What is strategy?
Forums › General Discussion › What is strategy?-
Ok, this might take more than a few posts so please be patient while I finish it. There have been quite a few people quitting of late and I think that it can attributed to the appalling lack of strategy employed by the masses that play this game. This game is NOT about capping each other's tiny circles on the map. That's boring and pointless since turf can just be rebuilt. There is no end game. Think if it instead as a massive, ongoing exercise in engineering the desired outcome using a group of players (some knowing and some not). What makes this game fun is when you get inside your opponent's head and "encourage" them to make decisions that favor you. Great patience is required to pull this off. You may have to wait months or more for conditions to be right to move. But that time is not wasted. You are busy getting a read on all the players involved. We all have personalities and character defects. By careful study, you can identify those in your opponent and exploit them.
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I find that sort of play very rewarding. To illustrate strategic thinking, I will take you all inside an operation that was aborted less than 24 hours from it's launch. No names will be revealed except one and she's fine with it. The reason it was aborted was because Nick announced plane tickets. Plane tickets made the whole goal of the operation a moot point. (thanks, Nick) So what was that goal? To cap Belial out of all territory except his home of southern california. As you can see, the advent of plane tickets makes this goal about as pointless as capping someone's home turf. You expend a great deal of energy, call in a lot of favors and next week he is back. Whoopee. Ok, so in the next post we will examine one method of how you accomplish this objective and the actual strategy that goes into it. Right now I have to put kids to bed. Stay tuned.
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A man after my own heart. 🎀
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(referring to the first post)
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First, let's examine the method employed by most players in this game: brute force. At the time of the stated objective, belial had roughly 1400 turf and a 1400 turf limit. You have to eliminate ALL the target turf at once otherwise he just rebuilds. Cap limits make doing that VERY difficult. You will need a HUGE army with each person taking cap limit at the same time. Given that belial as purchased invincability by adding a huge number of henchmen on top of his large mob, each attacker has to be in a vendetta for their attacks to succeed. The system will warn belial that he is the target of all these vendettas thus eliminating the element of surprise. Without the element of surprise, this "plan" is doomed to failure.
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Now, let's see how a strategist solves this situation. Remember I said that we all have personalities and character defects? How can we use that? For this discussion I'll pick one of belial's most obvious character traits: his continual need to stroke his own ego. Ok, we all know he is like that but how does that help us achieve the stated objective? Simple, you watch for and then exploit any situation where you know he will want to go in and portray himself as the "hero". You then twist and manipulate that situation so that his decisions will benefit you. In the next few posts, I will show the specifics of what that looks like in this particular example.
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Now here is where the patience part comes in. As i watched belial spread out, I realized that he had put a great deal of effort (and many nights and weekends) into hopping. He is going to protect that "investment". What we needed was first to let him feel secure at the limits of his frontier and then we needed something to divert his attention toward home. We had to wait a long time but eventually fate handed us a certain lady from a land down under who arrived in LA and wasn't afraid to get dirty. She goes by the name of Femme Fatale now but she will always be Missy to me...
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I was delighted with Missy's ability to get in there and mess with any and everyone. When I found out she was willing to drop influence, I knew we had a golden opportunity. By targeting belial in the forums, it was a pretty easy sell to get him to go after her. She'd plant turf outside his (and others) range and they would follow her. Perfect. Ok, now Missy drops influence to make it look like she is trying to remain cap proof. Now the best way to deal with a player that drops influence is to use a mosquito against them. I know that better than anyone. I invented it. But in this case I was banking on something different happening.
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You see, if belial uses a mosquito against Missy, he has nothing to crow about. Given his need to stoke his ego and be admired by others, he needs to find a way to take her out himself. Nothing to it. Just drop influence too. He has lots of cash in the bank and no one in Eugene, Oregon (his most northern territory) is big enough to be a threat. Shouldn't be a problem. Of course to match her low influence he is going to have to get rid of a LOT of turf. Can't get rid of too many turf in LA because he needs to blanket an area to go after Missy. This means that turf on the frontier has to go. Remember the cap limit problem that I mentioned in the original objective. He just made that go away for us.
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I forecasted that he would keep turf in Eugene to hold his place and I also figured San Francisco and Sacramento since they were major cities kinda at the midway point of his northward expansion. I was wrong about Sacramento. Missy was so enthusiastic about lowering influence that he had to go even deeper. Sacramento was now off the list. So with some careful manipulation, we have now whittled the problem down to a mere 4 or 5 turf in Eugene and 16 turf in San Francisco. Now we employ the mosquitoes and invite them to already established vendettas against Belial as soon as they have turf in position that is matured.
