I'm a level 54 player, but most of my experience has been through casual play and diplos. I have learned about pick making from some players, about delaying, but when it comes to attacking or early game encounters, I'm absolutely trash. I have lost to beginning players. Is anyone willing to give me some help to improve my play? I'm about to be done with this game, because 2 years in, I'm still like a beginner.

I am also BAD.

Being confident helps a lot. You will be less cautious and make smarter moves.


Now that I play without giving too much thought but being "efficient", I am a better player. :-)

------------


Confidence is hard to develop.




YOU ARE AMAZING BECAUSE YOU HAVE IMPROVED OVER THOSE TWO YEARS.

If you check ladder games or watch twitch WGL, you can learn strategies others have figured out. Most of the learning comes from others and experimentation !

Edited 1/3/2016 04:38:19

even if you lose, don't get discouraged playing better players. there is no secret way for a good strategy that works in every game. you have to get a Feeling for it.

if you Play only newbies you will hardly improve. Keep playing the ladders even if you got no success.

^

You have to lose to a better player to improve, that's the only way.

Also if you're talking about 1v1 and stategy games like on ladder it's completely different to diplos, FFAs and casual (that's where my strength lies too)

Just practise, join the 1v1 ladder, only pick say, 2 games at a time and really study the map, play the game out and then afterwards (espacially if you lose) analyse the history and try and find that "turning point" where you started to lose (or started to win)

In an even sided match there is usually only one turning point, if you can find it you can learn very quickly how to repair that mistake and learn from it :)

Edit: If you want more advice or just some practise then set up a 1v1 with me, I'm happy to test you out :)
I'm not quite as good as MoD but I probably have more time ;)

Edited 1/3/2016 04:56:54

I'm just amazed that MoD isn't at the top of the coin leaderboard.

In diplos, the main strategies that can be applied to strategic games you learn are expanding and order priority. Also, it is based on game theory that if you think that you have enough income you should attack your opponent, also expanding is generally worse than directly attacking, as that allows you to take away your opponents income while increasing your own.

in my experience playing with you,i can say
you don't do proper delays-
only using leftovers by moving them before making the attacks and using OD card is not all there is to delaying
you need to make cost efficient attacks-
many times you just deploy armies everywhere and attack everywhere on the map with equally proportional armies(in big maps)
but if you see the importance of specific territories to you or your opponent and concentrate more armies there and less armies in unneeded areas,you will have a better fight
also you need to know when NOT to expand,because many times you go into panic expansion all over the place once your opponent breaks one of your bonuses
calculate his income,think of where he started
blockading your broken bonus and moving on to expanding is not the only option
sometimes you expand many places at once and you're caught offguard when your opponent comes with a stack on your border
there is no coming back from that point,you should avoid such situations
for that you need to know where your opponent started,or have a general idea how fast and where he can expand/counter

^ That's some helpful advice there from Master Ryiro. I encourage everyone to take note of (and use) it, I've been guilty of not following some of those principles, but I could say that I've rectified most of those now

Keep playing the 1v1 ladder, as other people have also suggested. It will automatically pair you with people around your skill level, so you will have about a 50/50 chance of beating them. This is a nice sweet spot for learning to improve. If you can improve your ladder rating over time, you know you're improving.

^ everything Ryiro said
^ and wct
^ and Fleece (except that playing similar level players helps a lot too)

keep in mind that strategic play tends to be a bit different from diplos, and more serious than casual ofc, so if you are only just starting to really try to learn strategic play, you haven't really spent two years on it. so don't give up, you've only just begun :D

try to calculate your opponents income, when you meet him/her. if you can, continuously expand, if only by one territory, those card pieces are pretty important. its important though to be able to block your opponents stack without losing more armies than he does though.

also, legend has it that many strong players are willing to play games and maybe discuss afterwards what might have gone wrong. (don't do too many of these though, if you get them going, you won't benefit that much unless you learn REALLY fast. try favoriting games in which you get good advice from good players, so you can reference them, then try to apply their principles and advice in games against players of similar strength.)

...

wait, why aren't I doing this? :P

another hint: skip turn is your enemy. i never use that. you have no idea what was going on when you use it. A very Basic Thing but also essential. watch your and your opponents moves during the game!

^

if you see the opponent make deployments after you, beyond the initial turn order (say, after your second deployment, or if you move second, his visible deployment is AFTER you), then he is deploying elsewhere and trying to grow/attack you from another direction most likely

try to calculate your opponents income

Its very usefull to use "Armies accually deployed each turn" under the statstics window. This helps you greatly in seeing the development of the enemies deployments without having to go back in the history.

If you want I can play some 1v1 (ladder settings) games realtime with you and help you out with analysing them afterwards. PM me if you are interested.

watch kcsrag: https://www.youtube.com/user/kcscrag/playlists
and Mythonian: https://www.youtube.com/user/Myth0nian/playlists

I'll play against and you and go over the games afterwards if you'd like. Only requirement is you not being defensive.

I don't mean playstyle. I mean attempting to learn from criticism, not getting offended and refusing to acknowledge that you make mistakes.