Thanks for clarifying that!

First, thanks hedja for making this topic and thanks to everybody for spending time to discuss

So far, szeweningen's distribution is the one that satisfies me the most for its very high reliability against almost every pick possible

MotD's picks are awesome too, as long as you go for WR first in case you got scan+WR and no one's in europe

ps's picks on the other hand look very weak, both of them: picking SACA as 2-3 gives you a 50% chance of losing both of them; double picking aus and having the other pick around the ftb allows the opponent to complete his 1st bonus at least 1 turn before you, in case you have to deploy armies to fight in the first turns

What is SA / CA ?

SA-> South America (can also mean South Africa, but usually does not)
CA-> Central America

care to share your thoughts too Hennns?

I`d probably go SA, CA Norway, WR, SEA and 6th I`m not sure. I think I would go either Ethiopia or Malaysia

so many self-disqualifying posts here. seriously, clusterpick including Middle East? Go play Lego.

As it's rather obvious Scand-ftb will be countered i like hedja's approach, but knowing your opponent likely to go for some counter-strat himself you should take into account to miss out one of your first 2 picks, therefore 4,5,6 around indo seems odd. There is almost no way you miss 2 of your first 3, thus you won't get a combo out of 4&5 for quick Australia almost 100%. And getting 1,3,6 or 2,3,6 means you wasted your 3rd pick into a wasteland.
Thus i would've gone with africa as 4 and north africa as 5. doubt you'll need a 6th pick in that case

only prob with above strat: if your opponent ballsy picks aus-combo and africa, you're 90% fucked

my 4 was my safe pick for when I lose 1 or 2 and get my 3, and my 5 was if i didn't get my 4, because the best counter to Indo in this position (in my opinion) would be Aus. My 6 is to counter the aus combo because you only get 6 when they get 4,5. I knew that if they didn't pick anything near scan then I would be screwed, but it is a bit too risky wouldn't you think?

It seems very simple here, 1 SA 2 CA 3 southeast asia 4/5/6 scan/west russia/greenland. You can change the order of 5/6 here. On that particular map I sincerely feel it is by far the best strategy.

I won't lie, that does seem by far the best choice of picks, however I wonder how it would fair against an opponent who picked scan / west russia / greenland, because early expansion wouldn't be too bad in comparison, but you do have a nice safe africa and he can only take the 3 bonuses he picked, caucasus could be a struggle to hold onto.

I would pick 1 SA 2 CA 3 Scan 4 WR 5 SEA 6 Xinjiang..

These sound like alright picks as well, could be problematic again if they picked 1 Scan 2 WR 34 americas who is better off, them with the fTB or you with the america combo? Very similar to szew's picks except possibly yours are better because you have info about the ftb in the case that you end up with americas + sea? However if you both double pick americas then szew's would be better probably as it secures the safe bonus first.

I`d probably go SA, CA Norway, WR, SEA and 6th I`m not sure. I think I would go either Ethiopia or Malaysia

Similar picks to MotD, but as a 6 in this position I would much rather take west china or middle east as you know that they have west russia + sea, so you want your 6th pick to counter them. xinjiang works as a better counter to sea as the turn after he finishes the bonus you take tibet and have 3 borders, but middle east gives you the option to take georgia and double border west russia if you end up not having scan.

As mentioned by Sephiroth - cheers everyone for sharing your thoughts, more people replied than I was hoping for initially, helpful to learn what the best choices are when picks are like these :)

@Hedja

""""szew's would be better probably as it secures the safe bonus first."

Disagree.. If I get one from my 1/2 and one from my 3/4 and miss out on SEA, I'm better placed with my counter in Xinjiang.
If I get one from my 1/2 and both from my 3/4 I'm still placed well, since I have a combo(WR) which I can complete in 2 turns, whereas SEA can only be taken in 3 turns. Is there any other combination I'm missing out on here?


"""could be problematic again if they picked 1 Scan 2 WR 34 americas who is better off, them with the fTB or you with the america combo? """

I would argue in the long term SA/CA wins since scan/WR can be countered from SEA whereas SA/CA is not easily reachable.

Here are mine without looking at either player's picks or the comments in here...

SA (controls CA and WA is not a strong pick to counter it)
EA (again, WA not strong, no other safe picks)
WR
Scan
Aus (safe backup income)
Indo (counter to Aus)

Edited 6/3/2015 23:58:24

Sepheroth, why did you pick Baja 1 and Columbia 2? I understand your pick set except for that. Wouldn't you want the outside/cover pick 1st?

@Sep. ofc not, but keep in mind picking isn't my strongest side :p

I'd proably go smt like:
EA
Scand
WR
North Africa (?)
CA (?)
SA

Though my picks would definitely change depending on my opponent, that's proably what I'd pick against someone I don't know.


I've not looked on other suggestions, and thus do not have any comment on them btw.

