Has anyone found some good strategies for Challenge 2?

Yeah I figured out what to do. Works every time although you only really need to do it once.

You put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye. You have no chance to survive. It's a time sink, you beat it by not playing it.

My strategy for the first one:
Don't start in Central America, surrender. Meet opposition early on, surrender. Aren't somewhat stable by turn 15, surrender. One of the two teams is obviously getting dominated and you can't handle the other by yourself, surrender. Surrounded by enemies and have less than 15 income on turn 20, surrender.

Avoid getting into unnecessary fights and stay out of the way of the weaker team. Keep the opposing teams as balanced as possible, build up defense, and expand into the stronger team.

There's so much luck involved it's silly (and annoying). Makes it less about beating it in any given attempt and more about beating it in the shortest amount of time. Which probably requires you to surrender, a lot.

It's hard to know which team is in the lead too sometimes... attack the wrong one and you're probably screwed. The game gets lopsided very easily.
And these bastards don't talk, so unhelpful.

I beat the first challenge in 33 turns on the first time...and it was some good luck cause i started in w russia and just slowly expanded and made sure to attack both teams equally. I did get lucky that they were attacking each other and getting in each other's bonuses. I just moved along to get scan, europe, and caucasus. The hardest part was dealing with asia, that went back and forth several times in the game while I was working on taking africa and holding off greenland. The AI's started to drop 1 on the first team, then 1 on the other team and by the time it was about turn 20 ish, one team was completely gone. Then it was just working them down by getting into their bonuses.

I wish i could chat with them and tell them to surrender cause it took me an extra 6-8 turns to take them completely out after i knew i was gonna win.

The second challenge....is quite impossible...but i guess its some feat if someone beats it.

I wish on that second challenge, we could invite a partner and try and do 2v6.

the start must help, i thought level 2 was very easy? got shit kicked outta nowhere on level 3

i beat level 1 in 15 turns and level 2 in 18

lol i thought you were talking about levels i hadnt got to the challenges lol. i thought you were better than that!

I beat each of the 3 levels on my first try and I wasn't particularly trying to beat them in as few turns as possible, just quickly. Did levels 1/2/3 in 7/16/33 turns respectively. When I beat challenge 1 it was in 37 turns. As far as I can tell Challenge 2 is Randy's way of asking the Warlight community if there are any deep flaws with his AI that can be heavily exploited to gain victory. Which from what I've seen is not the case. His earlier 'AI' on the test server was quite simplistic and exploitable even when it had lots more income.

The new AI does not appear to be anywhere near that dumb, although with teammates it does occasionally have trouble taking a bonus when a teammate occupies a territory in the zone. This will not help you win in challenge 2 though. The starting positions and thus AI are fairly consistent prior to contact with you. I'm not totally prepared to say it's IMPOSSIBLE, however out of curiosity I investigated a bit and will give you an idea of just how unlikely it is. I'm not totally prepared because I didn't investigate what would happen if the AI had perfectly bad luck.

After about 8 turns the AI's, which is about when you'll probably run into AI Australia, will probably have somewhere between 83 and 95 combined income, plus cards. AI Australia will come at you through East Russia and has 16 income most likely. AI China is probably landlocked with its 9 to 15 income. Your likely income at this point if you've had pretty good luck is 46 (most of the time you'll have less). If you had perfect luck and planned for it (and it's worse odds than 1 in a billion, requires taking lots of 2s with 2s without any getting killed, doing it once alone is less than 1% odds) you'd have 69 (69/278). At this point they've likely acquired somewhere of the magnitude 500 armies during the course of the game to your at most ~278 (and likely 170-195 with good to pretty good luck). I didn't bother to check what would happen if the AI had perfectly bad luck (loses max, kills least possible every time), but given that with pretty good luck you're 46/195 (or 69/278 perfect luck) to the AI with bad luck at 83/568 (income/armies deployed) you can see just how 'difficult' and 'not happening' it is.

