User:Wick

Wick's Warlight Profile: https://www.warlight.net/Profile?p=7312632272

"No opponent is too difficult to beat or too easy to ignore."
-Mannerheim, GG Warlight Strategy Guide, 12/16/2013 ( https://www.warlight.net/Profile?p=868774213 )

The Advanced Strategy wiki page lacks many of the interesting details afforded by the various settings of this game, and I was thinking about writing some kind of tactical/strategy guide. This guide includes the essential concepts for competitive Warlight games. Practical advice includes a checklist that can be referenced during games. Then individual settings are discussed in how they impact the game, with specific examples included. This analytical and general discussion will allow the reader to apply these principles to many different templates and settings.

Abbreviations

• OP - order priority (see move order)
• SR - straight round (see rounding mode)
• WR - weighted random (see rounding mode)

Concepts and jargon

• Intel: intelligence of enemy positions beyond fog.
• Picks/starts: assigned territories at beginning of first turn.
• Bonuses: a group of 1 or more territories that increase your deploy.
• Income: number of armies to deploy.
• Completion: obtaining a complete set of territories for a bonus.
• Break: losing 1 or more territories of a previously complete bonus.
• Combo/cluster picks: two or more picks or starts nearby.
• Mirror: in team games, full or partial copy of teammate's picks.
• Delays: number of move orders before the delayed move.
• Running: when faced with an expectation of a large enemy attack, attempting to move nearby instead of defending current territory.
• Reach: maximum number of turns required to get to a territory of interest.
• Counter: pick for the potential to prevent enemy from completing a nearby bonus.
• Safety: a bonus' safety is measured by max turns required for enemy to reach, and number of borders required for defense.
• Stack: placing a disproportionately large number of armies on a territory, compared with nearby territories.
• Expansion: attacking neutrals in order to complete additional bonuses. Expansion can also refer to attacking enemy territories for the purposes of completion rather than merely breaking.
• Leftovers: armies previously used for expansion.

Checklist while taking turns

Every time you play a turn, you should have a checklist in your head for the various stages of the game.

Picks

• Double check the settings.
• Sort bonuses by generic types: combos, turns required for completion, safety, etc.
• For a particular template, develop a hierarchy of preferred bonus attributes, including bonus type, safety and reach. Examples will be provided in the "Picks" section. Use your general template hierarchy as a guideline but do not become too predictable.
• How do notable wastelands affect safety/reach of non-wasteland bonuses.
• Do you have access to recent previous games by the enemy players on this template?

First to last turn

Planning

• Is there #Cyclic move order? If so, determine who gets OP by default (if no OP card). Note that OP can sometimes be determined from picks and deploys without move orders (see #Deploy order).
• Reconstruct what your enemy has done behind the fog. This is difficult but more easily done if you have intel and it's SR.
• From reconstruction, what is the estimated max deploy of the enemy players. Check #Deploy order to see if they are expanding.
• Determine estimated max number of delays of enemy.
• Determine enemy cards and pieces.
• Consider taking the turn as if you were the enemy player before taking your own turn.

Tweaking

• If possible, hide your deploy. Deploy off of enemy lines so that they do not know your precise income, in order to make reconstruction of your turn (see #Planning) more difficult for your enemies. This deploy could be one territory away from the enemy borders, and immediately advances. Or it could be away from the enemy. But sometimes you need all of your deploy.
• Change the order of your deploys to deploy on enemy borders first (see #Deploy Order).

After the last turn

You think that means you're done? No! Watch the history and learn from what happened. Especially if you lost.

Deploy order

Deploys happen in the same order sequence as move orders. This is important to consider for two reasons.

