#Fixed VS Progressive

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void gust
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I'm primarily a fixed player and I'd say I'm good at fixed. I'm curious about swapping to progressive for my ranked climb.

Does progressive usually result in quicker games? Do you feel its easier to win consistently on progressive as a good player than on fixed?

warm drum
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Progressive world dom almost always results in quick games that end with someone chaining kills and sweeping the board or someone getting a kill fed to them leading to the same result, progressive caps can stalemate and go on for hours with good players but ends pretty quickly if there are a couple noobs in the lobby, if you interested in ranking up as high as you can I’d recommend Europe advanced progressive caps 60s blizzards on, then choose if you want fog on/off, alliances on/off and neutral/automated bot. Personally I use fog off, alliances on and neutral bot.

void gust
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interesting

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I'm gonna give it a try :D

void gust
warm drum
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I am the potato

warm drum
void gust
# warm drum Good luck hope you enjoy it

I played a game alliances on, fog off, neutral bot, blizards on, prog caps, ended up in a 4 man stalemate which eventually ended when a player rage quit after a series of betrayals even though he still had tons of troops. Then in the 3 man I ended the game and took second.

I definitely enjoyed the early game; Any tips on how to end stalemates effectively or prevent them from forming?

warm drum
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yeah thats the thing with no fog

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it stalemates a lot more

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however with alliances on it is easier to coordinate with the other players

warm drum
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i would firstly try forge a good relationship with as many player as possible in the early rounds

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then if the game does stalemate look for who has the worst cap (least territories needed to cardblock it)

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then try communicate with the others to form a cardblock on said player

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if your opponents are good enough they should help you with this

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doing that can then get you into the 3 player scenario

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where the most effective stragey ive found is pick a player to work with

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and unless your going to get 3rd never betray them

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then you can work with them to kill the other

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and get into a 1v1

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sometimes ill work with the worse player of the 3 so i can go into a 1v1 with them at disadvantage but still win

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also another thing to keep in mind is not getting fully slammed

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by the losing player whos getting teamed on

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kinda waffled on there for bit but hope it helps

void gust
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oki

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is it worth holding muiltple capitals in prog?

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kinda seems like all it does is split up my forces

warm drum
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very situational

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you need to be one of the stronger players

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and look for which cap has other caps/stacks open to it

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and put more on that one

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generally it is a good thing to get 2 caps, it makes you much more difficult to cardblock

void gust
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so caps are more so military bases in prog

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in fixed i usually just get them for income

warm drum
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the skill is knowing when someone is going to hit your 2nd cap and moving the troops before it happens

warm drum
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in prog caps after the early game your main income is cards

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and the way to kill players is denying them cards

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as your cap is where your biggest stacks are any territories next to your cap are guaranteed cards you can take (cap cards)

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so in essence the more caps the better as long as you hold them

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TheKillPeteStrategy also has a huge selection of entertaining and informative caps games you can watch

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more focussed on the early game strategies

west apex
# void gust in fixed i usually just get them for income

To add on to Potato… caps should be your defensive strong point. They aren’t worth the +2 in progressive. That’s irrelevant. But if you can get another cap that will let you hold +10 or more in bonuses behind it, then that can be worth it. You always want to ensure you are generating more than your opponents, even in progressive. More troops is always better. But as potato said ensuring you can always take a card is priority #1

lean sparrow
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Prog caps and prog world dom are entirely different games. Caps is more intricate (games are generally won by card blocking). And both of these games are entirely different from fixed.

void gust
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i am running into a big issue on prog europe caps where I'm "carrying all the weight" while my allies aren't really allies they are just doing the bare minimium, making troops whilst I do all the work and its very hard to convince them to fight

warm drum
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Yeah I do that too sometimes, I’ll make a non profit kill on a player and just stack on the best cap

warm drum
void gust
warm drum
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It’s boring and sucks

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But if people won’t work with you

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You can’t progress the game and still win most of the time

warm drum
void gust
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:D

warm drum
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Yeah as long as you can make 1 ally who will help you meaningfully you can progress most stalemates

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Just be careful to not piss off everyone looking for that ally and get teamed on, especially in the 3 player

