On escalating Peloponnesian and other similar conquest-style maps, the gameplay is unique to classic style maps in that it's relatively easy to attack and eliminate a player since all his territories are in one area. These maps include, of course, fuedal, WWII Poland, AoR1, etc. AoR2 not so much, as by the time cards mean anything, games would already be in the ending stages.
In maps like Fuedal and WWII Poland, the best thing to do (please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't play esc that much) is to stack on your starting position or somewhere near and bombard (from the castle in fuedal and from the planes in Poland) until cards are worth around 20-30 maybe and you can start eliminating players.
However, in maps such as Peloponnesian War and AoR1, there is no bombard option. Thus, to get spoils one must assault a territory. So take this game as an example: Game 11896351, which caused me to start the thread. I'm at Dardanians and I have two options.
Option 1: Stay within the Dardanian "boundaries" - ie. stay within the nuetral 6s and keep stacking. The advantage is that I can attack both the players to my left and to my right when the opportunity arises. However, I will not be able to get cards as I will soon run out of territories to hit and there isn't any bombard option. This will leave me severely less troops as the card value escalates, leaving me in a weaker position to eliminate another player should the opportunity arise. Instead, I will have to mostly rely on someone weakening the player for me so I can swoop in and take the cards. This is pretty risky though.
Option 2: Move out of the Dardanian area. I will expand out of the neutral 6s to continue to get cards and cash. The advantage is, of course, having more troops to eliminate people with. The downside, however, is that I will have to choose whether to break out on my left, or to my right. So suppose I decide to break out toward the left and place my stack somewhere west of Macedonians, continuing to attack one terit at a time to gain cards. This would mean that entry to the right region (Pontus, Lemnians, etc.) would be blocked by my own territories. So if an opportunity arises in the right, say someone tried to eliminate a player perhaps with 5 cards and the value is pretty high, I would be unable to finish him off as my stack is tied up on the other side of the map. Another downside is that after expanding outside my own territory, I will probably clash with some other stacks. While more experienced players will know to just leave it be, some noobs may not understand this and will probably suicide, effectively ending the game for both of us.
It has occured to me that I could split stack into two and place them both on the left/right side of my territory but I think this is more defensive gameplay and will probably be a bad idea if I'm trying to eliminate someone. So I just wanna know what would you guys do? Thanks in advance!
jl.