This is the same reason why a player like QueefBalls is likely to prefer templates with low skill ceiling and low strategix depth - he will simply win more games on them and just claim (possibly even believe) that what he does is playing templates that require a "different kind" of strategy. This has been his main argument in this entire conversation.

I believe Queef is arguing just for the sake of it (repeats the same statement multiple times for reaction). To be fair, he is getting some great conversation, even if he refuses to listen or contribute.

all I ever did was say that all templates are strategic. that's a fact whether anyone likes it or not. you can make a case that strategy has a spectrum. maybe you're even onto something in suggesting certain styles of gameplay become easier if you understand the game better. never denied that.

my point is and always has been that nobody has a chokehold on what is and is not strategic just because elements of strategy needed to win are different. if you don't like the strategy required to win on a certain template nobody's forcing you to play but that doesn't mean one style of play is more strategic than another.

Queef is definetly into arguing for the sake of it.
Tho so is Dan at this point.

@Alex, I created a template years ago that uses no-armies stand guard that I (and I believe others) consider to be strategic when I set myself the challenge of designing a strategic template using commanders. It was a seasonal template and won by Deadman, which seems decent evidence that better players beat worse players on it :P

https://www.warzone.com/LadderSeason?ID=4027

The main objection to no-army stand guard from what I recall is that you can always attack with 1 armies with no downside since you will at worst kill one army and lose one army, but you might take an undefended territory. The solution to this is to make it that attacking with 1 army is not guaranteed to kill one defending army, which you can do by changing kill rates to be below 50% or by using WR as I did in my template.

People who know me may not be surprised to hear me say this, but I strongly believe that any setting that exists in WZ can be used in a strategic template, even the ones that have been argued about here like airlifts, emergency blockades, auto-distribution, no-army stand guard, commanders, etc. Almost every template I've ever created has incorporated at least one unusual setting that previously had never been considered for a strategic template like army caps for Georgia, army caps plus MA for Bork, and commanders/no-army stand guard for Strategic Commanders.

I think auto-distribution is possibly the hardest one to come up with a template where adding it to a template actually increases the strategic complexity, but we do have at least one template that is widely used in the strategic community which employs it in Auto-Dist LD Ancient Greece (though it is certainly a polarizing template).

That's very interesting Beren, thanks for sharing!

But @Beren, there is a key difference between saying that any setting can be exploited as strategic and that any template with no matter what settings is strategic. Your point was already mentioned and I don't think anyone had objections. But some players came up with an idea that anything you can possibly play IS strategic, which is kinda silly and not an useful definition.

I dont think you can say per se this is strategic and this is un-strategic, either. I actually agree everything is strategic on its way. Just not every template is for every skill-level as much strategic.

@Rufus, of course that's different. While I don't agree with that if that's what queefballs is saying, I do think that many members of the strategic community could stand to be more open-minded about what templates can be strategic. That said, I think there is much more acceptance of template diversity than there used to be. I remember way back in the early days when there were serious discussions about whether any templates other than Strat ME and Europe 3v3 could be considered to be strategic.

My meaning of what makes a template strategic (which I posted in this thread) is very open.

Settings can be made strategic for the most part but that doesn’t hold true in games where luck is a major factor, like random picks or high luck modifier.

You can design a custom scenario around using auto picks and have a symmetrical position (like same spots in Double Earth). It’s only if you do something like that which makes auto picks not matter so much and because of using a custom scenario, you know where opponents started.

nobody tell Dan about strategy games that use dice rolls to determine outcomes...too much luck, Catan is no longer a strategy game.

auto picks just means your strategy for expansion has to be more conservative because you don't know when you'll run into someone or where the front will be so you can't just plow every territory.

in half court basketball you don't get to choose where you start each offensive possession. does that mean when jamrod is dominating me in shirts vs skins he's not using strategy?

You still think I’m talking about strategy in general terms and not what makes a Warzone template fall into the strategic game type?

As a side note, another solution to the no-army stand guard tap problem is designing the template such that incomes will likely remain low enough that players can't afford to gratuitously tap all their opponent's bordering territories.

0 army stand guard is more or less a style choice. Imo I don’t like it because it goes against how Risk works, but it makes sense.

I feel like the community is pretty open minded :D but it never hurts to be more open minded

I think we can all agree any setting can be implemented to improve strategy, if done properly. I like how Queef presented some humbleness, and I do agree, “What makes a template ‘strategic’?” is a “subjective question with no objective answer”

That being said, some settings are definitely more strategic than others :D

dan, I'm drawing parallels to other games to show why it's a fallacy to say these things aren't strategic. in any case, it's not like warlight has a separate definition of strategic than a dictionary does.

tactique, I admire your optimism but I've been part of this community for almost 10 years and probably the last adjective I would use to describe it is "open-minded". well the general community is open minded but the ones that know about and use the forum can often be vocally close minded

You’re missing the point entirely. All Warzone games have strategy - to take over the world - it’s on the first page of the website or app description.

Within the game, there’s different game types:

• strategic
  
• diplomacy/roleplay
  
• casual
  
• lottery
  
• troll
  

All of them have strategies but in strategic Warzone templates, the winner is decided by skill and understanding of game mechanics, rather than luck or randomness. Strategic games are 1v1 or NvN games to prevent the unpredictable nature of teaming up.

the games you call "casual" are strategic, they just require different strategy than the games you're using the "strategic" nomenclature to describe. you're just moving the goalposts at this point and saying anything that doesn't fit your narrow, specific parameters isn't strategic.

this is, again, a logical fallacy.

all that's required for a template to be strategic is that a player needs to use strategy to win

It’s pointless trying to convince you that a distinct strategic sub genre of templates exists.

How about agree to disagree and end the thread here?

To be frank, labelling a category of games in WZ as 'strategic' is a poor choice of words, because there's no cutoff point. It's not black and white.
Is Saudi Arabia strategic? Is Fogless Fighting strategic? Macedonia No-Split? Greece Auto-LD? Imperium Romanum Auto-LD?

The thread title doesn't help. If we asked 'which templates are fit for Clan League?' or 'which templates have the highest skill ceiling?' we might have gotten ourselves a decent discussion instead of 200 posts of spam.

I think we can all agree any setting can be implemented to improve strategy, if done properly.

Tacky, if you actually read this thread, you will see that lots of people disagree with this. Did you miss the entire airlift card discussion?