I think I gonna give up....

[Caphriel]

The truth is, the moment you start consciously contemplating your game decisions your performance rapidly drops (I dont mean ruminating over replay). You have to "feel" your game and I think this holds true for Wesnoth, for chess, for poker, every game.

No. Success, in Wesnoth or in chess (or other strategy games), is a result of careful planning and informed decision-making. Reduction in contemplation only comes when you have enough experience that you can recognize familiar patterns and implement them after only brief analysis.

[Neuromancer]

The truth is, the moment you start consciously contemplating your game decisions your performance rapidly drops (I dont mean ruminating over replay). You have to "feel" your game and I think this holds true for Wesnoth, for chess, for poker, every game.

No. Success, in Wesnoth or in chess (or other strategy games), is a result of careful planning and informed decision-making. Reduction in contemplation only comes when you have enough experience that you can recognize familiar patterns and implement them after only brief analysis.

This careful planning and informed decision-making is done on subconscious level. Although I agree the process is based on recognition of familiar patterns and requires experience with the system (=playing many games), I believe this decision-making is done 100% subconsciously. Try to consciously make decisions based on vast amount of variables (such is decision making in games), try to rationalize over these decisions instead of feeling them and you will see how bad these decision will be.

[Velensk]

I would disagree. I play much better when I take my time and think it through. Now, I vastly prefer to play mostly subconsciously but I certainly do not preform better. I make more mistakes and my risk management suffers immensely when I play on 'auto'.

[Caphriel]

No. Success, in Wesnoth or in chess (or other strategy games), is a result of careful planning and informed decision-making. Reduction in contemplation only comes when you have enough experience that you can recognize familiar patterns and implement them after only brief analysis.

This careful planning and informed decision-making is done on subconscious level. Although I agree the process is based on recognition of familiar patterns and requires experience with the system (=playing many games), I believe this decision-making is done 100% subconsciously. Try to consciously make decisions based on vast amount of variables (such is decision making in games), try to rationalize over these decisions instead of feeling them and you will see how bad these decision will be.

Do you have any evidence for this other than your own personal feeling or belief? Do a little research on competitive chess and poker (the two examples you mentioned) and see how many professional, successful players recommend not thinking about the game and just playing by instinct. And then, as an added reason that Wesnoth requires conscious analysis, consider that humans are notoriously bad at intuiting statistics. People cannot subconsciously perform careful planning and informed decision-making Subconscious impulses are mutually exclusive with carefully planned, informed decisions.

[Huumy]

Neuromancer I recommend you (and every1) to read "Josh Waitzkin - The Art Of Learning". I do not say you are wrong or right but this might give you another perspective how to become good at something and it's really interesting read anyways

[Neuromancer]

I would disagree. I play much better when I take my time and think it through. Now, I vastly prefer to play mostly subconsciously but I certainly do not preform better. I make more mistakes and my risk management suffers immensely when I play on 'auto'.

Its not about automation. Of course, you have to give yourself time to consider a situation, but you are not consciously contemplating informations. The answer just comes to your mind.

This careful planning and informed decision-making is done on subconscious level. Although I agree the process is based on recognition of familiar patterns and requires experience with the system (=playing many games), I believe this decision-making is done 100% subconsciously. Try to consciously make decisions based on vast amount of variables (such is decision making in games), try to rationalize over these decisions instead of feeling them and you will see how bad these decision will be.

People cannot subconsciously perform careful planning and informed decision-making Subconscious impulses are mutually exclusive with carefully planned, informed decisions.

Do you have any evidence for this other than your own personal feeling or belief?

Do a little research on competitive chess and poker (the two examples you mentioned) and see how many professional, successful players recommend not thinking about the game and just playing by instinct.

In fact, I had:

I'd gotten high pairs before, and not done much with them ... But at that moment, as soon as I saw my cards, I knew what I needed to do. To be honest, I don't know why I went all in on that hand. If I'd really thought about it, I might not have done it. The bet was damn risky. But it just felt like the right thing to do. You can do all the probabilistic analysis in the world, nut in the end it all comes down with something you can't quite explain.

Jonah Lehrer: How We Decide, page 229. Binger is speaking about his experience in World Series of Poker. Although he is "staying alive" through the opening rounds by card counting (conscious activity, he plays it safe because his opponents allow him to do so /theses opening rounds are "always full of players who probably shouldn't be there"/) in the later stages he is counting on his feel as is quoted.

Huumy, will check that out.