• Deploy order may give away the fact that you deployed elsewhere first. For example, if the enemy notices that you received OP but your visible deploy occurred after his deploy, then the enemy will know that you deployed elsewhere. This allows the enemy to get a better handle on your income for reconstruction (see #Planning). This is why you should almost always deploy on enemy borders first (see #Tweaking).
• Deploy order may be used to deduce OP for cyclic move order (see move order). Note that you may not be able to hide deploy order OP from enemies if you deploy on any of their borders. Even if you do not deploy on their borders with your first move, they can determine your OP via deploy by counting even or odd numbers of deploy before seeing your deploy (unless you sufficiently delay deploy such that they did not deploy in as many different territories than you).

Setting specific tactics

Transfer-only

Transfer-only is useful when transferring armies to a territory that may be attacked by an enemy. If the number of armies you are transferring is expected to be less than the number of attacking enemy armies, consider selecting transfer-only. This prevents your armies from being crushed by enemy forces which reach the territory before your transfer. A good example of transfer-only is provided on the following page: Attack Only and Transfer Only.

Even when transfer-only orders get canceled, those armies are no longer available for subsequent moves that turn. This is a clever way to ensure you have a certain number of armies stay behind to defend, especially when combined with a blockade card (see #Transfer-only and blockade).

Attack-only

Attack-only can be useful when you have a large stack that you would like to simultaneously defend two key territories. After delays you can attack-only your other territory. If the enemy doesn't attack, then your armies don't move from the key territory.

Here is an example of attack-only. On turn 9 of this game: ( https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=8561932 ), Glamorous (pink) had the difficult task of deciding whether Ragnarok (gray) would run to Congo, or delay and attack Central African Republics. In this case, Glamorous used attack-only after delays on Congo. Had Ragnarok instead chosen to attack only Central African Republics after delay, he would have failed due to attack-only, even if he had managed to have more delays.

Attack-only may also be used to mitigate 3v2 risk with WR (see #Attack-only and WR).

Cyclic move order

Cyclic move order introduces profound implications for the game (see move order).

• In pick stage, if you don't get your first pick then you know you have OP on the first turn. In team games, it gets more complicated. But in 1v1, you can be confident that if you obtained a counter pick you will have OP.
• For running from a stack, this means that without clever use of OP cards, you cannot run from a stack for multiple turns, unlike #Random move order. This means that having a dominant stack is on average slightly more important in cyclic move order than random move order, except in specific and temporary situations.
• OP may be deduced via #Deploy order.

Weighted Random

"In my experience players who complain about bad luck are the players who play the riskiest."
-Beren, Warlight forums, 4/5/2015 (https://www.warlight.net/Forum/84369-weighted-random-ladder)

Attack-only and WR

With WR, the 80% chance of a 3v2 may be mitigated by a subsequent attack-only of 2 to the same territory, assuming that you wanted to maximize the number of armies in a nearby territory. For example, on turn 5 of this game: ( https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=7926274 ), GiantFrog (brown) wants to maximize the armies on Columbia, and therefore captures Brazil with a 3v2 instead of a 4v2, and the attack-only of 2 from Columbia to Brazil ensures South America is obtained.

Multi-attack

Multi-attack games are typically fast-paced. To begin, some of the more surprising or non-traditional aspects of multi-attack will be covered here.

With multi-attack (and especially combined with local deploy), consider using those armies which are far from the front lines to move around and retake bonuses that you would expect an enemy to try to break during a long multi-attack. For example in turn 16 of this game: ( https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=9146807 ), Wick (purple), expecting a multi-attack through the blockade, uses delay orders and retakes the West China bonus as the last move.

Blockade cards may have surprising uses in multi-attack games (see #Multi-attack and blockade).

Cards

Blockade

A non-traditional use of the (emergency) blockade is to generate more card pieces. Have you ever played a diplomacy style game where you would have been better off sitting back and letting your enemies fight each other, but you attacked in order to get more card pieces? Consider instead a blockade on a territory that is away from enemies, and immediately recapture the blockade. This also works well with teammate AIs as card piece engines, preferably ones that you gift in a safe place when they are on the verge of elimination.

