Middle Earth Strategy

[shark0613]

I’m new to the game and I’m getting my a$$ handed to me regularly, especially on this board. I’m looking for advice on where I’m going wrong.

How is this for a first move on Middle Earth? I know Rohan doesn’t hold well early in a multi-player game, but I can consolidate most of my armies in there early and maybe make a move on either holding Rohan or moving into an adjacent continent later.

Board:


Deploy: 3 to Ement
Attack: Ement to Isengard, Win 3-0.

Final board after fortification:

[GrazingCattle]

I think you need to play this by ear. sometimes players will let you keep a con. for no reason other than they are to weak to take it. Keep you troops togother and look for an opening close by. Don't spend too much trying for the bonus if you can't hold it. It is better to get three troops and have 20 on the board already than to get 7 with 13 on the board.

Don't try and make your self seem like a threat, just wait to see what everyone else will do before you lock in a clearcut stratagy.

You must know your plan, but more importantly know your enemies plan!

[Incandenza]

You also might want to keep a loose eye on how the situation resolves itself in mordor. That's always a good continent to hang onto in middle earth. If you hold south gondor and Mt. doom, you're getting 3 armies with only 2 borders, which is about as good a deal as you're gonna get on this map.

and like cattle said: don't piss away your armies, don't try and take a continent if you're only going to be able to fortify with 3's, make sure you get a card every turn, and hope for the best.

[sully800]

That looks fine based you your starting position, but your key is going to be not holding the entire continent until you have the strength to do it. Rohan is in the center of the board, has a relatively high bonus and 4 borders....that all means that people will want to prevent you from holding it and they will probably be able to.

One interesting point in holding continents is rather unituitive for most people- its typical for someone to try and hold a continent by putting all of their men on the borders and simply forming a wall that no one can break into. That works great if you KNOW you have enough men to do it. The problem though is that your men are all on the exterior and ready to attack and keep expanding. When people see that, combined with the continent bonus, they feel threatened and attack. The other problem is that when they attack you lose a great deal of forces because about 1/4 of your men were guarding the border, and you end up losing them all.

As I said, the alternative is unituitive but very effective in most cases. Instead of placing all of your men on the border, place none! Just leave a single man, and concentrate your forces in the interior. This works especially well in cases like Rohan where one interior country touches multiple borders (Isengard). If you capture the whole continent and put a few men on Lorien and the rest on Isengard, you will have a strong central force that can't attack. Your opponents will realize that if they take Ement, Enedwaith, or Andrast they can prevent you from getting the bonus, but they will also expose the 15 or however many men you have stored in the center. In many cases that prevents them from taking the continent even though you seemingly put up no defense! The added benefit is that if someone DOES try to take the continent from you, you will only lose a single man and you can easily regain the continent because you can attack from Isengard. Whereas if you had 5 men on all the exterior borders and someone broke in you would lose 5 (of course) and have difficulty holding the continent in the future. Basically what I'm saying is, it doesn't matter which continent you try to hold...its HOW you hold it that is important. You can use the strategy that I've talked about but you also have to make a judgement call on when you should switch to a more traditional strategy of men on the outside (or a combination of the two).

[GrazingCattle]

Even i learn something! Thanks for the good advice Sully. I will be sure to use it!

*giddy as a school girl over new piece of wisdom*

[sully800]

Here is an example of what I'm talking about. I am teal.



Note that when we got down to 3 players, I had less than half of the men that the other two had. I built up slowly and never moved my main forces into a position where they could attack. This made the other two view me as a non threat and I was able to build until now I actually have the most men.

The best example is probably my Hawaii-Mexico border. By holding onto Hawaii, I get an extra 3 men per turn. However yellow knows that I can't add enough men to hawaii to break into mexico on a single turn, so he doesn't view my position as threatening. However if he were to attack hawaii he would currently expose himself to 120 men and be very threatened. I am confident that if I move a large force onto hawaii he will either attack it or add a lot there himself, and we will get stuck in an army building competition (like has happened on the iceland-greenland border).

Anyway, I hope that all helps your strategy for future games where holding continents is important (ie NOT escalating. The practice I have described is terrible for escalating games unless its only applied in the beginning of the game).

[GrazingCattle]

I will sit at your feet master Sully. Please continue, I am grateful, on all our part, for these pearls of wisdom. Any more advice Sully? I am keenly interested!