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I’ve had games where I try work with one guy to kill the other and they refuse to help so I go for them instead and ended up getting 3rd as they both hated me after that

void gust
warm drum
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There 3 that connect to 7 territories that are amazing

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Especially the top right of dinaric alps

void gust
void gust
warm drum
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theres also a 8 on the edge of russia that borders the +8

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which is pretty good as long as you dont take the +8

void gust
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i guess its just about shopping around when u get to that stalemate to see who will work with u

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but preferably make a good ally earlier

warm drum
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yeah finding someone good in the early rounds is really helpful

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some the best caps imo

vj9kjyct.png
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this can change depending on blizzards

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but as a general rule you place well capping in any of those spots if safe to do so

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the leftmost 5 are my favourite as to get through the midboard people must open them

void gust
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ooh yeah

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never thought about that russia cap

warm drum
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yeah its really nice

void gust
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do u play primarily eu advanced to climb?

warm drum
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yeah

void gust
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wow

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these games are slow how do u climb with it

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😭

warm drum
warm drum
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but i use no fog and alliances

void gust
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i've been using ur settings

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i do really enjoy it though, some of the best risk i've ever played

warm drum
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so its easier to communicate and end games

void gust
void gust
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yeah i just played a game with master+ players on eu advanced cap prog, neutral ai, alliances on, went a lot better

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game went pretty quickly

warm drum
# void gust potato do you try to talk to people you have an alliance with throughout the ent...

i keep pretty consistent communication during the early game to try figure out A. what the other player want for bonuses etc B. who is good C. try to make them have a positive relationship with me, moving my troops out their bonus or even if im way far ahead ill clear a players bonus of enemy 2s and 3s so they can take it, just anything you can do thats nice in the early game will help a lot later

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also you can pretty quickly tell what ranks people are

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if they dont accept alliance they are 99% of the time beginner or lower if they do then its usually beg+. You can also tell from the way a player acts, their speed, greed, guarding (master+ will tend to only leave 2s or 3s if anything). If someone is quick they will be expert+ 99% of the time, if they are dumb as well then they are usually expert, if they use a load of paid emotes its is highly likely they are master, if they are smart and quick you have a good master/gm on your hands.

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the most important alliance youll ever get is with the begginners and novices

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never hurt them

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unless someone goes in first

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as they will insta break alliance and never reaccept most of the time

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and you want to aim your noob cannon at another (sometimes better) player

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even if they are much stronger than you if they are slow and bad you can win a disadvanteged 1v1 on 60s timer

warm drum
void gust
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what I've learned is some allies are just bullies

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usually theres one or two bullies in each game

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but there are some genuinely good allies

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right now I'm in a stalemate with orange as my ally, blue is the bully who took my cap on the right while i was card blocking to elim pink, i took back my rightside cap and now I'm teaming with orange to slowly elim blue. Thinking of swapping to hitting black though their position is much stronger and unbeatable late game

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black took my cap and i cant get orange and blue to stop infighting lol

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ima try blacmail

void gust
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i got a lot of 2nds vs noobs with these settings

warm drum
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Your in a decent spot with those two caps

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Just kill blue

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And then either kill black and make sure you get at least 1 cap or kill orange into a easy 1v1 with black

warm drum
warm drum
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Just gotta work with the good ones

void gust
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mhm

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well i got blue and orange to stop fighting through threatening them. tried to get them to team on black, blue broke his bonuses, orange did nothing, i did as much as blue and tried to encourage and show him to do more

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ended up getting 3rd after black kamikazed my caps and i tookem out

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wonky game

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i should have targeted black's italy cap earlier and put more priority on getting the spain cap from pink.

