Map 1 pvp amalgamate

cat

I'm so biased but josh waitzkin insists i have transferable understanding. (most relevant to least)

1. Rank five Hots
2. Esea IM scout tf2
3. Global cs:go
4. Netrunner, hearthstone, duelyst
5. All i do is 9 pool, 7 roach rush and bunker bust and I'm still in silver
6. D&d, dungeon world, shadowrun

Lets define some terms and assumptions
* Early game ends after the first 5 gem waves (including rest wave)
* Late Game begins if you start building t3 units.
* You must collect gems to win the game.

I'm going to start with some framing of early game and mid game goals so I can talk about issues i had about communication and how that forced me to play a certain way into the midgame. The playstyle i adapted seemed to be “unfun” for most players in game.

-The early game seems to play out the same versus bots or humans.

These feel like the possible goals for early game. We will see how these change into the midgame.

1. Don't die (if you are dead, you can't get gems or gold)
2. Get gems
3. Kill robots (allows access to spend gems for gold)
4. Kill the enemy.

Investments are going to be made during this stage. We didn't need to communicate a whole lot in the early game, since our goals were rather simple. Now we are going to move onto the midgame where things start to open up.

The early game is ending, what are(feel like) the possible board states(#) for a team and what should their goals be(A-Z).
1. They have gems
---- a. Save the gems
-------- i. To respond to neutral weapons
----b. Spend the gems
-------- i. To get gems from small towers
-------- ii. To get more gems from big towers
--------iii. To force action by denying resources (gold/gems)
2. They spent gems on being strong soon
---- a. Use your units to kill other players
---- b. Use your units to get kill robots (more gold)
---- c. Use your units to get gems
-------- i. Gems on the ground
-------- ii. Gems from small towers
-------- iii. Gems from gem expansion
3. They spent gems on being strong later.
---- a. Use pre built towers for defence
---- b. Use pre built towers for safe gem collection
4. They now need gems to become very strong soon and later.
---- a. Look for safe fights
-------- i. To make space for gem collection

Clearly, we have a lot more stuff we could be doing. Many of these interactions with the enemy involve making space. Let's take a moment to talk about the most obvious conflict, direct combat.

Imagine two teams of equal skill create disparate squads that synergise well in the early game.[1]We compare the base potential power of these two teams and find one more powerful this early(call this difference V).[2]

Let's assume that team 1 prepares the most powerful version of their squads possible in preparation for the mid game.[3] We then compare that force against team 2’s squads focused on value progression, in order to extract a difference in power (call it P).[4]

Finally we compare V (the base power difference between team 1 and 2) to P (the power difference between the value squad and the most powerful squad). It felt like these power levels were very close to one another (V~=P).

[1]. An example would be: mele, mid range, long range. I rarely saw two people chose from the same color as well. I also never saw two teams pick the same squads.

[2] It feels like some squads are better at doing different things at different parts of the game

[3] An example would be: having tier two units, level one upgrades, or both depending on the strategy/squad/coordination

[4] It feels like maxing out your t1 units provides a lot of value, but there may be other ways to achieve this.

Put simply, if two teams choose differing compositions of squads, the potential power imbalance this creates in the early game feels about as much as an aggressive upgrade path can compensate.

All of this is just framing to set up an explanation of why i felt i needed to play the way i did, why i think it's effective but also counter to the playspace you are trying to encourage.

It feels like, going into the midgame, we have pretty similar armies. If we can, we should make space by getting some kills. This leads me into the largest issue I've ran into. Not being able to tell when to push.