[sully800]

Oh I have plenty of advice (some of which might be decent), I just wouldn't know where to start! If you have a specific question or a particular strategy you want to ask about I will do my best to answer the best that I can.

[GrazingCattle]

hmm, I find myself losing RT often. Is there a certain thing that you do that seems to help. (I normally don't go around asking for strat. advice because of a large ego, but I recently had that removed by Hopesail) Any tips in general for RT would be Treasured forever!

[GrazingCattle]

I have taken your advice about the holding a con bonus by not using force. Worked. I am strong in a RT game. Thanks for the advice!

[wcaclimbing]

The game that shark0613 is asking about is game number 227851

Link: http://www.conquerclub.com/game.php?game=227851

[sfhbballnut]

I think it might have to do with each person's style of play, I have trouble winning on some maps and I'm really good at others

[vgmmaster]

One of my strategys is to get a small contnent that is sort of out of the way and fairly small. In this game, I would go after Lindon depending on the amount of armies I had and who all was stationed there as well as their army totals. If there's 4 different people with 3 armies each, I may go for it. However, if it's just me and one other person and I'm outnumbered by owned countries inside that continent, I'll leave it for him and attack when the time is right.

[GrazingCattle]

Just wanted to thank you Sully. i just posted my first RT win, my first win over FP, and gained a large points boon. All thanks to your advice.

Thanks for the helpful hints !

[RobinJ]

Thanks for that too Sully - know that I think about it other players have done this to me too. I hope it doesn't come back to haunt you sometime in a game with one of us (unlikely).

[sully800]

haha, don't worry Robin I'll just add everyone who sees this thread to my ignore list

And Grazing, you are welcome, I'm glad it worked. Ad for your earlier question about real time games, I don't have any specific strategy for those since they are almost exactly the same as normal games. There are two main differences that I can think of-

1) Since people are watching you play they may notice when you attack a country but don't conquer it. That info isn't in the game log so it might be overlooked in normal games. That slightl difference wouldn't effect game play much though I don't think.

2) Alliances are a tad more likely since all players are there and can chat in real time and work out alliance details easily. Once again, since you can't do anything about others forming alliances I don't think this changes the game much.

[sully800]

By the way, one of my favorite spots to use that first strategy I mentioned is on SAmerica on the classic board. Place all of your men on only one of the borders, not both. That way the person on your fortified side isn't strong enough to break through, and the person on your weak side doesn't want to break in and expose your large force. The other nice part is you can switch the force between the two borders depending on the situation and threaten different people.

[GrazingCattle]

i had heard that last bit before. maybe my rt problem stems from less thinking about my turns and emotional attacks against "dumb" people. maybe that is it.

[Fireside Poet]

i had heard that last bit before. maybe my rt problem stems from less thinking about my turns and emotional attacks against "dumb" people. maybe that is it.

Watch it, GC!

[GrazingCattle]

AHH FP I uhh... didn't see you there. How are the kids?

[shark0613]

Round 2:



I deploy 3 and win Andrast 3-0. I fortified 8 on Andrast in an attempt to not to appear to be a threat. Would it have been better to stock up on Isengard? I don't think yellow will attack my backside since he looks more interested in Lindon.

Board after round 2:



Dam, another red card.

[GrazingCattle]

I think the idea is take Lorien next turn, then split your forces between Isengard and Wold. After that build up your center and attack from where you are not expected.

This is my personal advice, may it go against someone elses, choose your own path. Only you can play that game!

[Sammy gags]

My RISK theory is...aim small, miss little

[sully800]

If I were you I wouldn't take Lorien yet. No sense in drawing the attacks against you since you don't have many cards...also it would be 5v3 and if you lose both on the first battle you're in tough shape.

I would probably deploy on Enedwaith, attack the single man on dunland, then fortify all those extra men from enedwaith to wold so you have a strong enough force to take lorien on the next turn.

[maniacmath17]

Something to keep in mind for flat rate game is the number of cards for your opponents. You don't want to take over a continent while your opponents have 4 or 5 cards because they could use the set to break you. Wait till after they cash (assuming they deploy elsewhere) and then take the continent.

In this particular game, there is a lot of upside to taking lorien on round 3 since no one will be cashing that round, so it should be relatively easy to hold. Otherwise you would have to wait several more turns to take it because taking it in round 4 and 5 is just asking for it to get broken by someone's set.

But the 5 v 3 is tough, I would have kept more guys in wold after round 2 so i could take lorien next turn. No real advantage in having those 8 in andrast.