ffa strategies

[scarm]

You might not have, others were mentioning it. The point is theres nothing wrong with trolling/not playing optimally on purpose. GS argues there is, because you are exerting influence on the result of the game by arbitrariness, therefore only if you are playing with your self-winning in mind the gamemode is fun, if you don't the game plays out in a way your opponent didnt want it to, therefore making you bad.

In the 1v1 situation exactly that happened. I played with myself winning in mind, the game did play out in a way my opponent didn't want it to, therefore i stole his fun and his time by using a certain strategy. Ergo playing to win does not actually prevent ruining anyones fun, BECAUSE it as Papist said comes down to subjective judgement of how the gamemode should be played, which you can't enfore on other players.

[gamevideo113]

Also, it’s not a matter of treaty time. I think i can speak for GS too on this one, but i really don’t care if you’re in my base at 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes or 50 minutes. The point, which isn’t hard to understand, is that if you’re committing all your energies to eliminate a single player at the 10 minute mark you’re clearly not going to win the game because this strategy isn’t even a strategy and you’re actually ruining the fun of the other player who wanted a fair chance at winning the FFA. All in rushing isn’t fair to the victim because the aggressor isn’t simply trying to get an advantage over the rest of the players in the attempt of trying to win the game, he’s just focusing on taking an unlucky player down and that’s it.
It’s like if during a 100 metres sprint, with 8 participants, one of the runners tackled another one of the athletes, making both of them fall in the middle of the lane. Do you think this would be an intelligent thing to do to win? Do you think it would be fair for the athlete who got tackled?

[scarm]

Gamevideo again, you can argue that for any suboptimal strategy. If i start fighting with my imminent neighbour in a "everyones boomed up" type scenario, i also in fact do go fr mutual destruction assuming perfect play, which we apparently are because all PR 15s abuse a 3 vill for an early imp push, because as wolfpaw said the 2 fighting are wasting ressources, will therefore end up with a smaller bank and should therefore be destroyed by those with a larger bank. By picking dutch i put myself at a severe disadvantage because dutch lategame sucks, and therefore enable my imminent neighbour to win by taking more map control early on. Which is why if you make that assumption that you are always gonna die by rushing because you lose eco, you also have to assume perfect play for the restof the game, resulting in the entire theoretical france cold war scenario i painted on the other page, which is why arguing that playing suboptimally is morally wrong is absurd.

[gamevideo113]

In the 1v1 situation exactly that happened. I played with myself winning in mind, the game did play out in a way my opponent didn't want it to, therefore i stole his fun and his time by using a certain strategy. Ergo playing to win does not actually prevent ruining anyones fun, BECAUSE it as Papist said comes down to subjective judgement of how the gamemode should be played, which you can't enfore on other players.

Winning is more fun than losing but this has nothing to do with it.
You fail to understand that denying agra is a legit strategy if you want to win in a 1v1 and your opponent should expect it (and eventually he’ll be punished if he doesn’t), but all in rushing someone in a FFA is not a legit strat and it is unreasonable to think that your closest opponent will do everything to make you lose, losing himself as well in the process. Why would anyone even play FFA if that was the norm? When you enter a 1v1, you go by the assumption that your opponent will do everything he can in order to win the game (you never think “maybe this time my opponent will do everything to ruin my game without actually trying to win himself”, like hiding vills all over the map and walling the whole map from the very beginning of the game) . I don’t understand why should this not apply to FFA as well.

[gamevideo113]

Playing suboptimally isn’t wrong. It still means that you’re trying to win yourself though, because the “optimal/suboptimal” connotation implies that there is a goal to be achieved, and the goal of FFA is to be the last man standing. It doesn’t make any sense to assume other players wouldn’t play with that goal and legitimize those who play with different goals. If you’re all in rushing someone, you’re not even playing a FFA. You’re just playing your own game disregarding what everyone else is trying to play, and that’s why it’s a dick move. It’s not about optimal/suboptimal play or civ pick.

[scarm]

The intent to win does not qualify for a basis to judge whether a strategy is "good or bad" or desireable or not for the reasons i outlined above.

[Goodspeed]

Suicide-killing is a bad strategy because it loses the game for the player doing it. Intent has nothing to do with whether it's a good or bad strategy.
Intent is important when deciding whether that player is being a douche or just a bad player.

... there's 2 possibilities:
1. You think all in rushing is actually a good strategy in FFA. This would make you a scrub
2. You like to ruin the game for other players. That would make you a douche

So it's really one or the other

And for the record there is nothing wrong with being a bad player.

