How to evaluate Xu Jingyus victory over Sky?

The Strategy for the Victory of the Whale

Before the match, I didn’t think Xu Jingyu had a chance of winning. I thought the Whale was just a semi-crazy computer level, and isn’t it difficult for sky to play against three and a half semi-crazy computers?

After the match, well, the Whale did understand, and sky underestimated the situation.

In short, the Whale’s strategy worked perfectly, and sky didn’t come up with a solution.

What was the strategy of the Whale?

1. Quickly locate sky’s main base and send the main force to find sky, to prevent his heroes from leveling up. Especially in the last two matches, the Whale basically played a starving strategy, often running out of money, yet still harassing sky, making him busy and limiting his growth.

2. Burst the spider in the early game, and go full air force in the late game. This forced sky to switch to air force as well, restricting his tactics.

3. Leave the victory or defeat in the hands of two crazy computers, giving them time to develop and allowing the teammates to rise. According to the Whale, as long as the two teammates reach 80 units of population, they can surround the enemy together. Even the world champion will find it difficult to handle. And it seems to be true at the moment.

In fact, there is a fourth point, which is to choose medium or small-sized maps as much as possible. In fact, the only time sky won was when he chose a large-sized map, where the Whale was heavily constrained.

I think sky was a little careless. It seems that sky brother wanted to defeat the Whale from the beginning to the end, but the key to breaking the deadlock is not the Whale, but the crazy computers. I think sky can study from here and figure out how to turn the tables in the next match.

Anecdotes and Preferences in Playing Warcraft III

I saw a comment in the Bilibili comment section that I found very apt:

Xu Jingyu is like Draymond Green, using extreme tactics to exchange one for one and make Curry and Thompson output. These two crazy computer “big brothers” were the main force in winning against Sky in the middle and late stages. However, Sky underestimated the crazy computer, or perhaps his attention was diverted by Xu Jingyu, focusing on first defeating him. Once the crazy computer rose in the middle and late stages, there was nothing Sky could do.

I heard that Sky had previous successful experiences in challenging multiple crazy computers. After this battle, it can probably be proven that under the right strategy, even if a human player has much less skill than their opponent, they can still cause a qualitative change in the crazy computer. Of course, forget about the Human AI, that guy often doesn’t level up for hours. It seems like in the match where Xu Jingyu lost, there was even a Human AI teammate, otherwise…

However, what I am more interested in seeing is not their rivalry, but whether Gongsun Yaliang can come up with creative ideas in this area. The recent White Tiger Nightmare Trial series of three continuous matches was really full of creative ideas, right? Although Gongsun usually focuses on Heroic Duels, he often experiments with crazy computers, such as recently having a challenge against the insane Beast computer. Based on this idea, one can create a challenge to face two insane computers…

Speaking of which, when I used to play Warcraft III against AI for recreation, although I didn’t often play with teammates to gang up on the crazy computers, I had a favorite playstyle: engaging in chaotic battles in medium or large-sized maps with multiple players, such as Lost Temple. I would have a four-player free-for-all with three crazy computers on this map. I played as Human, starting with double mining and building a bunch of towers to defend against the computers' attacks. Then I would explore the map and observe the two crazy computers fighting each other, taking advantage of the situation. It was quite interesting. At one point, I even played an eight-player or more free-for-all, using the same extremely large map as in Xu Jingyu’s lost game. It was a lot of fun, especially afterwards when watching the replay to see how the other players were inflicting casualties on each other, it was especially enjoyable.