Waiting for players
2 player
Sequential
No Fog
Step 2: Look through the results. If any are started by a higher rank than you, join them.
It doesn't matter if you don't know the map. Just read the legend and see what they are doing, since they probably already know how to win on it.
Step 3: Look at how this person is playing. They are probably better than you, so copy their strategy.
aka. if they go for Oases on the Oasis map, you should be doing that too. If they are breaking your bonuses before taking some for themselves, you should be doing that too... etc... etc...
Step 4: Go back to step 1.
I was stuck with a high score of 1200 until I thought of something:
The Neon Peon, a long time ago, wrote:Hey, I seem to keep losing. Maybe I suck at this game. Maybe the people that keep winning are good at this game. Maybe if I do what they are doing, I'll get the same result.
I got up to captain in less than a month, and never dropped out of it since, with three exceptions:
1. When I got premium and played a bunch of random games without stopping to thing before I took my turn in the next one.
2. When I left the site with just over 100 active games and deadbeated them all.
3. When I recently started 120 two-player doodles, and did nothing but autoattack my opponent until I ran out of troops.
For some reason, I've never managed to make higher than a low major doing this. I went to different types of games and have had no trouble making and keeping major and colonel on various types of maps and settings. Right now, I'm seeing if I can make colonel playing a majority of flat rate/no spoils games. I'd assume that the looking at how other people do it helps you learn other settings faster as well.
Best of luck.