As pretty much always happens when template selection for CL is announced, there is controversy over the chosen templates, and whether they are 'strategic' enough for Clan League.
We have heard phrases such as 'multi-attack isn't as strategic' or 'no fog will lead to gambling', and it makes me wonder - are these just grumbling elitists who dislike settings that involve more than just counting? Or do the newer upstarts who like weird settings like them because the luck factor increases their chances?
Or perhaps are there genuine and interesting differences of opinion on what actually constitutes 'strategy' in WZ, aside from likes and dislikes, and this leads to controversy when it comes to template selection for the biggest competitive event of the WZ calendar?

There is a consensus that there is a difference between 'strategic' and 'luck-based' templates; so, my question (in the thread title) is three-fold:

a) How do you define what templates/settings are 'strategic'?
(i.e. does your definition in WZ differ from the dictionary definition: 'relating to the gaining of overall or long-term military advantage.')

b) Are there different 'levels' of strategy (i.e. are some settings 'more strategic' than others, or is there a hard and fast line between 'strategic' and 'non-strategic')?
If so, what levels do you think there are?

c) Where do you think the bar should be placed for 'strategy' when deciding templates for a competition (such as Clan League)?

P.S. This thread is designed to provoke discussion and sharing of thoughts on a subjective topic with no objective answer. Keep that in mind, and be nice to everyone :)

Edited 10/15/2023 21:55:17

multi attack is strategic

all the templates have elements of strategy in them, but that doesnt make them "strategic"

Strategic is a term Fizzer has coined to go with certain templates he has created, and has since been used by the community. A strategic template cannot include airlift cards, bomb cards, emergency blockade cards, etc because these happen before deployments, and encourages a type of play that is pretty much defensive. That being said, Clan League is not made for any single individual, but dozens of clans, and hundreds of players. There will always be backlash, or feedback (whatever you want to call it *wink*), but its nothing to feel bad about, people just care a lot about CL, and thats a good thing!

Also strategic gets changed all the time, like the recent "Strategic Greece" on Seasonal, was not exactly like the old :D... so up to interpretation maybe?

Very disingenuous to say that the complaints here are by "grumbling elitists who dislike settings that involve more than just counting". Ignoring the elitist insult, whittling down settings as involving "just counting" is wrong. Also, the backlash this season is not the norm. Previous seasons had minor complaints (e.g. Aseridith's first season) - but none to this extent.

You can say adding non-traditional templates is all well and good - and I agree. But where to draw the line? There is no one AFAIK that claims MA is not strategic. But there are plenty of MA templates that could have been selected before MME MA LD. If the CL organizers were tired of Bork, there was MA BIV.

Elsewhere, there are very good dense fog templates that have never been featured in CL. Such as the original 2v2 Timid Lands - or Vanuatu Islands. (Last season's 2v2 Timid had more traditional settings.) And yet we have a fogless template featuring which just represents a breeding ground for controversy in a competition like CL.

Chess makes a clear distinction between ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ that I think is useful here

‘Tactics’ are short-term, calculable, and concrete. If I move my Queen to h5, my opponent must defend with g6 and then I can capture with my knight, winning a rook.

In contrast, ‘strategy’ is longer-term, more nebulous, and beyond calculation. If I trade my bishop for his knight, then I should have a good endgame with the pawns on dark squares.

There are clear analogies for both of these in Warlight and it largely aligns with how the word ‘strategic’ is used.

Small, tight maps with fewer bonuses, more chokepoints, and more calculation (e.g. SE1W and especially Bomber) are extremely tactical. Advantages are gained on 1 and 2 move combinations and games ends abruptly.

Larger, more open maps with many bonuses and more long term planning are extremely strategic. Blockade cards are strategic. There’s more of a flow to the game. There are often several fronts and play all over the board. Advantages are slowly built until they snowball into victories.

I don’t have a dog in this fight and actually specialize in tactical templates. But I think this is useful nomenclature that many chess players are already using.

And yeah, Multi-Attack arguably has the highest skill ceiling of any CW template specifically because it has both tactics and strategy in abundance. Anyone saying this isn’t a strategic format can safely be ignored imo.

