I am an incredibly imbalanced player and sometimes i get lost down one of the holes in my knowlege. The worst one is when i give away the initative for a higher income. Initiative means being on the attack and having lots of options for how to direct the game.

http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=6336298 Quite an interesting game, i try a really difficult counter, mostly for fun. I spend the first half of the game with higher income and odin puts a lot of his early income advantage into SA which he doesnt take, so i have the advantage, and then odin clears me in wasted europe. Take a look at turn 9, i have higher income, bigger stack, slightly more safety in CA Vs Ant, and absolutely no idea what to do. As you can see in the game I just deploy all and go face first into ca. it doesnt work out well for me, at the time i surrender i have at best thrown away a strong positional advatnge. The stack in SA just balloons out of control, with no objective, and i fail to use it to achieve any strategy. What has happened is on turn 6 odin chose to sacrifice CA and SA in exchange for safety in europe and canada. I got a bigger income and stacks vs his initiative. in retorpsect i can see taht what i needed to do was mercilessly try to clear odin from sa/ca using guesses and tactics, but in the game i floundered because those are 2 things im really bad at, i refused to see that option. I had no way to predict him because he could go anywhere and do anything, he was not beholden to anything. Im not saying what odin did here was particularly good, he put himself in the position of having to chew through a huge amount of neutrals. But he did gain the initiatve by sacrificing income which is my kryptonite.

http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=6088494 look at the start of turn 9. All game ive had higher income, and i managed to sequester Sze's stack in SA, so i have a great short term advantage, and i used it last turn to take russia (taking higher income in exchange for less initiative). Like last game, bigger income, bigger stacks, and sze has the initiative because he borders me in west russia. I then send a massive stack...towards ant? and start to take...north america? 2 blunders for sure, but i kinda knew that at the time. I was scared to have the game decided by guessing and tactics in russia because i think of myself as bad in those situations. You can see how i misplay, at first being super defensive (an attack of just 2 when i have a stack of 20), then guessing wrong, then going way too strong into one territory and almost not at all into the other.

individually these games illustrate how not to play in certain situations, but taken with a few other games you can see how a fear of my weaknesses has overtaken my desire to improve.

Game 1: The counter didn't even work because you didn't even surprise him. You went into Greenland one turn too early and alerted him of your presence. He would try to take Greenland on turn 4 and you could have simply done a 5v2 from UK. That way he would have wasted more armies and would still be without the bonus. The additional armies should have been used to accumulate a stack to take Ant and possibly fight him if he is in SA.

It didnt work as an ambush, but it did work in the sense taht i have one pick very close to 2 of his bonuses. Looking at the game on the end of turn 6 i dont think you could call my 5th pick a total failure, but I didnt play it out perfectly. its hard to spring an ambush like that one properly, what if he takes iceland with 8? What if he takes it on turn 3?

Anyway that kinda isnt what my post was about.

what if he takes iceland with 8

Why should he? You could've countered via Canada aswell, i don't see why he might have suspected the europe-counter

I didn`t look at the first game, but i looked at the second one.

What really broke your neck there was expanding in africa. This is a 1st class mistake, especially against top players. Instead of being happy that the blockade worked and standing still preparing for szes takedown, you expand into north africa.
You build farms in the hind land with the bricks of your barbarian wall. What did you hope accomplish? Even if your way towards antarctica would have been successful and assuming you would have broken him, what would you have gained?
2 broken bonuses in africa and a marauding army causing headaches against one in antarctica. You couldnt know about sze using the blockade in caucasus, so he could have easily blockaded ant and secured his SA bonus with all the beautifully safe expansion option north.

Strategical mistake --> loss.


Its all about choke points. brazil - nigeria is such a choke point.

Alternative play should have been: Preparing a counter takedown in brazil in a couple of turns.

Youre all right, and the input is always welcome, but the last line is the most important one.

A few comments on game#1:

- Especially in hindsight, I'm not sure if giving up SA was such a good idea. Piggy had lots of possibilities to move in europe with his stack, had he gotten 1st turn there and moved somewhere then it would have been lost right there.
- I got somewhat unlucky with not getting mexico 1st turn. Had I gotten my bonuses earlier, I might have been able to defend SA better.

Game 1:

If you pick a plan to counter, stick with it. Wait one more turn and then hit greenland, if he predicts your counter by some sort of miracle, game is still not over since you have access to scandinavia and he couldn't have prevented your counter and finish 3rd bonus at the same time.

Game 2:

I used funny picks for a casual game, I had a slightly worse luck on leftovers which was significant since I couldn't pressure brasil. In any case I'd say hesitant play in russia was the biggest mistake. Again, I'd say being coherent with general plan is most important, you build a big stack in russia, if it is supposed to give you an advantage you have to use it. If you're not agressive when ahead, position becomes equal.


Another game to analyse:
http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=6386879

A game I wasn't really focused on, I was sure my team won on picks and I was really surprised when I got myself in a really hard position, which eventually was lost. Shows how much timing is important and even when better, you have to be accurate.

Welp, somehow I think I have insight so I guess I'll add my own analysis...

IMO Piggy's biggest mistakes in the first game was (1) playing reckless and (2) getting flustered and making errors in perception. I won't focus on the early turns but rather what happened afterwards.

Turn 7 onward, Piggy should have focused on holding Argentina. But even when Piggy moved his large stack away but still kept the terr... not even defending against Odin's existing stack on turn 10 was a very silly mistake IMO. Count the armies... Piggy's stack in Colombia was already plenty large enough to break CA. I feel like maybe that turn was more emotional than analytical for Piggy and that led to a rookie mistake. And then Piggy wasted a ton of armies trying to "correct" that mistake by crashing into Argentina. All Odin had to do was sit and let Piggy destroy his own stacks. I would have sat and waited for Odin to make a move in SA.

But even after the blockade in CA the worst that happened is that both players are even. Piggy lost advantage but didn't gain a disadvantage, so okay fine, take a deep breath and start playing a 50/50 game. But then Piggy surrenders? Huh?

The first game isn't about "giving away the initative for a higher income." It's about mindgaming yourself to surrender. :P

In the second game, I'm not so sure taking NA was such a terrible move unless you EXPECTED sze to crash through your blockade of 21. In which case why even set the blockade. :P (This is basically what Myhand is saying and I definitely agree with him.) That was more of a "good play" from sze than a "bad play" from Piggy. But this did set up a compounding mistake... why didn't Piggy use a priority card on turn 11 to attack eastern kazakistan from western kazakistan? Surely piggy should expect sze to use one. This mistake only cost Piggy a 50% chance at success but 50% > 0%. I would classify this as another rookie mistake.

So, Piggy, I'd say the best way you could improve in games like these is to, after you know you've made a mistake, *relax*, take a deep breath, and re-analyze the situation from scratch. Your issue isn't so much making mistakes, but rather getting so flustered that you compound the mistakes you already made. It's as if you focus so much on the "high level" of play that you forget the basics.

Following sze's advice does help with the "mental" aspect of the game, certainly. Following a plan leads to mental calmness. :)

Write the damn tutoring porky cook book, will you? :D