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Containment

Postby Just_essence on Sat Jan 12, 2013 12:38 pm

When I first registered on CC, I read through the SoC topics on strategy, and their most repeated strategy (mainly because it's successful in so many attempts) is to stack 3 or more territories in various regions of the world in order to be able to act on an opportunity anywhere, increasing the likelyhood of easy spoils and therefore contributing to the overall goal of the Escalating Final Sweep that destroys everybody. I was thinking about how to best counter it, since it is used by many due to its ability to win many situations, and I came up with a possible idea: "Containment", taking its name from the American policy during the Cold War.
Since their strategy seems (at least, to me) to imply that attempting to connect all the territories you own is useless and not to be pursued, then the stacks are obviously isolated. So, why not simply surround all the stacks with unprofitable amounts of troops? Of course, this is best used when you have a coalition of players each partially surrounding a stack, since you alone can't do the entire operation without giving up a lot in the process. The goal of the SoC strategy was to get easy spoils and conserve troops at the same time- so deprive the player of that opportunity. Since they don't have any other bonuses (SoC is, of course, against any Bonus Monkeying) and most likely won't have enough territory to get above the regular 3 troops per turn, they could be eventually wiped out through combined effort. Which one in the coalition profits most from this and how to make that person you, however, I don't know.
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Re: Containment

Postby Anatolia on Sat Jan 12, 2013 1:22 pm

That's a pretty interesting thought. The only way I see this working is if only one player in the game is stacking. Then the others could see this and put a stop to it by containing the stacks. The only issue is that, with good placement, a certain stack could reach 6 or more territories, depending on the map, which means a lot of troops dedicated to containment. The way the game seems to be played though, the stacking strategy works so well, it's hard to convince everyone to join against the stacker and not jump on the bandwagon.

The alternate to containment, which doesn't really seem to show up a ton in many player escalating, but seems to work very well elsewhere, is trimming, whereby a certain number of troops are dedicated to hitting a stack a few times to keep it's destructive force from getting out of hand.

Nice thinking though. I think CC could always benefit from challenges to the common way of doing things. PM me if you ever want to play doubles somewhere and try new strategies out.

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Re: Containment

Postby Just_essence on Sat Jan 12, 2013 1:32 pm

Thanks for the response and for the offer. You're right, it is a problem when more than 1 person is playing the stack or if one territory reaches many others. I don't think I've heard of trimming before, but it seems to be an effective counter. However, there is the apparent tradeoff of draining a percentage of your troops every turn.
Now that I'm thinking about territorial problems, it appears that there should be a good stack no matter what within a few steps of any one territory. If we let the stacker gain some easy cards, but left 3's or so in a ring, compacted with some of the other stacks that the player must run into, and never took the "easy card" territory back without reinforcing it to the point where it's not an easy card anymore...
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Re: Containment

Postby Viceroy63 on Sat Jan 12, 2013 7:37 pm

Just_essence wrote: The goal of the SoC strategy was to get easy spoils and conserve troops at the same time- so deprive the player of that opportunity. Since they don't have any other bonuses (SoC is, of course, against any Bonus Monkeying) and most likely won't have enough territory to get above the regular 3 troops per turn, they could be eventually wiped out through combined effort. Which one in the coalition profits most from this and how to make that person you, however, I don't know.


And that is really the trick isn't it? How does one profit from any specific tactic or strategy that involves multiple player participation? A word on diplomacy first, is that diplomacy if used improperly is a double edge sword that cuts both ways. It could hurt you as much as it's intended target. There are really only few times and exceptions when over the board diplomacy could and should be used. And plenty of reasons as well.

As to the strategy of the stack; It is a strategy best used with the escalating spoils on a standard game. One of the benefits is to make the Bonus Zones of none effect. (This works best on medium size maps like the Classic Map). The spoils then determine the winner of the game in escalating spoils games. If one wants to make the BZ's of any consequences then one plays with no spoils or flat rate. This would insure the battle for the Zones and who ever controls the Zones controls and wins the game. But that is a different strategy for a different setting.

