"Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.
To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.
[...]
Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defeating the enemy."
* * * * *
I think the spirit of what is being said in 'The Art of War', is the same principle that's being discussed in the article: Don't rush into striking before you are sure of victory, and lose everything; instead use the advantage to build yourself into an invincible position, with less risk.
* * * * *
'The Art of War' has been around a long time.
If there's a lesson here, its that strategy gamers might benefit from doing some reading.
I liked the article, and thought it was good; but it comes across that the author has no education in either (economic) game theory, or the study of game playing AI (e.g. minimax, search based AI techniques like you'd see in a chess AI etc). (Two related, but sometimes separate fields).
Which is fine - but there's a lot of good work in those fields, that strategy gamers, that seek to understand games analytically, as well as intuitively, would do well to read.
If there's a lesson here, its that strategy
gamers might benefit from doing some reading.
You have to play sc2 or similar games for years before that kind of advice becomes applicable (since there is so much basic skill to pick up before the game becomes that strategic), and by the time you know the game well enough to find the correct analogy to something written in The Art of War you've probably already discovered it yourself.
In short, I think there are very few if any sc2 players that would benefit (in terms of improving their game at least) from reading The Art of War.
>You have to play sc2 or similar games for years before that kind of advice becomes applicable (since there is so much basic skill to pick up before the game becomes that strategic), and by the time you know the game well enough to find the correct analogy to something written in The Art of War you've probably already discovered it yourself.
You seem to be saying that by the time they are playing at a level where general strategic advice becomes applicable, they'll already have learned it. This is a little circular.
Also, I think it probably takes a couple of months, before you get to the strategic level, not years, but that's just an opinion.
You seem to be saying that by the time they are
playing at a level where general strategic advice
becomes applicable, they'll already have learned
it. This is a little circular.
Can you point where the circularity comes in?
I said that by the time the advice that can be learned from reading TAOW becomes useful they would have already learned it from their "battle" experience.
What I am saying is that reading it in book form will at most provide an "aha - that's why this strategy I've been contemplating is good!" moment, rather than a new idea about how to play the game.
I've been playing sc2 on and off (mostly off) since it was released and am a diamond league player & most of the time the game is still more about paying attention and tactics rather than high level strategy for me.
And I am pretty sure I would have not have even got to this level were I not already a somewhat competent wc3 player.
Maybe if you play 10+ hours per week of sc2 every week since it came out you would not need years to master the game, but as a busy professional with little free time and many games I doubt you could ever reach that level in a matter of months without having played a lot of sc1/wc3 beforehand.
EDIT: take a look at http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Battle.net_Leagues#Lea... - 80% of players are at platinum league or less, where the game definitively requires more getting over basic tactics than high level strategy. I would bet you can win with a marine/zergling/zealot rush in almost every match in these leagues if you have sufficiently superior micro to your opponent.
By definition, platinum or below is the bottom 80% of the player base. No matter how good the sc2 population gets, around 80% will ALWAYS be platinum or below.
That doesn't necessarily mean that the skill level for platinum or below will always be static though. For example, the korean server is generally regarded as more difficult. A platinum player on the NA server might only reach gold there (or might still be platinum but lose more).
But you are definitely correct that their mechanics are the main thing that separates most top players. I would emphasize macro as being much more important than micro though.
Studying pure game theory isn't going to help the SC2 player, at least not in any tangible way, the same with current AI practices.
The point he's trying to make is that truly great (in his view: competitive) games are those that the most advanced AI algorithms won't have any real competitive edge, so that game "theory" would back-up game "reality" of winning with a marginal advantage is more advantageous than winning "big".
It'd definitely help people wanting to write articles analyzing starcraft. There's definitely things the author doesn't get, that'd seem obvious if he'd read this stuff.
Anyway, I think most people study pure game theory, not because its directly applicable; they study it because there are some surprising results from it, that inform their strategic thinking - not because they apply it to evaluate their specific strategic situation.
>The point he's trying to make is that truly great (in his view: competitive) games are those that the most advanced AI algorithms won't have any real competitive edge, so that game "theory" would back-up game "reality" of winning with a marginal advantage is more advantageous than winning "big".
I'm not sure that's the point he's making.
But anyway, I'm not sure its a valid point.
For example, Chess is a game where the most advanced AI algorithms have a huge competitive edge, surely its a truely great, competitive, game?
"winning with a marginal advantage is more advantageous than winning "big"" doesn't at all follow from:
"those that the most advanced AI algorithms won't have any real competitive edge".
Yes, sure, fair point.
I was talking about strategy games as such - but you are right that there's large elements of execution skill in many games, even in an RTS like starcraft, which is also fun to compete on.
Yes. Though even games that have dominant pure strategies in theory, like chess or go can be fun to compete in. Because humans don't have access to the optimal strategies, execution skill and gambling creep in.
(Gambling in the sense: You can create more or less complicated situations. There's more or less apparent entropy in the game you are playing then.)
* * * * *
I think the spirit of what is being said in 'The Art of War', is the same principle that's being discussed in the article: Don't rush into striking before you are sure of victory, and lose everything; instead use the advantage to build yourself into an invincible position, with less risk.
* * * * *
'The Art of War' has been around a long time.
If there's a lesson here, its that strategy gamers might benefit from doing some reading.
I liked the article, and thought it was good; but it comes across that the author has no education in either (economic) game theory, or the study of game playing AI (e.g. minimax, search based AI techniques like you'd see in a chess AI etc). (Two related, but sometimes separate fields).
Which is fine - but there's a lot of good work in those fields, that strategy gamers, that seek to understand games analytically, as well as intuitively, would do well to read.