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strategery
empath wrote
at 4:55 PM, Wednesday December 6, 2006 EST
Strategy:

Early Game(turns 1-4)

Goal: get a good position, and try to make it to the mid game with 6-8 connected countries and no 'islands'

Tactics:

Get Connected. Do anything you can to connect up all your countries, even if that means taking risks. If you're in the midgame with only 2 or 3 connected countries, you're cooked.

Get position: Go for a peninsula first, then a corner, then an edge.

Attack every country where you have the advantage. Take chances. The only exceptions is if there is a large stack near you that will reak havoc if you leave yourself undefended. Losing one or two countries on the counter attack is fine, 5 or 6 is disastrous.

If you have any singletons that aren't connected, just attack suicidally with them. You're better off not having them. The only exception to this is if it's got 7 or 8 dice on it. Just let it fill up and then it's not sucking away dice from where they're needed. If you can make a mad dash to connect up with the rest of you countries later, go for it, otherwise, ignore it.

Mid-game:

Goal: Turtling-- you're goal is to have 8 countries with 8 armies each by the end of this phase. 6 is probably enough to end with positive points.

This is the turtling phase. Play defensively. Only attack if you have the advantage and the new border will be surrounded by smaller stacks. Otherwise, just end-turn, end-turn, end turn.

End game:

Goal: This phase starts when somebody has 8*8. If that's you, congratulations, you're almost guaranteed points. If it's not you, you're playing for second. The strategy now is to attack when you have enough dice in reserve to completely refill. There's a bit more to it here, but i already typed all this out once and it ate my post so i'm not going to do it again.. others can elaborate if they want.

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Buton wrote
at 5:08 PM, Wednesday December 6, 2006 EST
That's not a bad write-up but I have a few additional insights:

Early Game:

If you get a big stack somewhere, USE IT! In the early game, killing off someone's 4 stack is a big loss. That 5+ stack of yours sitting on your border is a very good offensive tool. I personally call this "neutering" someone. A player may have 7 territories, 5 of which have 1-2 dice and the last two with 4 stacks on them. If I kill off one of those 4 stacks, his offensive capabilities are severely cut.
Taking new territory in the early game is extremely important, but always justify to yourself why you're taking a territory; you may have a 3 stack that can take a 2 and a 1 territory but if those two territories aren't all that connected to your main territories, chances are there's a player nearby with a large stack who can now make a series of attacks and sweep up your new territories. General rule, if a player has a large stack, always keep a "buffer" between it and any of your stacks (if possible).

Mid-Game:
What position are you in? If you're the leader in number of territories, follow empath's rule of stacking up. If you're still strugling with another player to stake out your borders, keep at it and take chances (even stack attacks).

End-Game:
If you're not first, you should be attacking the top ranked player. This is not how most people play the game. It's sad. Empath said most of it really.

Buton
Buton wrote
at 5:09 PM, Wednesday December 6, 2006 EST
Oh and BTW you only need 7 countries with 8 stacks on them to do keep a full 8 stack attack going.

Buton
empath wrote
at 5:11 PM, Wednesday December 6, 2006 EST
yeah, i didn't mean to imply that my strategy is the best or even the one i'm using all the time. just something to get the conversation started.
empath wrote
at 5:14 PM, Wednesday December 6, 2006 EST
oh, one other note. If another player has any singletons on the board in the mid game do NOT attack them, unless you have a reason for it. It'll just drain useful dice from their main landmass and prevent them from filling up with dice.
Measure wrote
at 5:16 PM, Wednesday December 6, 2006 EST
If you have the first turn: be very conservative.

If you spread yourself too thin, there's a lot of people between you and your second turn.

So if I'm first, I attack only if I have the advantage, and Only if said attack will join two of my territories.

Then I sit, even if there are more possible attacks. The large stacks are going to be more valuable than having more territory through the first round.

On your second turn and after, follow empath's advice.
Buton wrote
at 5:20 PM, Wednesday December 6, 2006 EST
Empath, I'm not saying that was bad at all. I was just adding some of my thoughts ;P I think you got most of it spot on (in my opinion). Everyone plays differently though. However, the biggest asset to anyone's strategy, is a VERY good sense of how the game is unfolding. Think of it as chess, try and think ahead, "what's blue going to do if this happens? What about this?" That sense is what distinguishes good/excellent players.

Buton
stay_dead wrote
at 6:42 PM, Wednesday December 6, 2006 EST
Something that's not really a strategy.. When playing a game and people leave leaving their players stranded, if it doesn't make any strategic difference take out the non-players first before going after the active players that are obviously done for. That way it rewards people for staying in the game rather than awarding points to people who left after 3 turns.

