Tattersail_, on 09 June 2021 - 01:02 PM, said:
You can feel bad for him if you like, nothing wrong with that, but this all stems from him picking the most contentious starting position, one of the most aggressive factions, declaring his rightful ownership of a huge swathe of planets, then telling me he intends to take my homeworld and there's nothing I can do about it. Things have devolved into total war between Twelve and I and probably can't be repaired now, since there's no advantage to either of us in stopping, but it's not like this was an inevitable situation. No one forced him to pick such an aggressive start and no one forced him to make such threatening overtures in the first rounds rather than being diplomatic.
He was 4th pick. He could've gone Mahact in the Mountain Fortress starting position and had a secure, steady forward creep if he wanted to. He could've gone Xxcha in the spot he did pick and had a defensive+diplomacy-focused game where he held fast with lots of PDS shots and made friends with everyone else. Frankly, I think both of those would have been a better fit for his playstyle.
He chose the opposite of that. You can feel bad for his choices eventually leading to his poor current situation, sure, but it's not like this all just happened to him out of random chance, it's a consequence of the way he chose to play. Heck, he wasn't even unfortunate enough to have 2 players attacking him, which is far more often the case.