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The
Art of War, Part 4: Divide and Conquer
Over 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote a book
called The Art of War, in which he told us to divide and
conquer the enemy, and to concentrate our firepower. Over one year
ago, Zileas wrote a webpage called The Zilean School of
AssKicking,
in which he told us to do basically the same thing.
Zileas was talking about Starcraft and Tzu was
talking actual war, but since real-time strategy (RTS) games are
(arguably) simulations of actual war, it’s not surprising that
great minds have thought (thunk?) alike here. What’s interesting
is that while Tzu wrote mostly about the large, macro scale, Zileas
wrote about the very same concepts on the small, micro scale.
Ironically, Zileas made his fame in the Starcraft world by
developing and writing about his “new school” approach to the
game where he focuses on dividing and conquering and concentrating
firepower on the micro level, rather than the “old school”
approach of concentrating on the macro level. In case you missed the
irony, it’s that the old school that Zileas argued against was
just another interpretation of the very same concepts his own school
was based on, all straight from The Art of War.
On the most zoomed out level, Tzu tells us when
to attack, based on the sheer size of the armies involved:
“It is the rule in war: If our forces are ten
to the enemy’s one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack
him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two, one to meet
the enemy in front, and one to fall upon his rear; if he replies to
the frontal attack. he may be crushed from behind; if to the
rearward attack, he may be crushed in front.
“If equally matched, we can offer battle; if
slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite
unequal in every way, we can flee from him. Though an obstinate
fight may be made by a small force, in the end it must be captured
by the larger force.”
On the most zoomed out level, Zileas tells us
when (in Starcraft) we are losing:
“If your kill ratio multiplied by the ratio
of your production to their production is less than 1, you are
losing. If their economy is gaining speed, and yours is stationary,
and this number is close to but over 1, you are still probably
losing.
When I say kill ratio I do not mean units
killed/units lost; I mean RESOURCES killed/RESOURCES lost both in
terms of unit production, miscellaneous upkeep costs (scarabs) and
building production/loss.”
The Art of War
One of Tzu’s main points is to attack an
inferior force with a superior one. Even if both armies are of the
same size and power, this can easily be done by looking at smaller
pieces of the whole. If the enemy only defends one piece of his
empire—and we know this—then the rest of his empire is wide
open. We can send but a fraction of our troops to dismantle any
number of his undefended spots. The more spots he defends, the
weaker each spot becomes. If he defends all ten of his outposts
equally and we concentrate the attack of but half our army at one
spot, we outnumber him 5 to 1! We have concentrated our firepower,
while the enemy’s has been divided and weakened.
All of this rests upon the shoulders of secrecy
and reconnaissance. Without these, Tzu’s method of divide and
conquer would not be possible.
“The spot where we intend to fight must not
be made known, for then the enemy will have to prepare against a
possible attack at several different points; and his forces being
thus distributed in many directions, the numbers we shall have to
face at any given point will be proportionately few.
“…Numerical weakness comes from having to
prepare against possible attacks; numerical strength from compelling
our adversary to make these preparations against us. Knowing the
place and time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the
greatest distances in order to fight. But if neither time nor place
be known, then the left wing will be impotent to succor the right,
the right equally impotent to succor the left, the van unable to
relieve the rear, or the rear to support the van.”
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Support
the van, kids. |
So Tzu tells us to keep our own positions and
intentions secret. He tells us to discover the positions and
intentions of the enemy. Through this we can concentrate our
firepower on the enemy’s weakest points, even at the expense of
our own defense; if our weak points are secret from the enemy, he
will not know where to attack. And our intentions being secret force
the enemy to divide his own force for us, in effect, conquering
himself, since he cannot hope to defend with parts of an army
against the whole concentration of attack from ours.
Starcraft: The “Old School”
Tzu’s ways are the ways of the best Starcraft
players in what Zileas calls the “old school.” These players
strive to build a strong economy to finance overwhelming hordes of
units. When they outnumber the enemy 10 to 1, they attack; 5 to 1,
they surround…you get the idea. Individual battles matter little
to these players, since it’s more important to build a large
mobile force capable of attacking the opponent’s weak spots.
Most of these players come from the days of
Warcraft 2, Starcraft’s predecessor. Warcraft’s interface and
units didn’t allow players to gain much benefit from micromanaging
individual battles. Warcraft’s units were
more…homogeneous…meaning you didn’t see kill ratios of 50:1
like Templars and Reavers are capable of in Starcraft. In short,
macromanagement was the only way to go. Build a large army. Divide
the enemy’s army. Concentrate the firepower of your army.
Starcraft: The “New School”
And then there was Zileas. He came along and
pointed out the amazing effects micromanagement of individual
battles can have in Starcraft, and he preached the revolutionary
ideas of…divide and conquer and concentration of firepower…on
the small scale, that is.
Lesson 1: Shift queue to concentrate firepower.
When enemy forces engage, say 10 marines versus 10 marines, they
will fire at each other in a mostly random distribution, so units
will only start dying towards the end of the battle. The better
player will select all his marines and concentrate their firepower
on a single enemy marine, then (hold shift to) queue the next
command to concentrate firepower on the second enemy marine, and so
forth. All 10 of the first players marines will kill one of the
enemy’s units right way, reducing his firepower. The 10 marines
will then automatically (through shift queuing) concentrate their
fire on the next enemy unit, then the next one, and so on. The enemy
is dividing his own fire but the better player concentrates it.
