Dotally Rad Warlock Brawl MARATHON this Thursday!

WHAT: 26 rounds of nonstop Warlock Brawl action

WHEN: This Thursday night, Feb 18 2010 starting at 7:30 PM PST

WHERE: Meet in Clan Milk channel on Battle.net (US West) to claim your spot

WHY: Winner to be immortalized on Dotally Rad with full marathon stats posted.  Also 5$ on Full Tilt Poker if you want

Classic Risk Next Gen moments

The 3-way ship battle on the high seas:

The omg there’s too many units my comp is glitching out when will this game end stalemate:

The super sweet Amazon boat parking spot:

The transports only mode surrounded boat trap to put an end to those pesky invasions:

Remember me pink?  The out of your way, for revenge only payback mission:

The third wheel; oh you two were fighting for South America?  Dont mind me, I’m just here to rack up kills:

Risk Next Gen Strategy Guide

Risk Next Gen is a Warcraft 3 custom that pits 12 players against each other in a free for all competition for world domination.  Automated hosting bots and stat recording on their website will have you craving that next victory.  Here are some tips to take your game to the next level (some of these apply for Risk Devolution as well):

Early Game

Grab small countries

At the start of the game, look to take over a two or three-city country, which will give a few extra supply at the beginning of the next turn.  If you try to go for something huge like Russia from the start, you will end up way behind players who are adding small countries to their income each turn.

Micro-manage your men

Battles at this point are all about finesse, and you have the time and ability to keep every man alive.  Always attack from the bottom left corner of cities if you can because the Barracks won’t have enough range to hit you there.  If this isn’t possible,  then select the marine that is being hit by the tower and pull him out of battle when he is about to die before sending him back in to help fight again after the Barracks has targeted a new unit.  After you capture the city, leave the weakest man behind to defend it so you can bring the healthiest ones on your next conquest.

Don’t butt heads

It is likely that you will run into a nearby player in the second, third, or even first turn of the game who is trying to gobble up small countries just like you.  Avoid a direct confrontation unless you are 100% sure you can wipe them out quickly.  If you get into a several-turn conflict that wipes out a lot of your men, even if you win and take over his territories, other players will have gotten way ahead of you just by expanding without conflict in other regions.  It is also a lot easier to defend than attack early game, since the Barracks will wipe out several of your men in long battles at an enemy city, so always you need an overwhelming force to attack.

Use healers

After taking a few countries you will have built up a decent-sized army of 15 or so men that are all fairly damaged.  While the other units are way too expensive to be of use at this stage, it is worth it to use a medic to heal your marines up to full health before their next battle.  As your income continues to increase, it is optimal to make one healer per every five marines or so, which will keep them alive and make you win battles.

Mid Game

Get the upper hand fast

Everyone knows how hard it is to outplay a guy who already has more supply than you.  While you are trying to save your men and set up perfect battlefronts, all he has to do is keep sending in wave after wave to wipe you out.  The best way to avoid this situation is to expand very rapidly in the early to middle part of the game, which will ensure you are one of the biggest players when major confrontations start to happen.  Take over every unoccupied country around you.  If you bump into anyone competent nearby, declare a truce and look to expand somewhere else that is still open.

Use Roar

As armies get bigger, the marginal utility of a few more marines becomes less than getting the four-gold healer than can roar or the five-gold navy officer that can roar.  Roar gives a +25% damage bonus to all nearby units for a whopping 45 seconds (3/4 of an entire turn), which means you are doing more with less units.

Use Knights and auto-cast Bloodlust

When your income is gets above 30 it starts becoming worthwhile to get Knights.  They have the armor and hitpoints to get close to enemy armies of marines and wipe them out quickly.  The other thing that is great about Knights is they move very fast.  You can quickly sweep through entire countries and continents before your opponent has time to react.  Also make life easy by selecting all your Knights and right clicking Bloodlust so it auto-casts and you don’t have to worry about it.

Set your country spawns

By holding shift and clicking the country spawn icon in the lower left, you can easily select all of your country spawns and rally these units to one spot to start building up troops in that area.  It is essential to keep track of all these spawns as you start taking more and more countries or you will have units standing around uselessly while you are busy microing units elsewhere.

Be an opportunist

Always look at the minimap and if fog is turned on then just use the scoreboard to see how strong individual players are and who is fighting.  Even in fog you can tell who is fighting each other if their kill and death counters are ticking up.  The best time to attack someone is when they are fully engaged in a battle with one or more other players and won’t have the resources or micro abilities to fend off your own attacks.  On the other hand, if you attack someone who is just sitting around doing nothing, they will be able to put 100% of their effort and money into defending against you.

