Semicedevine is mostly right. All you had to do, Billy, was start with the bonus in East China (deploy all 5 there to start) and not move ANYTHING else on the first turn. Then, on turn two, you see him pop up both in central russia and mexico, so you can deploy armies to both Venezuela or UFA and attack the spots that he just took over. Early in the game, dont invade opponents territories on the FIRST move unless it is to break a FTB, and always complete a bonus by turn 2.
Need to improve in games where battle starts early: 4/27/2016 16:47:14
Patiently take US bonus in 2 turns, and based on intel you could try countering russia last move on turn 2 or waiting one turn and playing 10 vs 9 income.
Need to improve in games where battle starts early: 4/28/2016 11:19:00
That's not the point. In case you aren't trolling: Some players are laughing cause you implied over and over again that you might be the best player and now you ask for advices on basic stuff. Pretty ironical
Need to improve in games where battle starts early: 4/28/2016 14:50:22
Billy Walsh is an old school player where 16% luck weighted random was common. As stuff switched to no luck I also had to pull out my calculator to see what my new options are. Also the question about how to play with immediate opponent contact is valid.
Need to improve in games where battle starts early: 4/28/2016 15:37:24
The amount of games I played on 16% WR and 0% WR there were only a handful that I could say: Yeah, I or my opponent lost straight up because 3v2 luck. Most of those scenarios involved missing an FTB. 2 of them involved taking a 2-turn 5 from 1 warlord. Whenever I see someone not named Timinator complain of 3v2 luck on that ladder (He has awful 3v2 luck, but never publicly complained about it), it's an easy indicator of someone who lacks fundamental understanding of the template.
Edited 4/28/2016 16:20:06
Need to improve in games where battle starts early: 4/28/2016 16:35:13
2*0.7 = 1.4 so with 0% luck weighted random you had a 40% chance that 2 neutrals kill 2. This means if you start out with 3 completely safe 4v2 attacks you already have a 6.4% chance that you lose 3 additional armies compared to your lucky opponent. Since in my scenario this luck happened first turn it has a huge impact. You could argue now that let's say 80% is still skill and I won't necesarily disagree however when playing for example a single elimination tournament you win 6 games due to superior skill and then then 7th guy gets dirty lucky and you fail to recover.
Edit: I just thought about it and came to the conclusion that on the 1v1 ladder luck should have been the most dominant factor. Reason is that the ladder pairs players up with equally capable players. If I have time I will look into the WarLight API and see if it's possible to extract the needed data. What I'm interested is the win chance of players who got more lucky than their opponent during the first... two turns.