I like your model Norman. I think that it is oversimplified tho in the sense that it completely ignores that we could do other things as well. Like if we expand heavily and Rufus goes for the Venezuela gamble he will suddenly fall from advantage to disadvantage. He has no reason to do so, he is trying to avoid all possible scenarios where he could lose his advantage. Having "just" a 50% chance of winning the game in this turn is good enough, if he avoids so much risk with it.

@Farah could you give Rufus a different color than blue next time?

Rufus will only make the predict to hit Venezuela if he evaluates it costs him little or that he needs to make it in order to win the game. I have a hard time justifying either evaluation, for the following reasons:

1) Brazil has a 50% chance of countering Venezuela move anyways

2) Even if everything goes perfectly for us, Rufus has options to make the momentum back.

Like, is everyone just ignoring the fact that from his point of view we could also have 13-14 income (13 far more probable with WR/CR) + Rcard and that we could feasibly stack it all in Brazil and hit Venezuela? Hit Brazil with 22 is not really a win, but it is solid for him, it gives something like 9 in Colombia vs our 4-5 in Venezuela. Miss is a proper headache for him as it's 21 in Brazil vs 17-18 in Venezuela.

Contrast that with Venezuela hits : hit first and he bounces us back to Brazil 6 vs his 9-10 Venezuela, and we are not bordering his income. Hit last and he has 11 Colombia vs 4-5 in Venezuela. Former being significant upgrade on a miss, latter a slight upgrade on a hit.

Now granted, if he picked SCA before EC, he will likely know what we have exactly, as WR is far more natural companion pick to SCA than either CR or CAU -and- it would be perfectly safe for him to assume we are completing bonus this turn because otherwise we just fall behind on income. But if he didn't, than he doesn't know our exact income or how close we are to completing 3rd bonus. Than the 20 stack in Brazil becomes a viable option for us and hence, the Schrödinger's Rufus.

Finally, say he did pick SCA as his 3rd, he does know our income and +5 bonus aspirations and he calculates exactly what we are going to do and he still wants to first hit our 15 in Brazil in order to eliminate us there and not prolong the game. What makes more sense, 22 or 25 hit?

The world voted for option 1!

Here's the board after the moves:



Rufus is now another color, as per request.
Here's what happened:

The World plays a reinforcement card for 5 armies
The World deploys 13 to Brazil
Rufus deploys 17 to Colombia
The World deploys 3 to Eastern Kazakhstan
The World deploys 3 to Western Kazakhstan
The World takes Venezuela with 14v3. The World loses 1 army
Rufus takes Brazil with 21v1 and loses 1 army
The transfers happen in the Russias
The world takes Caucasus; the 2v1 from Western Kazakhstan resulted in no armies killed for The World.
Furthermore, The World gets perfect leftovers when taking Kyrgyzstan and loses one taking Tadschikistan.

Expect a new thread soon!

Edited 9/8/2020 21:23:21

Just how we drew it up. Looking forward to what the committee puts forth for the next turn.

Alright, so with 17 out of the expected 21 income of Rufus being visible, Rufus has deployed 4 armies in the background. As I have pointed out in the previous thread, we have to watch Rufus' deployment this turn:
- If 4 armies are missing, Rufus might either move from the South (Hong Kong --> Tibet) or from the north (Beijing --> Inner Mongolia)
- If only 3 armies are missing Rufus moves from the South (Hong Kong --> Tibet)

Those 4 missing armies sadly don't give us any direct information. However I expect Rufus to show up in Xinjang now instead of coming from the north. The other question is also with how big of a stack Rufus will show up.

I also just realised that my matrix from above was a bit off. My assumption that Rufus getting first order would lead to him pretty much winning in 100% of the cases was based on him breaking us + in the same time him moving to Russia. However Rufus wasn't able to break us but just to give us a good hit.

Edited 9/8/2020 22:05:03

I stand corrected, a 21 hit happened and that's interesting. I'd say it's now certain Rufus knows our exact income and position. Yeah, stack.

We'd like to invite the community to think along with us.

We need to answer two questions:
1) Where did the missing 4 deploys go?
2) What can Rufus play?

To give a quick overview of the discussion I had with AI and Quicksilver:

1a) The leftovers went to West China. This could either be Tibet or Inner Mongolia. We suspect Inner Mongolia in this case, as we miss 4 deploys, and Rufus' leftovers were not in Bejing.

1b) Rufus took Israel with some spare deploys earlier and just moved to Turkey. This option seems unappealing to me, as the most likely scenario would be Rufus taking Israel with a 3v2 while taking Columbia with 6v2. Why not take Columbia with less and guarantee Israel? Of course we can not see behind the fog, and it might be possible for him to have done a 4v2. Keep in mind however that it's impossible to use the leftovers from Kenya in East Africa

1c) Rufus took Chad. While unlikely, with us having Brazil, it could be predicted that we flank in Brazil, thereby securing West Africa.



Now here is where it gets interesting. If we were to full deploy against CA, we break it, guaranteed. Even if Rufus thinks we have CR instead of Caucasus.

2a) Rufus doesn't defend CA. Instead, he delays, moves part of his stack from Brazil to West Africa and blockades Brazil. While doing this, he moves towards us from either China or Middle East.

2b) Rufus smashes our stack first move with all but two armies and tries to eliminate us in SA.

