Specialist advice for the new guy..

[cabert]

Here are two less extreme examples, both of them warmonger strategies.

A) build quechua in capitol. Scout with each. When reach 4, attack nearest AI.

B) build a barracks and a worker. Then build Quechuas and attack with 4.

If a player chooses to do A, is that bad gamesmanship? Hardly. But A precludes B. Is A even a "better" strategy? That's open to debate, I suppose.

I guess I get tired of people "looking down" on non early warmonger strategies. Heck, I play the early warmonger more often than not. But I do feel that long-term strategies take more skill simply by nature of their duration and required complexity of execution (not because you're failing to exploit a weakness of your enemy).

Wodan

A and B are 2 variations of the same strat.
What would be different is building stonehenge for cultural expansion, then a few settlers, then only looking for a war = too late for a queshua rush.

 

[Wodan]

A and B are 2 variations of the same strat.
What would be different is building stonehenge for cultural expansion, then a few settlers, then only looking for a war = too late for a queshua rush.

You're nitpicking. Regardless, hopefully the idea is clear.

Wodan

 

[malekithe]

A) build quechua in capitol. Scout with each. When reach 4, attack nearest AI.

B) build a barracks and a worker. Then build Quechuas and attack with 4.

If a player chooses to do A, is that bad gamesmanship? Hardly. But A precludes B. Is A even a "better" strategy? That's open to debate, I suppose.

If you could have conquered the AI without the barracks, was there any reason to build it? If your advantage is solely in having Quechua as fast as possible then, yes, B is the poorer choice. On the other hand, if you get considerable benefit from the extra experience garnered by the barracks, then B is the superior choice; you are expanding on your advantage. In the end, one will be rendered a superior choice over the other. The trick is in realizing which it will be.

 

[Wodan]

If you could have conquered the AI without the barracks, was there any reason to build it? If your advantage is solely in having Quechua as fast as possible then, yes, B is the poorer choice. On the other hand, if you get considerable benefit from the extra experience garnered by the barracks, then B is the superior choice; you are expanding on your advantage. In the end, one will be rendered a superior choice over the other. The trick is in realizing which it will be.

Well, I'm still working on perfecting my ESP abilities and crystal ball techniques. Given that nobody can tell the future, your advice becomes a moot point, I think.

The relevant thing is that the choice doesn't matter. The great thing about this game is that the player has a lot of strategic choices. Which one is better? Hard to say. Even using hindsight I'm not sure we can go back and say "strategy X would have been the best choice".

Anyway this whole discussion came about because we were talking about score. I made a claim that the score does not really have bearing upon the skill required to execute a chosen strategy. Mostly because the score algorithm is based upon things that I personally don't recognize as exhibiting higher skill (such as winning faster). I simply don't agree that building a barracks should result in a lower score. I absolutely don't agree that it exhibits poor gamesmanship.

Wodan

 

[malekithe]

I simply don't agree that building a barracks should result in a lower score. I absolutely don't agree that it exhibits poor gamesmanship.

I disagree on those two points. Building a barracks (or anything else for that matter) when it is not neccessary is merely a waste of time and resources and should absolutely result in a slightly lower score/slower finish. It demonstrates a small strategic gaffe; granted a very common one, but a gaffe nonetheless. It may seem like simple minutiae to someone focused on modern age strategy, but the entirety of the game is comprised of things that, taken on their own, could be considered equally minor. The strategic goal is to put together all of these minute decisions into a coherent, effective, and efficient full-game strategy. Neglecting early-game minutiae because you would prefer to focus on decisions further down the road can simply be classified as an oversight.

 

[Wodan]

What you're missing is how do we determine whether "it was necessary" or not? It doesn't work that way. In this particular case, a Barracks is an investment that increases the odds of a strategy being successful. Agreed?

So, if we choose to attack w/o barracks, then either:
1) we win with same losses as we would have with barracks
2) we win but with more losses
3) we lose with more losses

#2 and #3 are more likely, in my estimation, than #1. Regardless, your assertion only holds for #1.

Wodan

 

[malekithe]

Those aren't the only alternatives and, no, I don't agree that a barracks is guaranteed to increase the likelihood of success. It is possible that the resources and time spent building the barracks could be better spent in either attacking earlier or attacking with more troops.

It's similar to the question you always deal with at the start of a war, "Are my troop levels sufficient to acheive my goals?" This cannot be definitively answered before engaging in war and seeing for yourself. You can, however, draw on past experience in determining the appropriate number of troops required to handle various situations. A new player, without those experiences, may frequently opt for the "safer" tactics of building more troop than are strictly needed. Sometimes they will find that, by the time they reach their desired troop levels, the opponent has fortified his position and goals can no longer be met as anticipated.

In our your scenario above, why attack with 4 quechua? Why not 3 or 6 or 20? The imutable fact is that, for any given scenario, there will be a minimum number of troops required to meet your goals. Sending less than this number will lead to you falling short. Sending more will sacrifice resources that could be put to other uses. You know to send 4, though, because you've played through that scenario before and know how many it will usually take to crack the opponent's defense.

