Retreating: Advancing in another direction ?

[Ham]

Some people tend to refuse to retreat but sometime I think its essential.

Take this case. I was playin a world 2.0 and I held the middle east, china australia, canada, india, and the horn. Well everyone massed huge armies on my borders and broke into 2 of them. Instead of taking them back I just forted all my men to canada and took n. america the next turn and went on to win the game.
Some people would have just stuck with the broken conts.
How do you reveiw retreats ?
Whaddya think ?

[sully800]

Well on the world 2.0 map it will work very well for two main reasons-

1- there is actually a place to go! On most maps, if there are a few players left you wouldn't be able to just go to the other side of the board to take other continents.

2- Not only are you adding a new continent bonus on the other side of the map, you get to keep all the men you have scattered in your broken territories. Since 2.0 has so many countries you can get a large bonus just for the countries. And chances are all of your weaker opponents don't have many men to switch to the other side of the map as easily as you did. Therefore they will either break your new continents or defeat some of your old territories, but you probably put yourself in good position.

[wcaclimbing]

in a w2.0 game, all strategies are feasible and possible, but it all depends on teh circumstances of teh game.

one good thing about w2.0 is that your not gonna get eliminated easily. the countries are so spread out that if they take your area, you could move in from behind them and own.

another good thing is all of the small areas on the map. you can easily retreat into one of the many mini-continents and still survive off the bonus for that area, which makes it really hard for someone to take over someone elses area. they will just move back into one of the mini-continents, and then come back and reclaim their land later.

my favorite move is to get a good 10+ army bonus on each of my turns, and then deploy 10 armies on my opponents side where he thought i couldnt hurt him. it makes for really good sneak attack moves

[Incandenza]

Sometimes it's not even necessary to retreat. You just gotta tighten up your empire, get it down to four borders instead of 5 or 6. For my money, that's the key to 2.0, maximizing the number of armies you get while only having to hold 4 borders...

[speckknoedelsup]

it is a very important thing sometimes also on small maps for ex:
you have a good startup position and are able to get a big region before anyone is able to cash in , now it comes to the time that is is very likely some players will cash in next round (fore ex in round 4), due to the fact that you have the biggest region at least one of them may break your bonus , so instead of defending your borders you fortify everthing to the middle leaving the borders with 1 unit, they can easaly break you but hardly anyone wants to use his armys to reduce yours after your region is already broken.

so you just wait till everone has cashed in and then get your big region back.

it has the big disatvantage that the one who breaks your bonus don't lose much of his units.

i try this tactic sometimes (esp in 3 player games) sometimes it worked great, and sometimes it screwed me if an enemy broke me bonus + reduced my army, so this is kind of riski , but thats what the game is called isn't it .