There’s
an old game called WarCraft II. I loved it. In fact,
for me… severe old timer here… it is my favorite of the WarCraft
titles. And, full disclosure, I love and play it to this day.
Came
out about twenty-five years ago. You could play it as a single
player, progressing through different campaigns or even just set
up a single challenge. It also became popular as an online option.
Yup, you could be sitting in your living room and play against
someone from just about any other place in the world.
I
had a fun little strategy for the game, which was to set out and
immediately get multiple camps up and running. I’d send off some
of people to mine gold and chop wood in different places. It was
a bit risky, as during the early stages I would end up needing
a few town halls to ease the movement of supplies while also focusing
more on the workers and less on fighters. Such investments resulted
in my camps being extremely vulnerable to attack in the early
stages. But, once I got them established, it offered a powerful
position.
The
great part about the strategy was that it created two fun twists
for me. First, if attacked after building a second or third town
hall, I wasn’t going to be eliminated by one camp being wiped
out. I could still gather resources, and still add to my forces.
An opponent was going to need to find all of my structures, and
if a camp of two remained well hidden I could often survive some
early losses without truly losing all that much as long as I could
navigate the time needed to build some structures and forces in
the other camps. Second, it was possible to generate some unreal
and totally unexpected waves of firepower. If an opponent was
focused on working from a single area around one goldmine, while
I had been building near five goldmines, the numbers could move
almost toward my position being a five-against-one once everything
was in motion and secure.
In
one of my first online games, someone signed on and said they
were playing from a different country. Which… this was like 1997
or so… was incredible. For free, there I was, sitting in Connecticut
playing a game against someone that said they were in Brazil.
I
was able to set up four camps pretty quickly, and I can still
remember to this day that I was using two of them as the primary
places to build up my forces. One was what we might call a conventional
army, with the other being home to some of the more advanced options
such as dragons.
The
key to the everything was that time had been on my side. I hadn’t
really looked for any of his forces, but whatever he was accomplishing
early on it wasn’t find one of my camps. When he did, it was a
smaller one, still somewhat undeveloped and lightly protected.
But since it did contain most of the initial structures needed
for development, it had the appearances of being my main base.
His attack picked up and the trash talking began appearing in
gameplay messages.
How
could I be so slow in advancing my camp? What had I been doing?
Was I really that disgraceful of a player? I was promised an ugly
defeat, told to watch and learn, and he began a piece by piece
slow dismantling of my forces in that area.
Well…
his comments were not just swagger, but increasingly were including
some personal attacks. So, I decided to just unload everything.
The bulk of my army was sent toward the area of my attacked settlement.
About twenty-seven dragons were teamed up in three groups and
dispatched across the map to seek and destroy. I added some barracks
and shifted my main focus to adding troops upon troops upon troops
along with farms to feed them.
The
ground forces wiped him out without many losses. The dragons all
arrived at his camp at roughly the same time. Suddenly the comments
weren’t as boastful, and he signed off shortly after all the dragons
had begun attacking and before a victory was official (though
at that point it wasn’t in any doubt).
I
admit, I still smile thinking about it.
I’m
not the most impressive video game player. My youth has come and
gone, so to speak, meaning if I’m not able to play the boys as
soon as the game reaches the house, they will race beyond me and
within days I wouldn’t even be able to put up an enjoyable opposition.
WarCraft has drifted to the back burner, and I was never
able to really gain any level of competency in the third edition
or massive online world that followed WarCraft II.
But
even today, I occasionally fire up the old game. I am well aware
of the weaknesses in my approach (and since I don’t play online,
can chuckle when the computer led forces don’t catch on to it).
Back in the day, if someone was familiar with playing me, they
knew it was an advantage to attack as quickly as possible. If
I was splitting up my teams, I wasn’t going to be able to withstand
much early on. And if I decided not to expand, the attacks would
prove frustrating at the least (and devasting at worst).
There’s
a saying about expecting the unexpected. In a way, it’s a branch
off of the freewill tree. As long as someone can do anything from
a number of options, all of the options have to be understood
as possible. The end result becomes how well you prepare for any
eventuality.
I
always try to expect the best while preparing for the worst. In
real life, it’s served me well. (I suppose.) But it’s always a
bit better if I have just a little time to establish my base camp.