A Mental Tip: Weaknesses

A lot of strategy is usually just common sense, but with adrenaline pumping or under pressure, this is easy to forget about. I would like to share a simple tip that I realized one day in fencing practice. This is probably something that is heard very often, but it is also something that very few people put into practice.

During fencing practice, we were doing some free-fencing, and I had a clash with my opponent. I can't remember the details exactly, but after a quick series of attacks and counter attacks, we backed off with no one scoring a point. In fencing and in many other forms of competition, after action, the position one returns to is never as good and proper as at the beginning.

At this time, I didn't really know what to do; normally, in this part of combat, many people will either blindly rush in due to pressure or may freeze up. This time however, I was luckily able to pull my head out of the cloud and remembered some common sense. Without knowing what to do, I gave myself an objective: I examined my opponent's guard/stance. What did I find? He was exposing the under side of his arm. Now with a clear target, I calmed down and gradually pressed and waited. As soon as he began to move at me, I extended and got a point on the underside of his arm.

After this I realized that there are two really good things one can always do when unsure about what to do next: check one's own position looking for weaknesses and check the opponent's position looking for weaknesses. This gives something very productive to occupy the worried mind. It is also the groundwork for the formation of plans.

So next time you are unsure about what to do in competition whether it be real time strategy, chess, or martial arts, first check your own position for weaknesses to correct, and second check the opponent for weaknesses to exploit.

Balanced armies

I thought I'd talk about having proper balance in strategy. I was recently playing Imperial Glory (a Total War "clone" that covers the Napoleonic era) where I frequently use a relatively small, balanced force to overwhelm an AI's large, unbalanced force. The way it usually works in Imperial Glory is the AI likes to build armies with a great number of infantry, but usually not much cavalry or artillery (or sometimes tons of artillery with almost nothing else). In one particular battle, I was defending a country with less than 300 troops, and the enemy attacked me with around 700. I had barely over 100 infantry, 11 guns, and somewhere around 60 or so cavalry. The AI on the other hand had only line infantry. Concerned about whether he would be able to overwhelm me or not, I took a defensive position around a few buildings. I had two infantry regiments with one having 12 troops and the other close to 100. I put them both in the buildings and positioned the artillery next to the buildings and had the cavalry at the rear in a flexible position. As his army closed in, I pounded it with artillery relentlessly and sent my cavalry racing in a wide arc towards the weak end of his line. Unable to effectively form square formation under the artillery fire and under the fire from my fortified infantry, my cavalry swept in mercilessly like a wave and his line of battle almost instantly fell apart. With my artillery focusing on the left flank of his army, the cavalry sweeping in from the right, and my own infantry firing into the center, he suffered a substantial number of casualties before retreating. I think he suffered somewhere close to 500 casualties and I only suffered about 50 or so. Of course, the AI in many games is often not too bright, but this illustrates what can happen when an unbalanced army goes up against a balanced one.

It is also similar to martial arts where to be a balanced fighter, one must have skill in striking and grappling. And not just that, but ability to survive at various ranges of striking. MMA really woke up a lot of martial artists to these facts.

Anyhow, be careful about preferring a certain type of unit and make sure your forces are balanced. It is OK to enjoy using one particular unit over another, but always make sure you are prepared for whatever may come your way.

Introduction

Hello everyone! Welcome to Strategy Game Insight.

Obviously, this blog is about strategy games. This is my favorite genre of games; I like to win by pitting my wit and plans against my opponent, not by clicking faster and more precisely (though some strategy games today come down to this). I could bore you with a life story of why I like this genre the most, but I think I'll just cut to chase and leave that for later.

This primarily concerns PC strategy games, but I may cover games from other consoles and board games as well. I also may sometimes discuss a game or two that may not be considered a pure strategy game but that still incorporates a decent amount of strategy (Rainbow 6 for instance). Also be warned that I often like somewhat older games and may not be able to discuss in depth recent strategy games coming out. I will however post news about upcoming games that I look forward to and will probably provide some links.

What will I discuss? The games in general, history, and especially strategy. As a hobby, I like to peruse books like Sun Tzu's Art of War or Musashi's Book of Five Rings, so I will very likely talk about various applications of such texts. I also like war history (and general history) a lot and may refer to it now and again as an example or reference point. In addition, I play chess and practice martial arts, so I get different viewpoints about things and am able to make various connections others may not think about. (As an interesting aside, my martial arts instructor is a good Starcraft player)

I don't think I really need to say anything else besides this. I'm not a huge fan of games like Command and Conquer and Starcraft. Why? Good question because they are not bad games. I personally like to play a strategy game to see how various real life strategic principles apply and to practice outwitting opponents. In games like Warcraft and Starcraft, there is certainly strategy, but you have to do a lot of micromanaging and must learn the ins and outs of each unit thoruoughly to be good. I am more interested in large scale strategy without having to learn a new system of combat that has almost no bearing on real life strategy. I especially like games where intelligence and deception is extremely important. While great games, many of the mainstream strategy games are largely about micromanagement and don't have a whole lot of room for mind games and wit. Some games I am fond of are Total Annihilation (that old classic), its successor Supreme Commander, any Total War game, the Close Combat series, and the Stronghold series. There are certainly other games I like, but I shant try to name them all here.

I may talk about the mainstream strategy games from time to time. I also realize that the Command and Conquer series is changing and it will most likely merit some attention. These are just not my favorite games.

Anyhow, onto the rest of the blog!

-Mark Bukovich