Outwitters - iOS hex grid asynchronous strategy

Been playing this a bit the last week. I think it's pretty good and seems quite balanced. But I want smarter people than me (you folks) to tell me I'm wrong.

To save me time typing out the game, check out TouchArcade's review here.

So basically you have a nice hex based grid, some decently designed maps, and a seemingly simple system of units who's strengths and weaknesses provide some some deep thought on usage ("do I spam Runners, do I save for Heavy/Special?).

Anyone else played it? If not, you should grab it. It is free after all.

OK, pretty disappointed in lack of responses here. So lets see if I can stir up some conversation.

Last year, I personally picked Triple Town as my GOTY (even if it the original was around for longer - it only made it on web/iOS last year, which was the only ways I could play it without owning a Kindle). I thought the design was just so well done, and the randomness was just the right amount to give you a very deep strategy game. Though the randomness of the ninjas did ruin it for me at some points, I understood the need for such an enemy in the game's design.

This year, I'm calling Outwitters as my GOTY. I'm not sure, but I think it was in development for quite some time (2 years?). This feels about right to me, the game is just incredibly balanced. If you play it, you'll know what I mean. From the units HP total, to how the medic can only raise by 1, fog of war!, the distance they can travel, and even how well designed the maps are - I just get the feeling that they spent a lot of time fine tuning everything to work just right.

So I urge everyone here with an iOS device to at least grab the game from the App Store. It's a free download. The only difference the paid races give you are unique special units, which for your first 50-ish games won't really make a difference to your strategy (in my experience).

What I want to know is if this is based on anything in particular, or is it just a nicely refined system with queues from a few other games? I know hex-based board games have been around ages, that's not what I'm talking about. Fog of war means it's impossible to do this as a board game (I think?).

Looks nice, I will try it tonight

I've had a very brief play with it using the free team but it's yet to click with me. Granted, I'm not a big turn-based strategy expert - I enjoyed Advance Wars but didn't play the multiplayer very much but that's probably because I'm terrible at it. I have yet to win a single game of Summoner Wars online...

I think if you slammed Great Little War Game together with Hero Academy then you might end up with something similar to Outwitters.

Looks great but.... iOS so not for me

Can't play this because iOS, but it reminds me of Weewar (which I don't really recommend), except with asymmetry and quicker, less boring gameplay. But then I saw that "building," "moving" and "attacking" are all tied to the same resource and became suspicious of it devolving into terrible stalemate fests. "Once you have a lead, why pay to attack when you just pay for more units?" A brief look around their forum shows that that is indeed a major issue (or is at least perceived to be). In fact, you don't even have to worry about getting a lead if you're player 1 due to FTA, and apparently a lot of the maps don't really have immediately contested areas so you can essentially just set up shop and sit back. Anyway, regardless of those other issues, it seems like a really flawed resource system?

I'll check it out when i'm next with my family. They have some iOS stuff.

I get a lot of shit for being really negative about most digital games here, so let me just say this:

Outwitters is the best videogame I have ever played.

I've only been playing it for about 2 or 3 weeks of course, but holy hell am I impressed. You can just really see the essence of design here. The online multiplay setup is so smooth and easy and good; it is the next generation of online multiplayer. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Any comment on Kristoph's concerns?

I will first say that I think that those concerns are natural for people to have, and I myself am not totally sure that they won't become an issue at the highest levels of play. However what I can say is that I've played probably 100 games now and I've never come across a situation where some guy just won because he turtled. It has never been an issue for me, yet.

To answer a specific concern:

Because "more units" aren't actually terribly useful in Outwitters. This isn't Starcraft, where you can just CTRL+A like 150 marines and right click them into the base. On a given turn, you normally get like 5 to 8 wits - tops. So that means, at the most, moving+attacking with FOUR UNITS.

Oh, and the wit system is GENIUS, for this exact reason. It's like the picture of elegance, doing so many jobs in one swipe.

Yes, you can save up from turn to turn, but "advancement" is also a resource in a way. If you have a heavy and a sniper up in a good position, maybe with a medic overhealing the sniper and providing cover, that's worth more than 9 units all crimped up around your base that can't move.