[[Armag] diarouga]

The intent to win does not qualify for a basis to judge whether a strategy is "good or bad" or desireable or not for the reasons i outlined above.

It does?
If the strategy puts you behind and makes winning less likely (ie no intent to win), then it's obviously a bad start.

[scarm]

Thats what i am referring to @Goodspeed . Thats why good and bad are in ". I am talking as in morally good or bad. Winning intent is no basis to judge that on the above basis. You are just applying arbitraty limitations that you think are good.

@[Armag] diarouga again, maybe was not clear enough. I am not talking good as in chances of a strategy to win you the game. This entire discussion is a moral one.

[RefluxSemantic]

Again, a rush is not necessarily suboptimal. It depends on what other players will do and there are scenarios where a rush is optimal.

Again, imagine this scenario:
You are in a 4 player FFA
One of the players thinks rushing is optimal, the other two will go for a treaty boom because they think that will be optimal.

If you treaty boom there is a 1/3 chance you will just die. In 2/3s of the cases you will be left vs a guy that boomed and the guy that rushed. This means you will have a slightly lower than 50% winrate (in the rare cases that the rushing guy gets back in it). So you will have a chance to win that is lower than 1/3rd.

If you also rush however you are much less likely to be attacked by the rushing player; it is indeed completely suicidal to rush into someone that actually also is building units. The other rusher will look for a different target. You will then usually kill the other guy booming. The result: you're left in a 1v1 and thus with a 50% winrate.

In this scenario we must conclude that rushing is optimal. I would actually go further than that: booming is only optimal in this case if every single player thinks that too. In the case that one, two or three other players decide to rush then rushing is optimal. Look at the probablities.

If you boom:
- nobody rushes: 1/4 chance to win
- one other guy rushes: ~1/3 chance to win
- two other guys rush: ~0 chance to win
- three other guys rush: ~0 chance to win

If you rush:
- nobody else rushes: ~ 0 chance to win
- one other guy rushes: ~1/2 chance to win
- two other guys rush: ~1/3 chance to win
- everybody rushes: 1/4 chance to win

Theres 5 scenarios (from 0-4 rushers). Booming wins in 2 of those scenarios (no rushers or one rusher) and rushing wins in 3 of the scenarios. So to me rushing seems like the stronger play actually. Granted there is a lot more distinction between strategies as you could for example do a more suplike boom that survives a rush. This however should show that the metagame cant be stable as a treaty boom meta. After all people should realize that once people are going for the full greed builds rushing becomes viable.

I think this is exactly what ffa is like. You do a treaty boom and cross your fingers you dont get rushed, or you might go for a rush and cross your fingers there isnt one guy sneakily booming away or you might go for a more defensive boom to survive the rushes and then hope that the treaty boomers are taken out. Its a game of chance and the best strategy depends entirely on what others will go for. I think in this sense the comparison to games like risk is incorrect by the way: risk is an (almost) perfect information game, while in an ffa you are in the dark as to what others are going for.

[Goodspeed]

Thats what i am referring to @Goodspeed . Thats why good and bad are in ". I am talking as in morally good or bad. Winning intent is no basis to judge that on the above basis. You are just applying arbitraty limitations that you think are good.

Imo winning intent is basis to judge that. This because if you know your strategy is going to lose you and the other player the game and you still do it, you are refusing to play the game mode and knowingly ruining it for someone else. That comes back to the Risk analogy where one player knowingly suicide-kills another, or the boombox to a concert analogy: If you don't want to be at the concert, stay home, play your boombox there and let other people enjoy the concert.

Whether or not that's morally wrong is subjective. I think it's a dick move, you don't. :shrug:

[[Armag] diarouga]

Ok, so the conclusion is that you're not a douche, just a scrub xD.

By the way, as discussed above, booming doesn't mean 20v age up to colonial lol. More like vill cards early and train some units so you will rush someone who's making units and has mm. You will kill him eventually because he doesn't have military shipments in deck but it will cost you a lot of units.

Also your above examples are absurd. In all these scenarios, if one guy rushes and the others boom, the guy rushing will lose for sure. Thus, the guy rushing doesn't play to win.
Furthermore, you have to keep in mind that he needs units at home to defend the raids from the other players so he will have a smaller army.

