Is it better in the first few turns to use your attacks to get all your circle units onto the board, or better to use your attacks to take some blue territories?

Also - I found a bug in Ten.  The description refers to the blue territories as 'squares', when they are clearly 'rectangles'. 

Ozyman wrote:

Also - I found a bug in Ten.  The description refers to the blue territories as 'squares', when they are clearly 'rectangles'. 

Good catch, they are certainly rectangles and not square.  All references have been fixed; thanks.

I noticed that if you take a blue territory and don't fortify back out ot the green, and your oponents takes the green, that territory will then propogate to them.  It seems like it would be more interesting and intuative if such a territory was blocked from propogating and remained half white and half black?

BlackDog wrote:

I noticed that if you take a blue territory and don't fortify back out ot the green, and your oponents takes the green, that territory will then propogate to them.  It seems like it would be more interesting and intuative if such a territory was blocked from propogating and remained half white and half black?

Although this was desirable in the beginning, there is no way for the factories to distinguish between neutral and player owned as it relates to the auto assign functionality.

Alpha - hope you know I was just messing with you.  I had a similar experience - was trying to introduce my 2-year old to board games, and kept referring to the territories as 'squares', even though they clearly were not square, and had to forcefully clamp down on my brain to get it to stop saying "square".

Also - no one answered my question on strategy.

Also, also - How come that emoticon is not showing up?  All I see is the text for it.

Not sure if I have a clear idea about strategy. Probably needs a few more plays before patterns emerge. Hopefully, there is no cut and dry. I (what is the word used when senator's give the rest of their podium time to another senator?) the rest of my time to Alpha, Hugh, Beastly, Conan, CK66, Blackdog, MilesTeg,...

yield?

I think I understand Ten a bit better now.  I picture it like throwing rocks in a pond that ripples out through the squares of the same color.  Does that make sense?

Ozyman wrote:

Alpha - hope you know I was just messing with you.  I had a similar experience - was trying to introduce my 2-year old to board games, and kept referring to the territories as 'squares', even though they clearly were not square, and had to forcefully clamp down on my brain to get it to stop saying "square".

I know, but it should have been fixed and so I thanked you pointing it out.  As for clamping down on the old brain, I still have to fight the urge to say "irregardless" instead of "regardless" almost everyday.

Ozyman wrote:

I think I understand Ten a bit better now.  I picture it like throwing rocks in a pond that ripples out through the squares of the same color.  Does that make sense?

That was where it started.  I originally was going to make Ripple; a board that was exactly as you describe, but the neutral/player owed problem is prevents that functionality.  This went into designing a board like Nygma's one-way where units flow through the board.  Then, a few more dead-end's and combine them back together to get this.

I tell this as if it were just me and that I actually designed them, but really; Mongrel and I discuss the ideas over the phone and tear them apart until we come up with something that doesn't have a fundamental flaw.  Normally, this is the result of combining several broken boards into one idea.

Back to the original question; strategy.

Clearly from a few games, I have to urge Conan to give his assessment as it will be more useful.  Part of the problem with Ten is that there are so many possible opening moves that it is hard to see what to do so I hope, as Mongrel said, that there is no clear "do this", then "do that".

Basic Strategies:

Greedy - Turn on as many green squares as possible each turn which "threaten" as many squares as possible.

Slow-Down - In each patch of the opponents color, attack a square that split the swatch in two.

Protect - Fortify units to your patch of color that prevent a Slow-Down.

Long-Run - Protect squares that will not be threatened until the end of the game or possible ever.

Currently, I am playing a combination of Greedy and Slow-Down, but I have a lost a few games because the Long-Run strategy was used effectively and at the end of the game there were not any territories for me to take.

Ozyman wrote:

yield?

Thought it was something that simple. I was stuck on relinquish. Thanks Ozy.