@Chris: only because i picked carelessly because i expected the average 1v1 auto-game :P SA is obviously better than CA there

And this is why I get killed ..... why are my would be picks so awful ! ! !
1 North Africa
2 West Africa
3 East Africa
4 5 6 any order SA Scan SEA

Cluster yes but two borders to defend bonuses and plow through SA CA would be my approach

Disagree.. If I get one from my 1/2 and one from my 3/4 and miss out on SEA, I'm better placed with my counter in Xinjiang.
If I get one from my 1/2 and both from my 3/4 I'm still placed well, since I have a combo(WR) which I can complete in 2 turns, whereas SEA can only be taken in 3 turns. Is there any other combination I'm missing out on here?

Half the time with your picks vs Szew's you will get SA + West Russia + Scan vs CA + SEA + Greenland (case 1) other half it will be CA + Scan + Xinjiang vs SA + West Russia + SEA (case 2).

Case 1: You are able to take West Russia in 2 turns while he takes SA in 2 turns as long as he doesn't get too unlucky (not sure about the exact luck on taking a 4 bonus from 1 start in 2 turns) - you probably have the better positioning because of svalbard, you take it you will get scan in 2 turns (conservatively) and if he takes sea it will be hard for him to break. So if the picks are like this, overall I would say win for you.

Case 2: The only chance you have of taking a bonus is CA and that only works if he takes SA in the first 2 turns instead of trying to stop you. Scan is too easily counterable and visible from West Russia, and West China is out of the question. The only options for you are to go for elimination in West Russia or to take CA - I'm sure szew would do something that makes it nearly 100% win no matter what you do, although I can't at the moment, as he definitely has better positioning. Overall I think with your 2 picks you may have a slight advantage overall.

However when I was comparing your picks and saying I preferred Szew's that is because most of the people here said that they would pick SA/CA as their 1,2 or maybe Aus combo (which is probably worse but still an option) and his safe pick 3 meant that he would have 1 border in America, 1 safe pick in SEA first and then hopefully for him 1 pick around Scan next to 2 of their picks, giving him the advantage (in my opinion) over yours where you could end up with a double pick in Scan vs 1 in europe for instance, a border in america and they have a safe one in asia or oceania or africa.

And this is why I get killed ..... why are my would be picks so awful ! ! !
1 North Africa
2 West Africa
3 East Africa
4 5 6 any order SA Scan SEA

Cluster yes but two borders to defend bonuses and plow through SA CA would be my approach

Having 3 in Africa is very inefficient, because even though as you said you have less borders, if they picked the first turn bonus you are in a much worse position - however the only good thing about your picks is that if they went SA / CA combo, and a counter in Scan, they could waste a lot of troops trying to find you around Scan, and if you take Brazil with 6 the turn they plan on finishing SA you will definitely be in the better position. However, I definitely do not suggest for going for a picking strategy which relies on the other player wasting armies because your picks are so unorthodox, much safer to go for better bonuses (income/territory).

@Chris: only because i picked carelessly because i expected the average 1v1 auto-game :P SA is obviously better than CA there

Seph this is why I suggest you always have a sneaky peek of the other person's profile before you start a game, when I saw you were an oldie from 2012, you 2v2 in the ladder with Bjarke and your win percentages are 73, 69, 82 I needed to play risky :D

(not sure about the exact luck on taking a 4 bonus from 1 start in 2 turns)

84.64% if you can attack from both the territories you take the first turn
70~75% if there's a dead end

Edited 6/4/2015 23:12:57

@hedja: Problem in Indo it's a garantueed 3rd turn bonus. you could end up in awkward position against someone with a 2nd turn bonus

Edited 6/5/2015 04:09:26

when I saw you were an oldie from 2012

I created this account in 2012 but i only started playing at the end of this january... for the few months i played back in 2012, it was only 3v3 with friends against randoms (just like the poon squads do :P ) and that's why i have 82%
So I am a legit noob

Timi: Isn't is the same as having SEA as your safe bouns, except that it is definitely safer and you need to take 1 more territory for 1 more income? Also with Indo you can stop them from having SEA and from having Aus, and in this game where I didn't know where the enemy was going to be I wanted to be certain that they didnt have any bonuses around there and that mine was safe.

Seph: Just because they may be inflated from playing random bad guys in open RT games while you're with teammates doesn't mean that in reality they are more of a 50%, it's still impressive and means you're probably going to understand standard good strategy :D

SA > CA is pretty obvious.
i think the only way to pick here is
1 SA
2 CA
3 SEA
4 scan
5 Greenland
6 russia

africa as 3 isn't viable bc if you get 1 2 3 you lost bc no exp.

however you could go for australia combo and pick as 3 eu as blind counter. AA combo > sa+ca probably, but if your opponent is smart enoguh to pick SEA as 3rd as szew suggested earlier you basically lost at picks.

AA combo > sa+ca probably

Are you sure Gnuff? If you both have your 3rd pick in scan the player in america can eliminate player in aus before turn 3, unless player in aus doesnt go for 2 turn combo, in which case player in america has income advantage going into turn 3. This is of course assuming that as soon as you see you have both americas you need to clear him out of scan before he gets his safe picks as well.