Analysis of my experience in week 1 (and a huge thank-you to 1676 and 5624)

[alephzer0]

Hi all!
After a great (and exhausting) weekend at Mount Olive I would like to share some of my experiences from week 1 that may prove useful to advancing the metagame of Stronghold. (Possible long post/wall of text warning)
1. Speed, agility, mobility, etc. These things are HUGE. This ie especially true in playoffs. 1257 was the 7th seed alliance captain at Mt. Olive. We had a fast robot, and both of our picks were fast, and that is a good part of what won us the event. If you can have the tower close to 0 strength with a minute left in the match, you are almost guaranteed the capture. Our alliance was able to achieve this in most of our matches. In addition, it makes defense much more difficult for your opponents both to play and to play against.
2. Speaking of defense, effective defense wins playoffs. Almost always, the alliance with the better defender will have an advantage. 1676's defense was very difficult to circumvent, and the earlier they started playing defense, the less the other alliance scored , by a very large margin (our strategy was to have them damage 1 or 2 defenses and then go play defense for the rest of the match).
3. A great strategy and a good robot beats a good strategy and a great robot. All four of the top 8 alliances were eliminated in quarterfinals at Mount Olive, and this was almost certainly due to strategic differences. In addition, qualification matches could not be won if the alliance did not have a strategy and good coordination.
4. In qualifications, breaches are incredibly important for rankings; in playoffs, tower captures are very powerful. This is as predicted, but it's still worth taking note of. Every team in the top 15 got a breach in almost every match they were in.
5. If you're still reading, you have a great attention span.
6. Stronghold is a great and exciting game! I can't wait to see higher-level play of this game in week 7 and CMP.

Finally, I just want to thank teams 5624 Tiger Tech and 1676 the Pascack Pioneers for a great day on Sunday. We couldn't have done it without you guys!

[JohnBoucher]

Originally Posted by alephzer0

.
2. Speaking of defense, effective defense wins playoffs. Almost always, the alliance with the better defender will have an advantage. 1676's defense was very difficult to circumvent, and the earlier they started playing defense, the less the other alliance scored , by a very large margin (our strategy was to have them damage 1 or 2 defenses and then go play defense for the rest of the match).

Would you describe this in more detail? Thanks

[alephzer0]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

Would you describe this in more detail? Thanks

Well, essentially as I remember it, in quarters none of the top 4 teams advanced. None of these alliances played any defense. What exactly did you want me to describe?

[JohnBoucher]

Originally Posted by alephzer0

Well, essentially as I remember it, in quarters none of the top 4 teams advanced. None of these alliances played any defense. What exactly did you want me to describe?

Type of defense. Shot blocking of pushing them around.

[AGPapa]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

Type of defense. Shot blocking of pushing them around.

At both MAR events this week (Mt. Olive and Hatboro) everybody who had tried to score high had given up by elims. The winning alliance of both events had a robot (1676 and 1218) who could slow down/stop opposing teams from reaching the low goal. It's not worth it to try and stop the opponents from getting a breach because of how easy a breach is. Stopping the capture is much more feasible.

The introduction of a robot who can score high goals from the outer works dramatically changes how this game is played. That type of defense wouldn't work anymore.

[Boltman]

In San Diego very aggressive defense was played in eliminations and those teams that did lost to three hybrid breech and boulder bots. The winning alliance could capture and a single defender could not prevent all three boulder bots. The boulder bot alliance pretty consitently outscored all other SF teams one which played very aggressive defense(and effective at knocking HG shots off course by hitting corners) or in our case our shooter jammed so we were boulder starved and could not keep up with their scoring.

[alephzer0]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

Type of defense. Shot blocking of pushing them around.

Pushing and ramming mostly.

Originally Posted by AGPapa

The introduction of a robot who can score high goals from the outer works dramatically changes how this game is played. That type of defense wouldn't work anymore.

You're right about this, but there were very few robots at MO who could do this and they weren't very consistent at it.
A robot with consistent high goal accuracy from the outer works would be very frightening.

Originally Posted by Boltman

In San Diego very aggressive defense was played in eliminations and those teams that did lost to three hybrid breech and boulder bots. The winning alliance could capture and a single defender could not prevent all three boulder bots. The boulder bot alliance pretty consitently outscored all other SF teams many who played very aggressive defense(and effective at knocking HG shots off course by hitting corners) or in our case our shooter jammed so we were boulder starved

This is interesting. MO didn't have enough consistent/strong boulder bots to make this possible though.

