"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.

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.

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.

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 17^th low strong is pretty tricky, actually. I mean, wouldn't you expect an 18^th low strong after the 17^th one? (Note: I was actually even more sneaky, by doing the 18^th 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 14^th 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.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 5th, 2000 at 6:05 am and is filed under Articles, Playing Comeptitve Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.