Two of the 7-Wit units are particularly awesome for breaking turtles (the third is sort of designed FOR turtling, and it's my least favorite). The mind-control one, in particular, is incredibly awesome for breaking turtle shells.



TL; DR: It's a valid concern that makes sense on paper, but I haven't seen it be a problem in practice. I also have a lot of faith in these designers who have shown extreme restraint and skill and attention to detail with this game. So, go play it!

My game center thing is garcia10000
This looks like a pretty cool game, like Tiny Wesnoth. I will need to play a few games to see though.

Cool. Mine is "keithburgun" if anyone wants to play with me.

no such name found

Do you guys mind if I harvest the players and gamecenter IDs from this thread for my iOS opponents thread? Just let me know if you'd rather not be included

Go for it... although apparently mine isnt working. Try DinofarmGames.

Sirlin, very interested in your thoughts on this game's design.

Garcia, have you played it yet?

It feels incredibly balanced, but I'm not sure if it's just because of where I am in the meta game. For instance, for a long time I didn't see the point in the special units (the one that costs 7 wits, unique to each team). But on the weekend, my friend and I worked out some strategies using them and they are pretty cool (also very fun!). Now, I'm thinking that much of the top level play will revolve around using those big guys and how they counter each other. But I'm not quite at that level yet (just can't seem to break out of Clever rank - annoying, as I've won at least 40 matches in Clever now).

FAB, I just started playing. Play a game with me!

Damn, terrible game I played Garcia! I'll start a new one and play better.

I think you'll still beat me though. Your evaluation skills are worlds above mine.

What's the strategy with the 7 wits units? The free one seems like a worse version of the sniperbot, lol
I lost my first game btw. It was against keithburgun and he ninja attacked my base

I mean yeah I could totally just be biased here, since I come from an Advance Wars background. Advance Wars 2 was dominated by infantry (cheap, weak units that obtain resources but most often act as meatshields), and some matchups in AWDS are literally determined by "who hits the game's built-in limit of 50 units first." It was only in AW Days of Ruin, where Infantry took a number of huge nerfs and the game was made 100% more offensive in a number of ways, that unit count wasn't a huge factor in that series.

Even so, the Wit mechanic just seems inherently geared towards defensive play to me. I salivate at the prospect of being able to build a unit and then not even really care what it does-- because whatever, my opponent has to pay to get rid of it. And even though this is probably a totally simplified and wrong idea of how the mechanic actually plays out in practice, my experiences with the genre have told me so strongly that "offense pretty much needs to be *babied* if you don't want your players generating ridiculous stalemates" that I can't help but feel really suspicious!

I wish I could play the game and have something actually meaningful to contribute here, though. Or at least watch a replay or something-- is there a way to do that?

Replays can be watched from an iOS device... with the game installed :). Hold your finger on a completed game, and you can copy the replay link. A friend and I have been archiving our good matches for analysis. It's a great feature.

What you say is fine on paper, but like you say in practice it's not quite like that.

Defensive play will only get you so far though. There are only two win conditions, kill enemy base of camp on all their spawn points and kill their army. If you're just sitting there waiting for them to attack, you'll never win. You might survive all their attacks, but I'm yet to have a game where an opponent who successfully used such a strategy.

The level design is something else that needs to be commended. There are trick back door paths to bases, hidden spots, gaps you can snipe over by can't be jumped etc. Lots of well thought out ideas. Each map offers something a little different.

Garcia, I only know obvious stuff with Bombshell. Don't spawn it if you don't have enough wits to either move it to safey and/or go into mortar mode. Other than that, it's about positioning it where it's hard for your opponent to get near. Usually just behind a line of solders/heavys or similar.

It looks like turtling is a strong strategy
The first player starting with an advantage is also a bit weird, I would have expected 1P to start with 3 wit, or something

Turtling... I think sort of?... I dunno. I'm not the best player at this. I've broken a few strong defences before, but I admit some of that was due to luck in the other player not aware of the strategy I could use.

