Sunday, June 16, 2013

Ingress: State Of The Game: New York City (2)


It is fair to say the green team right now dominates Manhattan. Only a few week back they were at 50% of the territory. Now they are past 50 and still have momentum. Columbia University is solid blue, it is home territory to the top blue agent in the city. Upper West Side is also solid blue. It is home territory to the top attack agent on the blue side. But blue is shaky everywhere else on the island. I believe the green team is approaching 60% of the island by now. That is not worrying. What is worrying is they still have momentum.

When that happens there is the spillover effect. They start pouring out into Queens, Brooklyn, New Jersey perhaps. Already Kogent is talking about New Jersey on the All COMM. Manhattan is not enough territory. They are still hungry. I don't see a slowdown on their side.

West Village has become the green Bayonne. It is home to a permanent L7 farm for the green team. Only Bayonne has many fewer agents harvesting the goodies.

Queens used to be solid blue. By now it is 50-50. Downtown Brooklyn was always fiercely contested, as it is now. But southern Brooklyn is solid blue. Staten Island continues to be JPNasty1 territory: solid blue, the most unchanged part of the city for the game.

When I had a fallout with the current organized team in the city the blue team owned 66% of the city. As long as that team will focus their energies on faction chat in engaging in personal attacks on me, the other side will keep their momentum. If they still have momentum at owning 60% of Manhattan, they still have ground to cover in Queens and Brooklyn, and New Jersey is all open to crack. Arbitrage wants to buy a subway pass, Kogent wants a pass for PATH. The East Village and West Village are no longer enough for them and they are still hungry.

New Jersey's strength came from the numerous L8 farm events that NYC agents organized there. But by now New Jersey is self sufficient. It does not need NYC agents to stay strong. But I would still worry about Kogent.

Derp by now has his own private farm. It is the most efficient farm in the city right now: small and tight.

Forest Hills in Queens is one green 30 portal L8 farm in Jackson Heights taken to burnout away from being wiped out. Astoria, Flushing and Forest Hills all depend on Jackson Heights, the top Ingress destination in the borough by now.

Bronx is 50-50 like it was months ago. Not much change there.

rmazzara has done a good job of turning Long Island over 50% blue, it used to be almost 70% green, and he is not from Long Island. That change goes unnoticed. He might be the top blue agent in the city in terms of the sheer number of hours he puts into the game. Frankly, the number of hours he puts is scary to me. Maybe he is on Niantic's payroll.

What could the blue team do? What are the options?

(1) Make a team decision to stop personal attacks on me and my new, small team.
(2) The idea of me building a team is not alarming. And it is not at cross purposes. And the credit does not go to me. There are only two global teams possible. That is just the way the game has been designed.
(3) My team - The Squad - could sit on top of the organized team that exists already. The existing team was able to go to 66% of the territory in the city. Together perhaps we can go past 70% if we do it right.

Otherwise the green team could carry this current momentum for two more months at least.
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Thursday, June 13, 2013

Ingress: Linking And Fielding Types

Linking and fielding has got to be my favorite part of the game. The geometry of it all gets me.

(1) One school of thought that dominates the thinking in the city (and was even more severe before links started acting as shields) is that you should not create links and fields at all, because if you do you are only creating opportunities for enemy agents to get points. I always thought that was the stupidest thing. The thinking was and is that if you want to hold your territory just do not create links and fields. You are less likely to get attacked. As if you earn points for holding onto portals. I think you should, but right now you don't.

(2) Another way is to create as many links and fields as you can. And there a simple formula is, link to whichever portal is the closest to you. That way you will not mess it up. If you link far away portals you are depriving yourself and others of link opportunities, since links can't cross each other.

(3) The most efficient linking and fielding might be the spokes to a wheel method. You pick one portal as the hub and make it deliberately weak. And you link to that one portal from all the neighboring portals. This works best for home territories where you are likely to hack the same portals again and again and are likely to have many keys to each portal. This might also be the fastest way to gain points. The hub gets captured. You capture it again and build all those links all over again. In less than 10 minutes you might end up with 50,000 points. This spokes of a wheel method of fielding also might be the most efficient use of your portal keys. And the best way to cultivate your home territory. Say you manage to build a home territory with about 100 portals, and so when the fielding is done you earn 100,000 points. And you have a local team of agents on your side. Granted all of you do a great job of hacking the portals and always having plentiful keys, you could end up with the fastest way to level up your agents. The game does not care if you are a L1 or L8. You still get the same keys when you hack portals and you still get the same points when you create fields.

Where is your hub? Do you even have one?


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