Walling Tactics

INTRODUCTION:
This guide is essential to all players wishing to become a great at-war player, because in this guide, I will reveal many tactics that great players use frequently. Please look at the basic forms of walls before continuing on reading: http://atwar-game.com/forum/topic.php?topic_id=15896

Basic wall used in the reading is the same as the "First Wall" in the above link.

Section I: Switch Walls
This tactic is essential in beating the majority of high levels. If you can master this well, I can assure you that you will be known as a great player. The hardest part isn't the actual maneuver, its the predicting your opponent that is difficult.
The switch walls tactic is performed by the following:
1. Basic Wall -> Big Wall


2. Big Wall -> Basic Wall


You may ask why not Basic Wall -> Basic Wall? The answer is that it can easily countered by the enemy placing a single unit near the cap when it gets destroyed. If you have a big wall up, you can build a small wall while it still up if you feel the enemy is going to break your wall. This gives you 1 extra turn. The one extra turn is what makes a difference in small maps.

Section II: Water Block
This tactic allows you to constrict your opponent's movement. When your enemy is limited to only land, you can out maneuver them using your unrestricted transport. This is most commonly seen in UK vs. Germany where UK normally blocks the sea between hamburg and london. This is a great tactic to use since its easy to do, so you should do it! Blocking enemies port or channels can sometimes grant you unchallenged land grabs.


Section III: Great Walls
Great walls are just large chained walls. They are highly useful because you can use the units in emergency to defend your city. They shining points come from the fact that they restrict your enemies movement. I use this in the majority of my games, and are essential in any world games I play.

This underutilized tactics goes great with the switch wall tactics. In the competitive scene it would look something like this:
1. Basic Wall -> Great Wall
2. Great Wall -> Basic Wall

For example:
If you are Germany and your enemy is UK, you know he will break your wall on turn 3. One of the easiest and effective counter is to build a great wall cutting Germany in half. This will protect berlin, assuming they are not invading from scandi. This great wall switch is what allows me to have consistently beat UK in 3v3 games.


Section IV: Cap & Wall
The one turn wall was highly popular when SM was the dominant strategy (not just in ukraine). This tactic is performed as follows:
1. Cap city & Wall City


The major down side to this that it is easily countered by leaving a unit next to the city. It can be used with great wall or big wall to the same effect and it neutralizes the threat of an enemy unit next to the city.

Section V: Coup-De-Grace
This tactic is similar to section IV, but this is a death blow if done currently. This tactic doesn't necessarily involve taking the city, but instead form a big wall (or basic wall) around the city AND killing enemy units around it. You only see the best players use this due to being time consuming and movement intensive.

The following GIF is a simple version. Assume that generally the enemy will have their city walled. You wall want to make sure that the enemies are destroyed 100%, and on the second turn, you are able to cap with little resistance.


The death blow is devastating against an imp turkey player. Generally, a turkey player doesn't turtle with 30 inf in its capital, so if you can eliminate the wall and form a big a wall in 1 turn, you essentially killed turkey.
1. Coup-De-Grace Tactic -> Switch Walls Tactic

The only real counter to this tactic is predicting when and where a pro will strike. When you know where and when, you place a unit where you think the wall will be. It does not help if you leave a unit outside the whole game, because a good player will kill it while doing the coup-de-grace.


CLOSING WORDS:
The main reason I am writing this down is because I want the new players to learn and win. The old players won't be around forever, so we must put our knowledge to good use before it becomes forgotten. I urge all players to contribute to this guide for prosperity sake.

Special Thanks to Clovis for the Pictures

Good thread, a few pics to illustrate each point would make it excellent
Cheers

Good one Cthluhu <3

One of the more useful In-Game Guides, that is easy for noobs(me) to understand + it is short and simple.

Yup simple as pimples

Thank you, It is a big help to me.

Where are the pictures

Ewwww

Lel
now time to stop rankism

Yes, absolutely pictures. i cant wall for shit and a demonstration would be fabulous

AtWall

Prispeval redthunder, 13.02.2016 at 20:15

Yes, absolutely pictures. i cant wall for shit and a demonstration would be fabulous

Pictures are now uploaded thanks to clovis

What if the noobs are illiterate and cant read your guide. You might have to provide more pictures, like in basic steps.

Thanks Cthulhu, very interesting thread.

It was recently brought to my attention that the two following walling techniques are not highly regarded:
- Serbian wall (for what I understand, this technique consists in destroying an opponent's wall AND creating your own wall around the same city, on the same turn)
- Re walling (for what I understand, this technique consists in trying to move your wall units with higher priority than the opponent's units attacking your wall (so that they follow your own units, whether in your city or further in the field) AND creating a new wall around your city, on the same turn)

I have 2 questions on these matters.
1- Is the ban of these techniques widespread and generally accepted? As much as wallfucking on turn 1?
2- Is there a fundamental reason for banning those techniques?

From my newbie perspective, it certainly does not seem as overpower techniques, since there is an easy way to counter them, similar to what you noted above in your "Section IV: Cap & Wall":

Prispeval Cthulhu, 13.02.2016 at 01:15

The major down side to this that it is easily countered by leaving a unit next to the city.

So am I missing something? What is so different between destroying non-wall units around a capital, capturing the capital, and walling it, VS destroying wall units around a capital, capturing the capital, and walling it? The only difference I see is that it can catch off-guard an unsuspecting player. What's wrong with that? In other words, it seems to me that the better player you are, the better chances you have to counter those techniques. Isn't it something we should encourage instead of banning, in order to elevate the level of play?

For my part, I am usually playing blitzkrieg (which might confirm, in the eyes of many of the experienced player base, that I am still a newbie!), and walling techniques are ESSENTIAL in order to win - gaining one extra turn before being attacked is game changing when you can't defend properly. I have Serbian Walled so many times so far (before knowing anything about the technique's name and about it being despised), and won simply because of that. I am kind of hoping that you will tell me that the ban of those techniques is a matter of personal choice from game hosts more than a generally accepted rule.

Thanks

Prispeval Noir Brillant, 15.02.2016 at 08:08

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This might be of interest of you:

Prispeval The Tactician, 03.09.2015 at 00:39

Please not another rewalling/wg'ing debate I remember those long as hell forum posts about it. In short, its frowned upon and at least 80% of the community doesn't do it. It's like a further form of walling and only adds more mechanical processes to do instead of strategy to the game.

Sum up the community's though about rewall/serbian wall one year ago. The topic generated a lot of debate... Many good points from both sides.