It's not the goal of the strategy of the stack to go for the easy card while setting up stacks spread out through the map, but that this is the best tried and truest way to play for the settings of escalating spoils game. It is the settings that determines the strategy of the game. The strategy of the stack simply wont work in no spoils game or Trench Warfare games, for example, because that is the whole idea behind escalating spoils settings on a standard game.

Each setting needs and uses it's own specific strategy for that particular game. One strategy simply wont work for another setting. And while Your "Containment" strategy does sound intriguing, it is probably best for another setting or game map other than the one used by the SoC. The SoC is teaching the best strategy for the map and settings it's using. Anyone who deviates from the strategy of the stacks in an escalating standard game must eventually find themselves lacking in capability and or troop strength to insure a successful victory in those particular games.

I would enjoy discussing this with you further as I have also though about tactical plays along similar lines of thoughts. Although slightly different. No multiple player participation. I am thinking more of tactics then of over all strategy plays and mostly for Trench Warfare settings. I'm thinking of calling it "Landmine Laying." LOL. :)
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Re: Containment

Postby shadistic on Tue Jan 15, 2013 12:24 am

Just, I think you're on the right track.

The fact is that this happens in some form in quite a lot of Escalating games, especially on smaller maps: People take up positions that weaken the positions of other players. (What's this? Players in a zero-sum game actively work against each other's strategies? You don't say!)

It comes in 2 forms. One is to crowd their stacks with your stacks. This inevitably happens here and there, but much of it is intentional too.
Another is to block off a player's access to certain parts of the board. If you can't reach a player's last few troops, you can't knock that player out, and if you can't reach anyone's last few troops, you can't win. It's related to the "quarantine" tactic which you often see in fog games.

In general, the second form is a lot easier to do. You can spend lots of troops to paralyze a player's stack, or you can spend fewer troops just preventing that stack from going where it needs to go.
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Re: Containment

Postby Just_essence on Tue Jan 15, 2013 4:37 pm

So many different strategies for the Classic map that I've never heard of.
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Re: Containment

Postby Viceroy63 on Tue Jan 15, 2013 8:16 pm

Yes there are a lot of different strategies. I also played my share of Fog games but mostly doubles. And I can tell you that the strategies in Fog games are also somewhat diverse and even surprising sometime. Especially in individual standard or terminator games.

I always recommend simply sticking with one type of strategy at first. Play it and learn it well and then move on to another strategy. Part of the reason, In my opinion, for why some people have low win ratios like 12% wins or 15% wins is that they are not playing any strategy to the best of their abilities. Because they are not truly focused on learning any one particular strategy and so they are not learning all that they can from just one particular strategy.

By the time that they learn all the strategies, that low win ratio together with their number of lost games makes it difficult to increase their win ratio percentage's.

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Just as the lowly shall be Holy.
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Re: Containment

Postby Gillipig on Wed Jan 16, 2013 2:03 am

Viceroy63 wrote:Yes there are a lot of different strategies. I also played my share of Fog games but mostly doubles. And I can tell you that the strategies in Fog games are also somewhat diverse and even surprising sometime. Especially in individual standard or terminator games.

I always recommend simply sticking with one type of strategy at first. Play it and learn it well and then move on to another strategy. Part of the reason, In my opinion, for why some people have low win ratios like 12% wins or 15% wins is that they are not playing any strategy to the best of their abilities. Because they are not truly focused on learning any one particular strategy and so they are not learning all that they can from just one particular strategy.

By the time that they learn all the strategies, that low win ratio together with their number of lost games makes it difficult to increase their win ratio percentage's.

To the Patient, comes the Prize.
Just as the lowly shall be Holy.

