Mod perspective!
Overall, despite a few stalls, I thought the game had a good flow to it, with a number of factions seeing their fortunes rise and fall throughout. I think the only one who was steady throughout was Tapper, probably because everyone wanted to stay on the good side of the traders, and he didn’t show much expansionist ambition beyond the first couple of rounds.
I think that this was the first time we saw a group of factions really come together in effective cooperation to stop a threat (in this case, Morgoth), rather than shouting at others to stop it for them. Unfortunately, that wasn’t extended as well against IH, possibly because he was more isolated than Morgoth’s stretched position. I think D’rek did just about all she could, but coopting Morgoth’s help in taking down IH rather than others continuing to take his territories further apart was the only way IH could have been stopped. Though he did get lucky with the SO, nevertheless IH played a fantastic game throughout, I was seriously impressed. He played possum a lot, and wasn’t afraid to reverse policies after they had stopped being useful to him, such as breaking the alliance with D’rek and getting his Promise of Protection back. I don’t think he ever overstretched his resources, and Mirror Computing proved an incredibly powerful endgame ability.
D’rek and Morgoth were also excellent in their uses of both soft and hard power, and I thought that Gnaw stood an excellent chance of winning for most of the game, but ultimately changed his mind a little too often about what strategy to pursue. Blend and Nom were obviously the ones who ended up having the most difficult games, and it’s hard to judge what they could have done differently. I suppose the lesson from Blend and Tatts’ games is that no matter how secure you feel your alliance is, never leave your homeworld exposed, and both overstretched when perhaps they should have consolidated. I get that both felt they had to keep going as expansionist powers with a need for more resources/influence, so it’s a tricky balance to get right. As for Twelve, well, I’m finding hard to see how the Winnu can win in a 9-player game, that is a difficult race to prosper with. Also, his SOs were pretty much the worst
I also saw a lot of decisions being made without really taking into account how other players might react. It was like, “oh, I’ll do this then this then this”, with little consideration that eight other people will take their turns between each action and were unlikely to just stand around passively. It is difficult to take that into account, but the most effective strategies I saw were ones in which deals were formed before taking any action, and where most plans were at least semi out in the open. While cackling evilly to yourself in secret about what you intend to do is very much fun, other players generally didn’t take kindly to surprises.
This post has been edited by Khellendros: 25 June 2019 - 10:44 AM
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Tattersail_, on 24 June 2019 - 01:31 PM, said:
