Sillysoft Forums

[Nimrod7]

Let me begin by saying that this is not a flame thread. If you can’t contribute without making snide and/or snarky remarks, please stay away.

I have a question about the style of play I’ve seen in Rome2 in relation to marathons. This morning I played five games of Rome2 with zero marathons. This afternoon I watched one marathon that stopped after an hour only because the room crashed. Anyways, here is my question. Why do players protect their income with unbalanced armies? For example, Xantax is protecting Pannoia (16 income) with 121 armies. Southern Italy is worth 49 armies but he has 122 defending and 222 locked within. Northern Italy is worth 81 with 121 on it’s border with Gaul/ Narbonesis and 342 locked within. This is an extra 780 armies or so that could be put to other uses. I’ve got two cards up for grabs but he can’t reach me because of his army placement.

[Micella]

[soundboy]

In this instance, income aside, I would have to say that green has it right.
Where the borders bottleneck, he has a huge amount of armies.

It would be my preference to stack the bottleneck countries (rather than fortify a bunch of internal countries equally because:
1. It would discourage an attacker from hitting them (hitting 250 vs hitting 89 is quite a jump)
2. It gives you what I call a kill squad to KILL FOR CARDS.

Most of the Romans will place huge value on income, but that's because the games go on forever. As I've contended for quite some time, this map - and most maps - can be played the "Classic" way. The kills are a bit harder, but if I played as many times in Rome as I did Classic, the killing time could be fairly comparable. Being a Turtle, my speed is as you'd expect.

There is an unspoken power in a gigantic kill squad guarding a weaker adjacent border that says "Go ahead... pop it... see what happens, feckface".

People can make kills for cards in this game and minimize the importance of income. But 80% of the Romans would rather fortify every country between Rome and Sicily and provoke a marathon. And people wonder why there's accusations of teaming and asshattery so much more often on the Roman map... (not that there's never any asshattery in the sacred arena of Classic). Fortifying all of your countries leaves you vulnerable to ttack... so not only are you going to lose your outer border because you wanted to "batten down the hatches"... but you're going to lose the thing you were hoping to protect - YOUR INCOME.
There's a fundamental lack of clean kills and down-the-road game sense in the way that this map gets played... and that turns me off right away. That's not being snarky or snobbish, that's just telling it like it is.

Put those armies in attack position. The best defense is an ominous looking offense that also happens to function as a Great Wall of a defense..

[Micella]

[-NN-Grim]

this is a refreshing thread

Im not gonna say Xantax has it right, but everyone's different in their strategy. I would fortify different than him, but I understand his reasoning just the same.
Xantax is placed defensively. nobody is gonna just pop his income without being hit back in retaliation. If anyone hits him, they must go all out .
now for Green, he is taking a big risk in one way. By placing all his troops on the border, when someone breaks him ( and it will happen eventually), he will be not only gutted, but all those other massed troops are useless to retaliate or retake his income... and that becomes important as the game goes longer.

And Nim.. um... you look to be in a tough position.

Rome is a game that morphs from Cards to Income . It starts off as a card game, but the longer it goes, the less value cards have. if you get to marathon level, cards are trivial and it's all about income.

My advice on that is Kill for cards early, protect your income later.

edit.. another variable is knowing the competition. as you learn the different players, you might change strategy or fortifications to suit the opponents. Some guys are gonna explode on your for the smallest tap... others will shrink away if you hit them. figuring out who is passive vs. who is aggressive is a definite factor in how to protect your borders.

Bottom line is this... Come to Rome and Play your way.
You guys know Ive been saying that forever. Bring your game and make it work. You are all welcome, at any time.

[shinobi]

my take on it is that some people are afriad of having their income takin with no direct ability to respond, therefore they leave armies inside so that if they're hit they can quickly ajust as a apposed to making it harder to hit in the first place, win/loose situation, i play the way you're suggesting, with more armies up front, more or less so i can hit if need be, and it seems to work well for me

[Moiz]

I agree with Grim -- XantaX has it in his own style, Sure someone "Pop" some of him, but if they leave some areas "Unpopped" there's going to be a load of hell sent back to the attacker, Right?

Though, Xantax's is a little weird because he has 100 armies in weird places, but I guess its his choice. But I understand why some people spread their armies out on the borders of income -- To defend that even if something else is hit, because if you have income left over after being hit, you have a chance.

As for Green (Tstering) -- If someone breaks his Maurentian border they can pretty much level him down to just the income Carthage (49 on that particular round) provides, In such a case, He'd be screwed. Unlike Xantax, who would have more defending everything, and therefore possibly having more to hit back with if hit with the same amount of Armies needed to break Green.


Rome has a lot of strategy, some people scare you by acting like n00bz and win! Or lose (Me)


...But what do I know :p

[Tortoise]

Some people like to hit, some people like to hit back.

Some like to attack, some like to defend.

Some play aggressive, some play passive.

Some like to create tension, some like to relieve tension.

Some like to act, some like to react.

Some play like men, some play like girly men.

=====

There are a bunch of players who are super-passive and will not hit you all game.... UNLESS you hit them, regardless of their chances of winning. I generally assume that these players are very good in the beginning of the game and build up and defend their incomes like champs, but when it comes round to the business end of the game--killing--many players are clueless/scared and are quite content to let someone else make the first move.

Lion vs Vulture theory.

Lion has to go out and kill, to survive.

Vulture has to wait for killing to be done, to survive.

=====

This is quite common when you see games pass round 20, when a players income could exceed 5000 and they spend the next 3 turns(so 15,000 income) farming for a card set that might only be worth 300.

A strategy I see some use is just to build up and wait as long as possible, realizing that some players may have lives to attend to and will eventually get impatient/leave.

=====

In the case of Xantax this game, it looks as though he doesn't want to place 4th, so he keeps a neutral and unthreatening border with green so green can focus on expanding through you.

Pretty much he wanted to keep growing and let others weaken themselves through combat.

[Thetan]

[shinobi]

i bet cortes won

[bod]

Napolean apparently once asked his generals how they can best defend France. The answer from one general was to equally divide all the armies around the perimeter.
Napoleans response was "what are you trying to do - stop smuggling ?".

[mazza]

hehehehe, love that quote Bod, love it

[imapickle]

Ok imagine for a moment that Cortes was not playing red...


Then this is what happens:

No one pops N italy for a few turns cos its got loads of men in it.
Green at some point wipes out nimclown. Then Carthage gets ashatted the crap out of it. As Grimm said , greens got all his eggs in one basket so he goes down to 3 income splat. Then there is a battle between red and black . Then it degenerates into everyone hitting income all over the place and just trying to keep hold of a small core income. However, green has lots of armies in the piggy bank from holding lots of incoe earlier on so he is able to sit on two out of: Carthage; Rome: and that nice bootleneck in the top corner, meanwhile all the rest of the board is in flux and noone can get income from it. Then he repeatedly smacks the income of the players while building up until he can start killing them off. Game Black and all because he had a bind on italy/top right corner region.

That is the outcome of the game according to pickle theory.

... but yes in practice Cortes probably won.

[imapickle]

If i was red id probably pop n italy immediately