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The
Art of War, Part 1: The Sheathed Sword
“To fight and conquer in all your battles is
not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the
enemy’s resistance without fighting.” –Sun
Tzu, The Art of
War
Twenty five centuries ago in China, Sun Tzu
wrote a little manual called The Art of War. In the 2,500
years since that time, entire civilizations have risen and fallen.
Countless authors have tackled the subject of war, and wars
unnumbered have been waged. And still, Sun Tzu’s words have
unnerving relevance. Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book of
strategic and tactical doctrine was a nearly word for word
recounting of The Art of War. It’s rumored that
Napoleon’s secret weapon during his conquest of Europe was none
other than Tzu’s Art of War. Surprisingly, the book was
never translated into English until 1905. (Here's a link to way
too much information about buying the book.)
One of Tzu’s points is the concept of
achieving victory with a sheathed sword. That is, achieving victory
before the actual battle begins. After all, actual battle is
taxing and produces casualties, and more to my point, involves the
risk of defeat. Why risk defeat when it’s possible to win before
the fighting starts?
How does this apply to playing competitive
games? One interpretation is the idea of winning the psychological
battle with the opponent before the game begins. Though valid, this
is not my argument today. (Maybe I’ll write about that someday,
though.) My interpretation is that “actual conflict” does not
make up the entirety of a game. Most games begin with some kind of
jockeying for position or resources, building up of attack potential
and defense potential, and only later in the game does the conflict
take place.
The conflict is where (mathematical) game
theory kicks in full swing. During this phase of the game (in most
competitive games), players are faced with a large number of
decisions which depend on “what he thinks I think he thinks I
think he will do.” Each player must measure the other and guess
what he’ll do, guess if the opponent will expect that guess, and
so on. As with any battle, it can get very messy. As with anything
messy, there is possibility of surprise, luck, and defeat.
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| This
is Wesley Snipes in the movie Art of War. Do not see this
movie. |
In many games, though, it’s possible to
create traps or lay tricks that must be dealt with before the actual
conflict can start. What I mean is that it’s possible to throw up
brick walls that the opponent must break through before the
back-and-forth strategic play, the “fun part,” can even begin.
If an enemy must first defeat 3 brick walls before even facing you
in actual battle, then he’ll be weakened—or even
defeated—before real battling begins.
Street Fighter Alpha 3
I don’t even like Street Fighter Alpha 3, but
I’ve defeated quite a number of opponents in tournament play who
were “better” than me, and who certainly knew far more about
this particular fighting game than me. Part of the reason is that
(depending on the character match up), they have to pass a few
“magic gates” before we really even start playing. For example,
with my Zangief, they’ll first have to pass the “I’m going to
jump straight up and down forever doing fierce punches” test.
Zangief is surprisingly safe while jumping straight up, and his
fierce during this jump has incredibly far horizontal range.
Opponents might try to jump at him, only to get hit by the fierce.
They might try to throw a fireball, only to be hit out it by the
fierce. They might try to walk up and dragon punch the fierce, only
have me not do a fierce punch that time. I waited for them to miss
their dragon punch, then fierced them back. Actually, retaliating
with a fierce isn’t even necessarily the best move in that
situation, but it’s sure the most annoying. It helps strengthen
the illusion that the jumping straight up fierce is an unstoppable,
uncounterable, unfair move.
So if an opponent can’t even figure out how
to get past the “jump up fierce” test, why should I bother
actually fighting them? Why should I ever stop doing it? I might
lose if we actually fought. And even if they bumble around and get
hit a few times before they figure out how to get past the fierce,
they’ll be at the disadvantage. I’ll have more energy and the
luxury of playing defensively, should I desire to.
If they pass that test, there’s another test!
It’s the “jump at them with fierce splash” test. Lots of
characters can stop that one, but some have trouble. Zangief’s
“splash” has incredible priority and often hits the enemy’s
moves. It’s easily blocked, but my favorite move to do after a
jumping splash is—guess what—another jumping splash. I’ll do
it all day if I have to. As long as I’m not losing—that is, if
doing the move forever will put me ahead in damage or keep me
even—then I’m happy to do it. I’m setting the pace of the
match, I’m not losing, and the opponent has to “pass the test”
of the fierce splash before we get around to actually playing.
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| Famous
Brick Walls: The Berlin Wall. Try fighting someone after
getting past this thing. |
Sun Tzu Again
Another related point of Sun Tzu’s:
“The good fighters of old first put
themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an
opportunity of defeating the enemy.”
