Haven't seen a thread in this Strategy section for awhile so I want to bring up strategy on one of Cumberdale's duel maps: Bomb Factory.

Discuss.

After looking through some game histories and drawing some conclusions...

• Aggressive Play wins every time. I usually advanced with groups of 6's through my lines, then noticed that I was getting punked. Why? Because Gimli and those that played him advanced with 5. While I was going for the sure thing, he and his acolytes were willing to lose the occasional 5-v-2 and play the percentages. Guess what? It worked.
• Start strong. Most of the time, the game is won in the first 2-3 turns. After that, it's just a matter of sweating the details.
• Spread out or focus? There are two approaches that I've seen on this board, and both seem to work fairly well. You can either advance semi-vertically, creating a defensible skirmish line that slowly and inexorably advances on your opponent, or you can blast through a line with everything you have and catch your opponent off guard. Usually a little of both works quite nicely; the hazard of focusing on only one or two lines is that it's too easy to get your income disrupted at the end.

Those are my thoughts so far. Now I just need to find a way to turn them into wins.

Oatworm wrote:

• 
  ...Because Gimli and those that played him advanced with 5. While I was going for the sure thing, he and his acolytes were willing to lose the occasional 5-v-2 and play the percentages. ...

Can any of the mathematicians on this site say what the %'s are on this?  Specifically the opening decision...i.e. whether to attack 4 bombs with 3 armies each, or 3 bombs with 4 units each.

Back on WF Gimli and I use to fight on this board a lot. I think it was he who told me he tried the 4 attacks with 3 armies each for a while but found himself losing too much. It actually kills more countries in the opening (on average).

3 armies will kill one of the 2 army neutrals with probability .648.

4 armies will kill one of the 2 army neutrals with probability .8208.

The details of the above calculation aren't terrible. Let me know if you want to see it.

The expected number of countries to kill with 3 armies each is .648*4 = 2.592

The expected number of countries to kill with 4 armies each is .8208*3 = 2.4624

The problem with using 3 armies each against 4 countries is how many armies you'll have available for the next round of attacks. Oatworm mentioned using 6v2 where the Gimli followers frequently use 5. To have enough armies even for 5v2's, you probably should be opening with 4. I will say from recent (and prior) experience, that it sucks to open with 4 and to have one of those .8208's fail. And it is probably awesome if you hit all 4 of your 3 army attacks. So, 3 armies may have merit.

I like the 3 with 4 because it gives me 2nd turn options depending on the outcome.  If I get all 3 than I can continue forward with them and still have some to gain more from the starting position, however if I don't get all of them I might have units left to go big somewhere else and change from a spread attack to a concentrated attack.  I think the second turn is the most important because it ultimately will decide where your major attacks are gonna come from and what is your best opportunity for bonus hording and aggressive play.

My favorite aspect of the map is knowing when to give ground in one place to focus somewhere else or when an onslaught needs to be prevented early.  Use the percentages to decide it attack or defense is the best route.  I personally think it is sometimes better to kill with defense than kill with offense.  If you let them throw armies at you early in the stack perhaps you can comeback with a later attack to take the territory with fewer loses.  That's a BAO strategy but it still seems to work with SG.

RiskyBack wrote:

... I personally think it is sometimes better to kill with defense than kill with offense.  If you let them throw armies at you early in the stack perhaps you can comeback with a later attack to take the territory with fewer loses.  That's a BAO strategy but it still seems to work with SG.

Good point here Risky.  In fact Bomb Factory and A&A on this site play exactly the same as BAO because they don't use the attrition %'s with successive turns.  I'd hate to see how Bomb Factory played if Cumberdale added attrition %'s...

In my long history on this map, I prefer the 3 with 4 armies approach, because many times you will get the 3 bombs and not even have to add to them to attack to the next level, instead you can start a new row with your extras, or even begin a torpedo row.  I don't want to give too much away but was has worked for me is to be consistent in numbers but random in approach of which rows i choose to attack and when.  I keep a number for each row, example first row must have 4 for a reasonable attack on neutrals, 2nd row 5, 3rd row 6, when you run into your enemy that all changes but i find it usefull to have a row to mess around with for fortifies and turn order and that sort of thing.  Hope that helps

I don't actually send 5 (rare exception to come). It's 5 units, but 4 attackers. I do the 4 down 3. You end up with 1 less territory, but are more likely to capture. But the main reason is that moving down with 3 attackers you keep getting higher casualties, and are going to have to fully restock the territories each turn if 2 get killed. You won't attack with 2 units often. But you might have units sitting with nothing to do if you have to spread your bonus too thin.

The only time I am really sending 5 is if I am near the opponents tray and want to be sure no random bad attack dice stop me from moving down a crucial row, and if I have a unit to spare. 4 units at 60% should get it done most of the time. 2 early failures with 3 attackers can really set you back.

Oh, and I have acolytes?!?! That is so cool. I just wish I knew who they were. So I could make them send me tributes.

Gimli wrote:

Oh, and I have acolytes?!?! That is so cool. I just wish I knew who they were. So I could make them send me tributes.

This might be partially my fault.  Normally when I beat somebody in Bomb Factory and they ask for advice, I tell them to view your games :)

I think I heard a report about that. Nothing makes a player feel good than when players you respect and admire say nice things about your game.