There's always going to be a battle between risk and reward in the game. Through experience we discover what gambles pay off and which do not. We hedge our bets when neccessary and take risks when we think they are worthwhile. Maybe you've found that a barracks is always or predominantly a good build prior to a stack of quechua. If that's the case (and I'm certainly not arguing that it is or is not), then it would be a good stategic decision. But, if one day you found that by skipping the barracks you can consisitently accomplish the same goals quicker, why would you build the barracks again?

 

[RealPhenom]

ive always been wondering wat the best tiles were for cottages. now wat would u say r the best tiles for workshops, windmills, and watermills?

 

[cabert]

You're nitpicking.

Am I? I don't think so.
My point is the situation you describe isn't a good example.
HC is agressive, so the barracks are really cheap. It's only the price of 2 quechuas.
Malekithe still gave you generic answer, but i'm pretty sure there is no "long term" thinking in building barracks with HC.

We were arguing about game changing decisions. IMHO this isn't a game changing decision.
You either build 2 more quechuas (6 instead of 4, so you can avoid falling short) or the barracks first for the same cost, and same time frame.

Both maybe equally valid, and none is preventing the short term goals to be achieved (AFAIK).

A game changing situation is one where you decide to go either for teching better later, rather than pushing your advantage now = settling vs lighbulbing.
By lightbulbing you open an opportunity you don't have by settling = a few turns of tech monopoly.
The cost maybe high, since you could gain twice (or more) the beakers by settling the GS + free hammers. But you have an opportunity.

The strategic decision is to take the risk and hope for the reward, or to play it safe, at the price of the opportunity.
Playing safe leads to low scores, taking risks at wrong times leads to losses.

No I'm not picking.

 

[Wodan]

Those aren't the only alternatives and, no, I don't agree that a barracks is guaranteed to increase the likelihood of success. It is possible that the resources and time spent building the barracks could be better spent in either attacking earlier or attacking with more troops.

There's always going to be a battle between risk and reward in the game. Through experience we discover what gambles pay off and which do not. We hedge our bets when neccessary and take risks when we think they are worthwhile.

Hmm. I'll buy all that. What I don't buy is telling a new player that taking less of a risk is exhibiting poor gamesmanship.

Also, these are two "war" strategies (I'll agree with cabert that this was probably a poor choice for an example). It's much more difficult to compare a war strategy with a different strategy (space or culture, etc).

Why should an early conquest get more points than a culture, space, or diplomatic victory?

I'm not even sure an early conquest should get more points than a late conquest, let alone against those others.

Wodan

 

[Wodan]

No I'm not picking.

Your explanation was better, thank you.

(To clarify, by nitpicking I meant you were focused on the example, rather than the conclusions to be drawn from it. It's okay to point out deficiencies in an example, but please also proceed and discuss the conclusions which are the whole point of the example in the first place.)

Wodan

 

[Wodan]

ive always been wondering wat the best tiles were for cottages. now wat would u say r the best tiles for workshops, windmills, and watermills?

I'd say that hills are the best tiles for windmills.
River tiles are the best for watermills.

Grassland tiles are the best for workshops, though sometimes if you have a ton of food resources then a plains tile is good too.

Wodan

 

[cabert]

About scoring, we all agree it's flawed.

What we don't all agree with is what it should be like .
I personally don't play for score.
I play for the surest win in a given situation.
And the surest way is often the quickest (for cultural, i tend to be slower because I keep some research going and some real war capacity), where you have your advantage soon, so that only bad play can take victory away from you.

Sure it's fun to be the underdog sometimes. When I played my first "real" game on warlords, I was in this situation. But I won't put myself in this situation if I have the choice.

Very often I go for random leaders, shuffle maps and look from there.
But sometimes, i want a cultural victory, or a conquest, or ...
Then I select the leader and sometimes the map so that it's not a bad option to go for this preselected victory.
That's not strategy, that's a variant.

 

[Crighton]

On Scoring, Late vs. Early Victory:

I believe part of the scoring is based upon a percieved effeciency in gameplay, making earlier victories worth more in score. The problem as I see it is that early victories are going to be war monger victories, later victories are pretty much everything else, and there is no relative adjusting/indexing in the final score between the various victory options.

Imagine if you will that same percieved efficiency being carried over to the other victory methods, what is the earliest you could acheive a diplomatic victory for example? Personally I believe diplomatic victories to be ridiculously hard (as they should be given it's definition) but since it occurs so late in the game there is a wealth of score that simply is unavailable to the player soley because it can only occur so late in the game.

On Efficient / Sufficient Troop Levels:

It's always something of a gamble when you plan to go skull thumping, how many of what types of troops will I need? etc. A player with great experience will know better than a relative rookie about appropriate troop strength. Regretably the only way to actually get the answer is to put forth the best guess (I'm going with 5 q's instead of 4) then see what the boots on the ground can produce and hope you made the (or at least a) correct choice. Then of course, repeat said tactic until you need to alter it, always looking to do whatever more efficiently.

And slightly less off topic:

I need beer.