Advanced Tactics 2: Walling

Upon agreement from (now former) Order of The Emperor members, we have decided to release all of the guides, expansions & other helpful threads that we used inside the clan. Garde throughout the past year or so has gone threw the forums and brought public (mostly) information together to one thread that makes it easy for someone to learn what the thread is talking about.

These guides are endorsed officially by the Supporters Team (est. 8/8/2020) as they are made by the community as a whole and includes different points of view on the game- all while covering one basic topic to allow the player to easily read and understand what they came to the thread to prey their eyes on.

Do be mindful that these guides may still be updated over time and have sections put on them ahead of time- Also be mindful of other peoples' views.

Advanced Tactics 2: Walling was made by Garde.

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Walling is the most important skill to learn in Competitive AtWar as it allows you to protect your cities and stacks for an extra turn (a concept referred to as Denial) or perhaps even more.

Means of employing Walls:

The Triangular Method: When building any type of wall, a law known as the Triangular Method is employed. It sounds obtusely complicated for an online video game, but its actually quite simple: A unit vying to be a wall will only wall with another unit who is approximately closer than any other unit. If you sit in a private game trying to wall for more than thirty seconds you're bound to notice this law taking place anywhere. When we try to build more complex walls then, we should always consider this fact in planning and preparing for a build in any direction. For example: Building a Doublewall in Turkey around Ankara takes a decent amount of practice and self-coordination before finally becoming reality as intended, but you can speed up the process by considering the placement of your Bigwall units around Ankara and comparing them to the Citywall units surrounding Ankara. Then, considering the placement of your Bigwall units in comparison, you can deduct exactly where the furthest distances you can make your connecting wall should go without being walled to the Ankara Citywall by mistake (Hint: An Ankara Bigwall surrounding the Citywall should never use more than seven total units; If you can get the number down this low, you grasp this concept).

Theory of Optimal Destruction: When planning your walls and wall systems, you must always considering the following: Which direction will my opponent attack from? How can I make it harder for him to hit this wall from that direction? Where will he place his WF? How can I ensure his WF fails? How can I prevent my opponent from gaining access to this region? How can I connect my walls without letting them all break if one gets hit?

These questions form the basic theorem behind Optimal Destruction, wherein a player must prep and coordinate his.her walls in such a fashion that answers these key questions, with the key aspect being that any attempted break of a singular wall will not results in the failure of more adjacent and/or connected walls in the same system. This theory is why outdated versions of the London Wall that stretch up to Birgmingham are outdated; Only the Left-Double Citywall is still employed here (typically) because of it follows the Theory of Optimal Destruction.


Wallfucking:

Wallfuck: Despite the crass name, the Wallfuck (Also known as a Wallbreak or a Break to some) is by far the most important move in the Competitive scene solely because it is completely necessary to win 100% of the time: Your opponent will always wall his cities, and you need to know how to break them efficiently and predictably-without-fail.

There are several types of Wallfucks we will go over: The Normal Wallfuck (Usually referred to only as a Break or Wallbreak), the Auto Wallfuck, and the Coordinated Wallfuck.


Types of Basic Walls:

Citywall: The most basic and rudimentary type of wall you will encounter in the game. An entire article could be written about different types of citywalls, where to place them, etc, which I will eventually get to at some point, but for now you should only be doing the following: Making a "V" shape with three units around your city you wish to wall, shape them closely to the city and angled with the vertex pointing towards your opponent so he has to maximize his range to break your wall.



Longwall: Similar to a City Wall, only longer. Longwalls are typically used to avoid being Wallfucked from a particular enemy or angle. Longwalls can also be utilized to restrict your opponent's ability to maneuver his units around your territory. Largely power crept out of the game, I still use Longwalls in a pinch when I have local units that can make a wall around a target when a more formal compressed Citywall is not an option. Due to this, one may argue that the Longwall is merely an unoptimized Citywall, though in contradiction I still view tactical value in it due to the reason above.

Frenchwall: Named by Apocalypse due to his egotism, the Frenchwall attempts to rectify a WF situation by avoiding the WF unit and moving your walling units into an orientation that no longer enters a Fucked state. The Frenchwall isn't entirely practical or reliable on the higher end of the competitive meta, but can still be used in a pinch if need be.

Chesswall: Many call this a Nonewall due to how prolific it used to be when the None Strategy was more common, but nowadays only its inventor Chessand a few other competitive players like Witch-Doctor seem to use it.



Autowall: When your opponent forgets to move his/her WF and the previously-broken wall then automatically rewalls the following turn, or you place units that aren't walled together in such a fashion that they automiatically wall the following turn upon resolution.

Negatewall: Denial/Negate is a catch-all term for any mechanic or move that disallows an opponent from committing a certain move or series of moves on the next turn. In this case, a "Negate" wall would be any carefully-made wall (usually two units) to deny access to a certain area of the map arbitrarily or temporarily.


