I would like to go over a few more advanced gaming terms, and how they pertain to strategy games as a whole.
Map control is the ability to traverse the map without taking heavy losses. Usually one of two contending sides will have it at any one point in time, and the other will not. It depends on several factors. One is the strength of an army, and the other is the speed with which it can move. The most important benefit of map control is the ability to expand one's reach over the map's resources with impunity, and that should be one's mission if one enjoys it. Building new bases and expanding one's economy while preventing one's adversary from doing the same will greatly improve one's position in the game.
Base trading is what happens when two armies ignore one another, and instead both go on the offensive. Usually when one side commits to an invasion, the other side has two choices: defend against the aggressor, or launch their own counter-strike elsewhere on the map. Usually this decision is dependent upon how large the opponent's territory is as a ratio of the defender's. If the defender is smaller and less powerful, they must commit to a defense, whereas if their territory is larger, a base trade is the better strategy. To provide a mathematical understanding of this, if player one has four bases and player two has three bases, then before the base trade player one has a 33.33% territorial advantage, whereas after the trade they have three bases to player two's two bases, or a 50% territorial advantage.
Unit Trading is the metric used to determine the effectiveness of one's army at any one point in time. Simple numerical losses are not enough to reveal whether one is trading units favorably against an adversary. The cost in resources per unit produced is also pertinent, as a larger army of cheap units can in many situations prevail over fewer, more costly units. Furthermore, in situations where such economic costs are less important, such as in the late game when players have banked large resource reserves, or have population-capped armies, the time it takes to produce units also becomes crucial, as does their logistical footprint. If one player can make or replace ten cheap units in the time it takes the other to produce one powerful unit, that can easily be part of a victorious strategy.
Army Formation covers the basic placement of one's units upon the map. In general, the front line should consist of melee units, with ranged units covering them from behind, and with artillery units supporting both at a distance. In general, units are organized by the range at which they can engage the opponent's army. The longer their effective range, the farther they should be situated behind the front line.
Flanking usually occurs when the opponent's army formation is disrupted. By concurrently attacking an army both at its center and at its side, one allows one's own melee and ranged units to circumvent their front line units, and directly engage their army's rear, which has units not intended for such combat. One also forces the edges of a flanked army to fight more than one unit at a time, which when sustained leads to a collapse of said army's edge which can easily snowball into a total rout.
Encirclement is the result of a successful pincer maneuver. Without directly engaging an opposing army, one can both cut off their avenue of retreat, as well as ensure that both supplies and reinforcements are unable to reach them. The longer an army remains encircled, the more its fighting strength will suffer. It must eventually either attempt a Breakout maneuver, which is essentially a fighting retreat, or instead see its capability gradually erode, until it is finally defeated.
Turtling is a specific strategy that involves the creation of a strong economy behind a heavily defended perimeter. The idea is to allow one to build a powerful army that one's opponent is unable to attack until it is too large to defeat. This strategy can be difficult to counter, but usually if one's adversary is turtling, they have essentially forsaken the rest of the map, and one can therefore aggressively out-expand them, in the hopes of contributing to an army more powerful than theirs.
And finally, a piece of advice: when facing a superior foe, it is usually a bad idea to directly confront them on the battlefield. A better strategy is to rely on small but fast military units to attack the enemy wherever they are the weakest. One can thereby punish one's adversary when they begin to slowly traverse the map towards one's own territory, forcing them to return home and clean up the smaller crises one has caused. All else remaining the same, the longer one can delay a direct confrontation with the enemy's forces, the more chances one has of closing the gap in military strength, and of thereby recovering from a detrimental strategic position.
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