Team Strategy

Trumanator · #1 April 14th, 2009, 01:33 AM

I was perusing the strategy index and I noticed there is definitely something missing. Team strategies!! Now I know that strategies are heavily dependent on the component nations, but I was hoping some experts could just provide at least some general tips, maybe some examples of good nation synergies, etc. Please help out a team n00b and provide some pearls of wisdom!

Dragar · #2 April 14th, 2009, 01:43 AM

It is all situational, the most important thing is strong and coherent communication, and making sure your inbox always has room for new messages!

Also be careful not to hold too much back, if someone sticks their neck out in a war and their allies protect themselves, things can fall apart pretty quickly. Commit to the cause and make sure you are being proactively useful to your allies.

Jarkko · #3 April 14th, 2009, 03:45 AM

I wonder if Trumanator is looking for strategies for the various team-games going on, or strategies on how to play as a team in "regular" MP's?

There are three crucial differences between those two.

1) In a team game you know who you are going to play with, so your strategy has to be built up from Pretender design. Who crafts which items, who is the main dispeller (if you get to end-game you better have somebody able to dispel those killer globals), which globals are you two aiming for (and who will cast them) etc.

2) Pre-designated teams do not back-stab each other. You can be sure you are not all of the sudden overrun by troops from your cloesest ally and friend when you least expect it. Thus in a team-game you do not have to have an army around "just in case".

3) There is no need to build up for trust in a team-game. In a MP you need to show your ally that you are prepared to go out there and take punches (like Dragar above says) even when you are not fully prepared yet. If you don't do that, your ally might start to look for other options, and he will for sure remember your actions (or lack of actions) in the future. While in a team-game you can wait for slamming until you are ready, even when your team-mate is under very heavy pressure (as long as he doesn't croak, of course) so that you can pull of that killer gig when you have the perfect line-up.

Trumanator · #4 April 14th, 2009, 12:07 PM

I was thinking more in the context of pre-designated teams. Thanks for the advice, keep it coming please.

Illuminated One · #5 April 14th, 2009, 01:12 PM

Depending on how the map looks one could neglect the military side in favor of better economics.

One could take extremely good scales, the other one heavy bless with recruit anywhere sacreds. First one holds the majority of the territory and sends his income to the other who does the fighting. That's almost like both had good scales and a heavy bless.

Arco - Mictlan for example.

Or recruitable thugs and good forgers.

Ulm - Niefel

Pretender design can be tweaked as well. If you'd add a path on your pretender to open up some forging possibilities for you and your ally has these paths, they could be left away.

Viajero · #6 April 14th, 2009, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dragar

It is all situational, the most important thing is strong and coherent communication, and making sure your inbox always has room for new messages!

Also be careful not to hold too much back, if someone sticks their neck out in a war and their allies protect themselves, things can fall apart pretty quickly. Commit to the cause and make sure you are being proactively useful to your allies.

Totally agree. More easily said than done though. In essence any good diplomacy game, as is the case with D3, has at its heart the "Prisonners Dilemma" when it comes to Team Play and establishing alliances.

The Prisoner´s Dilemma is well taught in Game Theory (and I am not talking about tic tac toe) for commercial, political, diplomatic and also military environments where behaviour of other "players" matters.

In essence the dilemma establishes that in a one off game, played only once, the most productive course of action would be betraying your ally to take advantage of his/her trust. In the other hand, in a repeated game where your partners can see how you behave and can also impart punishment at the next opportunity available (i.e. future turns, or even future games as they know each other patterns) then the most productive course of action tends to be cooperation.

Having said that D3 is a game where at the end there can be only one, so Game Theory can not apply strictly, but you probably know what I mean by now...

BigDisAwesome · #7 April 14th, 2009, 04:00 PM

Well in one team game I was in, I came across a team that were combining two artifacts rather profitably.
One had The Sickle Whose Crop is Pain and the other had the Soulstone of the Wolves. He'd cast it every turn at a province with no PD and a thug using the Sickle. They were raking in 20-30 death gems a turn with this.

Ironhawk · #8 April 14th, 2009, 04:06 PM

Thats not restricted to team games by any means. Usually whoever forges the sickle in a regular FFA game will simply call up thier most friendly neighbor and say "hey, do you want to earn 10-15 death gems a turn, for practically no effort?" to which the other replies "why of course!".

atul · #9 April 14th, 2009, 04:25 PM

Which is quite lame, I must say.

After all, all gain with no pain shouldn't go well with Sickle Whose Crop Is PAIN.