[dsmoker]

Very little defense played in elims at the Waterbury District Event, and none in quals. The teams that did attempt to play defense in elims were not terribly successful, resulting in lots of fouls, and most gave it up after one attempt. Lesson learned: don't attempt to play defense if you're not skilled at it. There's really not a ton of room between the outerworks and the castle, and if you're not careful it's easy to foul your opponents.

[alephzer0]

Originally Posted by dsmoker

Very little defense played in elims at the Waterbury District Event, and none in quals. The teams that did attempt to play defense in elims were not terribly successful, resulting in lots of fouls, and most gave it up after one attempt. Lesson learned: don't attempt to play defense if you're not skilled at it. There's really not a ton of room between the outerworks and the castle, and if you're not careful it's easy to foul your opponents.

Yes. Note that I said effective defense.
Ineffective defense is wasteful.

[JeremyF]

I think defense was a huge part of eliminations at Granite State District. As the 6 seed, 88 picked another good breaching, low goal robot (1831) and a bigger robot to play defense (1786). It worked great. A lot of the alliances we faced had not yet been challenged by defensive efforts and it really paid off towards the win! For early events, do not underestimate the power of quick low goal cycling and defense. Those extra capture points are worth a lot more than making a few high goal shots and not getting the capture.

[MikLast]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

Would you describe this in more detail? Thanks

Check these two videos out, and look at 4495, the #2 alliance's backup defense robot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKP_g25Bj0I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80IE9Tgq4zo

[SciBorg Dave]

PNW West Valley.
We are a rookie team so this is from a younger teams experience. Remember this is week one. To advance and in eliminations.
1) Must do auto.
2) Must do breach.
3) Must do Challenge.
4) Shooting high goals during qualifications is ok but eliminations to easy to defend. If you want high goal do it from outer works or run and gun.
5) In eliminations defense is a must. But the team needs to know the rules. The defensive bot should be a low bar bot just needs to push and hit.
6) You will take a lot of punishment be prepared. Even in eliminations bots had problems.
7) To be a great alliance need to capture.

[Boltman]

Originally Posted by SciBorg Dave

PNW West Valley.
We are a rookie team so this is from a younger teams experience. Remember this is week one. To advance and in eliminations.
1) Must do auto.
2) Must do breach.
3) Must do Challenge.
4) Shooting high goals during qualifications is ok but eliminations to easy to defend. If you want high goal do it from outer works or run and gun.
5) In eliminations defense is a must. But the team needs to know the rules. The defensive bot should be a low bar bot just needs to push and hit.
6) You will take a lot of punishment be prepared. Even in eliminations bots had problems.
7) To be a great alliance need to capture.

Pretty spot on apart from "defense is a must" everything else I agree with an scaling can be a deciding factor too. Three scales is an extra 30 points above three challenges.... 1 scale basically negates other alliance 3 challenges

[007agentHP]

Yeah 1676 Pascack Pioneers's defense was incredible, and especially in our second quarterfinal match with team 11 that they were able to completely shut down team 11 from scoring. most shooters at Mount Olive were either batter shooters (like team 1403) or shot in the courtyard(Team 41, 3142), which meant that 1676's defense was incredible in stopping high goal shots.

Also we saw that Stronghold is rough. It has already been said before, but it is. look at most of our elims matches and some robot shut down almost every match (excluding the finals). whether it was 1403 in the semis, or 11 and 3142 in the quarterfinals, Someone went down. Our bumpers by the finals were wrecked. we have to make new ones for Bridge water. We had matches where our bumpers fell off and another where we loose communication.

The speed needs to be stressed. our robot in particular was made to be a fast tower bot. most matches (in elims) we got 4-6 low boulders in a game and 1-2 defenses taken out. Team 1257's bot as i saw it on the field was a super fast breecher bot that put in 2-4 boulders per match.


All in all, week 1 was a hectic competition with some fun matches. I look forward to the Bridge water event.

And Thank You to 1257 and 1676 who helped us win Mount Olive. You guys are incredible and i wish you all a lot of luck in your future events