Hit at the end of the turn

The best time to attack is in the latter part of a turn when a player may have already spent all his resources and wont be able to put them into defending a city.  Also, if you take one or a few cities right before the turn ends, your opponent will get less revenue when the next turn starts, because you will have taken away his country or continent bonus for that turn.

Jam the ports

Next Gen 2.2 update: In Transports Only mode now you can load or unload units on any terrain, not just ports anymore, so this tactic and ship blockades are less useful.  You’re better off leaving a few men in every barracks along the coast so that people can’t land there, kill 1 guy, and quickly start making units inside your countries.

After you’ve taken a whole continent or island, ports and connections to other continents are the only places that are vulnerable to attack.  For example, if you’ve taken over all of Africa, there are two ports in Madagascar, one port in West Africa, a land connection to Spain, and a land connection to the Middle East.  By clogging the ports up with marines, it will be impossible (especially in Transports only mode) or nearly so for an opponent to land there and quickly invade your continent.

Defend at pinch points

Bottlenecks on the map give a great advantage to defenders.  It is nearly impossible to invade with a large army if you have to fit it through a one-man wide gap with people shooting at you from the other side.  Spots like the entrance to Greenland, the British Isles, Central America, and in Indonesia are some of the tightest pinch points on the map.  Set up lines of marines and mortars to focus fire any units that try to squeeze through into your land.  You can also clog a small gap with a tank or some knights if you are worried about a Blitzkrieg of knights coming through one by one.

Pinch point at the entrance to Australia:

Pinch point at Central America:

Other spots on the map have walls or lots of trees which also force invading troops to funnel awkwardly through a tiny opening.  For example, there are walls around northern Greenland city and at the Great Wall of China.

Here the blue player is down to his last two ports in China but is able to fend off pink and stay alive for a long time within the walls:

Here the red player invades the brown player (who controls all of Asia) through the China port and is able to hold onto these two ports for a long time and ruin brown’s continent bonus for several turns and set up a larger invasion…

Set up battles the right way

The usefulness of each extra marine you have is limited by his attack range.  If there already 50 marines fighting in a row then there isn’t going to be room for another marine to get into attack range so he will just walk around confusedly behind them until someone dies and he can take his space.  Optimize your battles with knights and tanks in front to protect your weak riflemen, who are just behind, with a row of mortars and healers behind these.  In this way, you are making sure to have a diversity of units so that each one can be attacking from his attack range at the same time.  And remember to use Roar for bonus damage.

Know when to retreat

It’s easy to get caught up in a battle and throw tons of money into defending a city you know you’re going to lose.  It’s better to just cut your losses, pull your men back and set up a new front that you will be better prepared to defend.

Late Game

Use Ship Blockades

Even safer than jamming ports in transports only mode are ship blockades, which are essentially walls of ships that enemy ships can’t pass through to invade your ports.  Check out some of these blockades:

Northeast Asia harbor block:

New Zealand port block:

Over-zealous Hawaii ship wall!

Save money

It is good to have a surplus of money laying around that you can use in an emergency.  Other players will be planning attacks on you all the time and you need money to be able to mass units in the city that is getting attacked and fend off the attack.  It does you no good to spend all your money on ships if another player is just going to invade you by land on the next turn when you are broke.

Keep track of the big guy

Use the scoreboard and the minimap to keep track of who has the most income.  If someone is getting too big, discuss this with the other players.  It is in their best interest to team up with you against the big guy before he takes over too much and wins the game.

SS ships

Many games are decided by who has the biggest navy.  If at all possible, don’t waste money on any of the smaller ships which are of no use against SS ships.  If you save money for long enough, you can quickly amass a large fleet of SS ships that no opponent can match, unless they’ve been saving money too.  If someone has a bigger fleet than you, then avoid head-on conflict and just keep sailing away until you can construct more ships.  Getting your fleet wiped out will ensure your defeat due to the massive amount of money you put into those ships being lost.  Ships have a hard time hitting a moving target, so when you do get into battles with other fleets, make sure to focus fire on one ship in the other fleet, while retreating your ship they are attacking to prevent it from dying.

Roar Your Ships

It only costs 5 gold to make a Marine Major which can roar your ships for +25% damage for 45 seconds.  Imagine a squad of 12 SS ships worth 480 gold getting +25% damage for only 5 more gold!  This is a huge bonus of which most players don’t take advantage.

sneaky business post

Bonus sneaky: Zythor[V] sneaky appeal

Where's my money, bitch?