it's about cards not conquest

[Woodruff]

I used to think that winning was about building my armies and conquering territories. I have since learned that it is about being the first to eliminate another player, take his/her cards for the bonus and then eliminate the next player and so on. My latest attempt at this came close. I tried to eliminate a player who had 5 cards but the dice were not in my favour. Someone else beat me to it. Oh well next time.

Sounds to me like you should be playing No Spoils games (the only ones I play).

[Jeff Hardy]

I know a lot of top players will disagree but escalating games are complete lotterys. Its just pure luck, which is why I slowly reduced the esc games I played, and then eventually stopped altogether. Recently I've joined a random couple. I played in three of the Br's, and just my bad luck I woke up each time a new br was announced and they were all Esc. It wasn't until they were over that I saw there had been flat rate BR's..

Esc games between only good high ranked players have a degree of skill involved(not nearly as much as they claim), the problem though is that all the skill in the world can't conquer bad dice, and the next luckbox to take their turn steals your kill and game. With flatrate, a round of crap dice and failed alimination attempt doesn't spell the end of the game, being a good player with a good strategy you can recover.

And of course no cards, has no cards. Which completely changes attacking and eliminating strategy..(or it should, of course some people just..gah)

Right....

Which is why you calculate the odds before going on and attempting such a kill...

you have on the board 11 v 7, 11 v 7, 12 v 9 to go in for a kill. Do you go for it?

First, of course we subtract the one army that has to remain, thus it's 10 attacking vs 7, etc.
If you want to take a 34% shot - go for it. But if you lose it and blame bad dice, that's your own ignorance. And that's only if no one else is in the way - you have to block other's paths from getting kills, etc. Then you have to factor in teh chance "will someone else go for the kill? They have a 72% chance of getting the kill if they have a set, which with 4 cards is 78%... chances are he has a set and then has a 72% run at it, and will likely sweep the game, so either I should block and reduce his chance, fort my armies so someone else can block, or take the risk with a 34% shot which, with 6 players, still are good odds if I can win around 1/3 of hte games (assuming that kill guarantees a sweep).

None of these factors are considered in flat rate/no cards, which is a game of "let's wait until the opponents f*ck up." And that's not all the strategy, what I mentioned was just above the basics (yet still not basic).

thats pretty much what a good freestyle speed esc player can work out in his/her head within seconds (without the exact figures of course)

[Woodruff]

None of these factors are considered in flat rate/no cards, which is a game of "let's wait until the opponents f*ck up."

A distinct lack of understanding of the flat rate and no cards games, clearly.

[Puriahi]

I'm not a brilliant player although I know a few stats but it is obvious that in ANY game where luck is any factor at all, skill is best judged over a number of games. Most glaring example is backgammon, where players of reasonable skill alternate between certain tacks, sometimes for probability and sometimes, like when you're losing anyway, a risk for a great gain, but dice can swing games massively so it's traditional to play a series of games. Come to think of it that's how a lot of sporting tournaments work - the best tennis player might not win every game, but he can win the matches.

[riskpro678]

DomQuebec, ur right. i have to agree. i now exactly what u mean about luck. true, luck is a factor in the game. but not even close to the factor of stragedy. ill try to break it down into simpler terms with aradhus.
stragedy:85%
luck:15%
now, aradhus, ill try to break it down into EVEN SIMPLER terms for you if your that stupid:
u get the luckiest dice rolls ever. like no less than 4 all the time. you go to take over a zone. its a 6 territorie area and u own 3 of it. when u deploy, u have 9 men. that means you put 3 on each of ur zones. now i know you havent learned to count to 5 yet, but try to understand. u own 3 territories. u put 9 all 9 men on one of them. and since u done that, u wont be able to conquer the last zone because all 9 of ur men are on a NON-ADJACENT territory. all the territories u own that can attack the last territory have 1 man all around. so, he has 5 cards, and its escalating. well, since u didnt deploy ur troops properly, u cant eliminate him. then its his turn. he cashes in his group of cards for 45 men, and takes the 6 territorie continent with ease, takes ur 2 cards when he eliminates u, and then when its his turn again he cashes in another group of cards for 55 men. he then takes over a 15 territorie zone and gets 5 cards cuz he eliminated another player. he gets 7 men PLUS his trade in of 3 cards and he now gets 65 troops. then now he comes the hard part, he runs into the same scenario as you did when u was about to eliminate him. but he deploys an EVEN amount of troops all around, kills the last player and wins.WAS THAT CLEAR ENOUGH FOR YOU?!?!?! probaly not because your like the irish men that get good luck all the time but still cant figure out why you lose all the time. ill give you another example of how skill beats luck. POKER. you get royal flushes every single turn. BUT you arent SMART ENOUGH and you dont know you have the BEST hand. so you fold every turn and lose. ya see now?if your stupid and dont know what your doing, you wont win even with THE BEST DICE ROLLS ever!i hope you understand.

Exactly, and that's not all. I made a program on Excel who compute probabilities. So that's accurate and my moves are perfect. Only one thing can kill me when I try, that's dice, but I don't realy take care, since I know what are the exact probabilities, so I'm never angry against me, each of my moves are always perfects.

Noobs like Aradhus are very far from perfection, since they think escalating is luck... ROFL, pathetic!

[bridge2far]

I know a lot of top players will disagree but escalating games are complete lotterys. Its just pure luck, which is why I slowly reduced the esc games I played, and then eventually stopped altogether. Recently I've joined a random couple. I played in three of the Br's, and just my bad luck I woke up each time a new br was announced and they were all Esc. It wasn't until they were over that I saw there had been flat rate BR's..

Esc games between only good high ranked players have a degree of skill involved(not nearly as much as they claim), the problem though is that all the skill in the world can't conquer bad dice, and the next luckbox to take their turn steals your kill and game. With flatrate, a round of crap dice and failed alimination attempt doesn't spell the end of the game, being a good player with a good strategy you can recover.

And of course no cards, has no cards. Which completely changes attacking and eliminating strategy..(or it should, of course some people just..gah)

Right....

Which is why you calculate the odds before going on and attempting such a kill...

you have on the board 11 v 7, 11 v 7, 12 v 9 to go in for a kill. Do you go for it?

First, of course we subtract the one army that has to remain, thus it's 10 attacking vs 7, etc.
If you want to take a 34% shot - go for it. But if you lose it and blame bad dice, that's your own ignorance. And that's only if no one else is in the way - you have to block other's paths from getting kills, etc. Then you have to factor in teh chance "will someone else go for the kill? They have a 72% chance of getting the kill if they have a set, which with 4 cards is 78%... chances are he has a set and then has a 72% run at it, and will likely sweep the game, so either I should block and reduce his chance, fort my armies so someone else can block, or take the risk with a 34% shot which, with 6 players, still are good odds if I can win around 1/3 of hte games (assuming that kill guarantees a sweep).


None of these factors are considered in flat rate/no cards, which is a game of "let's wait until the opponents f*ck up." And that's not all the strategy, what I mentioned was just above the basics (yet still not basic).

thats pretty much what a good freestyle speed esc player can work out in his/her head within seconds (without the exact figures of course)

1. agreed.
2. not just for speed games jeff, this calculating is brought over to seq esc.
3. Aradhus.. quit being retarded..
look at some high rankers that don't farm [player]Thai Robert[/player] for instance.
freemium, Starts 8man esc on world 2.1. and has a win rate of 64% for 8man esc games.

trust me, its not a lottery.

and if you think BR escs are anything like an 8man esc... you actually are retarded.