[scarm]

Again, how would you judge me laming with nats then? The result is literally the same. I used a strategy undesireable by the other player, denied him the chance to actually play the gamemode, and ruined it for them. Yet i had the intent to win.

edit: I Still dont understand why you need to resort to insults like douche and scrub. I really would have thought you'd be more mature than that.

[Goodspeed]

@RefluxSemantic Yes, all in rushing is absolutely suboptimal. Your entire argument is based on the premise that multiple people will do a suboptimal strategy, which would make it not suboptimal anymore. But you obviously can't assume that. Besides, the possibilities don't end with treaty boom or all in rush. There's a lot in between. And if you're playing with good players who are trying to win, you can reasonably assume no one else will all in rush. For you to be the only one doing it is throwing the game.

[scarm]

Also, can i just make this thread invisible to me somehow? I really shouldn't be discussing this but i can't stop myself lol.

[Goodspeed]

Again, how would you judge me laming with nats then? The result is literally the same. I used a strategy undesireable by the other player, denied him the chance to actually play the gamemode, and ruined it for them. Yet i had the intent to win.

edit: I Still dont understand why you need to resort to insults like douche and scrub. I really would have thought you'd be more mature than that.

Douche and scrub were words used to describe people who do this generally. The discussion wasn't about you until you made it about you.

Again, how would you judge me laming with nats then?

As long as you did damage to someone else without ruining your own chances, it's a legit strategy.

[scarm]

Yeah. Sure.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Again, how would you judge me laming with nats then? The result is literally the same. I used a strategy undesireable by the other player, denied him the chance to actually play the gamemode, and ruined it for them. Yet i had the intent to win.

edit: I Still dont understand why you need to resort to insults like douche and scrub. I really would have thought you'd be more mature than that.

You ruined his fun but you won and he had to expect it and adapt. You shouldn't fb if your opponent has two natives, your opponent either expected to be lucky and get away with a fb or didn't know about the natives.
In both cases, your opponent made a mistake by thinking you wouldn't play to win.

Losing in FFA (a fun mode) because a guy kills himself to kill you is dumb however, because he doesn't play to win.

[RefluxSemantic]

@RefluxSemantic Yes, all in rushing is absolutely suboptimal. Your entire argument is based on the premise that multiple people (exactly half, even) will do a suboptimal strategy, which would make it not suboptimal anymore. But you obviously can't assume that. Besides, the possibilities don't end with treaty boom or all in rush. There's a lot in between. And if you're playing with good players who are trying to win, you can reasonably assume no one else will all in rush. For you to be the only one doing it is throwing the game.

Yes, booming is absolutely suboptimal. Your entire argument is based on the premise that multiple people (exactly more than half) will do a suboptimal strategy, which would make it not suboptimal anymore. But you obviously can't assume that.

I agree it's an oversimplification but it doesn't take away that there are cases where rushing is optimal. I clearly demonstrated that. This entire discussion can basically be reversed like I did. If you assume rushing is the standard, then suddenly treaty booming takes on the exact same role as rushing in my example does: To make it viable, you have to assume that multiple people will go for it first. You've been logically at fault here because you have consistently assumed that the metagame of the FFA is that people will boom. I showed you that this isn't a stable metagame, because there is a possible shift towards a different metagame. If you're not willing to actually engage in these points then I guess I'm done with the discussion.

[Kawapasaka]

@RefluxSemantic Yes, all in rushing is absolutely suboptimal. Your entire argument is based on the premise that multiple people will do a suboptimal strategy, which would make it not suboptimal anymore.

I'm not seeing the difference between that and passive boomy play only being optimal based off the exact same premise that everyone else will also do it.

[[Armag] diarouga]

@RefluxSemantic Yes, all in rushing is absolutely suboptimal. Your entire argument is based on the premise that multiple people (exactly half, even) will do a suboptimal strategy, which would make it not suboptimal anymore. But you obviously can't assume that. Besides, the possibilities don't end with treaty boom or all in rush. There's a lot in between. And if you're playing with good players who are trying to win, you can reasonably assume no one else will all in rush. For you to be the only one doing it is throwing the game.

Yes, booming is absolutely suboptimal. Your entire argument is based on the premise that multiple people (exactly more than half) will do a suboptimal strategy, which would make it not suboptimal anymore. But you obviously can't assume that.