But also, turtling won't win you the game. You need to destroy the base or KO all their army and sit on their spawns to win. Maybe that's why the win condition is one based on offence and not defence. That might have been a design decision the devs included to help combat the turtling strat.

Can you explain a bit more exactly what you think the advantage of going first is?

Sure!
If you go first, you can pass. Then you are basically the second player, except with 5 more wit. So going first dominates going second i.e. there is never a situation where going second is better.

Turtling is strong because, say, we each trade a soldier that costs 2 energy. But, you had to move your soldier 3 times to get to my base. On the other hand, I just had to move it once. Even though we traded equivalent units, I gained 2 net energy.

Presumably turtling could be combated by increasing the vulnerability of the bases? Forcing players to contest wit generating locations should also help there.

I'm not saying that it isn't pro-turtling so much as it doesn't sound inherently pro-turtle?

Well, I am up for games! I will play like a boring turtle guy, never taking risks, and see how this strategy gets beaten.

I've yet to win a game so if you're totally new Viva you should play against me, I might have more chance than against the vets

Preliminary evaluation: Movement is too expensive. Turtling near your base is just too energy efficient. Probably movement should be free or something

90% of games go like this: I turtle, opponent attacks me, he dies because he doesn't understand Outwitters math
Then there is one game with vivafringe which is: we both turtle for 10000 years, then I misclick, maybe die or I guess I can turtle more

Only maps which are viable for rush are Foundry and something Plains, the wide-open one

Edit: This game really needs some sort of thing like "You get 3 moves for free each turn"

I don't deny a strong defense is really good. But how do you win a match when you're not attacking the base? Or do you eventually move your line of troops up a tile at a time or something?

Gain a net wits advantage through good trades, then just roll them up. If you have a great enough wits advantage you can trade it in for board position.

It seems like the Adorables might be good, haven't tried it yet. potential 7 range, you can recall units, and makes sniper way more mobile. No idea about that.

If they're not going to make movement free, they need to put the resource squares much closer to the center. That way there's something worth fighting for.

Yeah. They tried to band-aid the turtle problem by giving first player advantage. But what if the first player is a jerky guy and just decides to turtle with 5 extra wit?


-- How do I copy/paste game link?

Maybe they should add some feature where the game randomly makes mistakes for you from time to time? Like one of your units just decides to go on vacation. They could call it "tripping"

Whale thing is for sending an attacker, killing a guy, then retrieving it. That use is I think a trap, though, because you spend too much wit (3+). A better use is to teleport in snipers. Sniper can immediately shoot after teleport, and it removes the main disadvantage of sniper low mobility. Is it worth 7 wit? Probably not

I just downloaded Outwitters, and played 2 games. Does this game have a time limit per turn? Games are taking forever to play out, and my opponent said he's purposely not moving because I told him to hurry it up after it took him 4-5 minutes for his second turn. I'm guessing this game is meant to be played at whatever players pace, while having multiple games ongoing?

Alright I should have probably read more about this game before jumping in. I just received an ipad3 as a gift and while searching for games to play, I chose to download the most popular game from that iOS gamer thread. So far I like the concepts.

!!!!!!!!
So basically turtle for 100 years, and then attack?

That could be true! No idea about that.
My main mistake is that I play half of my turns right after I wake up when I am groggy and not really concentrating. Then usually I misclick or make some mistakes.

Also I am tempted to attack sometimes even though I know it's a bad idea. That is another thing I accidentally do.

2 spawn point maps, you don't have to spawn every turn. 1 spawn point maps you really have to make a spawn every turn

garcia1000 vs vivafringe
outwitters://viewgame?id=ag5vdXR3aXR0ZXJzZ2FtZXIRCxIIR2FtZVJvb20YpY6DAQw
http://osn.codepenguin.com/replays/view/ag5vdXR3aXR0ZXJzZ2FtZXIRCxIIR2FtZVJvb20YpY6DAQw


Turtle wins again, with turtling!
Also involved: turtling
Shoutout to: misclick on bombshell on turn 24