[Caphriel]

I shouldn't have mentioned poker, because I forgot how superstitious some poker players are. I play and study chess, although I cannot claim to be an expert. Never, ever in chess should you make a move just because "it feels right." Maybe if you're playing blitz chess and you don't have time to think? When making a move in chess, you should always be able to explain afterwards what your intentions were when you made it, what the pros and cons were, and what the alternatives were. Wesnoth is a game of almost complete information, and more like chess than poker.

People cannot subconsciously perform careful planning and informed decision-making Subconscious impulses are mutually exclusive with carefully planned, informed decisions.

Do you have any evidence for this other than your own personal feeling or belief?

Yes. By definition, subconscious impulses are not carefully planned, because careful planning requires conscious thought. You cannot "plan" subconsciously.

Furthermore, by playing a strategy game through relying in intuition, you open yourself up to mistakes stemming from a whole host of cognitive fallacies. I'm not saying that intuition will always be wrong; for an experienced player it may often be right. But it is not, for a good player, better than analysis, as you claimed. We can take this into private messages if you like, but I don't really want to do the research and essay writing required to debate concepts of human cognition I haven't really worked with since psych classes in uni.

[Velensk]

Its not about automation. Of course, you have to give yourself time to consider a situation, but you are not consciously contemplating informations. The answer just comes to your mind.

I am quite consious of the majority of the information. Pattern awareness does help me sort through it and prioritize it more efficently but it does not remove the processing of it. To a certain extent, I do abstract the information, but if I am more aware of the specifics I do tend to make better decisions.

[ArtillaryGoat]

Take a breath, and calm down. Getting frustrated will just make things worse.
Play some campaigns and build some skill there. Have you ever played Eastern Invasion on Hard? And defeating all the enemy leaders in Evacuation? There's a task for you to do, but do ONE LEVEL AT A TIME. If you had played it on Easy before, play it on Medium before going to Hard. Also, observe from MP matches, particularly with good people (looking at the Strategies/Tips section and seeing who is giving all the comments is a good place to start). And then play again. That's how one gets better.
Don't be discouraged, everybody has to go through this before becoming a good player.

To be perfectly honest, I am terrible at campaigns, even on easy, but consider myself quite good at MP. I don't think the above would necessarily help everyone.

I always found looking at the player guides the most helpful.

[black_white]

Played on the ladder again and again I lost it becomes annoying for some people, this is funny but even the guides do not give me anything.

[Skrim]

Don't be discouraged by ladder losses - it's part of the game. The points mean nothing - I just see the ladder as a good way of getting some good one-on-one competition, as people are much more likely to join a ladder game than they are to join a casual one-on-one (unless they're a personal friend of yours and you ask them).

---

I'd say that campaigns are bad training for MP. The AI behaves in considerably more predictable ways that human players do, villages and gold are relatively less important, and the units in play are both more numerous and, by and large, more powerful and ability-endowed than the comparatively small numbers of basic troops you field in MP. The terrain is often heavily biased towards either your troops or your enemy's troops, and not representative of the mixed neutral terrain found on MP maps.
Playing a few campaigns is a good idea if you're new to the game, to get a hang of the game mechanics - movement, terrain, unit types, damage and resistance, day-night cycles, etc. - and some more advanced abilities - slowing, charging, magical and marksman attacks, healing, poison, leadership. But they're not useful if you want to train with an MP faction - heck, the mix of units you get in SP campaigns often include stuff from several different factions, and units that are not in any faction but are common in campaigns, like for instance Thugs or Mermaid Initiates.

---

As for playing by conscious deliberation or playing by 'feel', I'd say everyone starts out by playing through conscious planning. As they get more familiar, the depth of their deliberation increases, and things like unit recruitment become intuitive. As experience builds up, familiar situations and patterns throughout the various match-ups get incorporated into a kind of muscle memory and if you find yourself in a Drake mirror you'll immediately know to focus on Clashers and Augurs while a newbie may have to think over things. A newbie may not know how important it is for Drakes to retreat fast from Undead as night falls, while an experienced player knows exactly what must be done from... well, experience. Eventually entire strategies, like first-night Grunt rushing, say, can be played by 'feel', because you've seen others do it and have done it before and know how to and how not to go about things. You still deliberate over things, but those are large-scale strategic deliberations, because basic tactics have become intuitive.

So 'feel' comes with experience. You can't just start out 'feeling' your way through things. First you have to learn, then think, then feel.

[black_white]

Does not propagate is that I lose points on the ladder but is that a non-stop I lose a play about a year.

[Gambit]

The ladder is full of people who play competitively for ranking and points. It's not a good place to learn how to play Wesnoth.