Either that or you could even incorporate that into the scoring.. so even if someone ended up in 5th, but 2 people left and had their single territory sit there for the whole game, that person gets a 3rd place rating.
joby.d wrote
at 11:04 PM, Wednesday December 6, 2006 EST
Hello all, I don't play on the higher rated boards so might have sucky strategies but I *know* I was spreading myself out way too much so I have some altered strategies now.

---

There are times when you will obviously have a better chance of winning with just one territory in the first turn then trying to get 6-8. This is when it's obviously suicidal to attack any territories so ultimately you'll just be reducing your biggest stack.

This is similar to my second tactic, I now only use my big stack half the time and that's only if there's large ones next to me that are obviously better off attacking me. *if you have the biggest stack on the board people usually try to leave you alone* If you have a crappy spread but with an 8stack while everyone else has a 4 they'll leave you alone and you can build up your 1s. Of course this advice is useless against better players because everyone else will have a 6stack or higher pretty early on. But if by not using your 7stack you get a chance to kill their 6 then that can be the difference between 1st and 7th right there.

---

Half the time I go against your kamikaze singleton approach. If it starts off at three and you kamikaze it and it rebuilds up to three again at the end of your turn then you just wasted five dice. If there's no rush to build up my main army then why sacrifice dice that I can later use as a "surprise" attack. The maximum "wasted" dice that can be added to it is 7, this usually isn't enough to screw you over in most games. Of course if it's too hard to connect or obviously going to die then get rid of it asap. But an 8stack singleton can easily kill 10-20 of your opponent's dice if you time it right.
Another point: Instead of connecting asap I am finding myself taking one turn if islands are one territory apart, two if two apart, three if three apart and so on. So if your singleton is five territories away ask yourself if you think you can connect to it within five turns (adjust this strategy as experience dictates).

The reason it takes me longer to connect is I'm thinking about if my attacks are long term suicide. If you leave two 1stacks connected everyone will see your weakness and move in to attack you, you shall lose more dice than you could've gained. But if you're expanding your radius unit at a time then every territory shall be left with two defenders.

---

Obviously you want to take as much territory as you can but *even though it looks like a good move, always check to see if there's a better move* before killing their singletons. Keep in mind that other experienced people shall use the kamikaze strategy. So instead of considering their singleton to be a threat just wait it out and kill it since your guys shall build up faster. If they are winning the game and you weaken your own position by killing their singleton you're also just helping them build up their main army faster!

And to end this rambling, consider where your opponents shall try to go and block them off such that it's suicidal for them to advance in your direction. If successful this alone can get you 1st place because you get bigger and no one wants to attack you. If you can separate your opponents contingent territories then you shall likely only have one threat left. Hack away at them until no one can oppose you.

---

Miscellaneous:
If against new players then they shall either be too aggressive or too passive. Either way try to surround them and wait to take them over as the timing is appropriate.
Abuse away players by taking cover behind them ;)

I'm usually willing to play for second so most times I end up choosing a player that it looks like would be suicide to attack at every point of the game, leave them alone, create an opening for them and then hope they return the favour.

If you've won the game with four people left and are deciding who to get rid of first it seems to me the best ways are either kill the fourth guy if he was doomed but tried to screw over the second and third players chances of winning (because don't want to encourage boring games). Or just use eeny, meeny, miny, moe with the same reasoning. That being said if someone helped me win the game and didn't attack my main army I pretty much always leave them alone until the end.

Hope this is helpful to someone, all the best!
algios wrote
at 10:30 PM, Tuesday December 19, 2006 EST
You can only have 32 extra-dice so make sure to have some in the late phase. otherwise you wouldbe vulnerable to a large attack splitting you.

In that phase nothing is worse than to be split. In that case your tactacal decision is limited to: reunite.
Silvercobra wrote
at 12:21 PM, Wednesday December 20, 2006 EST
Adding a little strategy. (also worth keeping this post near the top)

When you have 6/7/8 territories and your 'turtling' (love that word) u basically want to fill up everything with dice and most importantly get a few extras.

This is the little plus that is next to the amount of dice you have.

Essentially the game is not to attack unless you have enough reserves to fill up everything at the end of your turn.

So if you have 7 territories and +7 reserves then you can afford to attack twice.

If you dont have enough, just sit tight. Rememember you are stronger defending!

OF course if someone has more territories then you he can attack more often then you can... and win thereby.

But thats the game..
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