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i guess i still could have easily cardblocked him though if i wasnt such a noob LOL

void gust
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ig i just need to get better at cardblocking

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I'm amazed how quickly im filling these lobbies with masters

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just opened this one 2 mins ago and its already at 4 masters

warm drum
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Yeah it’s tough to get the right balance

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You don’t wanna make someone hate you so much they just kamikaze you (unless your far far ahead)

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Just takes time and practice

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Still 3rd in a master game isn’t bad

void gust
warm drum
# void gust true lol

One exception would be in the 3 player games where your the strongest and they are the weakest

void gust
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mhm

void gust
warm drum
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but you will find often that they wont do anything

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thats how most of the longer stalemates occur

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or when everyone is equal

void gust
warm drum
# void gust :(

yeah it sucks, but you can still work with the rest of the board to kill them

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for example i just had a 4 player game, red white magenta and myself(yellow), where i was great allys with red and we started teaming on white expecting magenta to help

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but they just card passed in the strongest position and eventually had mine and reds troop counts combined (luckily about 3/4 was off cap guards)

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so me and red decided to team on them instead

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white didnt help at all but we eventually killed all the stacks and then i killed them

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then me and red had about the same as white combined and teamed on him to end the game

void gust
warm drum
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It did help that white was slower than a tortoise tbf

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And forgot to fortify back to cap

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As well has having about 1/3 troops off cap

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So we got good rolls on off cap and red took his caps then white slammed the caps losing about 3/5s of their troops

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And at that point I was ahead significantly

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And red just killed white into a free 1v1 for me

void gust
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red mega loyal ally

warm drum
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Yeah they were amazing

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I did try give them a fair 1v1 by killing white myself but I messed up my pathing and white was left with a single 50 stack

void gust
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my second epic cardblock! Ended in a orange kill. got 2nd this game, kamikazed pink to end stalemate. Cardblocking people at the right times before stalemates get out of hand is the key to quicker games on these settings i think

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any cardblock i manage to pull off counts as epic for now lol

warm drum
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Assuming your white here, that’s a nice card lock and good teamwork w black

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Exactly how to progress games quickly

void gust
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my newfound eu caps prog addiction has led to soaring lp, i'm sitting at 22k lp rn

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nothing compared to you

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but much better for me :D

warm drum
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Nice! Glad I could I introduce you to it

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Now just change your name to JJIsANovice and get 3rd on the leaderboard

void gust
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big stalemate cuz all these players are trash istg

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void gust
void gust
ornate lava
hoary leaf
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@warm drum would central caps that don't get card blocked easily matter more on no fog vs fog? I've been trying this mode out myself and this seems to matter

hoary leaf
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I'm winning a lot more with alliances actually. It feels a lot easier to play than fog the "Meta" style where i'm guessing at people in the fog which i'm not that great at. I've made it to master now playing all kinds of settings, am looking to be more consistent to get to GM

west apex
# hoary leaf I'm winning a lot more with alliances actually. It feels a lot easier to play th...

Fog is a skill gap for good players. Being able to use it to your advantage will definitely help you get to GM. Some tips for fog.

  1. Figure out where players are early in the game when you can see the most of the board. Players likely won’t move a whole lot so this will help you figure out what bonuses they have. If you know where they are you should be able to tell exactly what bonuses they have based on how many troops they get each turn. Watch for this number to go up or down. If it goes up they are expanding and again you can figure out where too based on how many more they get. If it goes down they are fighting with someone.

  2. Watch the dice at the bottom. They go from one dice to 3 every time someone goes to attack a territory. So you can count how many attacks they make (again helping you know where they are or if they are fighting someone).

  3. Watch the cap counter in the top left. This will tell you if someone’s cap got stolen. If someone gets their cap stolen and doesn’t die after you should look to see if you can kill them for their cards on your turn.

As far as the central caps, I would say it matters more with fog but is important in prog either way

hoary leaf
# west apex Fog is a skill gap for good players. Being able to use it to your advantage will...

I see. I mean I watch a lot of Kylted so I see him do all these. The problem for me is consistency. The mentioned "skill gap" doesn't seem to be big enough for me 😢. To explain, I would come in 1st, 1st , 2nd with fog and then come in 5/6th next because I got into a fight with someone early game in the fog and other people took me out or some unintentionally bad cap choices for me due to the fog making the disadvantage hard to overcome 😢 I also find it hard to team up to stop a snowball too without alliances so i don't make it to the 1 v 1 which I almost always win even at a troop disadvantage. I can take a 1.2x to even 2x troop disadvantage against a weak to semi strong player and still win. You can even watch the last time i ever played fog here https://youtu.be/I0IC0ZJxAew?si=3NvQ02AGZxSEDwr_ and give feedback. i'm the purple player GreanBean and did badly when OliveXC snowballed. I sort of got discouraged and stopped playing it afterwards 😢

