You also may take into account direct and indirect information gleaned through diplomacy. Perhaps you can cut a deal with him and you know he is gullible enough to believe it. You can then do the opposite of what he expects. Or perhaps he has another enemy and could use one of the units needed for defense on the other front so that you can take advantage of the unit straying away from the purpose.

I guess my point is it depends upon the specifics of the situation, your situational awareness, his situational awareness, and your diplomatic acumen. You don't even provide a made up but concrete example to run with.

I group players into two classifications: rookie and veteran. Here are my definitions for each:

Rookie - only considers his own position when selecting moves.
Veteran - considers both his position and mine and selects his move based on what he thinks I will do.

Rookie play and rookie press is generally very straightforward. Plans are simplistic, moves are simplistic, and the rookie is biased toward protecting his own turf every time.

Veteran play and press are obviously very different and you will usually know you're dealing with one fairly quickly either by the press they send or by the unexpected moves they make.

So then, this is how I out-guess my opponent:
-determine if my opponent is a rookie or a veteran
-pretend I am my opponent and determine what moves I would make if I were a rookie or a vet in their position
-plan my own moves accordingly

If you still can't figure out what to do, then, all other things being equal, choose the more creative or unexpected move.

The decision is too complicated to give an example. Even pointing out a current game or past game wouldn't suffice because you have to account for everything. Is your ally going to tip off your opponent, can you use that to your advantage, do you risk dropping hints to an opponents ally. You can also look over your own record that game and figure out what your opponent thinks you are going to do. I could go on and on but I think Draugnar summed it up pretty well, it's completely situation.

Let's say that you have F MAO and your opponent has control of both Iberian SC's, but only a F Portugal to effect it. GoL, WMed, Gasc, and Mars are vacant. Which target do you hit?

Me, I would almost always go Portugal, expecting he would bounce Spain. Spain, after all, is the better position overall.

Or would I? I guess it depends on a variety of other factors. And whether I want to be honest about it in public since I play non-anon a lot.

Draugnar, yes diplomacy most often plays a huge role and there are all kinds of other things you can look at, but in every game there are situations where you have to guess with your moves without the benefit of press related to that situation.

I left this without a concrete example on purpose. I am trying to show general principles and ways of thinking about the game.

The problem with that is without a concrete example it becomes too general.

I knew you'd post something like this, Jacob

Unless you are playing gunboat, you always have some press from the past in which to weigh your options. It is completely situational, and I think I laid out a big part of the variables to account for, but there is also the gut factor.

I just guess right.

Seriously, though... I do pretty much what jacob does... predict the obvious routes based on the skills of the player, and take advantage of it... but if I've played the opponent a lot, I have to out guess him out guessing me. Then it becomes a cyclical nightmare.

But I usually guess right... defense is one thing I'm actually fairly decent in.

@stratagos - I'm tired of the constant drivel in the forums so I figured I'd start posting some strategy threads. Every time one falls off the front page I'm planning to post another =)

Jacob I read what you have to say with pleasure. Please continue these threads. While you're at it, please tell me how do I convince an opponent to make a move that I can't identify having any other advantage than that I won't attack him.

I've muted two people and cut the drivel by 90% ;)

I have a bad habit of doubling down in the OP's hypothetical situation. Given two alternatives, I generally go with high risk, high reward in terms of future positioning. Too often I get cut off at the knees, so I must telegraph this tendency. (Draug, no laughing please.)

i can't tell you which one i would take, because that would give you an advantage in games against me :p

Orthaic illustrates my point nicely. Note his simplistic post = rookie.

Just kidding orthaic =)

Redhouse I'm not sure I know what you're asking. Can you clarify a bit?

Rock-Paper-Scissors on steroids.

Well Jacob, for you i'd always be happy to clarify; how do you tell a player that if he does a certain move, you'll start a war on him, but without angering him to the point where he does the move just to provoke you, but also being serious enough to make him change his mind...

*Chainsaw Diplomacy*!!!!!!

Redhouse I think the best way to handle that is to let them know your concern. Tell them how a move there would affect you and let them know that you are hoping your two nations can work together.

I kept my answer short here because this is a little off-topic. Might start another thread related to this at some point though.

You mentioned rookies and veterans but it also should be noted that players also fall along the risk-averse risk-taker spectrum. You can often determine which your opponent is through press or even moves alone. This helps me out quite a bit since I know who will risk bouncing me my army in Wales and who will play it safe and cover London.

Rookies and veterans both can fall anywhere along this spectrum, in my opinion.

