Hi all, I'm trying to fully understand and love this game, but every game I play I'm starting to hate it (probably my fault, but it's how it feels to me).

I'm a big fan of strategy, and I played Risk a lot as kid. When I found this game was a dream, Risk with steroids and without dice, WTH!!!
But there is something I can't get it or don't fully understand (about strategy globaly).

I can't explain exactly the problem. I tried to play with balanced armies trying to expand in each direction, expand from one place with a big stack to other, and so on...At the end, just my opponent decided to rearm, over 5 different border provinces with 0 armys, the one I'm attacking, and I lost all. Or I rearm the 2 border provinces with my opponents, no attack him and resupply, and bam, in 2 turns my opponent has a 30 stack and province and armies gone, bonus gone, and start to spread over my territory.

Not saying the game is based on luck, but it is how it is feeling to me recently. Just asking for help about 3 or 4 tips for understand properly how to understand better the strategy on this game.

Thanks.

https://www.warzone.com/Forum/688994-strategy-guides
https://www.warzone.com/wiki/Main_Page

If you want some practice games, mail me.

Edited 4/18/2024 23:19:22

I find replaying games in the history tab against quality opponents extremely helpful…and understanding the difference in the offensive and defensive kill rates.

You can also choose to join a training clan like {101st} in order to be trained by strong players and improve :)

There is certainly luck involved. The beauty is you can manipulate the numbers to make your own luck. A lot of Warzone is balancing probability, and planning best strategies/plans to capture your own safe income and break enemy income

A big part of each strategy game is knowledge. Sure there is some risk involved but it can be greatly mitigated by knowing what opponent has where it moved and who moves first.

If you feel unjust or want to understand something you didn't get you can give some examples and/or study game using history (even in current matches too!)

Edited 4/19/2024 14:00:20

An update on this…
Was asked for practise games. There’s definitely a steep learning curve. Playing more games in single player with minimal settings and checking history to see what went wrong should be the answer. Some of the moves weren’t objectively good (not talking out predictions, move order or bonus safety).

Games played in order of creation:

• https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=37645045
  
• https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=37649826
  
• https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=37653594
  
• https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=37665101
  
• https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=37665174
  
• https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=37665388
  
• https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=37675009
  
• https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=37695610
  

The games are a mix of SE1W and SE1W with no fog. The idea of no fog was to see if better moves would be played but the opposite happened.

There isn’t really anything I can do to help, at least until overall gameplay improves through practicing against AIs. If it was only about settings and predictions, I could do more. I’m not really sure how much advice has stuck.

Show us the game you were playing link or we can't really say much

Some tips i can give:

On any given turn, befor commiting, see if all your units are doing something.
That includes:

Defending...
...a territory against your opponent, to not lose a bonus.
...a territory so your opponent doesnt complete a bonus.
If the territory you intend on defending, doesnt fall in either of the above, then they are doing nothing

Attacking...
...a territory to break your opponents bonus.
...the opponent to regain a lost bonus.
...a territory, so you can in the future attack an enemy bonus.
...a territory from your opponent, that is attacking a bonus you own.
If the territory you intent on attacking, doesnt fall in any of the above, then your attack is useless. Just because you attack your enemy, doesnt mean that you "actually" attack them.

Expanding...
...to complete a bonus in the future.
Here its important that the bonus you expand in, is actually safe to take. If you expand in a bonus where there is a wasteland, the enemy is already present, or the enemy already borders it, then you are likely just wasting your units

Basicly, the reason you lost all these games quite quickly, is because a lot of your orders werent following these rules.

Some additional info:
If you are unsure on attacking, then just defend. Defend has a higher killrate, i.e. if 10 units attack 10 defenders, the attackers lose 7, and defenders lose 6.
The killrates are in the Settings of the game.

Take atleast 1 territory a turn.
By taking a (singular) territory, you get card pieces. You dont have to take 2, 3, 4 or 10 territories. just 1. So if there arent any suitable territories to attack or bonuses to expand to, then taking "any territory", even if it doesnt fulfil any of the rules above, is still ok, because it gives you card pieces.

last and most important tip.
Dont play AI to improve.
AI is only good to play against, if you dont even know what a bonus is.
If you play the AI to much, you will essentialy just get into a lot of bad habits and lose even worse than befor

Edited 5/2/2024 15:38:51

The idea behind playing single player is to formulate better plans and not just random moves that do nothing or put you in an even worse position. After a while it is better to play against actual humans. If there's an unfamiliar setting, do you not try it out in single player first instead of only having a theoretical or no knowledge of it?

@Joi how much of my in-game advice or analysis do you disagree with?

I think I might know what you mean... Like when you meet your opponent and they have a border advantage over you, and it's easy for them to break through your bonuses? That's why you have to learn how to play around a disadvantage. Learn to predict and expand carefully.

If you think you have a low chance of securing a bonus then let your opponent take it and expand somewhere else or reinforce armies in the back of the bordering territories and then outplay your opponent to take it back.

In this game the person who plays better usually wins. Luck plays a role sometimes, sure, but that's most turn based games where there is usually an RNG system or some other mechanics like that. :D

If you wanna practice you can challenge me to a game :D

"@Joi how much of my in-game advice or analysis do you disagree with?"

i was talking specificly about your advice to play vs the AI as i feel strongly against that advice.
I didnt wanted to downplay the rest of your advice, as help is help.

"The idea behind playing single player is to formulate better plans and not just random moves that do nothing or put you in an even worse position."

You cant improve in formulating plans, against an opponent, that cant formulate plans itself. This just doesnt work. The AI literally cant punish you as it doesnt even try. I thought youd know how the ai plays.

"After a while it is better to play against actual humans. "

why is that "after a while" not immediatly? AI will only teach you bad habbits, and its harder to break out of bad habbits than to just not develop them in the first place.
in general i dont understand the notion of "i wanna get better, so i avoid playing people better than me"
Makes logically no sense.

"If there's an unfamiliar setting, do you not try it out in single player first instead of only having a theoretical or no knowledge of it?"

this is just unrelated to the rest. Here the goal is just understanding a setting rather than improving. those are 2 completly different things. so sure, if he wants to learn the setting through SP, sure.

Edited 5/1/2024 00:39:15

Everyone learns differently too. Different approaches can be a good thing, but playing against AI is considerably poor practice, because the AI is weak

Then why don’t you change

Dont play AI to improve. Dont follow Dan's advice.

To just

Don’t play AI to improve

Because otherwise it sounds like you disagree with everything I said

ngmi

Don’t play AI to improve

I dont want to question that generally good advice. If you have the choice between practicing with a human and practicing vs AI, choose the human.

But maybe there is one little aspect which you can learn vs. AI though: delay moves.

I came to WZ via the single player maps and played them for months before even registering... If you dont excessively delay on the single player maps, you lose at least 2/3 of them. So I knew at least that little aspect (which I think can be hard to explain to a completely fresh player).

I summarised the last game advice I gave and it appears that I left out an important detail when I posted here. Aiming for the gold stars. Take a look at their single player stats. Going for gold star requires better planning. I couldn’t see any objective behind some of the moves in that game.

If it was the wrong plan, I would have mentioned it in the game chat and continued with multiplayer practice games. But here I couldn’t see any plan, other than completing Australia.

"Because otherwise it sounds like you disagree with everything I said"

i can see people missunderstanding it as such, i changed it.

to my defense, i wrote that midnight

Maybe the thread creator would like to give some feedback on the suggestions mentioned?

I think half the fun (if not, more) is from being in a clan and have friendly games with more experienced players to learn while playing.