What makes a template strategic?

I recently had a discussion with a certain player and I asked what makes a template strategic. I won't name any names, but this player's main account is in WG and they claimed to not only be in Lynx, but simply to BE Lynx. A simple question asked to a player who I thought should be well qualified to answer. The answer I got was "The less luck-based, the more strategic" I offered a template that qualifies as pure skill and was told that it was not strategic solely because it was an FFA. I was told that in FFAs, when A fights B, C is allowed to expand and wins no matter how well they play. I asked "what if A fights B, while C fights D, and also E fights F?" but was ignored, more on that later. I believe my template (the settings have not been completely optimised) is strategic so strongly that I even challenged this elite player by saying I would win based purely on my strategy, even with multiple opponents. Then some other people started talking and this elite player jumped at the chance to exit my discussion and completely ignore me, choosing instead to talk about Poland or something.

So I ask again, what makes a template strategic?

Please keep all responses on topic, this is the strategy forum, after all. If anyone wishes to reply with sarcasm, etc. feel free to call me or my template stupid by making a different thread in a different forum.

I honestly just want to know which settings templates must contain and omit to be considered "strategic"

Hanky is talking about alexinclusive, he is the god of lynx

irise, that is wrong. He IS Lynx.

A "Strategic template" is something that can accurately be predicted by an ELO win probability calculator or something like it:
https://wismuth.com/elo/calculator.html

Something like chess, is completely strategic aside from the randomness in move order (50% chance of being White)

A template like Strategic 1v1 is considered strategic because of the skill gap that exists. The player who is better wins at a probability nearly predicted by the aforementioned calculator.

It is not specific settings that make things strategic, however there are common themes with strategic templates:

Not too many armies

Make the base income in Strategic 1v1 100, I wouldn't consider it a Strategic (or fun) template. Low-medium amounts of armies make it much easier for an advantage to occur. This is why templates often remove super-bonuses, or simply avoid the maps with super-bonuses. Another aspect of this is WR vs SR. Strategic ME 0%WR has "less" armies, which is part of why some people prefer it over Strategic MME.

Strategic Map

Nobody plays 1v1 on 3200 territory US Counties map, for the same reason as above, the games aren't fun and it is hard to get an advantage over the other player. Maps with 100-300 territories and fair bonuses are usually considered strategic.

Goldilocks-Zone Intel

Intel is the amount of information you know about your opponent. Auto-Distribution? Not enough intel. Anything besides Light or Normal Fog? Too much intel. I considered szewenigen's LFD templates to be in the area of too much intel, so I came up with Greece LLFD:

https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=9782739

This template has normal fog, not too many armies, and what I believe to be Goldilocks,Zone Intel. Combos are common, so you will have a general idea of where your opponent is, but of course not exactly.

Inequitable-Bonuses

Imagine Strategic 1v1 with no wastelands, fixed distribution, and every bonus is set to n-1. There would still be some strategic value, but eventually the game would be "solved" and become a sort of rock paper scissors. The same is true on symmetrical maps. Templates like Europe 3v3 focus on regions of the map. It sacrifices intel for hierarchy of picking. You basically know where your opponent is on a Europe 3v3 game.

Finally, not all templates need to be "Strategic". It can be fun to play a game like one of Blortis' big games, however templates that are "Strategic" are ones we'd like to consider when picking Ladder, QM, or Clan League templates.

I would generally say for all Strategie games (and yes this isnt the only factor but one that you can imo apply to any strat game) that the more control you / your team have on the outcome of the game the more strategic it is. This is why any game with more than 2 players/teams is already less strategic since the impact you have on the outcome is lower. (since there are more players). Thats also why luck games are well.. luck. as it also decides on the outcome of the game.

Thats why i dislike WR. yes overtime your luck will level out. the more games you play the more likely it is that the games where you had good/bad luck should be 50-50. But for me it doesnt matter that the luck levels out over multiple games but how it is in the game now that im playing. not the next one or the one befor.

Besides that Benjamin already said everything or to the very least i cant think of something to add.

...the more control you / your team have on the outcome of the game the more strategic it is.

Would it not be more accurate to say "the more control the players have on the outcome of the game the more strategic it is"? As an avid FFA player, I (personally) don't see how more players/teams = less strategy. Having more opponents/teams of opponents certainly makes it harder to win, but I just don't see how it is less strategic. If anything, it adds a whole additional layer of strategy in reading people and playing them against each other. Plus with more than 2 teams, you have much less idea of what is happening behind the fog. Or if the people giving you information are being truthful...

To quote myself, I was asking about a

template that qualifies as pure skill

I fully agree with your views on luck and WR

The fact that you see "pure skill" as an indicator of how strategic a template is, is already wrong on so many levels. It isnt that hard to create an template that qualifies as "pure skill" but has absolutly no strategy in it.

"Plus with more than 2 teams, you have much less idea of what is happening behind the fog."

so your saying that the less information i have the more strategic it is. Thats just... no.

