So now that I'm first in my silver league (still trying to get promoted to Gold), I play FFA a little bit more. It seems that with FFA, it is just plain luck who wins, i.e., players concentrate on others before getting to you, enabling you to tech up. Anyone have any good strategies for FFA, or it is just, hope that nobody messes with you so you can sweep in and destroy the others after they duke it out? Just wondering...
Is FFA just luck... I'm going to say no. As for strategies, if you used invisible units to monitor your enemies, you can strike them when they send all their units out to attack someone else.
In my opinion luck plays quite a role in it. In FFA a good method is to weaken the economies of all of your opponents. Never try to wipe one out or damage them too much though. Also telling your opponents if one looks to destroy you that if your destroyed he loses half of his forces and that other bloke over there will wipe him out. If your against good players FFA will be a steady balancing game where each player is slowly weakened. Breakouts are only down to miscommunication between players. Only rush or raid minerals if you believe that guy poses the largest threat to you and don't underestimate communication between other players.
No, it isn't just luck. If you enter a FFA game as a 'pro' against a bunch of people who aren't, then you're going to walk away the winner unless there is some pre-arranged conspiracy to gang up on you. There IS more to a FFA game than the ability to micro/macro well though. Doing well in a FFA can involve preying far more on psychology/sociology (and quite possibly in-game politics) than your standard match. The calculations for risk vs reward (say pushing out to secure/grab a non-natural expansion, or even more so, taking over one from someone else) are more complicated.
No FFAs are about psychology, not luck. Throughout an FFA match you want to make yourself appear strong enough so that others fear attacking you and weak enough so no-one considers you an immediate threat. As someone has already stated the worst thing you can do is make many enemies. Be sure that when you attack someone you will win otherwise you will just make enemies who wish to kill you later on. The trick is to scout well enough so you know who your true rivals will be and execute small attacks that weaken them.
Luck plays a slightly larger factor than in, say, 1v1, but it still isn't very luck-based. Opening position matters a little bit more, and that's luck-based. For FFA, I just cheese with protoss. I use a forge with cannons to fast expand, and then expand again. It seems that many people play as though it's 1v1 or 2v2, so they play conservatively, balance economy, tech, and army, and do typical late expos. Everyone is afraid to attack, since at best they'll hurt one player and then be vulnerable to several other players, so I abuse that and just fast expo with cannons (and later a few zealots) like crazy. Then mid-to-late game I start scouting a whole lot mainly to keep tabs on how many bases everyone has and start massing void rays. 30-40 void rays is just silly, and I start killing people with them. If an opponent is reasonably decent and starts to mass hydras or stalkers, I'll augment my army after several void rays have died by getting some strong ground units. Basically I just macro my way to victory because people don't attack.
Mostly luck, yes. It's about turtling and not getting noticed so that you can stomp on the other players who have been fighting all match.
The idea is for the two weaker players to defeat the strongest player first. That person is the biggest threat, and nobody wants to end up in a 1v1 against them later in the game. So you play with the expectation that the strongest player will face the most aggression and will be defeated. At the same time, the two weaker players want to be stronger than each other. So each player wants to be in the middle; neither wants to be the strongest or the weakest. The game is about convincing your opponents that you are in the middle. When conflict between all three players happens, there's a natural instinct to pull back and let your opponents wear each other down. But I think this is sensible only if you are the strongest player ~ The two weaker players should be cooperating, and conflicts should be with all three teams together.
