This is the forum.

Sven and I had a discussion during one of our recent games that he suggested we share with everyone else. I've copied the discussion from the in-game chat of game 4756 (http://www.takeaplay.net/sup_browse_game.php?game_id=4756), and rearranged the posts into a top down order, but otherwise they're just as we wrote them. If you follow the URL above you'll see that I'm currently getting clobbered, something that was pretty much inevitable from turn 2 and which I though fairly likely as soon as I saw his starting position in Central Africa and mine in Afghanistan.

What does the rest of the community think about defending neutrals?


From BlckKnght to (public) on turn 1 (2009-08-29 6:04:45, that is 2days 14h 30m 3s ago). Subject: Good luck! .
I've not been doing as well in games with defending neutrals lately, but this one should be fun.

From sven3012 to (public) on turn 2 (2009-08-29 8:36:55, that is 2days 11h 57m 53s ago). Subject: and you! .
It seems that on helpless games the key to winning is spreading out thinly very quickly then filling the gaps, but the defending games it's all about getting the 1st 3 population territory as quickly as possible.

From BlckKnght to (public) on turn 2 (2009-08-30 3:25:12, that is 1days 17h 9m 36s ago). Subject: I think you're right .
about the strategies needed for the two kinds of games. I don't like the defending neutrals version as much because I think there's a much greater value to some starting territories (Madigascar, Australia, etc).

And one crummy attack (like mine this past turn) and you may not have a chance to recover before your opponents roll over you. [ed note: My 9 attackers did 3 damage, taking 5 in return.]

From sven3012 to (public) on turn 3 (2009-08-30 10:27:28, that is 1days 10h 7m 20s ago). Subject: Very true .
You can avoid the crummy attack by waiting one turn for the 10 troop attack, but I only do that for multiple player games. For 1v1 I'll usually gamble.
I prefer defending neutrals for lots of players and helpless for 1v1

From BlckKnght to (public) on turn 7 (2009-08-31 9:40:43, that is 10h 54m 5s ago). Subject: Hmm. .
Even for multiplayer games, I think I prefer there to be no defenders. Otherwise it's often easier to fight through another player's territory than to go into neutral areas. Often there's a big fight between players in some small area while another player who had more space around him builds up a monster army and smashes everyone. With no neutrals to get in the way, everyone can at least attempt to spread out early, and if they're bold they can make a few attacks count, turning an enemy's flank rather than smashing through the center.

From sven3012 to (public) on turn 10 (2009-08-31 18:54:48, that is 1h 40m ago). Subject: Maybe. .
I think this could be an insteresting discussion to take to the forum for everyone, but I wonder if people would not discuss for fear of giving away too much of their tctics to the oposition?

Here is something I think we can use if neko can program it in. We can do team tournament if we have these settings in place.

- A setting in AOW called Team games. Instead of saying the usual BBW vs RYG in the description and you never know which team you are in until start; you get to pick your color and team just like the team games in Void Patrol.

- Fixed starting positions for team game. You know where the starting position will be when you create the game. None of these stupid team game starting position that get you surrounded by enemies right off the back.

- A list of starting positions to pick from with a preview map. Experts like BlckKnght and sven3012 among others can decide on where to start to be fair to everyone.

- We can always leave the fully random option as existed for those who like randomness.

BlckKnght wrote:


True, BUT, I suggest the same is true of non defending neutrals. If you look at the game, I will give you an Australia position every time. And I will win most of the time by not having it. Why? because, it's all about spreading quickly, and, when you spread into the center of Australia, you lose TWO moves since you can't get anywhere from the interior, while, the other guy gets two extra moves to spread out quicker for that turn, and later turns. So, the growth becomes overwhelming. Think about it...

sfatula wrote:

I certainly agree that some territories, like Australia, are not as good as others in games with no defenders. I just think the difference between the best starting position and the worst the starting position is much greater in defended games, where it can be obvious from turn one how the game will play out and eventually end. If you look at the game where my discussion with Sven took place as an example, I doubt you can come up with a plausible scenario where my army starting in Afghanistan could out-grow his army starting in Central Africa. I did have some extra bad luck with my first attack which made it effectively impossible to even put up a strong fight, but I don't think there was ever much chance that I would win. By contrast, I think many of the tournament games were won by a player in a weaker starting position.

The analyst in me wants to look at real data though rather than just debating individual cases. That's why I've been gathering info about the starting positions in the 1v1 tournament. Australia, for example has been picked randomly as a starting territory 5 times (in games 4587, 4588, 4600, 4639, and 4684). The first two were wins and the last three were losses. Now, those outcomes will also have to do with the other player's starting territory and how well the different players actually went about playing the games, but a 2-3 record for a starting territory isn't as lopsided as I think you would see if the 1v1 tournament had defending neutrals (where I doubt players starting in Madagascar, Australia or New Guinea would ever lose, except of course to each other).

I'm planning on doing a statistical regression on the results of the tourney games to see how well I can predict the outcome of a game based on the starting territories and the players' rankings. You can see the raw data I've collected so far from the 102 completed games on the third worksheet of the spreadsheet at: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AhKA2D8hkS2adHJLVzVqSUdqMVFzWFRET0ItU2xiR2c&hl=en

Yes, I think statistics are the only way to settle it. I personally think starting position is just as important in non defending neutrals. Another variable in your 2-3 score is which player had Australia, one of the leaders in the tourney, or, one of the weaker? Would need way more data points I suspect!

sfatula wrote:




I think that the non defending neutral game involves far more luck than the defending neutral game. I stopped playing defenseless games for about a year because of this. I realize this is just my own experience but it seems to be far easier to put together long winning streaks with defending neutrals than with defenseless because of the starting position luck factor. It is far easier to overcome a poor starting position with defending neutrals. If you have a poor setup with non defending neutrals you might as well bend over a kiss it good bye because you are done.