Maybe you will understand this. if not then.. i just wont try again. If we assume we play a 20Player FFA. Its *very* unlikely that you will see every person. Let alone fight them. I think we can both agree on this part pretty clearly. THO just because you dont see or fight person XY doesnt mean they wont have impact whether or not you will win. Because what XY does and how well he plays will affect player YZ to how well he does and play and that again might effect you because XY does so poorly YZ is able to put more pressure on you. XY doing poorly is COMPLETLY out of your control and has literally NOTHING to do with reading people or strategie. in other words its just dumb luck. and to that you already agreed that, that isnt strategic.
If you deny this than you are just delusional.

Edited 12/31/2019 04:32:35

FFA's are not strategic. The reasons are obvious.

1.) Doing well early on is actually a detriment as it unites the other players against you.

2.) Players with no chance of winning can function as KingMakers, even when in a position where they can't possibly win they can often hurt one opponent enough to ensure that another one wins.

There's also more than one kind of luck.

Example: Strat ME is more strategic than Strat MME.

This is counter-intuitive to many people, but most people that are good (capable of top 10 on ladder) on both templates (not just 1 or the other) will agree.

Strat MME has less traditional luck. The result is that it has more viable picking strategies, and as a result there are more places to potentially start in and win, which makes guessing where your opponent is more difficult. As such it adds guesswork. Making the right guesses is quite often luck. That luck impacts games outcome more than traditional luck does in Strat ME.

Edited 12/31/2019 05:03:18

No setting or particular feature makes a game strategic or strips it from a template (general rule, with some exceptions). Many have strong opinions when deciding whether a certain template is strategic or not, but fail to explain why. I will provide my understanding how I determine it. Strategic does not mean pure strategy, pure strategy is subset of it.

Wikipedia and enormous, vastness, bottomless internet states that "autonomous decision-making", "importance of situational awareness", "ability to predict your opponents moves and play accordingly" and all this should lead to "high significance in determining the outcome of the game" in condition that "luck ought to play no role in it". This can be seen as constraints, that need to satisfied for game to be strategic. Easiest way to achieve it, just eliminate randomness and large options from game.

For a template to be strategic, it has to be primarily coherent. Whether the map is small or big, armies are left behind or not is not individually important. Large maps are not advised, because they mostly lead to way too large possible scenarios, that are impossible for humans to analyse. So for better human-readable strategic game the template map could be small or medium, but with right settings I don´t doubt someone could make a large map in to 1v1 competitive template.

Being coherent means that template settings should support the aim what creator has in mind, with conditions outlined previously for a game to be determined strategic. This means, as Benjamin628 wrote in style, its easier to say what is not strategic. Randomness is clearly not strategic, hence WR, Luck, auto-distribution and similar features should be discarded. In most cases, large maps or large army size, as well too many picks lead to large decision trees and are not regarded human-readable strategy and ought to be avoided as well. For example multi-attack without wastelands and somewhat higher neutrals offer lot of options to move on map, which make it more of guessing game than calculation and predicting your opponents next turn moves.

As Joi179 said, "impact on outcome" and "elimination of luck on a single game" are important criteria. When someone wants to design strategic template I recommend to look into Game Theory and think about complete/incomplete information, symmetric/asymmetric information and so forth. Furthermore see picking territories as opening, expansion as mid-game and after contact with enemy as end-game.

Edited 12/31/2019 06:07:36

If you think FFAs cannot be strategic, Ko might have a word for you:

https://www.warzone.com/Profile?p=7818276235

And I don't think he farmed these either, as he was the winner of the 50 player FFA:

https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=7579047

Edited 12/31/2019 06:34:52

Making alliances and getting people to work against each other is strategic, but it's not strategic gameplay in the same sense that other games are.

Other people have basically said the same thing in more words, but to make it really simple. The more likely a better player is to win on a template the more strategic it is.

Strat MME has less traditional luck. The result is that it has more viable picking strategies, and as a result there are more places to potentially start in and win, which makes guessing where your opponent is more difficult. As such it adds guesswork. Making the right guesses is quite often luck. That luck impacts games outcome more than traditional luck does in Strat ME.

This is so important to understand. It falls under a category that I mentioned "Inequitable-Bonuses". I always feel like playing a Strat MME game "where the hell do I pick it's all the same" type of thing. I would remedy that (if you keep SR) with decreasing the base income to 4. Not sure why that hasn't been suggested yet.

Personally, I have a very simple idea that different games (assuming they are all pure skill settings) have different strategies and skills required to win.
Templates considered "strategic" have more focus on how well you can place your use your armies and predict your opponent/s, whereas something like diplomacy focuses much more on player relations and people skills. I haven't played heaps of FFAs, but I imagine that skillset is somewhere in the middle.

In the strat ME, strat MME debate I think it would be fairly easy to determine which is "more strategic." Go to the ladder before and after it swapped over. See in which ladder the higher rated players won more often. Now this isn't perfect because it isn't the same set of players but it should be close enough.

In my opinion they are roughly even templates. I feel like Strat ME takes more skill to play well, but random luck also decides the outcomes of more games. My guess is it balances out to them being about the same over a large enough sample size.

Edited 1/6/2020 19:36:59

Someone invite me to a game of Strat 1v1 with 9 wastelands and or 4 base income