Qi sometimes plays 3v3 europe by not taking (m)any bonuses and just building a fat stack and womping it all around (usually) the centre. Its pretty cool. The best thing about it is he is not obliged to defend a bonus[1]. Players wilt under the pressure of trying to guess his moves and do stupid things, they also cant see a way to dictate his moves to him. In 1v1 that isnt a workable strategy, the board is less crowded. When you start out you soon learn that the one with the highest income wins. When youre not sure what to do then you take a bonus. As you start to progress from being an okay player to a good one you realise that at a certain income level more bonuses stop being useful. After about 30 income then taking bonuses is less efficient than breaking the enemies. The better you are the lower the income threshold gets. By the time youre on a level with gnuffone you start to consider circumstances where breaking the enemy is more efficient than taking even one bonus! The biggest thing that sets top players apart is their insistence on not being the player who is defending. So if you want to jumpstart the process of playing like a better player (than yourself) then anytime you instinctively start to take a bonus challenge yourself instead to start an attack. I find that taking all of my starting bonuses while getting into position to attack and then going for the jugular on turn 6 about right.

[1]He does have to defend his stack. If his stack bashes into another one, even if he kills more than he loses, then another player with income 8 can come in and push him around. players dont know that so to them he seems impossible to pin down.

Edited 7/20/2014 11:42:58

tl;dr: he who has initiative controls the game?

long story short, you're just saying that good players have realized that WL is a sum 0 game :)

To add to this I will say that attacking is easier than defending. Also there is a psychological advantage to be gained from being the aggressor.

tl;dr of Piggy's post: bonuses are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

i believe that using armies efficiently is more important than getting bonuses. maybe Qi has 5 income but every turn he kills more armies than he lost. he is very good at this and he can show you tons of games he won which his enemy has more income until turn 10 maybe. this is only one of tactics he uses when he needs to use it!!! not every time.

Qi is one of old players in warlight. very experienced. he has lots of tactics and skills. his picking and playing style depends on what he needs. sometimes he uses big stack of armies and go directly into enemy's bonuses, sometimes he attacks with small armies and attacks neutrals which are next to enemy's bonuses. he changes the way of enemy's big stack etc.

i see this new generation is playing with calculations. but old players know this is a war game. they play with war tactics and they believe that is more important. when they play seriously you can find lots of reasons behind their every moves. most of players in new generation speak after they win game and create reasons about how they won. but old guys like Qi knows what will happen in minimum next 3 turns. sadly students of Qi, myhand etc. are better than them at advertising tactics. but i can say that games (3 years old) between old players still includes lots of tactics which are not known by new generation.

Edited 7/24/2014 01:17:41

Have you been in any games with him that you can show as example?

I want to see how it plays out.

Thanks.

I got tl;dr three times! thats the community telling me this post was too long and verbose. Entertainingly all three are quite different, which means i did not impart the information clearly. Oh well.

thats the community telling me this post was too long and verbose.

Entertainingly all three are quite different, which means i did not impart the information clearly.

Even when piggy tries to be brief he says the same thing twice in different ways! XD But I'm usually just as bad, if not worse. :x

Those are different things. To say long and verbose means the same as unclear is incorrect. The two sentences were not synonyms. My post did not actually repeat its main points. you are wrong.

"too long and verbose" and "did not impart the information clearly" are similar enough you pedantic piggy you. :P I'm okay with being wrong though.

Eh, it was a joke. i tried to write the same thing 5 times to be ironic. You were right, but writing concisely is really hard when you dont know exactly what you want to say.