Aug 21st 2014, 15:29:55
I am a noob. Here is my noob experience:
After signing up, I tried Tournament server first. Dunno why I chose Tournament. Maybe because, at the time, it was just starting. I figured if this is like other turn-based games I've played, it is better to join closer to when a round starts than to join a round mid-way through.
Anyway, I played Indy Communism, producing lots of spies, since from what I was reading, spies seemed pretty important. I though I could sell military and save lots of spies and then nobody would attack me since I could retaliate with ops. Also, as I spied on other players, I was able to learn what was important, how other more experienced players were playing the game. I learned a lot by spying.
I have to say, one thing I found really useful were the tips that popped up at the top of various pages, and the links to the help pages on various topics. One thing about this game that is very exceptional is the effective help pages.
That being said, I wanted to quit and even messaged the developers asking how to delete my account. While playing and trying to learn, I kept getting attacked. And just didn't understand how to retaliate. Learned the importance of land-grabbing and how to do it through reading forums. And did some land grabs. I think I did too many on one particular guy, since, afterwards, he sent a really nasty message and then did like 50 ABs on me, completely destroying all my buildings. That was one time I wanted to quit.
Another time I wanted to quite was when some really high-ranked player attacked me. I didn't know how to join GDI. I thought you had to pay real-life money for it, or bonus points or something.
I had had what I had thought would be enough turrets for defense. I had learned through spying that a lot of players around my NW had about 500k-1M or so of turrets. I also had what I thought were plenty of troops (100k). I had learned from that previous guy who AB'd me like 50 times that I should have a significant amount of tanks, too. Also, my networth wasn't all that outrageous compared to my acreage - I wasn't sticking out as an appetizing target or anything.
And then, boom. I get attacked for like no reason. Anyway, from the battle stats, I was like is this? I quit! First reason was it seemed the player had attacked me with only jets, since from the battle stats he lost only jets and didn't lose any troops tanks. Moreover, he lost fewer jets than he'd destroyed my forces. And it wasn't a bombing run, either. He'd actually nabbed land! What is this??? He nabbed a huge amount of land, too. This made no sense, I thought. I had tried a couple of my own attacks, noticing that even when I won a battle I would always lose a lot more units than the defender. Also, in calculating the cost of units lost, the amount of land I could get in successful attacks wasn't worth the trouble. It was almost better for me to keep exploring acres instead of land-grabbing. I was even attacking countries with higher net worth and more acres than me. I had even been using planned strikes with all of my forces to try and get the most land from each attack. But still, for what I got the cost wasn't worth it. I didn't understand that in this game 'overwhelming force' was a bad thing - that you would lose a ridiculous amount of forces if you used more than necessary. I thought that overwhelming force would allow me to lose fewer forces rather than more. In other games 've played, the greater the force overwhelms the enemy's the fewer losses you can expect per capita.
And then here comes this guy from way up there on leader board with his jets and nabbing a ridiculous amount of land from me, with only a few jets.
In short, I didn't understand how attacking and defending worked. And I didn't know how to join GDI, etc., how allies worked, etc..
Another time I wanted to delete was when some ops seemed to work while others seemed buggy. The espionage op threw me for a loop for a while. I'd do the op against a player, supposedly successfully, but it kept saying "you stole 0 technology points". It was not a fail, but, rather, a success. For whatever reason I was only able to steal 0 tech points. though.
Now, I had spied-out the target and from what I could tell he had lots of tech points (like even as much as 100 points in some fields :) ). So I figured he had tons of tech to steal. But repeatedly I was successfully stealing only 0. What is this?
I kept thinking I was doing something wrong and kept wasting ops on trying to steal tech, even against other players (who also seemed to have a lot of tech points), only to repeatedly 'successfully' steal 0 tech points each time.
I eventually came to think that there was some sort of bug or that the the espionage op had been disabled for this particular Tournament round. I came on forum trying to get some sort of explanation, but nothing came of it.
It wasn't until later on when I spied out someone who had 50k+ tech points in a tech field that I realized what the problem had been.
Basically, my experience with the game as a noob has been how I kept getting attacked and unsuccessfully defending such attacks and not understanding why I can't defend. Also, my own attacks kept failing, and, even when successful, I'd lose way too many forces!
For the first round, I think all I did was explore and build turrets, oscillating between trying to figure out how all this worked and how to delete my account.
