I was thinking about something, and it made me wonder which side of the fence most people fall on.

With the first two templates, ie. the two small earth ones, do you feel it is easier for a good player to consistently win on the manual dist template, or the auto dist one?

I feel that most people will intuitively pick the manual dist one because picking is something good players tend to do better than their opponents.

I am torn though, because I feel the template is incredibly simple to pick, and that as a result there may actually be more skill involved in knowing what positions could beat you, and moving to counter them without having concrete intel on them.

Auto dist is disgusting, if you start at the wrong spots.

One thing is for certain, auto distribution is more luck based then manual because if one player starts at Asia and N. America, and another starts at Oceana and S. America, for example, the only case in which the person in the two smaller bonuses would lose would be if he/she is a complete noob that takes four or five turns taking the bonuses because of not knowing how to split up stacks and attack two with three.

^NA and Asia is still winnable, even against SA and Aust. You just need to play it right.

https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=19476920

There's a NA and Asia win.

Admittedly, that's less a good example of me "winning", and more one of them "losing".

Edited 8/22/2019 02:57:08

Without a doubt, manual distribution favours a good player far more than auto distribution does on small earth.

With manual distribution, a good player will use intel from the distribution/picks received to deduce where key territories lie, and where conflict is likely, and play to that. They will start from a strong or at least competitive position in every game, and will almost never lose to a poor player.

In auto distribution, there are too many unknowns, and a bad start is very difficult to recover from, even with superior gameplay, so the win rate will be lower. Mind you, a good player will beat a poor player most times, but it will be lower than with manual picks.

I'm not sure that is true.

If I get worse picks on manual dist, which actually happens a lot, due to how simple it is to pick the template, I feel I am at a larger disadvantage than if I get bad picks on auto dist.

The reasons boil down to:

On manual dist, my opponent knows where I started, they know they have an advantage, and this makes it harder for me to overcome my deficit.

On the flipside, when I get bad picks on auto dist, I usually know how to make the best out of those picks, and my opponents lack concrete intel on my picks so they tend to defend themselves against my picks much less effectively.

Basically, while you suggest that manual dist should be easier for a good player due to a greater amount of intel, I consider auto dist to be potentially easier due to their opponent having less intel, while they still essentially have the same amount if they know what potential picks can beat theirs and effectively play against them.

Edited 8/22/2019 03:51:04