I usually rate how good a wargame is by its ability to allow the number of tactics to be employed in the game itself. I going to now try to start a thread based on Sun Tzu's Art of War and how they can be implement in the game itself.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu contains 13 Chapters whereby the first Chapters is on Laying Plans. I will skip points 1-17 of the chapter (talking about things like weather which is not an element in the game) and go to point 18 onwards.

18. All warfare is based on deception.
19. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable;
when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we
are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far;
when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

When attacking, do not send your main force up straight into the enemy line. That will only reveal your strength and weakness. Sending up weaker and dispendable units is a wiser choice.
A unit of troop can only see up to 8 hexes away. Anything farther away your opponent cannot see unless they have outpost built beside the troops. Use that to your advantage to hide your true forces.

20. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder,
and crush him.

Leading an enemy into your ranged troops range and crushing him is a good tactics here in waronline.

continue...

21. If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him.
If he is in superior strength, evade him.

When you see troops massing up near any passage, you better be prepared for an upcoming invasion. If he has a stronger force than you, avoid a direct confrontation either by fencing off his advances or moving into narrow passages where his total force cannot attack at the same time.

22. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to
irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.

Always try to know the characteristic of your opponent, if he is easily angered, taut him and make him do a rush attack. If your opponent is one of those boastful type, pretend to be weak and he will grow lax.

23. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest.
If his forces are united, separate them.

If your opponent wanted rest, dun give him. If his forces are united at one place, use small units to strike at different positions of his kingdom to make him split his forces.

24. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where
you are not expected.

Scout for weaknesses in your opponent defences using mounted units. Once spotted, sneak up an attack on that area.

Last Edited : Wednesday, 2 October 2002 - 00:40

26. Now the general who wins a battle makes many
calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought.
The general who loses a battle makes but few
calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations
lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat:
how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention
to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.

In other words, work out your strategy/tactics and KEEP TRACK OF STUFF. If you don't there will be someone else (like me) who will.

(Can't remember which number).
There are routes not to be followed, armies not to be attacked, citadels not to be besieged, territory not to be fought over, orders of civilian government not to be obeyed


This is a very brief overview of a strategists thinking. Leadership in waronline - the player - must decide how to get to your destination, how long it will take, implications of choosing either routes, possible threats(logistics); choosing which army should attack which (rock/paper/scissors) & (Low BP/No retaliations or Counterattacks); choosing if attacking a castle directly will cost you more than you will gain (Seige or not to seige); only taking the land you can keep (expanding empire); and disregarding political squabble to concentrate on solid combat, winning without making much noise........


Anyways....that's how I interperate it.....my favourite quote....hence it being in my profile description.

Take care, adding more later,

Silva Husky.

Thats Chapter 8: Variation in Tactics point 3.

silva, you obviously have the 'thomas cleary translation', i think its interesting that 'civilian government' is not the only way to translate it. 'ruler' or 'rulers' is also possible.

that doesnt help much for waronline, but i think its interesting, and one should be aware of the fact that there is always more than one translation to what sun tzu has said in the original.

Yep I have the Thomas Cleary Translation, his version very simple to read so I like that one.

I really ought to read a few more different translations....pity I can't read Chinese....properly....cause that's what it's in right?

Ohh Isn't it civilian government? Ohhh but still Rulers still give the same meaning I think or pretty much similar meanings....it just means the ruling party/person in whatever form of government or lack of.....

*sigh* wished I had more time to read more stuff like that!

i disagree.

a ruler could also be a military ruler, which might change a lot, IMO.

civilian government could mean that civilian rulers that have either no clue about warfare or only limited knowledge give orders that have the goal of achieving victories like conquering a city with the name of the enemie's ruler, which would be a great political/propaganda success. but these orders might be of no significance for the military; it might only endanger the military forces of that country.

a military ruler (a general perhaps) should see these dangers and avoid them.
so disobeying him should not (normally) be necessary because of strategic orders that make no sense, but because of ... perhaps war crimes? an ordered genocide?
might sun tzu say that killings of innocents are not to be carried out?

Last Edited : Saturday, 5 October 2002 - 08:11

Back in Sun Tzu's day all leaders were pretty much military. The emperor/king might have some civilian roles, but he was also the supreme commander and head of the military. Governments are more of a modern thing...or are they? I'm not well up on ancient Chinese history

he might have been head of the military, but that doesnt necessarily mean that hes a former general, i think.
im not entirely sure either.

China was divided into large provinces which were divided into ownership of warlords. They governed their own land whilst trying to expand their territory. That's why the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is still floating around either as comics, or new computer games. Most leaders were militaristic. But governments were still in place, just different types of governements.....Monarchy......

But regarding that translation, I still think it refers to civilian government or secular power, cause it doesn't really make sense to ignore military leadership regarding warfare........but it does seem to fit, if the civilian government were taken less seriously if military was the main focus.

Abit of side track here. If anyone happens to be interested abt my clan name. It happens to be 'borrow' from the Romance of the 3 Kingdoms.

Side tracking is fun! hehe
I really wonder...why do people call it Romance of the Three Kingdoms?...why the word "Romance"?

Hrm....imo, i believe becoz of the stories, things that happen then was just so fascinating, like a romance story.....