What I have found is that it is best in the beginning to start trying to multiply to as many territories as possible.  This way your opponent is forced on the defensive as he has to try to stop your plague filled territories.  And it will also allow you to cut off all of his advances on the board.

I believe Beastly is on the right track.  At the beginning I tend to throw two rocks into the pond (err, I guess the rocks may already be in the pond and I just supply them with kinetic energy) simply because it starts more fires than my opponent can put out.  I have also had successful games in which I make two blocking moves and one ripple for the start.

How to decide that really depends on my evaluation of the board state.  How effective is a particular block versus how potential is a ripple is the question I ask each turn.

Evaluating the board at each turn seems to be more of a qualitative "feel" rather than a pure calculation.  Quite frankly, I'm still trying to formulate solid strategies.  I may have to weigh in again later.  I think Alpha is on the right track with defining key strategic terms.

I have a couple of games finished now, and have had good success with the strategy of turning on two blocks on the first turn, often two more on the next turn if there are enough decent placements.

Picking placements - Try to find 'holes' in your coverage.  Ideally a single isolated enemy block surrounded by your blocks.  Attack that and turn it on to get four places that you threaten to take over next turn.  Your opponent can't block them all.  Next best is a block surrounded on 3 sides.

Once I get a few things started it turns more into placing units for blocks & bridges.  In the same turn as placing two Blocks/Bridges remember you can also turn on one off-block that has a 1.

Ok, so the point of Ten is to build up units inside of each square and finally obtain 100 territories total.  The easiest way to do this, and really the only way short of someone REALLY not understand how to play this is by turning territories "ON".  These territories that get turned "ON" allow all adjacent territories you own to get turned "ON" and will also magically, through the use of factories, get a unit inside of them, which allows them to never be taken by the opposing player.

Along those same lines if you were to link all of your territories together and never get stopped by the opposing player you would win relatively quickly.  This means that when turning territories "ON" you want to look for areas that can be linked together to form some kind of chain for you.

One other thing you must focus on is breaking up those chains for the opposing player and thereby minimizing the damaging effect that the other player using the linking strategy can cause to your game.

Some of the things you want to try to do often are to force players to move around your territories.  You also want to try to have at least two areas building so as to expand your ground as quickly as possible, and it forces the opposite player to go on the defensive.

One of the major things you want to avoid is leaving a switch turned "ON" without a unit inside of the main territory.  Your opponent will take the territory and you will not receive a factory bonus on the next turn because you must own both the "ON" switch and territory containing the "ON" switch in order to turn on adjacent territories.

One other thing to take note of.  Playing as black is very different than playing as white.  The best analysis that I can think of is the tortoise and the hare.  White must move slowly while building and black seems to go all out in order to win quickly.

Basic Strategies:

Greedy - Turn on as many green squares as possible each turn which "threaten" as many squares as possible.

Slow-Down - In each patch of the opponents color, attack a square that split the swatch in two.

Protect - Fortify units to your patch of color that prevent a Slow-Down.

Long-Run - Protect squares that will not be threatened until the end of the game or possible ever.

From my experience, almost every turn will be one of the following actions (which fulfill the greedy and slowdown strategies above):

1)Attack your opponent in the one spot that will most slow his propagation and turn on two of your own squares in the most threatening locations.

2)Attack your opponent in two spots that most slow his propagation and turn on one of your own squares in the most threatening location.

For the first couple turns, black will mostly do the first option, and white will have to make tough decisions between the first and second.  In the middle game, it is a judgement call for both colors, and in the endgame as useful propagation spots diminish, it tends to be mostly the second option for both players.

Fortifying to protect your path of propagation (the third strategy above) is useful in some cases, but can usually only be used by the white player and only once per game (since white has the third unit).  Also I find that it is often more effective to use the fortify to prevent black from taking a spot that would be valuable to him on offense (lets call this blocking?)  For instance, if white has a single spot in the middle of a large clump of black, black will attack that spot and use it to start a propagation.  White could prevent this with a timely fortify.