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The issue that I have now with alliances is stalemated games. The other day I was with 2 Masters in the endgame where I was massively out generating each one (but not both combined) and they were happy to just take a card and pass. I found the opportunity to progress the game by setting up a card block on the master that was easiest to card block when he had just traded and was on 3 cards and i had a wildcard in my hand after my own trade to set up the cardblock. I was far ahead in troops and perfectly willing to do all the work myself. However, instead of helping or passively not doing anything else, the other Master betrayed our alliance by taking some of my bonuses for himself. This made my card block un-sustainable and I removed the card block and fought the other master which betrayed the alliance. This ended up angering both of them. I eventually ended up 3rd. How would any of you guys deal with this situation? I cant seem to think of anything else better to do. I Googled their Skill Points after the game and saw that both masters were very close to making GM. So they may not have an incentive to do anything much other than just take a card and pass for a long time?

To be fair though the master which i initially card blocked did ridiculously well. The moment that I removed my card block, he set up a reverse card block (the kind where he had much fewer territories than me 😮) and set up a card trading zone in a small pocket with the other player and so my game was pretty much over after that.

hoary leaf
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I felt so discouraged after that game. I had just won a game before with 3 active masters in it that went 2 hours long with lots of drama and alliances which made time fly. But playing with passive take a card and pass players for a long time is very challenging for me

hoary leaf
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I am now hovering around high expert/low master level after 90 FFA games under my belt with a 30% win rate. I think that if i specialize in my best game type which would increase my win rate and come in 2nd the other times I may mathematically reach GM right? Kylted plays and wins across almost all different map settings but I have not found that I have that strength so far

west apex
# hoary leaf I see. I mean I watch a lot of Kylted so I see him do all these. The problem for...

Ok I watched the video. I think you picked a really good cap. I also think you played it perfectly tbh (from Olives viewpoint). I probably wouldn’t have card skipped but that’s about it. He was critical about how you played but TBH I think that’s just him. He’s pretty critical even if what he’s saying isn’t true. If you had been more aggressive like he was saying you would have just died earlier because you would have had less troops on cap and would have been getting out generated by everyone around you. You just had some seriously unfortunate luck. First that you ended up in a game with Olive, a top GM, and he’s someone that plays super aggressively and would rather make an aggressive play and lose than sit there for a while. Second, that he was able to get Africa on turn 1 with great dice and nobody broke. Yellow was right there and just surrendered. And pink was super passive and didn’t break him until it was wayyy too late as well. That meant he was guaranteed to make like 7 more troops than you a turn. Which there’s nothing you can do. I genuinely wouldn’t play like him because he plays way too risky and for the snowball. I’ve watched some of his streams and he surrenders out of games very early when he doesn’t snowball (which is most of the time).

west apex
waxen pagoda
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It's really dependant on your opponents for how you should play too, if you can spot skilled players vs newer players it'll help you decide how to play a bit more.

Some new player behaviours you'll see in fog caps are:

  • many attacks early game
  • this is usually not advised because your cap ends up pretty weak
  • attacking very slowly
  • likely has camera animations enabled
  • places cap in a dead end, instead of a central location or border of a continent
  • likely doesn't know about capitals at all, and may leave it undefended in favour of a continent
  • manual rolling with 1 or 3 troops in balanced blitz
  • likely doesn't understand how true random / balanced blitz works

If you're playing vs skilled opponents, you may see some good indicators of it such as:

  • capital on a bonus entrance
  • turns often last <15 seconds
  • doesn't leave troops off cap (or only does when they've got a severe troop bonus exceeding card trades)
  • doesn't place troops against a cap
  • tends to make 1 or two attacks per turn
  • slider blitzing 2 troops into dead end territories
  • slider blitzing minimum 100% (rarely losing many troops when attacking with big stacks)

You can quite easily spot GM from non-GM with fairly high accuracy if you take all of these into consideration

west apex
# waxen pagoda It's really dependant on your opponents for how you should play too, if you can ...

I disagree with some of these. In the video Olive did some of the stuff (like leave a large stacks directly next to his cap) against Dan, and Olive is extremely skilled.