U know, so much twist, so unexpected....loyalty, foes, tactics, politics etc....

Backing up this thread. I've got 2 things to add (of which one IMO important):

From what I've read in the commentaries of tAoW rulers might have been warlords, but they often still employed seperate generals. I've read some pretty interesting remarks about civilian and military government being distinct. The idea of ST's remark on it is that a civilian government might give orders contrary to the military interests, even though the military is carrying out earlier orders that can not be reversed (like Morbius' example).

The second is an elaboration on 'laying out plans' that I've experienced problems with but can be helped.

In order to win, you must maneuver towards a situation that has you at an advantage/your opponent at a disadvantage. For example, I know my enemy uses a lot of scouts, so I go maximum on the spearmen production.
HOWEVER: maneuvering towards a situation where you can get advantage, and maneuvering to a situation where you really TAKE advantage are two quite distinct things as I have noticed.

In my last war with someone I had spearmen and my opponent has scouts. I had more in number, and the trooptype advantage. Sure win right? Wrong.
More numbers dont necessarily mean that much. Spearmen are weaker than scouts (hence the compensation with cheaper cost and higher production). In fact, when you produce 81 spearmen, they have about the same amount of hitpoints and deal about the same amount of damage as 54 scouts do (=what your opponent produces in the meantime). Actually even slightly less. Still spearmen should win. Why? Trooptype advantage. paper beats rock beats scissors beats paper.

However I still lost. Why? My army was split across 2 stacks, and his army was divided among several. "Good" I thought, "More concentrated punchingpower". Wrong.
The divided scoutstacks easily blocked the paths to his armies of commandeers and archers: bonus for him.
Also: whenever an armystack engages another armystack, they lose actionpoints. Also a stack can only retaliate once or so in the same hour (if you just spent all your enemy hacking the enemy in your front there's little time/energy left for the enemy in your back). Another bonus for him.

Then there was the fact that he had shorter supplylines, and thus easy reinforcements. Considering scouts dont lose out *that* much versus spearmen, this proved fatal for my army. His spread out army also prevented a quick retreat for me, and he also had faster trooptypes anyway..

Then there was the last fact that I arrived at the scene with one stack first, then another. Another bonus for him: he could do a full smackdown of the first stack while the other was still arriving. Another bonus for him.


Now you see how you can lose in a situation where you have an advantage at your disposal. Once you envision a situation where you can take an advantage, ENVISION yourself how you are going to *take* that advantage.
If your opponent can easily compensate for an disadvantage by several potential advantages, then you really dont have that much of an advantage do you? Time to make a new plan.

And the UTMOST important aspect of planmaking that Genming hasn't adressed is: Don't fight unless you can win (something by it). I think this is Szun Tsu's funding stratagem. The fundament upon which you should build all your plans.

I have addressed the "Don't fight unless you can win" theory. You just have to look at my character description.

well said, egregius.

hmm, one might add "dont fight unless you can win AND unless you already know how to win (the battle/war)"

since the clever general plans how to win and then fights while the not so clever general fights and then tries to figure out how to win.

Last Edited : Wednesday, 4 December 2002 - 07:56

You might not always know how to win the battle/war. If the war is long enough, you won't have a clue how to bring out a prolonged campaign. So again, you have to look at how many adv., and how man disadv. you get out of each upcoming situation. In other words, don't play to win, play to win better ground :-)

Example.

If you use tactic A, you can win the battle. Great.
If you use tactic B, you lose the battle, but win the next one. ok...
If you use tactic C, you lose this battle and probably the next few after that - but it will ultimately leave your opponent very few options. You may have less, but what you have could well be undefeatable.

Now, for us - the good news is, too many players like tactic A best :-)
The better ones tend to use tactic B, knowing that something better just around the corner.
But the best ones will give tactic C the most thought (even if not picking it). The tactic (or perhaps we should call it strategy, as it's more long-term) might not guarantee you anything at all, and might have rotten-looking prospects. But if it's the only one that near enough promises a winnable position in the near future, it's certainly worth a look.

You'd mean in the far future.

Anyway, I agree with you. Last game I played (Game 57) I had to face a guy called Corwin753. I owned two castles and he was the next one in my way, as he had attacked me and threatened my eastern flank.

So I started gathering a larger army and attacked his castle. His archers fell easily, but then I had to face a bigger threat: the 3 barracks he had inside his castle were producing output after output of marksmen.

As my army was mostly made of squires, falchioniers and also marksmen, I had to make up a quick strategy: sacrifying lots of falchioniers in order to keep him busy, attacking his marksmen frontally although not making too much damage, and using my squires as a bait to atract their arrows.

While doing this I lost many troops, but it gave me time to set up a second attack from the north, placing all my troops at the edge of his towers sight. Then, once my marksmen were also at position, I launched a two-side attack that finally worked out. With a quick move, I could also get next to his barracks thus killing new outputs of marksmen as they were placed.

If I had not sacrified some troops at the beginning, he would have grown stronger inside the castle, amassing more marksmen in the towers and behind the walls, that way I could have been unable to take over the castle later, or even lose the war as shortly afterwards I was attacked by another player.

Last Edited : Wednesday, 4 December 2002 - 16:30

Well, more mid-term. Near-ish, but not in plain sight either.

Who am I kidding, I just didn't type it very well...! :-)