Disclaimer: This topic requires a basic knowledge of competitive side of the game.

In the entire history of this game, that already lasts more than 14 years, people whom strived to be along the best players have discovered some neat tricks that forever changed the game:

Timi-blockade discovered by Timinator from MASTERS 		(https://www.warzone.com/Forum/94540-blockade-pro)
Conditional delays discovered by Master Jz from MASTERS 	(https://www.warzone.com/Forum/224889-attack-percentage-conditional-moves)

After these findings it seemed that Warzone's mechanics were pretty much solved and there is nothing new left to come across. But an year ago (2021) something strange has been discovered that finally goes public:



To explain what exactly is happening: A failed move at the end of turn still follows the move order procedure and potentially gives you additional information as any successful move would do.

The trick is simply performed by intentionally making a move that would fail at the end of turn. You don't need to have any armies left for that and can enter any number by hand or use attack by percentage:



Edited 10/16/2022 16:21:24

I see... let me check this...

https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=32285291

- Turn 1 grey tried to find out the amount of orders from brown by using this trick. This is however not how it works.
- Turn 2 grey saw that brown moved after his non executed move.
- Turn 3 it was the same test as in turn 2, but grey saw that brown moved before his non executed move.

So it can get used to find out about the cycle. It certainly makes sense to put this into your arsenal, probably not for real time but more for multiday games.

Some observations:

This is for Cyclic games.

This "intel move" (Rufus' name for it) is also visible to your opponents. So perform it on a part of the map that's not visible to them.

You can safely make this move (once at the end of each turn) as often as you'd like, so you can just keep adding Intel moves to the end of your turn until you've deduced the move order.

This also works in team games and I think you can do this once per player, not once per team, without breaking the move order.

An elaboration:

This is much easier to understand if you view a game's move history on a turn with a delay move both without fog and from one player/team's perspective.

Here's a toy explanation of what it means for the failed move to "still follow the move order procedure"-

Warzone move order is a snake draft (ABCD...DCBA both within and between teams, so ABBAABBA... in 1v1s and ABbaabBA... in 2v2s, and so on, with the order simply flipping each turn, so the next turn in the 1v1 would be BAABBAAB... and in the 2v2 abBAABba...).

So if you're A and have first move on a turn, your orders might look like ABBAABB. Suppose the first two moves by B aren't visible to you. So when you watch that turn you just see AAABB. That's not enough for you to figure out who had first move that turn, so in a Cyclic game you don't know if you'll move first or second in future turns.

But if you add another move, the order becomes ABBAABBA and you see AAABBA- that's enough for you to figure out you had first move that turn! Else you would've seen AAAABB or AABAAB (your view of BAABBAAB). For those new to move order: the heuristic here is whether A had an odd or even number of moves execute before they saw the first visible move by B, and it only works here of course if A still has moves after they see B's first move, otherwise the ordering could just be because all of A's moves were already exhausted.

Of course, you might not have enough armies to add more moves- all of yours that turn could be working. This is when Rufus' intel move comes in handy! It's essentially a quirk of how the game handles 0-moves.

Normally, if you have 0-moves, the game just shows them but doesn't move the move order forward. So, for example, if A adds 3 0-moves at the end of ABBABB, all the 0-moves would just continue the existing cycle: it'd become ABBAAAABB. But the quirk or glitch here is that the game engine first advances the snake draft, THEN realizes it's just looking at 0-moves and doesn't move the order forward AFTER executing the zero move. Basically this is arguably a bug/exploit (probably deliberate in the design) in how the game handles move order for empty moves- it handles them here by not updating move order AFTER executing the moves, although I don't recall if this is still true if you have a valid move after a 0-move (I think so, but it's not useful).

So, at the end of your orders, your FIRST 0-move after a non-0-move continues the snake draft. Which means that, if your last move was at the end of your cycle for the draft (e.g., ABBAA and not ABBA), the 0-move starts your next sequence, interleaving your opponent's moves in between. Which gives you free Intel!

Edited 10/16/2022 16:17:50

To toy around with how the game engine handles 0-moves, I played a game where I interleaved 0-moves between all my real moves: https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=32285883

Don't judge the gameplay too harshly; it's pretty hard to focus on playing both the game and interleaving 0-moves, and I made a few blunders as a result (like the Africa moves). I also didn't realize until turn 3 that I could also prepend a 0-move to the start of the game. Anyhow, let's take a look at how 0-moves actually work! As a reminder, remember that the game doesn't let you enter 0-moves directly; you need to enter impossible moves, like sending 30 armies from a territory that has 0.