After signing up, I tried Tournament server first. Dunno why I chose Tournament. Maybe because, at the time, it was just starting. I figured if this is like other turn-based games I've played, it is better to join closer to when a round starts than to join a round mid-way through.
Anyway, I played Indy Communism, producing lots of spies, since from what I was reading, spies seemed pretty important. I though I could sell military and save lots of spies and then nobody would attack me since I could retaliate with ops. Also, as I spied on other players, I was able to learn what was important, how other more experienced players were playing the game. I learned a lot by spying.
I have to say, one thing I found really useful were the tips that popped up at the top of various pages, and the links to the help pages on various topics. One thing about this game that is very exceptional is the effective help pages.
That being said, I wanted to quit and even messaged the developers asking how to delete my account. While playing and trying to learn, I kept getting attacked. And just didn't understand how to retaliate. Learned the importance of land-grabbing and how to do it through reading forums. And did some land grabs. I think I did too many on one particular guy, since, afterwards, he sent a really nasty message and then did like 50 ABs on me, completely destroying all my buildings. That was one time I wanted to quit.
Another time I wanted to quite was when some really high-ranked player attacked me. I didn't know how to join GDI. I thought you had to pay real-life money for it, or bonus points or something.
I had had what I had thought would be enough turrets for defense. I had learned through spying that a lot of players around my NW had about 500k-1M or so of turrets. I also had what I thought were plenty of troops (100k). I had learned from that previous guy who AB'd me like 50 times that I should have a significant amount of tanks, too. Also, my networth wasn't all that outrageous compared to my acreage - I wasn't sticking out as an appetizing target or anything.
And then, boom. I get attacked for like no reason. Anyway, from the battle stats, I was like is this? I quit! First reason was it seemed the player had attacked me with only jets, since from the battle stats he lost only jets and didn't lose any troops tanks. Moreover, he lost fewer jets than he'd destroyed my forces. And it wasn't a bombing run, either. He'd actually nabbed land! What is this??? He nabbed a huge amount of land, too. This made no sense, I thought. I had tried a couple of my own attacks, noticing that even when I won a battle I would always lose a lot more units than the defender. Also, in calculating the cost of units lost, the amount of land I could get in successful attacks wasn't worth the trouble. It was almost better for me to keep exploring acres instead of land-grabbing. I was even attacking countries with higher net worth and more acres than me. I had even been using planned strikes with all of my forces to try and get the most land from each attack. But still, for what I got the cost wasn't worth it. I didn't understand that in this game 'overwhelming force' was a bad thing - that you would lose a ridiculous amount of forces if you used more than necessary. I thought that overwhelming force would allow me to lose fewer forces rather than more. In other games 've played, the greater the force overwhelms the enemy's the fewer losses you can expect per capita.
And then here comes this guy from way up there on leader board with his jets and nabbing a ridiculous amount of land from me, with only a few jets.
In short, I didn't understand how attacking and defending worked. And I didn't know how to join GDI, etc., how allies worked, etc..
Another time I wanted to delete was when some ops seemed to work while others seemed buggy. The espionage op threw me for a loop for a while. I'd do the op against a player, supposedly successfully, but it kept saying "you stole 0 technology points". It was not a fail, but, rather, a success. For whatever reason I was only able to steal 0 tech points. though.
Now, I had spied-out the target and from what I could tell he had lots of tech points (like even as much as 100 points in some fields :) ). So I figured he had tons of tech to steal. But repeatedly I was successfully stealing only 0. What is this?
I kept thinking I was doing something wrong and kept wasting ops on trying to steal tech, even against other players (who also seemed to have a lot of tech points), only to repeatedly 'successfully' steal 0 tech points each time.
I eventually came to think that there was some sort of bug or that the the espionage op had been disabled for this particular Tournament round. I came on forum trying to get some sort of explanation, but nothing came of it.
It wasn't until later on when I spied out someone who had 50k+ tech points in a tech field that I realized what the problem had been.
Basically, my experience with the game as a noob has been how I kept getting attacked and unsuccessfully defending such attacks and not understanding why I can't defend. Also, my own attacks kept failing, and, even when successful, I'd lose way too many forces!
For the first round, I think all I did was explore and build turrets, oscillating between trying to figure out how all this worked and how to delete my account.