then I was 3x the size of anyone else). I expect to lose a few cities but will be compensated by the sheer number I get. Once self-raze is added it will help even more because I will raze those I can't keep or that get threatened at the far edges of my expansion.

KGB

[LPhillips]

Playing conservatively nets you nothing in this game. I'm winning 3 FFA's right now because I expanded twice as quickly as anyone else, and now I'm twice as powerful as any other player. Every turn they fail to take cities away from me, my lead expands. Gaining an early lead in cities and cashflow is absolutely essential. Just ask kenc80: he's an excellent player, but I've got him in our 1v1 because I was taking as many as 10 cities in one turn early, and now my army grows by 15 more production every turn than his does. I think players who fail after expanding quickly only do so because they're weak in other areas of gameplay.

I attack the strongest player only if I am at the top an a FFA game. Since I'm significantly stronger than the other players, this is very much to my advantage. It's only valid when the entire map has been taken up and there are no more neutrals (as I stated). This doesn't mean that I will leave the weaker players alone; it means that the real threat(s) become(s) my primary target. I may learn over time that this is not the best strategy for this particular game. It's important to remember that generalities in strategy are only generalities --I wouldn't make Crow's mistake of not exterminating weak enemies, and leaving holes in my defense, to march halfway across the map to execute an ill-conceived attack on someone nearly as powerful as myself.

Star seems to employ the same strategy. Note his overwhelmingly win-heavy FFA record. He keeps up continuous medium-strength attacks on me, his strongest neighbor, which has bottled me up (Westeros is an extremely unbalanced map anyway) and forced me to remain on the defensive while he has expanded. He had no need to punish ams16 so heavily, and indeed if he had focused on ams16 I'd have kept expanding and probably be just as strong as he is at the moment.

[KGB]

LPhillips,

If you are significantly stronger (2-1 cities) then it matters little whom you attack since you can take that player down quickly. But if you only have a city ratio of say 1.5-1 or less then it's a bad idea to attack the next strongest player compared to someone else who you might take down much faster. The other reason I favor finishing off someone quickly is because I don't want a 2 front war and I especially don't want 2 players teaming up against me. So the sooner one player goes, the better even if it means my closest rival gets to expand and grow.

As for the Crow (A friend of yours as it's a hidden name player?), yeah it was a bad mistake to march across the map to attack me. Even worse was trying to bless every unit on the way slowing him down and worst of all was using Dwarves in his stacks giving me ample time to prepare. He lacks the experience of converting an early game lead into a victory over a strong opponent and good hero management.

In 1-1 games as you noted, it's all about fast expansion. However as I've been teaching KenC, there are 4 equal factors in a 1-1 game that contribute to whether or not you are winning/losing. Those 4 are cities, armies, heroes and gold. You can fall behind in any 2 of those categories without much worry. Fall behind in 3 and the game starts to get away from you. Fall behind in all 4 and it's just about impossible to come back as your only hope at that point is to empty your cities and make one 'Pickets charge' and hope to break the other player.

KGB

[LPhillips]

Maybe it was poor on my part to make such a generalization. I do find that my military might recently goes most often to stomping my most threatening neighbor. However, I haven't been playing in games with you

KenC really did well on cash. However, I've been hitting him hard with well-balanced hero stacks. Now I'm ahead in heroes, and have been a step behind killing a second of his main heroes for two turns. On that map, cashflow is ample from city ownership. So controlling the majority of cities ensures a superior income.

I'm in trouble in another game because I lost two great hero stacks on battles that were 75% or better, even though my army size is still double the other two players'. Heroes and unit quality are a big deal indeed. At least it was possible to finish off the enemies' heroes quickly after losing my own, or I'd be dealing with command+3 enemies now.

How do you generally deal with being ganged up on in FFAs? I've been careful to keep my enemies on the defensive, but I can't say that I have the experience to know if that's a successful tactic.

[KGB]

Which map are you playing with KenC? I'm guess it must be one of the ones with a lot of cities/ruins.

I'd guess I've faced being ganged up on in 80% of every FFA I play due to being an early leader in most. Sometimes it's conscious as they exchange info and make a formal alliance and others it's happenstance as I am the enemy they both can reach.

You are doing the right thing when being teamed up on. Keeping the enemy off balance is the best thing you can do.

The rest is dependent on the enemy position (are they on opposite flanks or next to each other so they can support each other). But very quickly you should assess which is the weaker opponent (could mean just fewer cities/armies, could be you have your better heroes near that player, could be a player I know isn't a strong player and is likely to blunder someplace or could simply be you have a much better defensive front against one opponent) and attack with 75% of your armies in an attempt to finish them off. The other 25% simply holds/gives ground very slowly to the other player. With a bit of practice you'll find that works much better than splitting 50% against each one as that tends to stalemate things and a bad battle or two (as you described above) can really hurt you.

If it's a large FFA game and there are more than the 2 (or 3) players left you should obviously elicit support from one of them to attack one of your enemies from the rear (as I did with the Crow) and promise them the pick of the spoils should they need enticement to help you.

KGB

[LPhillips]

It's the worst possible situation in one of my games:

Low income map (poor design, in my opinion, for all cities to give income in the teens) meaning I'm about to run up against an upkeep wall, while their armies will continue to grow until they outstrip me.

Two enemies with powerful hero stacks, on a united but very wide front, working explicitly together.

A slow, rather less than useful player picked to do what you described, and (apparently) failing to do so on this FoW map.

So, even though I have outplayed them all (in my opinion), I'm about to get stomped. And there's little I can do about it. I've been sending squads into the weaker opponent's territory and burning his cities, but it's really not a winning tactic. I had to make an effort to break the enemy on one front, and his combined odds of surviving my attacks were something like 2%... but he did. One lone hero, killing stack after stack, against all odds, is now a superhero. The last unit alive in his stack for the last 3 battles. I must have spent 50 turns of production on him in the end. At least now there's no upkeep wall to worry about...

[strach]

I guess the strategy you are talking about (as quick expansion as possible) is good only while fightinng unexperienced players. imagine you are playing with some really strong warlords players and you have 20 castles in Eight Kingodms, and the rest has around 10: it's obvious they'll join their forces against you, and it's obvious that you wont survive this.

nevertheless I always try to implement this strategy - it pays because there's a lot of warlords newbies on this site. but in one game (on Eight Kingdoms) it failed while piranha managed to convince other players - just the moment I was gaining the critical mass of cities and hereos - to attack me. and even tough I was stronger than every one of them I lost half of my cities. I think it was a great strategy by piranha to play this way: to stay a few castles behind me and then to point at me as a main threat. of course right know the situation has changed and we are all fighting piranha but I guess it's is too late (you know how hard it was to convice them that I was no longer their enemy but their chance to stop piranha?)...

so I guess in some games with experienced players it is good to go for quality not quantity

[LPhillips]

You need to take castles you can defend. But ganging in FFA's is increasingly problematic. The best players sometimes suffer by making targets out of themselves. As KGB says: with the advent of team games, we will probably see a large decrease in the number of randomly matched FFA games.