I agree it's an oversimplification but it doesn't take away that there are cases where rushing is optimal. I clearly demonstrated that. This entire discussion can basically be reversed like I did. If you assume rushing is the standard, then suddenly treaty booming takes on the exact same role as rushing in my example does: To make it viable, you have to assume that multiple people will go for it first. You've been logically at fault here because you have consistently assumed that the metagame of the FFA is that people will boom. I showed you that this isn't a stable metagame, because there is a possible shift towards a different metagame. If you're not willing to actually engage in these points then I guess I'm done with the discussion.

Your whole argument is flawed.

For example, you assumed that only the people booming will get rushed which is wrong.
First, you have to fb before knowing who's booming/rushing. In addition, why on earth wouldn't you rush someone who has no units in base because they're all at his fb?

[scarm]

Because the people booming are a way larger threat to you in the lategame. You can't win vs a player opting for a greedy approach later, but you can vs another player opting for an aggressive approach. So you would maybe try to kill a few vills of the other aggressive players but focus your effort on delaying or stopping the inevitability of the greedy players.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Because the people booming are a way larger threat to you in the lategame. You can't win vs a player opting for a greedy approach later, but you can vs another player opting for an aggressive approach. So you would maybe try to kill a few vills of the other aggressive players but focus your effort on delaying or stopping the inevitability of the greedy players.

Well, you know that the rusher will kill the boomy player, so just boom while sending 5 huss to his base and he's super dead.
Furthermore, assuming the guy getting rushed is playing France, you probably underestimate the amount of shit 5huss+cdb+mm can hold. In fact, you probably need to have 15 bows during all the rush, else the cdb will just kill your pikes xD.
Same with like Japan and yumi/wall

[RefluxSemantic]

@RefluxSemantic Yes, all in rushing is absolutely suboptimal. Your entire argument is based on the premise that multiple people (exactly half, even) will do a suboptimal strategy, which would make it not suboptimal anymore. But you obviously can't assume that. Besides, the possibilities don't end with treaty boom or all in rush. There's a lot in between. And if you're playing with good players who are trying to win, you can reasonably assume no one else will all in rush. For you to be the only one doing it is throwing the game.

Yes, booming is absolutely suboptimal. Your entire argument is based on the premise that multiple people (exactly more than half) will do a suboptimal strategy, which would make it not suboptimal anymore. But you obviously can't assume that.

I agree it's an oversimplification but it doesn't take away that there are cases where rushing is optimal. I clearly demonstrated that. This entire discussion can basically be reversed like I did. If you assume rushing is the standard, then suddenly treaty booming takes on the exact same role as rushing in my example does: To make it viable, you have to assume that multiple people will go for it first. You've been logically at fault here because you have consistently assumed that the metagame of the FFA is that people will boom. I showed you that this isn't a stable metagame, because there is a possible shift towards a different metagame. If you're not willing to actually engage in these points then I guess I'm done with the discussion.

Your whole argument is flawed.

For example, you assumed that only the people booming will get rushed which is wrong.
First, you have to fb before knowing who's booming/rushing. In addition, why on earth wouldn't you rush someone who has no units in base because they're all at his fb?

I do agree it is a bit simplified yes but I would say it shows there are absolutely scenarios in which rushing is strong. I assumed a 4 player FFA where the map isn't absolutely huge by the way. Against a treaty boom you can just build your units at home and then right click a TC.

I have definitely played FFAs where the treaty boomers just got screwed over because everyone was playing pretty aggressively. In that case the metagame is such that booming is the worst possible thing to do and rushing seems pretty nice. I came up with just one example, but there are countless examples you can come up with where treaty booming is the losing play. Yet Goodspeed seems to imply that booming is the only logical play. This is just straight up false. You can come up with plenty of examples that prove that.

[Goodspeed]

Have you guys heard of defender's advantage? Your argument is like claiming that an all in rush is viable in a French mirror based solely on the assumption that both players do it.

In a scenario where everyone all in rushes, the player who doesn't attack anyone else and just invests in a decent defensive force will come out on top because his eco is superior. Do you see how this would logically lead to players trying to get away with as much eco investment as possible? If you all in rush, the odds are 100% that there is another player who invested more into eco than you did. And even if you're attacking that player, if they invested in defense at all they are still going to win. Therefore by rushing you unequivocally worsened your chances of victory.

Again, there is a lot between all in rush and treaty boom.

Yet Goodspeed seems to imply that booming is the only logical play.

Just for the record, this is not my position. The best play is to invest as much into eco as possible while defending aggression and raiding players who went for a greedier build than you. In other words, it depends on what everyone else is doing.