F%#& Strategery

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." Churchill

Love Churchill. Witty. Determined. And one of the greatest wartime leaders OF THE EVER. But I digress. The question before me is what value do strategy and tactics have to board game victories? And which is more critical? So to quickly get this out of the way, what are our definitions of strategy and tactics for discussion purposes?

Strategy is taking an action that will give the greatest overall value, usually long term value.

Tactics means taking actions with the greatest immmediate value, or short term value.

For me, my strategy skills are generally much better than my tactics.

Strategy is your game plan, and you just can't win without a game plan. Most of the time when I first play a game, I have no game plan. I'm just trying to learn the mechanics and try different things. Don't get me wrong, I want to win, and I'm trying to win, but without a game plan, I usually don't (although it helps if everyone else is new to the game too).

You use tactics to accomplish your game plan. If your tactics aren't the best, but you're accomplishing things that further a great strategy, you're still going to finish in the money.

There is a generic situation in many games were bad tactics can cost you bigtime, perhaps the game: When there is a potential confrontation, your goal is to win a quick decisive victory, OR to become a prohibitive favorite. The last thing you want to do is go back and forth with another player throwing actions/resources at the same objective over and over again with neither player backing down. This effectively stunts both players, particularly the loser, but even the winner isn't really a winner. You have to avoid this type of arms race, dominate a conflict so the other player would rather put his resources elsewhere. It helps if you build a reputation among your friends of never backing down (Chris Brown, I'm talking about you).

Late in a game, generally you are only playing tactically. Your strategy got you here, now you need to pick up the VPs, as many as are available each action. In fact, it's difficult not to strictly play tactically. Very occassionally there are still strategic moves to make that will give you bigger points before the games is over. However, just playing tactically near game end is no vice.

I break down games like this (you know, away from the table, when I'm obsessing over it): How many turns/actions/decisions do I have over the course of the game? How many points does it take to win? During which phase of the game are the most points scored? I also like to get a point per turn ratio to get an idea of what a really good turn is and what's not a good turn (has not helped me in Ra). Note that most games give low VPs early, and high VPs late.

Sun Tzu: "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

I like this quote, and it sums up my feelings. A player with good strategy and bad tactics will win their fair share. Players with bad strategy and good tactics will always struggle. Average tactics are sufficient.

Now lets look at a few games from this perspective: Age of Empires III: Age of Discovery, 7 Wonders, and Brass. Read whatever game or games you're most comfortable with.

AoE:AoD - I've uncovered three strategies in this game. Colonization, Colonization supplimented with Guns, and Merchantilism. There are eight turns with five+ actions in each one, and three scoring phases. In a 4 or 5 player game a winning score is over 85. Most of the points are scored in the final scoring phase, and the last round's capital buildings can be worth 20+ points each. Now let's talk about a few of those strategies. First, if I can get +1 merchant per turn later on the first turn, I like to go with the Merchantile strategy. With that strategy, one thing I like to do is stunt the other players economies by winning the merchant ship wild card every single turn. I do this by becoming a prohibitive favorite with more unplayed merchants and captains than any other player. So they don't even want to try and arms race with me because they cannot win. Often I win the ship with a single worker (and if Navy comes up, I win! Navy doesn't tend to come up btw). This is a potential arms race that you must win decisively, because otherwise you spend excessive resources, and allow the other players more good selections that you're not taking because you keep playing doobers on the Merchant Ship. The Merchantile strategy requires most of their final point total to come from capital buildings. Part of this strategy is to amass a wad of cash for the start of that final phase, and potentially to go first during that phase. With good tactics, he accomplishes that efficiently. With bad tactics, he accomplishes...less efficiently :) Next, let's break down the colonization strategy by looking at points - in this strategy you need to get about two thirds of your points from by occupying the colonies. That's about 60 points...that means in the first scoring phase you need to occupy two of the available regions (nine total, but only ~three will be conquered by now), during the second scoring phase you need to hold three, and during the final scoring phase you need to hold five. The remainder of your points will come from capital buildings, economy, and and odd exploration. Now you understand your game plan, and for me, playing the game with those goals in mind helps tremendously.

7 Wonders - A winning score is about 50-60 points. You get six choices three times (so about 18, some civs get more). Most of the points are scored in the last phase. A good card is worth 6-8 points. Your wonder is worth 10 points on average. 7 Wonders is pretty situational, it matters what everyone is playing, particularly your neighbors, and it matters what cards you see. But there are some lessons for us in this game. A very simple strategy is to collect resources and complete your wonder during the first two turns, and then buy high point cards worth between 6-8 points on each of the six actions of the third phases. *IF* it works out, that's about 50 points and and enough to win sometimes. The next lesson is around military. The arms race is your enemy here. Two players piling up the level three military over and over again during the last phase is good for the rest of the table only. If you can become a prohibitive favorite in the first and second rounds, a neighbor is less likely to mess with you in the third round. You can improve your position with your left hand neighbor by burying military you cannot use in your wonder on round two.

Brass - Brass has two "phases" with 16 actions in each phase. A winning score is about 140. If you look at a typical game, most of the points are scored in the first six to eight actions of the second phase, the rail phase. 10-12 points is a good action. Brass has several viable strategies, and sometimes requires more flexibility on which strategy you choose than most games...that is you may be forced to make significant "adjustments" to win. Let's talk about one strategy - cash and shipyards (this is my "go to" strat). Cash usually comes from iron to offset your loans. The ability to play shipyards generally comes from having ports played in good positions. So that's your strategy. First phase you have several things you need to get done, you need to take a bunch of loans, you need to get some iron played, and you need to get some ports played. Good tactics gets those things done as efficiently as possible. Second phase you spend all that money on rails and shipyards. Tactically you try to block the shipyards so you can continue to earn big points after the first half of the rail phase. and shipyards. Once I know what I'm doing (sometimes after the first few actions of the canal phase, sometimes not until half way through), I can then map out what exactly I need to get done before the end of each phase. That's my game plan, when and how I do each task is a tactical decision. I'm much better at this game online because I can take some notes and ponder it for a bit. You know, when I'm obsessing.

Tips:
*If the game plays clockwise in turn, you should avoid the strategy or strategies employed by your right hand neighbor. He's going to get first crack at the things you want. You will lose out.
*Similarly, if the game plays clockwise in turn, you should prefer the strategy or strategies employed by your left hand neighbor. You will get first crack at things he wants.
*The longer you can effectively defer commiting to a strategy, the better. In a lot of games, finding the void can mean a much more enjoyable experience, and maybe a cheap win :) With Brass, you don't want to be one of three players playing Cotton. You do want to be the only player playing Ports and/or Shipyards.