Transfer-only and blockade

Here is an example of transfer-only combined with blockade. On Turn 11 of this game: ( https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=11411092 ), Wick (blue) wants to blockade California, and at the same time Berserk (purple) wants to blockade Labrador in Canada. Wick does not know if Berserk will attempt to take California with full force or not, and he can’t afford to lose a blockade card should this happen. But he also doesn’t want to make an excessively large blockade. So Wick delays, then does a transfer-only to Baja California with 2 armies. Now, the last order of the turn is to send 12 armies to Hawaii; however, there are 11 armies on California due to an attack by Berserk. Had Wick not done the transfer-only, 10 armies would then have gone to Hawaii and the blockade would have been a 5 neutral. But with the transfer-only to Baja California, those 2 armies are not allowed to participate in any more move orders. Therefore, 8 armies go to Hawaii instead of 10, and the blockade is now 15. Similarly, Berserk expected a large army to attack Labrador. But instead of using delays and transfer-only to make sure that his blockade wasn’t excessive, he ended up turning 15 armies into a 75 blockade, which would have been better used to defend North Quebec.

Transfer-only, attack by percentage and blockade

Coined the "optimal blockade" by GiantFrog (see https://www.warlight.net/Forum/149405-trans-attc-percentage-cards ), this method is for similar purposes as the transfer-only blockade, except that you can tune the number of armies left behind depending on whether the enemy attacks your stack or not.

z1:= #armies you want to blockade if your enemy did not attc
z2:= #armies you want to bloackde if your enemy did attc
a := #attcers (enemy) in case he attcs
d := #defenders(yours)
f := #armies you "transfer only" to your enemy
p := (%armies you transfer away)/100

solve (and round):
f = ( a( 3z1-3 )+( 5-5d )z1+( 5d-5 )z2 )/( 3a-5z1+5z2) 
p = (z2+0.6a-d)/(-d+0.6a+f+1)

Multi-attack and blockade

Blockade cards in games with multi-attack can be used to allow you to move freely, rather than to block. For example on turn 8 of this game: ( https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=9092687 ), the blockade card played on Brazil allows Wick (purple) to defend south pole with a stack in Argentina that can simultaneously threaten multiple paths into the USA via Cuba or Panama.

Multi-attack, light fog and blockade

Similarly, with light fog, blockade cards can be used to confuse your enemy as to whether there is really a large neutral or not. For example on turn 2 of this game: ( https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=9079354 ), Wick (purple) blockades Israel with a 4 neutral. Due to light fog, the enemy sees the blockade, but does not know how big the blockade is. In turn 5, the enemy completes the South East Asia bonus, likely assuming that the blockade is large and the bonus is safe. The purple player then surprise bursts through the small blockade (also taking advantage of local-deploy to use those armies due to blockade).

Gift

"You need to *eventually* use the gift card in any template it's present, even if it's a bluff."
-Kenny, private communication, 5/3/2016 ( https://www.warlight.net/Profile?p=635295275 )

Gift cards may be used to prevent an enemy from completing a bonus. For example, on turn 8 of this game: ( https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=9817160 ), Beren (green) gifts Svalbard to Master Atom (light blue) in order to prevent the enemy's teammate, Master of the Dead from completing that bonus. The corollary is to remember to select "treat teammates as enemies" in situations that an enemy may use this technique.

A gift card can be used to generate card pieces (see #Blockade for card generation).

Multi-attack and gift

With multi-attack, gifting your territory to an enemy may allow you to reach new routes with a stack (similar to #Multi-attack and blockade).

Diplomacy and gift

When one of your teammates are under diplomacy with an enemy, you may gift your territory to that teammate in order to immediately prevent that same enemy from attacking the territory.

Other links

• GG Warlight Strategy Guide: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B024HXqzvoGCejhhajNFa1ZOVlE/edit
• https://www.warlight.net/Forum/168132-strat-guides