Playing 3-way games...

[SteppinRazor]

So I thought we could get a good discussion here about the most complicated part of FFA...THE INFAMOUS 3-WAY GAME

The reason I am making this thread is because I (and I think probably many others, especially newer players) find these types of games hard to deal with in terms of decision making, and 95% of the time I just end up suiciding someone and then dying to the "smarter" player.  From what I have experienced, the typical (and key word here is typical, since obviously there can be some amount of variance to this) 3-way games happens when one players kills one of the others.  In the majority of the games I see, most 3-ways start out like this: "player 1" who has the strongest heroes, "player 2" who has the strongest economy, and "player 3" who is the weakest (weaker heroes than p1, and less gold than p2).  At this point, I find that basically every scenario is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.  If you need hero levels and you make 80/100 food and attack someone, well then the third player just hoards at 50 or comes in your base and kills you when you are weak.  If YOU sit 50 and hoard, then you usually end up with bad hero levels and run the risk of dying to someone who 80/100 food pushes you.  There's also about a million other things that factor into the game, like what race the players are, if one player is super gosu, what the map is etc etc

So I ask this question: How do you play these types of games and actually give yourself a "decent" chance to win?   

[daselend]

Generalizations are hard to make in 3-ways, but my standard approach is to wait for that window where I am strongest (or just becoming strongest) and they haven't turned on me yet. My plan is take out the weaker one of the two ASAP, and by taking out I mean really destroy him before the damage inflicted by the other guy makes me unable to win the 1v1 (let's say at the start of the 1v1 there's a 5k gold difference, something you can really come back from easily). This is not always an easy task of course, prominent examples being human bases (takes fucking forever, masonry is a joke) or maps where you will have a hard time killing someone off permanently (gold rush..), or if the 2nd strongest guy is elf and may force you to tp constantly because of chims.

[rygorych]

Here is the simplest way to deal with 3 ways that works 99% of the time.

Scenarios:

1. You are the strongest:
-Try pretend you are not strong, if it works, make peace with the weakest vs the 3rd player, team to death, 1v1 the weakling
-If you can't pretend you are not strong, you are fucked. Assuming you are in a game with actually intelligent players. If you are in a game with micro monkeys, it doesnt really matter. Cause you will be stuck there for 3 hours until all gold is drained, then base race /yawn

2. You are the weakest:
-Make sure everyone knows you are the weakest. Use that advantage to hoard up.
-Make peace with 2nd weakest vs the strong and team to death. Then 1v1 and hope you have enough gold to win that.

3. You are not strongest or weakest.
-Peace with weakest. Team strongest to death, 1v1 the weakling. Ez pz.


Key point: private or public peace to THE END. No fucking backstabbing. Make that very clear when you have peace. If they backstab you, suicide the dishonorable fucker. And then 100 food rush them again and again in every game you play them. Dishonorable fuckers need to learn not to backstab. So Educate them.

=This way games don't last long, e.g. 30-60 min tops.
=The moron who plans being the strongest always loses. This may be difficult to understand, but if every player in FFA is 100% logical, not emotional, etc, the strongest (micro wise) player SHOULD NEVER win. Ever. You team them to death, always.
=The fun/important part is the 4 way. It usually lasts 20-30 min, and personally that's what I play for. This is the best part of FFA, the rest is garbage and I don't care so much to play/obs. If you enjoy sitting around and carousel teaming for 3 hours, then this is not for you, obviously. Have fun scratching your arse.

Toodles.

[FML|red7z7]

u manip the weakest guy into teamin the other, then take the win

[FML|Renaud]

3 way in it's simplest form is: "teaming the strongest until hes not the strongest anymore."
So the way to win is to identify the strongest, and make it a 1v1 as soon as you are the strongest (because otherwise they will team you!)

The hard part is usually judging who is the strongest.  In order to do so, you must scout a lot (figure who mines what at what upkeep, and how much money they used on building/unit/items) or, you can try to look for signs of fake death

Often, a player will say "i have 0 gold", how to know if he is lying?
-If it's a market map and he has 10k worth of items, hes lying
-If it's a market map and he gets new items, hes lying
-If you destroyed some empty expo, and he starts building farms, hes lying (he can go 100 again, and needs the farm for it)
-Tavern revive is usually VERY suspicious

By that logic, you can also figure out when someone is really dead (but be careful, it might be manip)
-If he starts to sell items
-If he doesn't rebuild his farm/production building
-Orcs tends to make less bats and more wyv

And here are some stuff that DOES NOT MEAN HE HAS GOLD OR NOT
-Building an expo (seriously? you build an expo if you NEED gold, not if you have it)
-Repairing Main/Towers (that doesn't cost much... ofc if you see 10 peon repairing/rebuilding towers, that's another story)

Also, sometime you have to team someone who is not the strongest, but simply a bad match to you.  For example, if you only have a few building left, you should be scared of anyone with base racing abilities (tanks/bats/mass tp/tinker/etc).  Or some player have such terrible micro, that you feel you can beat him 1v1 even if he has more food/gold.

Also, after watching/obsing many game, you should get a feel of who says what in what situation (some player are completely random and/or new so you can't)

[Q-veta]

First: team the orc. If there's no orc team the strongest. If you are the strongest try to point out that someone is hoarding because someone is always hoarding. If there are two orcs, leave because there's nothing you can do. If there's 3 orcs (including you) then you should be ashamed of playing such a race.

[rygorych]

What if there are 4 orcs?

[Q-veta]

DISGUSTING

[FML|Renaud]

if there are 3 orc, you have to team whoever has a DR
if two player have dr, team whoever has a DR + imba micro (don't consider gold)
if no one has a dr, then chances are you 3 are idiots for not taking it in orc mirror, and deserve to suffer in a long 3 way of cowsex

[Rain]

I feel like these are often decided by either the dumbest player who has no idea of whos weakest/strongest/gold amounts being manipulated into teaming.

Or the player who gets bored (me in my games)

[FML|Renaud]

Yes, many time when nothing happend player A just say "... want to team player C, then 1v1? it will go faster", player B will say yes because he's just happy he wasn't just chosen to be teamed

The other commun "luck" scenario is
Player A attack Player B
Player A says "ok, we both fought, we are both weak... lets team C now"

[FML|WorpeX]

The way I deal with 3 ways is by identifying the person who I think I can beat 1v1. Doesn't matter if that person is the strongest or not, if I can take him 1v1, i'll team with him to kill the guy that I can't. Then proceed to kill the other one once the one I can't beat alone is dead.

If I don't think I can kill any of them I just go after the one who pissed me off the most in the game...

Yeah, I don't usually have 3 way games because of this and if I do, they dont' last long.

[FML|Renaud]

...
last 3 way we had, you ask me to team the other guy
:(

[DarKNeSSCaLLs]

DISGUSTING

4 way orc battles are actually a lot of fun 

No one can claim imbalance and it's just a massive amount of cow battles, one after another. Fights last a super long time due to all the tauren rezzing. It gets pretty insane!

[rygorych]

DISGUSTING

4 way orc battles are actually a lot of fun 

No one can claim imbalance and it's just a massive amount of cow battles, one after another. Fights last a super long time due to all the tauren rezzing. It gets pretty insane!

The hell you are going to, Darkness, will have plenty of cow coupling that you wil no doubt enjoy.

Toodles.