Types of Advanced Walls:

Greatwall:

Seawall: There are three primary types of Seawalls: Those using primarily Naval units, those using primarily Land units, and those using a mixture of both. You cannot make a wall between a Naval and Land unit, so these hybrid walls are rarely used and are not optimized, but you may occasionally run into them in lower-tier games.



Chainwall: Any type of wall that connects two or more Citywalls/Bigwalls/etc together is considered a Chainwall. Simply put, for a wall to be considered a Chainwall and not an RPwall, it must adhere to the Law of Appropriate Destruction (see below in "Means of Employing Walls").



Spiderwall: A Spiderwall refers to a complex system of other walls attached together in an Optimal manner, meaning that each wall forms an independent system similar to a Chainwall, but with added vertices and offshots to deny attack from certain directions, or to ensnare/disorientate the attacking force. In Competitive, you will nearly always see higher-level players such as Njab use Spiderwalls to guard their Yugoslav territories, or in Germany to prevent attack from the East and West if they're in a Pinch Position. Spiderwalls should be used sparingly due to their sheer amount of units needed to generate them, as well as the time/coordination needed to pull it off optimally.

Bigwall: Bigwalls are used primarily from a defensive position to grant yourself an extra turn of defense by building a Citywall inside of the Bigwall on T2. You can do both of these on T1 by building a Doublewall instead. In some picks however, building the Doublewall is not optimal, as using all of your starting reinforcements sans your bare minimum walling units could be far more important to your expansion and mid-game posturing than having both walls at the beginning. If you find yourself only having room either on land or in your budget for just the Bigwall, then employing either a Wallglitch or producing an extra three units to make a Citywall around your previously Bigwalled city is the route to go on T2. Using your Bigwall units to make this Citywall can be done under many circumstances, but isn't optimal considering the possibility of these units being TB'd and/or WF'd the turn you try and move them. Because of this, use the Bigwall units that are furthest away from all opponents to ensure they will not be hit, and move the rest of your Bigwall units elsewhere to ensure your Citywall doesn't fail upon turn resolution.

Bigwalls can be used offensively as well, see the Coup-De-Grace section in Walling Maneuvers for further information.



Doublewall:



RPWall: An RPWall refers to any type of Wall or Wall maneuver that fails to adhere to the Triangular Method and Theory of Optimal Destruction, but most commonly this term is attributed to Greatwalls, Chainwalls, and Spiderwalls that simply make no sense, use too many units, or are otherwise worthless in a competitive environment.


Walling Maneauvers:

Trapwall: A Trapwall refers to any type of wall that locks an objective inside of a city, whether it be an empty enemy city, a stack of an enemy, an enemy's area, etc. many Trapwalls are just made on the fly and can be compared to Serbwalls to an extent, whilst others are formed using Autowall mechanics to catch the enemy by surprise or to efficiently utilize available reinforcements. Having a vast knowledge of Predictive Modelling will help you use Trapwalls to their highest potential.

Clusterwall:

Switchwall: First reported on by Cthulhu in this thread back in February 2016, the Switchwall is a Walling tactic primarily used to form a momentary line of primary defense after a previous, localized one (typically a Citywall has been wallfucked. Despite this, the magic of the Switchwall is predicated upon your ability to predict an incoming WF towards your Citywall, otherwise you're just going to be building a Bigwall. Switchwalls do not always take the same shape as the one shown in the gifs below, occasionally you'll see Ukraine and/or Turkey form Switchwalls in the form of a Longwall south of Kiev to block the locomotion of units to or from Turkey, or south of Paris to deny France the chance to stack his cap prior to a cap attempt by his/her opponent(s). Typically if you're using Switchwall tactics to create a Bigwall, you will want to make another Citywall shortly thereafter to give yourself an extra turn.

If it wasn't evident enough however, to be a Switchwall, the wall must be some other type of wall first. The act of the "Switch" comes completely from prediction modelling, which you can read about here. To make the Switchall effect (catching/trapping your opponent), you have to accurately predict when it is necessary; You have to predict that building a Longwall in Ukraine to ensure he can't move his units south will have no chance of being WF'd, as with the Paris wall, etc. One should never confuse any other type of wall with Switchwalling as a concept; The only way to make a Switchwall is to figure out what your opponent is going to do, decide what type of wall you wish to make to trap him, and do so from a point that will not be interrupted or turnblocked in any capacity.

Serbwall:

Teamwall: Teamwalling refers to having your teammates create walls (usually your Capitol) around your cities or possessions. Using Teamwalling mechanics to fundamentally Rewall is frowned upon but is not disallowed at the current time.

Rewall: This mechanic is unofficially banned in all competitive play and will result in blacklisting by many players if you do it and are caught. Rewalling is the act of moving your walled units back into the city that they're walling, then re-dispersing them in the same pattern as before to deny any possible wallbreak attempts that may have occurred during your turn. Rewalls can be stopped by placing a wallfuck right next to the city you suspect is being rewalled.