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Strategy games
A list of pages I have on various strategy games
General principles for doing well at a strategy game
- It seems that strategy games basically boil down to simple mechanics:
- Knowledge of the game tree, that is, knowledge of the extended consequences of both your and your opponent's choices.
- Random chance.
- Game tree
- Make sure you have a very clear understanding of all of the ways that you can win and lose, and don't lose sight of them.
- It is extremely important to know what your capabilities / immediate-options are, and what immediate effect taking each of those actions is likely to have.
- It is also extremely important to be aware of what larger, more-abstract, slower-acting patterns exist in the game, and how each of the actions available to you will affect the extent to which those patterns indicate that you are likely to win.
- Examples
- Chess has 'Reuben Fine's 30 Rules of Chess', which are basically more-abstract patterns that have been noticed in chess, where violating one of those 'rules' tends to lead to defeat.
- In a fight between relative equals, the fight may become one of looking for small mistakes / imperfections in your opponent's movements / actions, and taking some action that reduces your opponent's capacity to fight by some amount. And the duration of the fight becomes a series of encounters like this. In a situation like that, patience becomes important.
- It's often the case that both you and your opponent will have 'moves' or 'units' or 'soldiers' that you can order at a particular time to take some action against your opponent. And it's usually the case that your opponent will have some way of blocking or avoiding your action. And so
Articles / videos
- Lindybeige - Priorities in conflict - a possibly-new schema
- My thoughts
- As several commenters pointed out, this is very similar to SWOT analysis.
- I think the
- Summary
- There are four priorities in any sort of conflict (between individuals, groups, gaming, business).
- I'll use a battle between two armies as an example.
- First thing I need to do is look at my army and the enemy's army and think about four things: my strengths, my weaknesses, my opponent's strengths, and my opponent's weaknesses.
- One priority is that I need my army to be able to use its strengths.
- Another priority is to protect my weaknesses.
- A third priority is to attack the enemy's weak spot.
- A fourth priority is to make sure my opponent doesn't get to use his strengths.
- If you can achieve all four priorities and still lose, then you never stood any chance in the first place.
- (If you create a scenario where the weaker army can achieve all four priorities and still lose, it's not a balanced scenario.)
- Within those four prioties, there are priorities. This is because it's unlikely you'll be able to achieve all four priorities. So you need to pick which of those priorities are higher than others.
- The way to do that is to look at your army's overall strength relative to your opponent.
- If your army is overall superior, your number one priority is to use your strength.
- If your army is weaker:
- your highest priority is to make sure your opponent doesn't get to use his strength.
- If you think you are the weaker party, then your next-highest priority is to attack your opponent's weak spot.
- "You can forget about" the other two priorities (protecting your weaknesses and having your army able to use its strengths) because it's "incredibly unlikely" you'll achieve all four priorities.
- If you're the stronger party, your second priority is to protect your weakness.
Wargaming / Simulation gaming / Scenario gaming