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So how far did this all progress? Only one vendetta would be needed. It was already in place and active. Favors were called in and mosquitos were in the process of placing their turf. We were right at about 24 hours from launch. Missy was hopping all over LA and raising cain, thus keeping the focus down in LA. Now comes the part that no amount of strategy can overcome. Nick makes a HUGE, game changing, announcement. Plane Tickets! Now the whole objective is for nothing. I guess we are fortunate that Nick revealed it when he did. Tremendous energy would have been wasted, new mosquitoes revealed and for what? Just to have the guy fly back in the next couple of weeks...
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Ok, so what can be learned from all this? First, this game is a team sport. Teams need to consist of all kinds of players. Small players are very valuable. YOU DON'T NEED TO HAVE A HUGE MOB to have fun with this game. Mosquitoes are the best weapon. Make some connections, be patient and see what shakes out. Play with a long term strategy. Oh one more thing: Belial, if you feel the need to insert yourself into a situation and "rescue" your friends, it is because I want you to.
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Thanks for your patience. Have at it.
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Well played Sir.
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Hey Dirty- I wasn't going to tell Anyone of the big plan, but since it's out in the open, I must just say it was soo much fun. The best bit was when we had Belial shut down in every forum post and you predicted within 1 hour he would have to change his name and he did... Rofl. Anyway, I'm sure there will be other opportunities in the not too distant future... Lots more.. Muahahaha .. Missy💔💔💔
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RENO🌵 wrote:
Thanks but not well enough. The plan couldn't absorb what Nick threw into the mix. I never thought that plane tickets would happen...Well played Sir.
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Femme fatale wrote:
Since it was not going to be used, I thought it would be helpful to get people thinking of alternative ways of playing the game. The idea is to get to know your opponent and figure out what makes them tick. Knowing what they will do is a powerful weapon. Never could do the evil laugh myself. I'll have to work on that...Hey Dirty- I wasn't going to tell Anyone of the big plan, but since it's out in the open, I must just say it was soo much fun. The best bit was when we had Belial shut down in every forum post and you predicted within 1 hour he would have to change his name and he did... Rofl. Anyway, I'm sure there will be other opportunities in the not too distant future... Lots more.. Muahahaha .. Missy💔💔💔
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Well, dog will hunt. We will have another chance soon I'm sure.
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RENO🌵 wrote:
well, that objective is old news now. I'll play around on the air travel thing and see what the lay of the land is after people get shuffled around the globe. Could be interesting.Well, dog will hunt. We will have another chance soon I'm sure.
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Stfu and play.
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Leprechaun wrote:
Hahaha!!!™👈🍀Stfu and play.
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🙌🙏🙌🙏🙌🙏
Nice way to playbthe game -
Ok. This term has several misconceptions. First off you have no concept of the fog of war factor. Second off my northern most part Isn't and hasn't been Eugene for Minths. I'm still
In sac btw. Next you didn't invent using small inf players to cap. -
Ah the one that got away. Your story reminds me of the time I was fishing and almost landed a 100lb trout. It was magnificent. He didn't want to get caught, but I made him bite my bait. I had it arranged perfect. Mosquito bait, overcast skies, but God had to ruin it by blowing away the clouds, thanks a lot God.
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This must be a major embarrassment for Belial. Haha! Fair play Jim 👍
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zraygo wrote:
I should also mention there is another reason why the plan was shelved. Has to do with a bug in the game. Won't reveal it here. Could come in handy should the devs choose not to fix it.Ah the one that got away. Your story reminds me of the time I was fishing and almost landed a 100lb trout. It was magnificent. He didn't want to get caught, but I made him bite my bait. I had it arranged perfect. Mosquito bait, overcast skies, but God had to ruin it by blowing away the clouds, thanks a lot God.
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You should write a book
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Tumble✭weed wrote:
Mosquito is a low inf player that can place turf near your intended target that can't be capped while it matures. Once that turf matures, you invite the mosquito into an already existing vendetta and use them to cap the target. Old concept I used on Nixon in SF back when he tried to take the city.Please explain the term mosquito.
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Jim Dirt (Add A1) wrote:
Which one? The capping/destroying influence lowering bug?zraygo wrote:
I should also mention there is another reason why the plan was shelved. Has to do with a bug in the game. Won't reveal it here. Could come in handy should the devs choose not to fix it.Ah the one that got away. Your story reminds me of the time I was fishing and almost landed a 100lb trout. It was magnificent. He didn't want to get caught, but I made him bite my bait. I had it arranged perfect. Mosquito bait, overcast skies, but God had to ruin it by blowing away the clouds, thanks a lot God.
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Very entertaining Jim, thanks for sharing the story. One thing I noticed is that belial still had a lot of safe house all over CA after he dropped his influence. There would had been a lot of clean up to do to achieve your primary goal.
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