---

Actual move order: I am A (first move on odd turns), opponent is B (first move on even turns). I will italicize zero-moves.

t1: ABBAAAABBAAAB
I see- AAAAAAAAB
opponent sees- BBBBB

t2: BAAABBAAAABA
I see- AAAAAAAA
opponent sees- BABBAB (opponent can infer they are B)
(note: on this turn, both of us figured out opponent is B because of deploys)

t3: ABBAAAAABBA
I see- AAAAAAA
opponent sees- BBABB

t4: BAAAABBAABAAAAA
I see- AAAABAAAAAAAAA
opponent sees- BABBABAAAA

t5: AABBAAAABBAAAB
I see- AAAAAABAAAB (I can finally infer from moves that I am A)
opponent sees- ABBAABBAAAB

t6: BAAAABBABB
I see- AAAABABB
opponent sees- BAAAABBABB

t7: AA
I see- AA
opponent sees- AA

---

Takeaways:

- opponents can see your 0-moves, so be careful where you do your intel moves
- corroborates my hypothesis about the engine handling 0-moves and move order by not advancing AFTER the 0-move (but advancing BEFORE the 0-move, if the previous move was valid)
- intentional 0-moves only add value when added at the very end, because interleaved 0-moves have the same effect on move order as the legitimate moves after them (i.e., a valid move by itself advances the move order both before & after itself; a zero-move followed by a valid move will similarly have the move order advance before it, won't advance the move order between the two moves, and will advance move order after the valid move). Since interleaved 0-moves can be seen by your opponent, they can backfire and give your opponent intel.

Edited 10/16/2022 17:09:32

Who is "they"?

A Warzone secret they don't want you to know

I think the 0 armies orders have always been around (caused by issuing too many multi-attack orders and running out of attacking armies and opponent attacking you and not enough armies left to execute the order), never heard anyone mention it before though.

I see some confusion here, Dan. While these 0 army moves always existed, the key difference is that nobody noticed what underlying principle they hide

Basically, 2 key insights required here:

1. More moves that follow move order system = more intel about move order
2. Move order system advances after valid moves, which means it can still advance before invalid moves

So: A 0-move at the very end = 1 free extra move worth of move order intel

Incredibly useful tip. All upside.

There is one more trick: assume a situation, when you have 3 armies on a territory vs enemy having 2. You want to tap your opponent's territory, but if and only if he hasn't tapped you yet. If you don't have an attack by percentage available, you can make a transfer-only order on neutral with 1 troop, followed by tapping the opponent's territory. Your tap will go through if you had 2 movable armies (opp hasn't tapped) and fail if you have 1 or fewer movable (you were tapped).
---
This is seldom useful on low-income templates when you don't have the 1st order.

Indeed there are more tricks like that, but most of them are a combination of the ones mentioned in the original post. Anyway, this thread isn't about that, but if someone has a unique idea they are welcome to share

Who are those "they" that don't want me to know about this? :0

okay so I'm a noob here, and I feel like noobs are going to stumble over here can someone explain it more simply so people like me don't get confused?


edit(response to krinid's post): Yes I did, but the system is far too complex. As someone with zero background knowledge of advanced hacks/glitches in the game, it is very hard to follow.

Edited 10/17/2022 05:28:30

Did you read l4v's post? He went through it in detail.

@pi: invite me to a multi-day 1v1 on your preferred strategic Cyclic template and I can demo it for you.

The background you need to understand is:

1) How move order works - https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vS5eO54w3LgnkcwbLqM3DhynuQGoChrPn313QXIMm0QZ3ApILPuvcunEdmG_nZflHKcfRwCpZfvHA8L/pub#h.w4m56q1j8i33
2) How to infer move order - https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vS5eO54w3LgnkcwbLqM3DhynuQGoChrPn313QXIMm0QZ3ApILPuvcunEdmG_nZflHKcfRwCpZfvHA8L/pub#h.oqt1nu4gjdkt

Then from that all you need to realize is that (generally) more moves = more intel about move order. And Rufus' intel move trick means you get 1 free move worth of move order intel each turn, just by adding an invalid move to the end of your orders.

You don't need to fully understand it to apply it. All you need to know, to get value out of this is that- in games with Cyclic move order, you should make invalid moves (moves that will execute with 0 armies) away from where your opponent can see them in order to get free intel about move order. For example, send an attack of 30 armies from a territory that has 0 armies, in a corner of the map your opponent will not border.

Edited 10/17/2022 06:05:20

The disclaimer is here for a reason

:P I don't think it should be. Intel moves require less background to grasp & even less to apply than Timi blockades and especially conditional delays. Actually, of the three, your discovery can be used with the least understanding of game mechanics.

That's why it only says basic knowledge. You can't grasp these concepts if you don't know how move order works. Of course it might be a good encouragement to finally learn these things

Fair enough, it is pretty basic. The other ones that require "marking" the units requires a bit more understanding, but are quite useful - if only I'd remember the use them during games though!

This is so last year