(This is all based on the meta settings which is what Dan is playing)

  1. Many attacks early game. I actually typically find this to be a higher skill play. But very dependent based on position. Getting out to a big lead on a large map can mean you can eliminate opponents early. Being too passive and not attacking much may mean you don’t know what you’re doing and therefore not playing your position correctly. It’s hard to judge skill based on this by itself.

  2. Attacking slowly. The truly high skilled players like Olive will often hide how fast they can go so they don’t appear to be a threat. Players who attack super fast from turn 1 are probably medium skill since they don’t realize that can appear threatening.

  3. Manual rolling 1s. Manually rolling a 2v1 is advised as it gives u better odds so I’m not sure y u said that was low skill.

  4. Capital on a bonus entrance. Again I think this can go either way and is not a great indication of skill. If you see someone capped in a corner obviously low skill. And if you see someone capped in the center they probably know how to play late game so that’s probably high skill.

  5. Already mentioned the placing troops against cap. Can definitely be a higher skill play skill play as it might be the only way to take a cap. You would rather have someone hit your troops than have those same troops on cap. Much better ratio.

One thing I’d add is someone opening up capitals unnecessarily is low skill. And someone attempting card blocks when a player is below 3 cards is very high skill

waxen pagoda
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For 1 it's common for newer players to overextend themselves, taking too many territories early game is definitely not good for you
For 2 there's attacking slowly and there's attacking with all of the animations (delays between stopping/ending phases etc)
For 3 I specified manual rolling 1s and 3s is bad, not 2s 😄 - actually mentioned that in skilled players more likely to blitz 2v1s - manual rolling 2v1 isn't higher odds, it's blitzing 2v1 that does
For 4, yeah it depends on map too - if someone's in the middle away from any definitive bonuses they'll likely fall behind in fixed caps very quickly - on progressive it may not be as relevant unless snowballing
Not sure I'd agree with 5, at least not on balanced blitz - the advantage being increased for attacker means the person on the cap would be better hitting that stack before they add more troops to it to take your cap (more problematic for balanced than true random of course)

If I see someone doing a reverse cardblock they're almost definitely GM (something else I forgot to mention)

I actually like to test cardblocking players at 3 and 4 cards, if they don't trade in for a few turns they may just be unlucky to not get a set - and wiping them out later will be 2x-4x more value than having left them at 1 or 2 cards for it

hoary leaf
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So you would suggest card-blocking players at 3-4 cards? I don't quite understand the rationale behind that. I seldom if ever do that because i'm afraid of them trading and using attackers advantage to blitz my off cap stacks used in the card block putting me at a troop disadvantage. Usually at 1-2 cards I card block but I don't pull the noose that tight, leaving them space to get another card or 2... then totally card-block them.

Not only that, depending on the complexity of the situation, i don't usually pull a complete card block off on my first try.. so that would mean a card block when the other player has 4-5 cards? That would leave me rushing to try to get my troops back on cap or having enough off cap to withstand a slam

west apex
# waxen pagoda For 1 it's common for newer players to overextend themselves, taking too many te...

  1. Yeah again it totally depends on position. For a bonus heavy large map like EU adv someone attacking a lot might be in a really good position to do that. It can be hard to know in the fog so I would hesitate to say that's definitely a low skill thing. But that is correct that newer players tend to over attack

  2. fair point. You might be surprised how slow I go sometimes though to hide it 😅

  3. a 2v1 is manual rolling 1 troop since you only have 1 troop to attack with. and that gives you better odds. IDK any other times

  4. Yeah all of my comments are based on the meta settings (EU adv prog caps) because that's what he's playing

  5. You need 1.7x to win a cap at large numbers. 2x at smaller. The attacker will not win by those margins so by hitting your troops off cap, they lower the margin you need to hit them. Ill give a numerical example. If you have a 50 stack and they hit it, they probably lose around 35-40 and that's better than you would lose hitting the cap. And now you need 80 less troops to hit the cap (40 x 2). So not only did you lose less troops by them hitting you, you also increase your odds on the cap (80-50 = 30 troops closer). If you watch the video of Dan and Olive, Olive really wants Dan to hit his troops sitting next to him and that's why.

reverse cardlock is definitely a high level play