And I second FK's opinion. Predicting small-scale tactical situations are easy. Just make the right choice.

I love chainsaw.

Anyone up for a public press chainsaw game?

Yes, only so long as it is on the Classic map. That travesty of a world game was horrid.

I think it was great. Apart from being cancelled and spammed by a few people that is. I'm sad I could never manage to come around to stabbing obi, though. World is better suited to Wilson than classic IMO.

Well, I for one totally agree with Jacob on opponents. I posted essentially the exact same thing in both my SoW Game 1 EOG and as a prof about meta-cognition in game 2. There are definitely 2 types of thinkers, and although my labeling is different, the classifications are exactly the same. I also mentioned that sometimes you have to try to make a huge leap by trying to think about what you think your opponent is thinking you'll do and counter that move.

Although the situation is generic, it holds true for a majority of people, and where some say there's a spectrum, I think there's less of a diverse spectrum than one might think. I might even decide to study the situations and outcomes at some point by observing various cases in games to see what people do. This sort of thing boils down to sociological statistics and general trends as it pertains to most people.

+1 Jacob

Given the situation where the choice is a creative play or a straight-forward play I would play straight forward 60% of the time against a veteran and 10% of the time against a rookie

I would think of the most strategically sound move, as in, the ones that would put me in the best position or him in the worst. Then I put myself in the opponents shoes, and make the best defence assuming he was 100% certain I was making those strategically sound moves. I then enter my orders as though I'm 100% certain he is going to make the moves that counter the strategically sound ones. Thats the gunboat strategy anyway, when you throw press in there the entire thing is far too complex for any one strategy.

@jacob: "So then, this is how I out-guess my opponent:
-determine if my opponent is a rookie or a veteran
-pretend I am my opponent and determine what moves I would make if I were a rookie or a vet in their position
-plan my own moves accordingly"

What if the player is a veteran, and he knows you know he is a veteran, and thus deliberately makes the rookie move because that is the move you would least expect? Then of course you probably pick that sort of of veteran and adjust accordingly. But then they might know that you know that they are that kind of veteran... it goes on and on.

Myself I mostly try to figure out the risk versus the pay off, try calculate the "expected value". But I recognize that I am often just a little risk adverse (like most people).

I err on the side of the move that gives me the most options, when taking into consideration all the possible outcomes.

I do agree with you. Sometimes you can intuit what then think of the other player will be (or maybe you just think you do when you guess right).
I have noticed that some players do like to play the crazy/unexpected move -- especially when the chips are down as they see the writing on the wall. You can anticipate those moves sometimes. This because people become less risk adverse when they think it is over for them.

[fix up sentence which makes no sense]... sometimes you can intuit what the other player's thought process will be

Spyman, the situation you're describing only happens to me when I play madmarx and babak =)

In the given situation, I would say you make your decision based on the assessed skill level of the opponent, as has been said. However, as a diplomat, you need to play every possible angle. Every move, by every player, every turn, has an effect on your situation. You need to figure out the optimal move for each player and then consider whether that corresponds to the optimal move for each set of players, i.e. alliances. When the lists of moves match, you know that person's moves. When they don't, you need to figure out which set they will play. This is largely determined through diplomacy and gauging how each player feels about all the others. Usually, there is one or two players who will be willing to give you a good amount of intelligence on the other players. That information is a good start point for figuring out what is going on with the other player's moves. Once you adjust that information for self-serving deceit and weigh it against the bits of info you get from others, you have an even better knowledge of what's going on and can make the determination of whether your opponent is defending with move list A or move list B.

The majority of 50/50 situations aren't really 50/50 -- sure, 50/50 guess at a center, but one center has a more valuable position than another (Iberia, for instance; Spain has more influence than Portugal).

Then I toss a coin. If I call it right, I go for the less valuable position of the two; if I call it wrong, I toss it again, heads being the more valuable position, tails being the less valuable one.

The other thing to put into consideration about guessing is the season.

As the defender, In the spring I defend the more valuable position, in the fall I will defend the less valuable one.

@Fasces makes a good point. Also, defend the position in the spring the player can more easily defend from taking back in the fall. That way you have a better shot of turning around the loss if he takes it in the fall.

All very interesting stuff, to be sure.

I would say though that it is vital never to fall into the trap of thinking that, just because you've outguessed a player once or twice, you can read him like a book and can confidently predict most of his future moves. Luck plays a large part, and even the best of us get it wrong a fair amount of the time.

Doing what you can to convince the other chap that you can read him like a book, on the other hand, can be rather fun and is extremely useful.