Giving the opponent brick walls to deal with
before engaging in actual combat is a way to bide your time, waiting
for the opponent to defeat himself. Not all walls must be broken
down. For example, an opponent faced with my “jumping straight up
and down Zangief” could simply decide to back off and wait. What
he might not realize is that I have unlimited patience. Since my
brick wall in this case is keeping me even (I’m not falling
behind) I’m happy to do it forever, which is probably much longer
than he’s willing to avoid the battle. Most opponents lack the
will to avoid battle forever, and will eventually enter into it at a
disadvantage out of impatience. Whether the opponent attempts to
break down the wall or not, he is all the while susceptible to
error. His patience is sapped and in all likelihood, he’ll open
himself up to attack through hasty desperation. It’s for this
reason that the ability of the “brick wall” tactic to do actual
damage is far less important than how solid it is. The more solid
(even if doesn’t damage the opponent, but merely stands in his
way), the more frustrated the opponent, and the more likely for him
to make the fatal mistake I was waiting for the whole time.
Starcraft
The real-time strategy game Starcraft is even
more directly a game of war than Street Fighter. In Starcraft, a
player makes a huge number of choices long before actual conflict
occurs. These are decisions about how he builds his base and which
units he produces when. The possibility of being defeated before
“the actual game” begins is quite high. You’re Protoss and
didn’t build any observers? Too bad, since you die automatically
to my invisible Dark Templars or invisible Lurkers. It doesn’t
matter what you have, since you can’t even attack my forces.
You’re dead. Or perhaps you’re Protoss and didn’t build any
anti air (maybe you were going for a ground force of Zealots).
That’s too bad, too, since now you die automatically to my air
force of Mutalisks, which again, you can’t even attack. Maybe your
mistake was not checking the perimeter of your base carefully
enough. I built a bunker just outside your visual range, and put 4
marines in it right at the start of the game. Then I built another
bunker a little closer to your gas mine, this time in your view.
You’ll have great difficulty stopping that second bunker, since
you’ll have to take fire from the first bunker if you even try.
I’ll eventually leap frog those 4 marines all the way to the heart
of your base.
The list goes on and on and on. Starcraft games
often go on quite long, with tactics, counter tactics, and plenty of
game theory and strategy. Your 3 bases in good position versus his 5
bases which are poorly defended. Should you cut off his mineral
supply? Lay siege? Attack his flank? Sounds like we’re “actually
playing” here. But many games of Starcraft are over before the
“game” part even begins, because there are such a large number
of ways one can lose the game before real conflict begins.
This isn’t necessarily a design flaw at all.
You might just call it depth, though it can be frustrating to
beginners who play 10 games in a row of “Ok, now I know to always
scout my base perimeter,” “Ok, now I know to always scout his
base,” “Ok, now I know to build detectors quickly,” and so on.
There are a lot of hoops one has to jump through (and learn to jump
through without even thinking) before one can reasonably hope to get
the ‘actual game.’ Sun Tzu would have loved it!
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
The fighting game Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is
another especially applicable game. Nearly ever good character in
that game is good because of his ability to create “lock-down”
traps. Dr. Doom can cover the screen with wide pink lasers while
simultaneously calling helper Blackheart to create vertical columns
of ice track the enemy. Strider can force the opponent to block a
zillion orbs, then block damaging rocks from his Dr. Doom assist,
then go back into his orbs. Spiral can cover the screen with streams
of knives at varying heights, covered by, say, Cable’s beam assist
which gives her enough time to call a new batch of knives to throw.
If you don’t know the game, it’s all pretty meaningless I know,
but the game is so amazingly full of brick walls that must be gotten
through before any actual combat occurs that I felt it required
mentioning.
Street Fighter Alpha 2
To further drive home the two points we’ve
covered from The Art of War (win before the fight begins, and wait
for the opponent to beat himself), I’ll now tell the story of one
of my own Street Fighter tournament victories. The tournament was
called the East Coast Championships 4, or ECC4. I had won the Street
Fighter Alpha2 portion of the ECC3 tournament, so I felt a lot of
pressure to win again. I made it to the finals where I faced veteran
player Thao Duong. Thao plays only one character (Chun Li), and
he’s incredibly robotic, meaning he executes moves perfectly and
rarely makes mistakes.
I was undefeated in the tournament so far, and
Thao had one loss (it was double elimination). This means Thao had
to beat me 4 out of 7 games to be even with me, and another set of 4
out of 7 to win. I only had to win one set of 4 out of 7 to win.
