Welcome to turn 8 of Rufus versus The World. For reference, this is how the board looks right now:



As a recap, here's what happened last turn:

The world plays OP Card
The world deploys 2 to Kyrgyzstan
Rufus deploys 16 to Xinjiang
The world deploys 15 to Tadschikistan

Orders:
The world took Venezuela from Cuba with 9 armies
Rufus took Kyrgyzstan from Yinjiang with 19
Rufus transfered 2 to Brazil from Colombia
The world transfered 1 to Eastern Kazakhstan from Ufa


Today, we bring you three options to choose from. They are as follows:

Option 1: Take back Caucasus with FO attack

Deploy 12 to Tadschikistan
28 armies from Tadschikistan will attack/transfer Kyrgyzstan
6 armies from Cuba will transfer to Venezuela
5 armies from Eastern Kazakhstan will attack/transfer Kyrgyzstan
2 armies from Tomsk will attack/transfer Xinjiang

Option 2: Predict an attack in Caucasus and sneakily take it back

Deploy 12 to Eastern Kazakhstan
16 armies from Tadschikistan will transfer to Eastern Kazakhstan
6 armies from Cuba will transfer to Venezuela
3% armies from Eastern Kazakhstan will transfer to Tadschikistan
4% armies from Eastern Kazakhstan will attack/transfer Ufa
4% armies from Eastern Kazakhstan will attack/transfer Western Kazakhstan
4% armies from Eastern Kazakhstan will attack/transfer Turkmenistan
5% armies from Eastern Kazakhstan will transfer to Tomsk
2 armies from Tomsk will attack/transfer Xinjiang
100% armies from Eastern Kazakhstan will attack/transfer Kyrgyzstan

Option 3: Fight in America and move towards his EC bonus

Deploy 12 to Venezuela
4 armies from Cuba will transfer to Venezuela
16 armies from Tadschikistan will attack/transfer Xinjiang
2 armies from Tomsk will attack/transfer Xinjiang
2 armies from Cuba will attack/transfer Mexico
12 armies from Venezuela will attack/transfer Brazil
Blockade Eastern Kazakhstan

You may submit your vote by posting on this thread, or, if you'd rather vote anonymously, mail Farah.
Voting ends three days after this post... well honestly just whenever Farah feels like it.

If you want to see the board on picks, check out the game here: https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=22959869

To check the previous threads, refer to these links:
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/433434-rufus-vs-world-picks
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/436073-rufus-vs-world-turn-1
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/437146-rufus-vs-world-turn-2
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/441344-rufus-versus-world-turn-3
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/442264-rufus-versus-world-turn-4
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/447175-rufus-versus-world-turn-5
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/463579-rufus-versus-world-turn-6
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/466579-rufus-versus-world-turn-7

Edited 10/20/2020 20:12:16

rufus will win

2, tentatively

will edit to whatever Norman picks once he posts his analysis

If you see this message when tallying votes, and Norman's already posted his analysis, please just change my vote to whatever Norman went with

Edited 10/21/2020 00:19:12

I vote surrender.

If that's not allowed, 2.

Do the god old surrenderboot

will edit to whatever Norman picks once he posts his analysis

Uhm, thanks. However it's best to vote for the soundest reasoning.


Here my thoughts before looking at the options:
Rufus's last turn was IMO on the one hand very risky in Russia however too passive in South America. I believe that he played his order prio card in Russia. If he else would have run into our deployments + armies floating around he would have pretty much immediately lost the game since we would have been able to also break him in China then.

Whether Rufus has an order priority card is pretty important here since it will determine how likely it is for Rufus to move his stack towards West Russia. I'd like to assume here that Rufus does not have an order priority card, and that he will sit put in Caucasus while deploying enough there in order to not only not get eliminated but also not get a bad fight. With the remaining armies he will probably try some stuff in America. If Rufus plays it like I expect him to play, I'd like us to blockade Eastern Kazakhstan and move towards East China while deploying heavily in America in order to achieve something there / preventing Rufus from achieving stuff there.

That being said this is just a guess how Rufus will play it. It's just my thoughts that at this point of the game we will have to determine the most likely play of Rufus and play a precise counter for that moveset. It's all or nothing.

Now to the options:
Option 2 and 3 follow a sound thought process predicting a different moveset from Rufus. I'm cool with both of them however I just don't believe that option 2 will work out according to how I expect Rufus to play it. If option 2 would work this would make Rufus look like a fool.

Option 1 is more difficult to judge whether there might be a fundamental mistake with this moveset. We are assuming here basically that Rufus deploys nothing in Russia but all in America. If Rufus plays it like this I believe he will just sit in Russia so we wouldn't need to waste the first order for the Russia attack. The problem I see here is mainly that if we are right and Rufus completely focuses on America we might indeed manage to eliminate Rufus from Caucasus but still lose the game due to us completely getting whiped from America. IMO option 1 would be votable if we first move to Venezuela and also leave 2 armies behind in Tadchikistan as we hit Rufus from there so Rufus can't just sneak back the break from China.

I vote option 3. However this time I believe that one of those options is our ticket to get back into the game. Option 2 and especially option 1 look a bit questionable for me but IMO are still sound choices. Surrendering is prematurely here. We are down 1 income and have a a positional disadvantage but have an armies advantage. If we guess Rufus' next move correctly we can get at minimum a positional advantage. Sneaking back Caucasus especially without getting anihilated from America seems a bit stretched for me.

Edited 10/21/2020 23:06:27

I agree with all of Norman's analysis. I also think the whole idea of option 1 is flawed in itself. Option 2 is too unlikely to actually work in my opinion and would require some serious mistakes by Rufus. Playing for mistakes is a good idea I think in our position but this is a mistake he will not make imo. Option 3 can work, hoping that Rufus plays too safe and allows us to get the blockade through. If it doesn't, we lose, but this is the kind of mistake that I think Rufus could make.

I vote option 3

With no option to surrender , option 3 I guess? Nothing is ideal here and I think we are losing now either way,but this still seems most likely to work.

Regarding surrendering: For me the surrender condition is something in the line of the opponent being able to tell you all his moves in chat but you still can't find an appropriate response. If we knew about Rufus still having + playing his order priority card we might should be thinking about surrendering since it's hard for me to think of a way of us winning the game if Rufus moves towards West Russia. However with our current intel for all of Rufus' possible moves there seems to be an adequate response so we aren't yet out of the game. The only possible move from Rufus which we don't seem to be countering is Rufus strongly moving towards West Russia with an order delay card however also such a moveset is counterable.