@Tacky it absolutely is up to interpretation, that's what I'm interested in! What are people's interpretations?

@Photonique
I think you missed the point of my message; that second paragraph that you took as an insult wasn't my actual opinion, it was just clickbait, if you will 🤣. To make sure no-one else misinterprets that, I'll add an 'insult' to the other side of that too 🤣

@Leon I love that distinction, that makes so much sense! It also aligns with the idea that I had, which I shall detail below, and I'm going to use that terminology from now on!

I thought about this for a little bit, and here's my thoughts:
a) I think strategy in WZ, or at least the popular perception here, has to do with how much control a player has over the outcome of the game. Templates like lotto duel are considered pure luck, because players' thoughts and moves have no effect in the outcome of a game between two determined opponents.
Some other templates involve certain elements of luck, such WR, where the specific outcome of a particular move (like how many leftovers from an attack) is outside the control of either players moves.
So I think I would define a 'strategic' template in Warzone as one where the players have more than a certain level of control over their moves and the outcome of the game; there must be very little randomness (that is not due to any player's actions) affecting combat.

b) I think there's three levels of strategic play in WZ.
The first kind of 'strategic' settings that encourage 'tactical' moves give a high level of control to the player, making it a lot about calculation and counting - there is a narrower, more defined set of 'good' moves to make, and a player's skill on these templates is decided by how well they can optimise their moves. In other words, the success of the moves is often well within the control of the player who makes them.
The second kind of 'strategic settings (*cough cough* MA, emergency blockades, airlifts, bombs) make the result of a lot of moves incalculable; this is because these settings have a much wider range of possible ''good' moves, and often how well you predict what your opponent will do has a large effect on the result of those moves. While these settings certainly aren't as 'tactical', and the success of moves is often notably outside the control of the player making them, this adds a whole new level of 'strategy' to the game, by increasing the psychological element of predicting what your opponent will do.
The third level of 'strategy' in WZ is the long-term combination of the two above, i.e. what Leon defined as 'strategy'. The first two are about how you make the moves you make on a given turn, while the third kind is about your multi-turn plans for gaining an advantage on your opponent. This one also is somewhat incalculable, and you often can't see whether it's a good 'strategy' or not immediately, like you can for moves on one turn.

c) Personally I don't know about this, but I'm curious to see if anyone else does!

thank you thegreatleon for highlighting the difference between strategy and tactics

Anyone saying MME MA LD isn't a deeply strategic template simply hasn't taken the time to learn how to play it.

For me, the most important feature of a 'strategic' map is limiting the number of 'coin flips' between the players. Luck or Weighted Random, for instance, can easily decide a match if one player hits their 80% to complete a bonus and the other doesn't. Random turn order can similarly turn a reinforcement into a suicide mission that swings the momentum of a match. You can still strategize around these constraints, so it certainly doesn't remove the strategic element, but there will always be instances where a player can do everything optimal and still lose. And then, of course, there are simply templates like SE where so much is determined by picks, that too frequently whoever gets the 'winning' turn order for that map will win almost automatically. While obviously there's the rudimentary strategy of knowing which picks are correct, it will come down to a coin flip if your opponent also plays optimally.

The rarer a template makes these type of coin flip situations, the more strategically deep it is.

Edit: Just to be clear, I don't mean that a template with WR or random turn order is automatically non-strategic... it's a spectrum, naturally, and I think that those features tend to nudge it towards the non-strategic end of the spectrum, but the rest of the template settings and map could easily be enough to push it well into the strategic end of the spectrum. In the same way that SE auto dist is obviously less strategic than standard SE, even though standard SE is itself on the non-strategic end of the spectrum.

Edited 10/16/2023 02:52:59

It's actually hard to concisely define what makes a template strategic. I generally agree with the idea that it's determined by how much control the players have over the outcome, but there's also the question of skill depth. The most strategic templates have great skill depth and give high control of the outcome to their players.

A setting like WR, adds randomness to the game which decreases strategic value. But it also adds a skill of risk management, which adds strategic value. I've seen many arguments about whether MME or ME is more strategic, and while its my opinion that MME is more strategic I think it's a legitimate argument. In general I would group various features into more or less strategic.