Communication is an important part of conflict and helps set the pace for the game. If we destroy a part of the enemy's army, we are at a significant advantage for an amount of time. I feel like this information is not presented to the players. It's hard for everyone on the team to be on the same page in regards to capitalizing on another armies death. This feels extra bad, since armies fighting (to the death) is the most common form of interaction. (An example of a game that is having a hard time with this would be Overwatch)
Its also important to have this information be presented systematically as kill counting feels lame as a communication topic

With no clear way to visualize the amount of space created by collecting kills, I felt the only course of action was to force conflict. If I created a point of pressure, other players would be forced to respond.

cat

THE STRAT

Get some gold to sustain a value army. Get gems to create pressure. Use small canons to get gems from center nodes. Use those gems to pressure nexus. If they kill your gems with gems continue as “normal” (IE get more gold)

I was going to write a large section on neutral weapons and early game pushing. But some people feel exactly the same way as I do and are better at writing so I’m going to steal some quotes to talk about neutral weapons and early game pushing.

“Players were also trying to exploit the collision by stacking Neutral Weapons up to block corridors, and considering they have pretty high health, it was a pretty annoying tactic that didn't seem to have much counter play. Simply taking up so much space is so strong... I worry using them to exploit collision is going to become more and more of a problem as players learn to harass."

"Neutral Weapons Felt like they could pretty much suck up the aggression while you did the fighting, rather than feeling like you had to actually defend them."

"Gems = direct pressure does not feel right. Makes the game feel very snowball-y in either scenario. Early game if 1 team gets solid map control on the center gem spawns they can put overwhelming pressure on early for a ~10 min domination”

Again, going into the midgame it feels like the two teams have similar armies. Gems however create a “taunt” unit. This push feels incredibly strong. Defending players will need to drop all other goals and defend the node and/or the nexus.

Lets assume for a moment the center nodes go down and then the attacking team is wiped out. Then, we add a new goal to the defending team, one that feels to early to be on the board; Defend the nexus.

“seen people leaving sieges behind to keep the opponent busy while they are elsewhere more often that use it to encourage interaction, and on defense it feels like a waste of time to fight units that you can't attack with most your army.”

Once we enter the late game, If the nexus is wide open, a situation like the following will happen much more easily.

“Even with all three of our opponent’s armies there to try to prevent it, they couldn’t kill them in time to prevent their Nexus from dieing”

“Mid-late game however, I always ended up with an overabundance of gems, and often I would use these to straight up win the game by running past the central towers and throwing down 15+ mini ion cannons (often per person!) in range of the Nexus. Even with all three of our opponent’s armies there to try to prevent it, they couldn’t kill them in time to prevent their Nexus from dieing. Alternatively I saw replays of other games where players would throw down 3-4 Ion Cannons and slowly siege the Nexus core and win the game that way. This felt very anti-climatic as an end to the game. (edit: anti-climatic because the opponent really had no chance of holding against it.)”

THE COUNTER

I think the best counter to this strategy is (refer to mid game goals)
- 2.a
or
- 1.a but...

“Siege does not feel right. Focusing on towers over expansions does not feel right. +Gems being spent on siege units more than infrastructure does not feel right. The way those couple systems work drastically reduce the possible opportunities for strategic interaction”

OTHER FEEDBACK

-Hydros is my favorite squad so far. Rolling around and grabbing a bunch of enemy units feels amazing. Having them ramp up a bit then swoop around is really cool. Scuttle guard shield ability makes my brain scream value every time i see one of those bars go down. The same thing with seed bots little saplings. Quadrapus healing and healing upgrade are my absolute favorite. I can see the little health bars go up instead unlike the % damage reduction of the upgrades. But, pathing and collision issues shine when playing Hydros.

-Man this game is so much fun. I really loved playing zerg in sc2. But macro is something my left hand never learned to do, so all i could really play was dota or hots if i wanted to get my micro on. This game feels like a squad based moba, has the fast paced micro fights and activated abilities. Clearly i need to find a rts that's only macro so I can cross train and leave silver.

-If my objective is to win, i feel like i've solved the bots after my first 10 games. I'm not sure if my method is important.

-Some players referred to the strat as “cheese”. I wonder if that's a first?

-Ill have more time to give general feedback after the next pvp test.

-Im much better at talking and listening then i am at writing. If anyone wants to talk more about what i’ve laid out, that's great!