I started by playing Zangief, my secret counter
to Chun Li. Since it’s widely believed Chun Li totally destroys
Zangief (but not mine!), it would be a flashy way to win. Whether it
was my year of no practice or Thao’s playing or Chun Li’s
dominance of the game I can’t be sure…but Zangief was not up to
the task that day. No problem, since I would switch to my standard
Chun Li killer: Ryu. I scraped together a win or two, but again my
lack of practice was showing and Thao won by greater and greater
margins. I then realized the horror of what I would have to do, and
what I would become somewhat famous for in the Street Fighter
community. I realized that the only remaining character I could
reasonably play in a tournament was Rose, and furthermore that Rose,
though very good against most characters, really only has one move
against Chun Li: low strong.
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| Rose
(left) does "low strong" to Chun Li (right). In
the Street Fighter world, "low strong" and
"Sirlin" are synonyms. |
And this is where Sun Tzu comes in. My use of
Rose’s low strong move is both a method of winning before fighting
and of waiting. The low strong is an uninspiring little punch that
doesn’t have all that much range, but it has amazing priority to
beat other attacks. It’s also incredibly fast, allowing Rose to do
multiple low strongs in a row with only the tiniest of gaps.
The low strong was my brick wall—my first
test. The only problem is that there was no second test. And worse
yet, there really wasn’t much “actual fighting” in store for
Thao should he get past my “trick.” I could only hope that
he’d fumble in trying to get around it, and even become frustrated
enough to make mistakes. In retrospect, this is not the best
approach to take against the robotic master of move execution
himself, but it’s still preferable to no strategy at all, which
was my alternative.
I low stronged my little heart out. Probably
over 90% of my moves were low strong, done at a very particular
range, and with a particular pattern of timing that I dare not
reveal. (Ha!) I had infinite patience to low strong forever, forcing
Thao to defeat this trick. If he could beat it, we would then have
to actually play, and at that point surely he would win. But
fortunately, he never did beat it: he fought it head on. At times,
he would decide not to attack, not to beat against a brick wall. I
used that opportunity to get at the optimal range (which is one
pixel farther from him than the range of my low strong). From this
range, I continued to low strong forever. I wasn’t winning by
that, but I wasn’t losing. Even the robotic Thao would eventually
tire and attack, even if at the wrong times, out of annoyance or
desperation. Spectators reported that I did an amazing 18
consecutive low strongs without either myself or Thao doing any
other moves.
A side effect of my low strongs is that they
create a “baseline expectation” of what I’m going to do. The
sneaky roundhouse I do after the 17th low strong is
pretty tricky, actually. I mean, wouldn’t you expect an 18th
low strong after the 17th one? (Note: I was actually even
more sneaky, by doing the 18th low strong, then the low
roundhouse.)
My story is dragging on as much as that match
did. Each game is best 2 out of 3 rounds, and games tended to go the
full 3 rounds. They went the full count of 4-3 when Thao won the
first set, and all the way to the 14th and final
game…where I won 4-3 in the second set…to win the tournament. I
collapsed in dehydration and drank a quart of red Gatorade without
pause.
I urge you check out this excellent,
if brief, tournament report by Chocobo.
Had I ever actually fought Thao “normally”
with Rose, he would have killed me easily. Instead, in an amazingly
boring and non-crowd-pleasing show, I attempted to prevent actual
fighting through my “brick wall trick” of low strong.
Furthermore, I bored my opponent into attacking hastily at times,
and generally frustrated him, or at least think I did.
It’s interesting to note that early rounds of
Street Fighter tournaments are often dominated by “tricks” like
the ones I’ve described. Few players have the will to keep those
brick walls up forever, though, and eventually resort to “actually
playing.” Also interesting is that the last rounds of Street
Fighter tournaments—especially the finals round to determine the
top 2 players—very rarely operate anything like I’ve described.
Far more often, the players good enough to get the final 2 are also
good enough to easily avoid the kind of roadblocks I’ve been
talking about, even if they have to devise countermeasures on the
spot. The usual case at such high levels of play is “actual
fighting” right off the bat, the very thing I try to put off as
long as possible in a tournament match. So it seems that (my own
exploits excepted!) tricks will only get you so far. To the benefit of
the spectators, the best of the best actually do fight.
Talk back!
Discuss this article in the forums.
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| "Wow,
he's quoting something older than me! It must be good." |
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| "Oh
no, here comes the big story about how great he is." |
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| "This
sounds like an elaborate cover-up for not being able to do
anything but one move." |
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