You've played just 24 fog games, you don't know anything about fog of war!
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Re: Containment

Postby Just_essence on Wed Jan 16, 2013 4:38 pm

24 is still a sizable number. He at least knows something.
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Re: Containment

Postby Viceroy63 on Thu Jan 17, 2013 12:09 am

Gillipig wrote:
Viceroy63 wrote:Yes there are a lot of different strategies. I also played my share of Fog games but mostly doubles. And I can tell you that the strategies in Fog games are also somewhat diverse and even surprising sometime. Especially in individual standard or terminator games.

I always recommend simply sticking with one type of strategy at first. Play it and learn it well and then move on to another strategy. Part of the reason, In my opinion, for why some people have low win ratios like 12% wins or 15% wins is that they are not playing any strategy to the best of their abilities. Because they are not truly focused on learning any one particular strategy and so they are not learning all that they can from just one particular strategy.

By the time that they learn all the strategies, that low win ratio together with their number of lost games makes it difficult to increase their win ratio percentage's.

To the Patient, comes the Prize.
Just as the lowly shall be Holy.

You've played just 24 fog games, you don't know anything about fog of war!


Of those 24 Fog of war games I won 12 of them for a 50% win ratio. Of those 12 wins
01 game was a 4 player standard, out of a total of only 1 game of this type.
03 games were 1vs.1, out of a total of 6 games of this type.
04 games were Doubles, out of a total of 5 games of this type.
02 games were triples, out of a total of 2 games of this type. And...
02 games were quadruples, out of a total of 2 games of this type.

I have yet to win any 6-8 player standard but as I have only played 7 of those types of games (and only 1, five player game of this type), I am well with in the win ratio of 15% to 20% for those types of games. The fact that I have won a variety of different types of games would indicate that I am well verse in Fog of War type games. And that the majority of my wins are in team games would indicate that I play well with others in Fog of War team type games.

What more do I need to know? Why don't you invite me to a team game so that you can really and truly judge me. I must warn you however that I take photos of my games and save them all on my computer. So if your intentions are to invite me to a game and then throw it away and blame me for it, I will present my case with photos and Statistics and the game chat itself. But if you sincerely want to know what I can do and what I know and if you would like to win games with me then invited me to a doubles game and you will see first hand how I think and what I can do.

On second thought, with a 93% attendance like yours, I would most definitely not accept unless you also include your password to your account with the invitation.That has probably got to be one of the worse things in these games when playing with a partner who misses turns. I don't care for rank much, I have played and won games with privates before (Game 12026663), but people who miss a lot of turns, really should not say too much about how well others who do not miss turns play.
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Re: Containment

Postby Gillipig on Thu Jan 17, 2013 5:24 am

Viceroy63 wrote:
Gillipig wrote:
Viceroy63 wrote:Yes there are a lot of different strategies. I also played my share of Fog games but mostly doubles. And I can tell you that the strategies in Fog games are also somewhat diverse and even surprising sometime. Especially in individual standard or terminator games.

I always recommend simply sticking with one type of strategy at first. Play it and learn it well and then move on to another strategy. Part of the reason, In my opinion, for why some people have low win ratios like 12% wins or 15% wins is that they are not playing any strategy to the best of their abilities. Because they are not truly focused on learning any one particular strategy and so they are not learning all that they can from just one particular strategy.

By the time that they learn all the strategies, that low win ratio together with their number of lost games makes it difficult to increase their win ratio percentage's.

To the Patient, comes the Prize.
Just as the lowly shall be Holy.

You've played just 24 fog games, you don't know anything about fog of war!


Of those 24 Fog of war games I won 12 of them for a 50% win ratio. Of those 12 wins
01 game was a 4 player standard, out of a total of only 1 game of this type.
03 games were 1vs.1, out of a total of 6 games of this type.
04 games were Doubles, out of a total of 5 games of this type.
02 games were triples, out of a total of 2 games of this type. And...
02 games were quadruples, out of a total of 2 games of this type.

I have yet to win any 6-8 player standard but as I have only played 7 of those types of games (and only 1, five player game of this type), I am well with in the win ratio of 15% to 20% for those types of games. The fact that I have won a variety of different types of games would indicate that I am well verse in Fog of War type games. And that the majority of my wins are in team games would indicate that I play well with others in Fog of War team type games.

