Ser HodorSon Of Hodor
Posts: 756
Games: 1,331
Rank Points: 10,054
Member since: 2016-Mar-20
Topic: General tips
Posted: 2020-Mar-16 16:52
The complexity of the game is its appeal, and as such it resists any single strategy that fits all situations. Each house plays entirely differently because of its varied house cards, geography, starting units, track positions, and neighbors. On top of that, the Westeros card system allows for (if my math is correct) 63 distinct combinations of events that could appear after the first turn, and from their the permutations multiply eight more times, such that you could play every day for the rest of your life and never see the same progression of cards twice.
Still, I will try to come up with some general principles that apply to all houses.
1) Control of the sea = Control of the realm.
You win by holding castles, but to hold castles you have to first reach and then support them. Ships are the best way to do that. Without them, even the strongest land army will struggle to reach a 5th castle without getting surrounded and overwhelmed.
2) Gold wins wars.
CP early and often. The influence tracks are not everything, but they are very close to everything. If you have no star orders or valyrian steel, then you are pretty much only playing defense no matter how big your army is.
3) Diplomacy. To an extent, Stark and Greyjoy can thrive just by being left alone, but even they do better with at least one friendly neighbor. The first priority is often to secure at least one safe border, but from there it is often worth exploring relations with non-adjacent houses, who will often have the same incentives to beat down your neighbor, but not be jockeying for the exact same territories while doing so.
4) Don't Throw Stones At Cripples...
This is something that is counter-intuitive, but when scheming to enter a conflict it is usually better to choose the weaker house as an ally over the strong one (if it is not yet the endgame scramble to nab any castle you can). When you join a late dogpile to wipe out an already beleaguered house, often times you will be securing for yourself only a scrap of their land, while helping your "ally" build a dominant position from which to turn their sights on you to end the game.
There is only one winner in the game, which means that at all times you have 5 enemies. And that includes your allies. Your goal is not to eliminate other houses, it is to hold castles, and often times the best way to do that is to keep a crippled faction with a few units as a buffer between you and the powerhouse rather than clearing the way for that powerhouse to attack you directly.
5) But If You Do, Aim At Their Heads...
The flip side to that is that if you are the powerhouse that has a neighbor on the ropes, don't pass up an opportunity to stamp them out entirely. A single straggling unit can still prove to be a surprising thorn in your side, as it creates a whole different set of house cards to potentially account for as you make increasingly complex calculations as your armies grow and the rest of the realm realizes they need to work against you (this is especially worrisome when those house cards include Doran, QOT, Tyrion, or Patchface).
6) Don't Give Up.
For one, be a sporstman and don't queer the pitch for the other players who sunk multiple hours into a game by just giving up when you start losing. For another, things move pretty fast in Westeros, and a lot can change very quickly. At the least, you can be that thorn in the side of the would-be conqueror that ruined your day.
That's about everything I can think of that can be generalized across all houses. Elsewhere in the Strategy forum, I wrote individual "House Guides" for each faction that track my thoughts on their particular strengths and weaknesses.
