When choosing an initial starting position, or when advancing towards the enemy, the concept of “Contact Point” is useful. A Contact Point is where you concentrate your forces to confer the most advantage in the three main strategic drivers of the game:
1. Defend vulnerable existing territories
2. Threaten enemy territories and pin enemy forces
3. Expand into new territories in the rear
If you can bring to bear the same armies to meet all three goals simultaneously then you are making the most efficient use of your forces. Conversely, you’re not making the most of your troops if:
1. you are deploying forces to defend where you have no plans to attack
2. you are building up a large attacking force that cannot change plans to, say, expand
3. you are deploying forces in your rear that serve no offensive or defensive purpose
The ideal Contact Point is one that is a natural geographical choke point, and also has a large number of “exit” routes to the rear. You deploy most or all of your troops at the contact point, which threatens the enemy at potentially long range in the early game, and also serves as a strong defensive position. In the following phase you have the luxury of choosing between attacking the enemy or consolidating your position by expanding in the rear.
Even without a geographical choke point, you can still use this concept. Mass your forces close to the enemy, and expand out to rear in a fan shape.
In the example screens, I’ve managed to place my forces (red) at a good choke point location, and am expanding in the rear while the enemy (blue) has essentially blocked himself in and has no expansion options, while I force him to defend against my larger force (note that it is red’s turn).
Often times, a stalemate type situation will evolve where the map is divided and forces are evenly matched. To get the advantage in this situation, you need a breakthrough while leaving enough troops to cause some damage behind enemy lines. “Sapping” is a good technique to use here, involving two or more regions attacking a single position. Counter intuitively, the key is to not win in the first battle, but to “sap” the enemy forces allowing you to strike a decisive blow leaving you with enough forces to continue attacking. For example, with a defending army of 6, you attack first with 4 or 5 armies so that you don’t win, but will reduce the enemy to 2 or 3 or hopefully even 1 army. You then follow up with another attack from a region with 6+ armies and should win easily. The remaining 4 or 5 armies can then continue on into the enemies undefended interior.
In contrast, if you had staged 6 armies in two regions for a total of 12, your first attack has fairly good odds of taking the territory, but leaving you few armies to attack further with, the other supporting 6 armies being left behind your own lines with no adjacent territories to attack.
Be careful when setting up this kind of attack because if the enemy has a strong force they threaten all adjacent territories and you risk them punching through any one of them. Make sure you have forces behind your lines to stop any progress after an initial enemy victory.
This is a straightforward technique that will put your opponent on the defensive and allow you to take the initiative. If you can’t chop your opponents territory in two, or you don’t quite get all the way through, try to penetrate as far in as possible inside his area and reinforce with a large concentration of troops. Try to reinforce in a country that has the maximum number of adjacent countries, and minimum number of enemy troops. It doesn’t really matter whether you have a follow up plan or think you can survive the counter attack, the goal is to force your opponent to deploy troops to defend. If you can leave 6 armies in a country that has four adjacent enemy countries, then the enemy would have to deploy 24 troops to have even odds in the battles that will follow the next turn.
There are only two phases to the game: attack and reinforce, but you need to think of it as three: attack, defend weak areas, and stage for next round attack. The “punch” technique forces your opponent to allocate more armies to defense and thereby forfeit attack capability in the next round. You’ll need to allocate armies to the punch rather than defense, but the multiplier effect of 6 armies threatening 3 or 4 undefended countries should give you the advantage.
You can punch through defenses, or if you spot an opening sweep through neutral countries and into the flanks, as in the screens below.
Cornelius
In screens for my articles I will always be red, and all strategy will be from the perspective of the red player. Also, everything will be in the context of one-on-one multiplayer, where starting positions are selected manually. For some reason, pass and play mode always automatically and randomly selects starting positions for human players, and they are rarely good. Also, pass and play provides an option for automatic placement of reinforcements which I’m not going to consider.
The general rule for starting is simple: if you are placing first always go slap bang right in the middle of the map. Although you might alter the position slightly based on the presence of “lakes”, starting in the center conveys the greatest strategic advantage, much like tic-tac-toe. Where your opponent places will then give you a sense for how he would like to see the map carved up. If he makes the mistake of placing at a distance from you, then you’ll be able to move towards him and ensure that in the end game he’ll have less than half the map and you will likely win any war of attrition.
In the screen below, the enemy has started too close to the bottom of the map, which allows me to advance towards him and start to dominate the map. In this situation, you can comfortably avoid combat for as long as you like, secure in the knowledge that you’ll win the war of attrition. It’s important to keep strong flanks here so you can you envelop the enemy and prevent escape. Once the enemy is cornered all you need to do is fend him off while continuing to expand in the rear and you’ll eventually overwhelm.
If the enemy places close by or right next to you, then it’s game on!
Cornelius
There are a large variety of possible game modes based on the size, setup, and type options. However, experienced players almost always play Epic, Land Grab, Attrition.
- Anything smaller than epic or large does not provide a challenging game.
- Full map as opposed to land grab gives too strong an advantage to the first mover.
- Winner Keeps All is unrealistic and leads to crude brute force strategy.
Color, of course, is a matter of taste, but I’d recommend picking a non-default color and sticking to it. Also, if you do play Winner Keeps All and Attrition games simultaneously, try to consistently use two colors, a different one for each type of game. There’s no obvious way to know which type of game you’re playing once your in. Remember also that you can change your color before accepting someone’s challenge.
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