That was a very good breakdown of how you can get your ass kicked by the AI. I can't wait to get AI into multiplayer, that would loads of fun.

btw, levels 1/2/3 in 7/14/21 and Challenge 1 in 33.

edit: lvl 1 is now down to 6 turns

Note: Challenge level 2 was changed today, 9/5/2009. The discussion above relates to the "old version."

I'm curious to read everyone's feedback on the new Challenge 2 - give it a shot!

I became convinced the original version of challenge 2 was impossible. My last attempt to defeat it was to envelop myself inside of AI Australia, maintaining a buffer of at least 1 territory between myself and all other AI’s, and expanding with AI Australia’s expansion. This worked well until the other AI’s ran out of neutrals to feed upon, and then they began to transfer units to AI Australia rather efficiently.

I believe it is possible to win version 2 of challenge 2. Here is a unit income list from my first attempt at winning version 2. I apologize if the formatting is off.

turns -> 9 10 11 12 13 14
my income* 41 50 55 61 67 61
adjacent ai deployment* 28 43 44 63 55 63
total ai income** 85 95 91 91 95 95

turns -> 15 16 17 18 19 20
my income 61 67 70 59 74 76
adjacent ai deployment 55 64 54 57 61 72
total ai income 92 92 92 91 95 90

turns -> 21 22 23
my income 70 79 64
adjacent ai deployment 79 73 60
total ai income 103 99 103

• includes reinforcement cards
  ** does not include reinforcement cards

I abandoned Svalbard S on turn 9 with 5 units. On turn 19 it was taken by a force of 40. I recaptured Svalbard S on turn 21, but Norway S held 163 enemy units, and I could not stop this force. My cumulative luck was -8 on turn 23, and one AI had a lower cumulative luck of -12. For all but the last two turns I had the lowest cumulative luck.

At turn 17 the AI’s still have territory disputes in East Russia, West China, South America, and Europe. By turn 20 all of these are resolved.
AI 1, which starts in Malaysia S, gains all reinforcement cards.
AI 3, which starts in Eastern Kazakhstan S, can be blocked by the abandon in Svalbard S.
AI 4, which starts in Shanghai S, does not make it out of East China S.
AI 6, which starts in Anadyr S, can be kept at an income of 5.

happy hunting

haha, I like your strategy for getting inside the AI. It does prefer to expand as long as it still sees neutral bonuses to expand to.

Im about to give up on level 2 lol.But then again i was about to give up on level one then i beat it in 32 turns (pretty easily).

I'm not sure version 2 is possible either, but I haven't given up trying yet. On my last attempt (~5th real attempt) my income maxed at 77 (without card) on turn 17. The AI had a total of 101 (+2 card pieces) income that turn. I failed to abandon Svalbard S this game. But I did manage to kill AI Africa. I died on turn 35. My cumulative luck on turn 15 was -7.8, the same as AI 1's (Indonesia). So we tied for lowest at that point. The next lowest was AI 2 (Africa) at -1.6. The highest on turn 15 was AI 3 (Caucasus) at 2.9. On turn 15 the AIs had 382 more armies than me. 83 more on turn 5 and 228 more on turn 10.

Anyone else done any better?

Beta phase 10.1:
"Challenge 2 tweaked again: One fewer AI, adjusted starts and abandon card multipler increased slightly."
Guess we're on to version 3 already.

Specific changes:
One less army on each starting spot at beginning
Abandon card increased to 500% from 400%
AI Indonesia (formerly AI 1) removed
AI Caucasus starting position moved from Eastern Kazakhstan to Georgia
AI Caucasus is now AI 1 and uses the reinforcement cards

Are you just going to keep changing it every time no one beats it within a week?

I have no plans to change it any further now. This latest version has been tested much more than the previous two were, and I'm much happier with its level of difficulty. I'll continue to monitor it to see if it needs to be tweaked further, however it won't change anytime soon.

Your list of specific changes is accurate.

I've tried out the previous ones and they have seemed impossible. I just gave this one a first try and I think this may be realistic now. Of course I'll have to play around with it a bit more.

Does the AI ever use Abandon cards, by the way? I haven't seen it yet.