Tournament Player Tips (Beta Version)


6-Apr-97. Compiled common wisdom from playtesting; edited by Bob Heeter

  1. The Object of the Game:
  2. The first object of each tournament game is to have FUN!
    The second object is *not* to "win" the game, but to do better than others playing your color in the other games. This cannot be overemphasized: You don't need to win - just do better than those playing your color in that part of the round! In other words, if you are Yellow, you want (a) for "your" Yellow to survive longer than any other Yellow in any other game, (b) for "your" Yellow to have a larger fraction of the remaining cities on Turn 20, and (c) possibly for "your" Yellow to have the strongest army at the end.

    Winning your own game is obviously a good way to achieve that, but it may not be necessary and it might not be sufficient either. If every other Yellow player dies on Turn 10, you don't even need to finish the game! And if every other Yellow player wins their game, you have to do more than just win - you have to Win Big!

    So there's no point in bowing out before your time is fully up - how long you live is part of how well you do. And only the final standings at the end of the match will count. It doesn't matter if you led the game for 17 turns if everyone allies against you and knocks you out on Turn 20!

    So be careful how you play, because the objective of the tournament games is very different from the simple win/lose objective of a single normal PBEM game!

    Finally, there will be a "Head-to-Head Warlords Ladder" which will start after the 1st round of the tournament and run continuously thereafter, and players will be seeded on the ladder based on their success in the first round, so even if you don't do well you should stay in the tournament and try your best so you can get a good spot high up on the ladder!

  3. General Gameplay:
    1. Make a printout of the army set data for quick reference. Print out the rules for quick reference too. Consult these and the Moderator's Bible online before bringing issues to the moderators.

    2. Keep copies of game files from the start and end of all your turns, so it's easy to back up and replay turns if someone makes an error. It's also good for catching cheats and checking things that you didn't notice at first, such as enemy vectoring plans.

    3. Always report the outcomes of all battles, even against neutral cities. Always report the actions of your hero, especially ruin and temple visits.

    4. Save the game file before every battle and before critical moves. You may need to revert the battle or redo the move differently, and this way you don't have to restart the whole turn.

    5. You can discuss your games privately with players who are not in the game, but all discussions with the players of your own game must be public via the Remailer.

  4. Protecting yourself against Cheating:
    1. YOU are responsible for detecting cheating and bringing it to the attention of the moderators. The rules don't prevent cheating, they just make it possible for you to catch it. The rules banish cheaters from the tournament and other Warlords PBEM games for life, but that's only helpful if you catch them at it!

    2. Gold is crucial, and players may try to cheat with gold, so account for other players' gold VERY carefully each turn!

    3. TRUST NO ONE! Keep track of other players' units, builds, blessings, items, allies, and so on. Make sure you receive copies of all game files and turn-change messages so you can check them.

    4. Verify all WarBOT reports. Check the original gamefile to make sure the units involved could actually reach the battle site, check that their strengths (with blessings) were reported correctly, redo the battle in WarBOT to make sure the battle results are correct, and then check the final gamefile to make sure that all "dead" units are in fact gone from the map. (The Birnbaum-Irwin Warning.)

    5. If you do suspect someone of cheating, don't make an immediate accusation - you might be mistaken and accusations of cheating create hard feelings. The best thing to do is to ask for a clarification of the (move, attack, gold accounting, etc.) from the appropriate player, and then bring the issue to the attention of the moderator.

  5. General Survival Strategies:
    1. Before taking your move, peek ahead at all your opponents' upcoming turns to see what is in their stacks, what new units are being built, where they are vectoring their production, and where previously vectored units will arrive in the future.

    2. Look at the gamefile after each and every player moves, to plan your strategy for your next move, check battle results, and look for mistakes/cheating. That way when the gamefile gets to you, you don't need to spend so much time on your move. (This helps make the 2-day turnaround easier to deal with.)

    3. Think very hard about movement - who can attack you, where, and with what? Since battle outcomes are predictable, your survival depends on it! Remember that the movement tool does not always give the shortest path. (Especially when navies must go past bridges, units can go through cities, or when there are distant roads that the movement tool ignores.)

    4. Study the contents of all the ruins right away using the ruin map. Use this to plan your hero's advance. (N.B. - Ruins maps should be provided in the scenario package, if the ruin contents are not indicated in the ruin descriptions themselves.)

  6. Hero Survival:
    1. You should NEVER LOSE YOUR HERO by accident. Since it's always clear what the battle outcomes will be, heroes will only be killed if a player makes a mistake, or chooses to kill his hero intentionally. Since heroes are scarce and games are short, the loss of a hero is often a FATAL mistake, although it may also be a brilliant tactic. So don't let it happen to you unless you plan it yourself! This is so absolutely critical that we have started...