Lesson 2: Use formation to concentrate
firepower. When two enemy forces engage, say 10 marines versus 10
marines, formation can be everything. If one player marches his
single file line of marines into a horizontal line of enemy marines,
the horizontal line formation will be able to concentrate its fire
on the first marine in the single file line, then the second, and so
on. The last marines in the single file line won’t even be close
enough to fire until all their friends are dead. Even better than a
horizontal line is “shallow encirclement,” a crescent shaped
formation that maximizes the firepower one can apply to a point.
Lesson 3: Use choke points (narrow passes) to
divide the enemy’s units. When a large enemy force must pass
through a narrow choke point (either naturally created by terrain or
artificially by your buildings) he is dividing his own force for
you. You can concentrate your firepower on each unit as it passes
by.
There are more lessons, but his point is the
concentration of firepower on the small scale of an individual
battle. I cannot leave out Zileas’s most extreme and signature use
of concentration of firepower: his “Doom Drop.”
Zileas is known for playing the Protoss race,
the race smallest in numbers and most powerful in punch. Notice that
they are already concentrated before he even got a hold of them. A
so-called Doom Drop is when you fill 4 or 5 shuttles (flying
transports that carry other units) full of amazingly powerful
Protoss attack units such as Reavers, Templars, and Archons. (These
shuttles are accompanied by Scouts, heavily armored air units.) This
superabundance of force—this concentration of firepower—is
enough to overwhelm nearly anything, so long as it is applied
instantly at a single point. When 1 Archon, 3 Reavers, 4 Zealots,
and 3 Templars suddenly appear in the middle of your base, the sheer
force of it all applied to your surely badly positioned units is
usually too much.
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A
Doom Drop in Starcraft, Zileas style. |
Even more devastating is what Zileas calls his
“Extra Crispy with Slaw” version of the Doom Drop, where he uses
hallucinated (illusionary) units to draw fire. Flying 4 shuttles
into an enemy base is not an easy task, since they’ll probably be
shot down easily whatever anti-air happens to be scattered about. 4
Shuttles accompanied by, say, 5 scouts is another matter. Now the
anti-air fire has been divided among more targets. Better still if
all these targets are accompanied by, say, 10 illusionary Scouts.
The illusions can’t attack, but they draw fire enemy fire giving
the real units more time to act. In effect, the illusions divide and
conquer the enemy’s anti-air fire.
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Preparations
for a Doom Drop, Extra Crispy with Slaw. |
Micro and Macro
Why not apply Tzu’s teachings of divide and
conquer and concentration of firepower on the large scale as well as
the small? Must one choose one over the other? The answer in
Starcraft, realistically, is yes. One only has so much attention
which must be divided between micro Extra Crispy with Slaw Doom
Drops and macro economy and horde-building. Zileas explains:
The Third Resource: Concentration
“Minerals and Gas are the resources that most
players think in terms of. Although these are central to the game,
you also need to think in terms of concentration. I define
concentration as time that a player has to spend focusing on a task
during the game. Expanding is a high concentration task, especially
if you are Protoss. Attacking certainly has a high concentration
level, and the more concentration you put into an attack, the higher
the effect. Even scouting carries a high associated cost. One big
difference between "Someone who is really good" and
someone who is #1 is knowing when you need to watch a battle, and
when you don’t, and recognizing that your opponent also has a
finite amount of concentration to draw from. There are a number of
techniques for minimizing concentration costs (i.e. hot-keying
buildings, using magic spell hot keys, queuing attacks, etc.), but
everything you do has some intangible concentration cost. I would
argue that as you get better at Starcraft, you go into a match with
a larger innate concentration income/second. :P It is very possible
when doing multiple coordinated attacks at different locations to
use your superior concentration reserve (if you have it) to decimate
an enemy who is tied with you in terms of unit control and tangible
resources. Although I'm sorry to say this, concentration is
basically talent. Playing a lot of games slowly raises it, but its
something some people have a lot of and some people don’t. It’s
kinda like fast sprint ability in running: you can train up and
become a great long distance runner, but for sprinting, there’s
always that talent based barrier–you can slowly improve it, but
everyone has a limit. I’m sure that someone will push me off #1
who has more innate talent, along with the same skills...
“The best way to train concentration, as
Visage has reminded me just now over MIT chat, is to play 2 on 1s
and 3 on 1s (multiple opponents vs. you). I can often pull 3 on 1s,
and certainly 2 on 1s, and really the only reason I can do this is
my ability to multitask. Also, team melee is an interesting game as
it involves doubled concentration reserves on both sides... well
almost doubled since its not one mind thinking at once and they have
to communicate...”
Whether you, as a player, spend your
concentration resources on the large scale or the small depends on
which game is at hand and your personal style. In either case, the
same principles are at work. On one level or another, thou shalt
concentrate thy fire and divide and conquer thine enemy!
Postscript
In an odd footnote of history, I was a senior
at MIT when Zileas, who apparently has a real name (Tom Cadwell),
was a freshman. I never actually met him, though. Zileas leveraged
his success as a Starcraft player to help form an independent game
development company called Ethermoon. The release of his first
title, an rts called Strifeshadow: Tournament Edition, is due for
release shortly.
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This
goofball is Zileas. =) Is this a great pic or what? Starcraft,
MIT, and Zileas all in one! |
Talk back!
Discuss this article in the forums.
|
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| "Enough
about this dead Chinese guy! And if Zileas is so great he should
design a game himself!" |
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| "What
is this, a Zileas ad?" |
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| "Oh,
it looks like the young 'un is making his own game after all. He
can ask old Cranky for tips anytime." |
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