From your experiences, what is the best time of day to join a game and why?
My personal preference is as soon as I wake up in the morning. I do this for several reasons. First, I don't like to go to sleep if I'm still at war. This way, I can move troops into position overnight and attack when I wake up. Plus I like to use spies to get troop locations and this allows me to attack while the intel is fresh.
The downside to this, as previous partners have pointed out to me, is that I have little chance of catching an experienced player offline as everyone joins the game at the same time when they are likely to be awake.
Been thinking about this as well from a more technical perspective. Absolutely agree that it is great to move into position and be online for the final hit, and to be able to see fresh reports too! But would not being online the couple hours before day change affect the final results of the game? We are talking about extremely close/competitive games where final VP points may matter.
I don’t sleep well with an active game and often check in while I’m lying awake before getting out of bed. Doesn’t help me sleep, but I don’t get surprised as easily.
I like the late morning myself, like 11 am. You have some time to take some measures for capital farming, and move some units to critical places for rebellion supression. Yeah it's true that you don't have spy reports before launching your main offensives (yeah those start on waking), but you should have the first line scouted by planes and AC's anyway. Besides, you made your main battle plan the night before, and units moved into position overnight so there's not TOO much changes you can make when the guys jump in their tanks to charge after you wake. So when the spy reports come a few hours later, it tells you how to adjust your plan to take out the second line anyway. When he's online, it will even tell you how he plans to counter your attack (the "arrows") after he had some hours to respond.
Apart from that, I like playing opponents in my own time zone to have a maximum chance for interesting encounters. My 11am is 2am Pacific and 5am Eastern US times; few chances they'll sign up at those hours, and Americans are the main non-European player group.
I hadn’t considered the value of seeing their response to my initial invasion. Against a quality opponent this would probably be more valuable than their initial troop locations. It would pose a small risk of your initial captured providences flipping due to a revolt unless you take precautions. I’ve had similar happen and the movement penalty for being in an enemy providence applying again can be consequential with my play style depending on using mobile artillery to hit and retreat. I suppose I could just have an armored car sit on the providence center if necessary until day change.
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