One thing that makes it difficult to determine objective strategic value is everyone has varying familiarity towards different templates, and the templates they know better will tend to get rated as more strategic , because they have a greater awareness of the skill depth. I think there's also a fallacy if you become really good at a pet template and thus win it at a very high rate of overrating its strategic value.

While various factors contribute to the strategic value of the template, I think the biggest thing is hitting the goldilocks zone of restricted but not too restricted picking. Templates that are too open, like the QM RoR where every territory is pickable, become rock paper scissors with different picking strategies. Boards that are too constrained like the old Archipelago Brawl become too much a luck fest on who gets first pick. In my opinion this is why French Brawl is a better template than Yorkshire Brawl. The picking on Yorkshire is a bit too open, whereas French Brawl is right in that goldilocks zone.

I like this discussion, so far, but am quite tired, so I'll take a rain check on most of it.

I did notice the opening post mentioned "Fizzer's definition" of Strategic, and while I can't independently verify that definition, it looks a lot like something that a definition for "Pure Skill", with the blue open-winged eagle icon.

And I would love to see the definition of "Pure Skill" in Warzone spelled out, especially compared with "Strategic", which does seem to have a definition as well,
(as used for Strat 1v1, and such.)

From memory “pure skill” is 0% SR no-luck cycle. The no-luck cycle part is bad though, ask any top player.

From memory “pure skill” is 0% SR no-luck cycle. The no-luck cycle part is bad though, ask any top player.

"pure skill" was introduced to oblige to gambling laws when coins were still worth real money. Basically no randomness, so you have to add manual picks and no random cards to that list.

Edited 10/18/2023 07:50:01

I have no idea where to draw the line, but it would be (in my opinion) boring/useless to define "strategic" in such a way that SEAD is strategic. It is a small map, auto distribution, and clear what to do on most turns, and luck determines a significant amount of games.

@DanWL I agree, NLC is bad... iirc theres a whole forum thread about it

For me, the most important feature of a 'strategic' map is limiting the number of 'coin flips' between the players. Luck or Weighted Random, for instance, can easily decide a match if one player hits their 80% to complete a bonus and the other doesn't. Random turn order can similarly turn a reinforcement into a suicide mission that swings the momentum of a match. You can still strategize around these constraints, so it certainly doesn't remove the strategic element, but there will always be instances where a player can do everything optimal and still lose. And then, of course, there are simply templates like SE where so much is determined by picks, that too frequently whoever gets the 'winning' turn order for that map will win almost automatically. While obviously there's the rudimentary strategy of knowing which picks are correct, it will come down to a coin flip if your opponent also plays optimally.

Even with my little experience in SE1W, I can see that a significant amount of games (when played fairly well) come down to pick luck...

Edited 10/18/2023 07:58:39

@Dublin
I don't think I called it "Fizzers definition", I instead quoted the dictionary definition; Tacky, however, did talk about how Fizzer was the first to describe a template as "Strategic ____", and how that has been picked up by the community.

It is strategic when the better player wins more often.

You will never succeed with a definition of settings, it is absolutely impossible. What I also find quite funny that we rarely talk about the map, which has arguably a much bigger impact on a template than the choice of whether it is SR or WR.

We have heard phrases such as 'multi-attack isn't as strategic' or 'no fog will lead to gambling', and it makes me wonder - are these just grumbling elitists who dislike settings that involve more than just counting? Or do the newer upstarts who like weird settings like them because the luck factor increases their chances?

Well, for me the problem is obvious. "strategic" is a made up term which gets filled with individual definitions. Those "grumbling elitists" throw terms around, believe that they are all talking about the same thing but they are not.

I believe most define that term as following:
"Strategic templates are the sum of templates which me and my fellow grumbling elitists like to play."

Edited 10/18/2023 11:42:12

What I also find quite funny that we rarely talk about the map, which has arguably a much bigger impact on a template than the choice of whether it is SR or WR.

@Beep
That is very true - could it perhaps be because the map, while having a big impact on how a template is played (i.e. what tactics and strategies are used), doesn't necessarily impact how 'strategic' the template is as much as settings that could directly add luck factors?

Edited 10/18/2023 11:57:35

LD no split