User:Crazyguy7398/Signaling

Hey everyone! I had an interesting game last night that I wanted to talk about that I feel demonstrates something pretty important about Prismata. Everyone knows there is incredible depth to the game, but what form does that depth take? How do players know what's going on and how to counter their opponent's strategy?

Part of the answer is signaling. Signaling is like having a conversation with your opponent. Similar to poker, the person who wins in Prismata is the person who both correctly interprets what his opponent is trying to tell him and then uses that information to respond in the appropriate way.

I'm going to use a replay of a ranked game to demonstrate what I mean. Here's the replay: http://play.prismata.net/?r=rXl+H-E7rhu[1]

So two things to notice about this set. First, it has Amporilla, which is one of the best late game finishers in Prismata. Gone unchecked and defended properly, a single amporilla can win the game. Apollo is also in the set, which means going Amporilla is going to be VERY risky. Nothing else particularly stands out, but a side mention goes out to grenade mech here. It has 4 health, which means it dodges Apollo, but it also serves as a sort of semi-counter to Amporilla since it can let you build up to a single burst damage turn.

The first signal that gets sent in this game is by me on turn 2. I get the third engineer. This is the start of a conversation with my opponent that lasts the whole game. I am telling my opponent "This is going to be a late, economy-heavy game." My opponent responds on his turn 2 by not getting the third engineer, effectively signaling "I disagree with you."

The next signal is from my opponent. He drops an animus on turn 3. This is a very big investment from him, and is another signal, saying: "I am probably going to go Tarsier + Amporilla this game." I still have not chosen my tech buildings, so this is an aggressive move from him as I could still go Apollos and shut him down quite easily.

I respond to his animus on turn 4 by getting a single blastforge and continuing to drone up. This signal is me saying "I am playing blue this game. You should be worried about Apollo."

Here's where it gets fun. My opponent responds to my blastforge by completely ditching the red play and moving into double conduit. He buys no attacking units and switches tech completely. This signals: "Oh shit, you CAN get Apollos. I'm going to rush you down with Gauss Cannons, because Apollo can't kill them, and you will have no attack if you do it."

At this point, I change my mind about Apollo and continue droning. As I said at the beginning, this is going to be a heavy econ game and my opponent still hasn't directly pressured me. I stay in a holding pattern to see what strategy he commits to.

The next major signal happens on my turn 7. I realize I am going to fall behind to the gauss cannons just building steelsplitters, and grenade mechs aren't efficient long-term attackers. I move in to red with an animus. This is an interesting one: I am telling my opponent that I'm going to get some Tarsiers now, and I don't think he has the economy to support Apollo at this point. I also buy a steelforge to use up my blue on the cheap. Hey, I might want some cheap steelsplitters later, right?

On his turn 7, my opponent gets a blastforge and builds a rhino. This blastforge is his signal of "I'm going to move to apollos too, so you'd better not buy tarsiers." He's also buying a rhino, effectively calling my bluff on the Apollo play.

I begin buying Apollos and Tarsiers, and my opponent fully commits to buying walls and rhinos, probably because he was running out of gauss cannons to buy. Little signaling happens past this point, as we were both pretty committed to our strategies. I ended up taking the game with Amporillas because I was confident he would never afford an Apollo.

Shout out to SeriousSin, this is one of the few games I've played where I felt I was having a conversation with my opponent. We were both reacting to what the other was doing. I thought this would be a good example to post of what's going on in players heads that leads to the decisions they make.