      The Warlords Hall of Shame

      The ways to dusty death previously travelled:
      1. F. made his hero into a navy, losing all bonuses. (Ack!)
      2. B. forgot that an opponent had an extra command item. (Doh!)
      3. M. didn't realize an enemy hero was actually in range to attack. (Pain!)
      4. B. didn't consider the units that could attack the "back door" of his city...
      5. M. forgot that a new unit would be built in range to attack. (Oops!)
      6. S. forgot that an opponent's stack could pick up a blessing before attacking. (Ouch!)
      7. G. didn't enter the base strengths of his blessed attackers into WarBOT correctly, and paid the ultimate price... ("My hero's dead???") Compounded by not leaving stack on optimum defensive terrain.
      8. B. didn't consider that an enemy hero was due to arrive - and, as it happened, within range to kill his own in a suicide attack. ("S*&%!")
      9. M. and B. didn't realize that an extra unit could attack from almost out of nowhere, since the movement tool is sometimes wrong. Enemy units snuck through cities instead of going around, thereby saving enough movement points to attack. (Aauugghhh!!)
      10. B. didn't realize that a hero over mountains or water with flying units in his stack does not fight last, even if he has a flight item. One of the flying units always comes after the hero to keep him in the air. (Nooooooooo!!!!!)
      11. J. and I. knew their heroes were vulnerable, but felt their enemies would not attack since the cost of killing their heroes would be very high.

      (From most to least stupid. Names abbreviated to protect sore egos.)

    2. The best way to make sure your hero is safe is to open up everyone else's turn after your own move is done, pretend to be those players, and see how you (as them) can kill off your own hero. You have to be as clever as they will be! If you find a way, you'd better go back and redo your move, because you can bet that the other player will find a way too. The biggest mistake playtesters (including certain web site authors) have made is to be careless in checking what their enemies can do to their hero stacks. To paraphrase a bit of Mark Twain: "If you have to put all your eggs in one basket, then GUARD THAT BASKET!!" Or as one newly hero-less player put it: "WarBOT is the sole decisive element in each and every battle, and many losses due to carelessness in this game will not occur on the battlefield, but in manipulating WarBOT. Poor strategy will not help you in this game, but getting WarBOT wrong will get you killed."

  7. Gold Management:
    1. Gold tends to be scarce in tournament games - use it wisely! In particular, watch what you build. A typical city can maintain 2 griffins, 4 spiders, 8 heavy infantry, or 12-16 light infantry.

    2. Tournament armies are a bit more expensive than normal, and the most powerful armies are *very* expensive - so watch your income and expenses carefully!

    3. When visiting ruins or sages with gold, revert a few times until you get a decent amount (at least 1700 at a ruin/sage and 3000 at a stronghold).

    4. Scouts cost you 25 to maintain each turn, so unless they are doing something that another army can't do, they should be disbanded.

  8. Battle Odds Information and Tactics:
    1. You have control over the fight order, so you can "choose what you lose" by changing the fight order for a given battle. Arrange your units in order of desired survival probability rather than strength when you put them into the battle odds tool.

    2. Also, note that if you have multiple units of the same type and strength attacking (e.g., 3 light infantry), and some of them are expected to live while others will die in battle, you may choose *which ones* you actually lose. For instance, you might want to save the one with the most movement remaining.

    3. It pays to crush groups of relatively weak enemy units with a single strong unit rather than a whole stack, since this preserves your peon units and also conserves movement points. It's usually best to leave unneeded units out of your attacking stacks and only win by the thinnest margin possible.

    4. A non-neutral city with 0, 1, or 2 builds has defense 1 and a non-neutral city with 3 or 4 builds has defense 2. This is true even if the production is turned off. A razed city has defense 0 but is still city terrain. You can see how many units a city produces by clicking on it, since "View Production" is on for the tournament.

    5. A neutral city with only 1-2 builds has a no defensive bonus, because the neutral city defense bonus is only half of the normal bonus, and it's rounded down. All neutral cities in the tournament should have only 1 production (the useless scouts) and therefore no defense bonus. So the fact that the scout is in a city doesn't increase its strength at all. This means that any strength-2 unit can capture a neutral city (i.e., anything except a scout or bat).

    6. When you fight a battle the bonuses are always evaluated on the *defender's* terrain. Navies revert to their normal, on-the-ground army strengths when attacking a city or a ground unit on a bridge.

  9. Differences between "Classic" (version 1.x) and "Deluxe" (version 2.x):
    1. There are some important differences between "Classic" (version 1.x) and "Deluxe" warlords which you should remember to play well. The most important of these is how the two versions handle the installation of new city builds:
    2. In Classic, remember to "Turn On" newly-bought production.
    3. In Deluxe, remember that purchasing any new build automatically terminates whatever you were currently building and switches you over!
    4. Also, remember that navies in Deluxe have a strength which is no more than 4 - if the unit's base strength is less than 4, its naval strength is the same as its base strength.

Back to the Tournament Home Page