2c) Rufus lets us break CA but takes SA after

2d) If Rufus has taken turkey, we should see a stack in Iran this turn. Him losing CA is no problem if he can break Caucasus next turn.

What do you think?

Edited 9/10/2020 09:49:17

@Farah:
I believe I can narrow it down by showing that the Israel scenario isn't realistic. Here is a best case scenario for Rufus:

- Turn 1: Rufus deploys full in East Africa and moves both in Central America + East China. All with perfect leftovers of course.

- Turn 2: Rufus needs 4 income in East Africa. He ends up again with the perfect 3 leftovers in Egypt. He also deploys 1 to Mexico so he has 3 armies there now.

Turn 3: Rufus needs 3 income to continue East China. In order to take Central America with 4v2 attacks he needs his remaining 6 income there. This leaves 0 income to add to his 3 armies in Egypt.

So this is how Rufus moved to Israel instead in turn 3:
--> Rufus had perfect leftovers all along.
--> Rufus only takes Baja (Central America) with a 3v2 attack. He also takes Israel only with a 3v2 attack. He will neither take Shanghai nor Panama with a 3v2 attack.

And then besides this calculation, Rufus attacking us via Africa didn't make very much sense in the first place. The most straightforward way to attack us is via China.


Edit: I just realiced that scenario 1b) actually assumed Rufus taking Israel 1 turn later than I have calculated as unrealistic...

However I still believe that my calculation helps. Turn 4 Rufus needed at min 4 deployment for South America and 6 deployment to safely take China. With this he could add 2 armies to Egypt and continue to Israel with a 4v2 attack. Again this is always assuming perfect leftovers without there being room for any bad luck. The only wiggle room I see is if Rufus did some 3v2 expansion steps.

Edited 9/10/2020 16:12:05

Since my wall of text in the previous post is probably pretty repulsive, I have just created a custom scenario in order to show how the Israel scenario could have played out.
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=23889038

As you can see, there was no room for any bad luck which is quite unlikely to happen. This scenario also doesn't really fit with Rufus not showing 4 income last turn.

Edited 9/10/2020 16:34:28

thanks norman, pretty helpful

seems like he would need pretty good luck to go for Israel Turn 4

Don't see why he'd be doing anything but going through China. Everything else is just horribly slow and inefficient.
Then again, I really didn't see things playing out as they did last turn, so...

I said that Rufus probably went through the south part of China however thinking about it, I believe that the chances are bigger that he is coming from the north. Coming from the south is pretty bad for him if we are in Central Russia instead of Caucasus. Also I believe that Central Russia was our more obvious expansion choice, if we weren't so "paranoid" about the Middle East.

What I don't like about this turn is that now there are order delay cards in play. Without the cards we should be able to easily outdelay Rufus and I don't like wasting a card. Without calculating anything, I'd say we deploy full in South America, play the order delay card, outdelay him and then hit him everywhere where we see him. Something like 4 armies Central America, 2 or 3 armies Colombia and the rest to Brazil. If I was wrong and Rufus is coming from the south of China, he has to invest quite some armies to break the +4. Also no matter the direction, Rufus probably would prefer to show up with a stack

Edited 9/10/2020 18:56:07

outdelay him and then hit him everywhere where we see him.

This is usually good advice how to lose a game, we should have some idea what we actually want to achieve with our attacks, otherwise we will just have be vulnerable with our small attacks.

Rufus will beet the world

This is usually good advice how to lose a game, we should have some idea what we actually want to achieve with our attacks, otherwise we will just have be vulnerable with our small attacks.

@AI: I said I haven't calculated it through, not that I haven't put any thoughts into it:

- If Rufus hits us strong from Brazil, we just break Central America and our other orders don't get executed.
- If Rufus tries to outplay us by taking South America, he pretty much loses the game.
- If Rufus (for some reason) defends Central America, he will most likely attack us with 2 smaller stacks and lose the game.

Of course "lose the game" is a pretty absolute statement, however we could certainly bring Rufus to the edge of defeat.

If our small attacks succeed / partially succeed this puts pressure on Rufus next turn while releaving pressure from us. In total this is an enormous pressure swing. Right when Rufus want's to break us, he is risking getting beaten in South America. South America is a "pressure" region. We don't want to have an enormous amount of pressure there while simultaneously having Rufus show up at our doorstep from China.

The fact that Rufus is (most likely) moving towards us increases the chances that he will try for some fancy play in South America next turn.

Edited 9/10/2020 19:14:00

Late retake of South America or blockading Brazil + stack in China seem likelier to me than slamming us in Venezuela.

Late retake of South America or blockading Brazil + stack in China seem likelier to me than slamming us in Venezuela.

I haven't thought about the option of Rufus moving his stack to Africa and blockading Brazil. At first glance this option seems completely nonsense. At second glance that option still looks crazy but then again it could also turn out to be crazy smart instead of crazy stupid. Thinking about it, Rufus could even both try to take over South America while moving his main stack to Africa. However this might then again be just crazy stupid...

Anyhow, those options are just another reason to go berserk now and hit Rufus everywhere. I'm not asking anyone to vote for the "berserk" option, I'm only asking to get that voting option.

Edited 9/10/2020 20:27:52

I think we can probably think that Rufus will send most of his armies towards us in Asia/Iran - whereever he's moving towards us.

That's the winning play - break us in asia and then it should be gg. So, given that - blockading Brazil and taking West Africa with his stack in Brazil is a smart complementary play.