What more do I need to know? Why don't you invite me to a team game so that you can really and truly judge me. I must warn you however that I take photos of my games and save them all on my computer. So if your intentions are to invite me to a game and then throw it away and blame me for it, I will present my case with photos and Statistics and the game chat itself. But if you sincerely want to know what I can do and what I know and if you would like to win games with me then invited me to a doubles game and you will see first hand how I think and what I can do.

On second thought, with a 93% attendance like yours, I would most definitely not accept unless you also include your password to your account with the invitation.That has probably got to be one of the worse things in these games when playing with a partner who misses turns. I don't care for rank much, I have played and won games with privates before (Game 12026663), but people who miss a lot of turns, really should not say too much about how well others who do not miss turns play.

How impressive :lol:
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Re: Containment

Postby Just_essence on Thu Jan 17, 2013 7:16 am

Never thought there would be banter on this thread, but I guess I thought wrong.
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Re: Containment

Postby Viceroy63 on Thu Jan 17, 2013 7:20 am

Gillipig wrote:
Viceroy63 wrote:
Gillipig wrote:
Viceroy63 wrote:Yes there are a lot of different strategies. I also played my share of Fog games but mostly doubles. And I can tell you that the strategies in Fog games are also somewhat diverse and even surprising sometime. Especially in individual standard or terminator games.

I always recommend simply sticking with one type of strategy at first. Play it and learn it well and then move on to another strategy. Part of the reason, In my opinion, for why some people have low win ratios like 12% wins or 15% wins is that they are not playing any strategy to the best of their abilities. Because they are not truly focused on learning any one particular strategy and so they are not learning all that they can from just one particular strategy.

By the time that they learn all the strategies, that low win ratio together with their number of lost games makes it difficult to increase their win ratio percentage's.

To the Patient, comes the Prize.
Just as the lowly shall be Holy.

You've played just 24 fog games, you don't know anything about fog of war!


Of those 24 Fog of war games I won 12 of them for a 50% win ratio. Of those 12 wins
01 game was a 4 player standard, out of a total of only 1 game of this type.
03 games were 1vs.1, out of a total of 6 games of this type.
04 games were Doubles, out of a total of 5 games of this type.
02 games were triples, out of a total of 2 games of this type. And...
02 games were quadruples, out of a total of 2 games of this type.

I have yet to win any 6-8 player standard but as I have only played 7 of those types of games (and only 1, five player game of this type), I am well with in the win ratio of 15% to 20% for those types of games. The fact that I have won a variety of different types of games would indicate that I am well verse in Fog of War type games. And that the majority of my wins are in team games would indicate that I play well with others in Fog of War team type games.

What more do I need to know? Why don't you invite me to a team game so that you can really and truly judge me. I must warn you however that I take photos of my games and save them all on my computer. So if your intentions are to invite me to a game and then throw it away and blame me for it, I will present my case with photos and Statistics and the game chat itself. But if you sincerely want to know what I can do and what I know and if you would like to win games with me then invited me to a doubles game and you will see first hand how I think and what I can do.

On second thought, with a 93% attendance like yours, I would most definitely not accept unless you also include your password to your account with the invitation.That has probably got to be one of the worse things in these games when playing with a partner who misses turns. I don't care for rank much, I have played and won games with privates before (Game 12026663), but people who miss a lot of turns, really should not say too much about how well others who do not miss turns play.

How impressive :lol:

Thanks; I try. ;)
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Re: Containment

Postby gimli1990 on Fri Jan 18, 2013 1:11 am

Just_essence wrote:So many different strategies for the Classic map that I've never heard of.


yes there are strategies for each set of setting each map and for different player counts. trench for example changes everyting on any map all of a sudden you have to think ahead and know when to advance your troops or hold or other options. i play a lot of trench so i think i know what i am doing there. just watch the settings and know how they work would one peice of advice for anyone that is new.
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