This game favours builders ...

[Misotu]

Yeah well. I've read a lot on these boards about how the game is designed to favour momentum players and geared for war ...

But that's simply not my experience. I'm a pure builder. I play SP and MP, both with a reasonable degree of success. As a builder, I find switching to a war footing causes me no problems.

Sure, if momentum players get the opportunity to do the early rover rush, or hit air power fast, then they are in a good position. But otherwise ... surely, as a builder, you can always balance your defence so it's poised to meet the momentum rush? And once they start to strike, you may suffer a few losses, but when you turn your energy/production over to x jets ... it's over.

Momentum players have a pretty small window of opportunity. They have to strike early. After that ...

Or have I been lucky?

[mark13]

Like so many things in this game, I believe it depends almost entirely on circumstance. If you try building on a tiny world, it just isn't feasible - Santiago or Yang will come knocking usually about 5 years after planetfall. You have to give them about 4 techs to stop them from attacking, at which point technological parity is restored, and Yang immediately annihilates you.

Sure, the way we play it (huge map) the game favours builders, but that is not the way everyone plays it - and I feel the game excels itself in this way.

[Simpson II]

Well... it depends.

You can broadly divide the game into pre- and post- air power. Pre-air power momentum players rule. If a builder waits sround to build an adequate defence at the start then they are sunk, because it's effectively easier to attack than defend, especially given the bonuses of the momentum factions vs the builder ones. They will be left far behind in development and expansion.

On the other hand, if a momentum player can't get to them before their infrastructure is starting to come together then the builder can afford to defend, and do it in spades.

Post air-power, whoever has it rules. The only effective defence is to steal it and build an air-force of your own. In principle Zakharov should be able to do quite a fast time to Doc:AP and then blow everyone else away, unless they can kill him first. Obviously this is less the case on large maps, but with foil or needlejet colony pods or strategic alliances, you should be able to achieve a global reach.

In the tournament games that you played (and mostly won) the map was made so that momentum players would find it difficult to get to builders quickly, and also so that tech would progress very fast... so the builders always had Doc:AP early enough to counter the momentum players.

On the other hand, in ACT021, everyone started on a big continent. If the momentum players had researched impact weapons earlier and teamed earlier, then the two builders would have been eliminated easily. I almost had a heart attack when I saw the position I'd inherited - damn right I wanted that 25-year peace treaty to get to Doc:AP! It was the only way I would be able to stay alive. If I'd had more costal bases to build probe foils then I would have attacked you quickly, even playing as Morgan.

So, IMHO it depends primarily on the map position. However, it's almost always worthwhile to attack someone if you get air power before them. A race to Doc:AP and then a blitz isn't really my idea of builder play... so I would agree that the game helps those who are aggressive. Just sitting back and relying on your defenders to do the fighting isn't normally practical.

[Misotu]

SimpsonII: I don't disagree with most of what you say. The tourny maps certainly don't favour the momentum player and the map position is key, I agree. There are situations where you can't play a pure builder game in the early days and survive.

But I still say that pure momentum players get a fairly small window of opportunity, and they can get VERY unlucky. To win they must a) be able to get to and wipe out *all* the builders pre-D:AP. b) They must not pop pods and get techs that destroy their bee-line to impact because that is *death* - they can easily end up 30 or 40 turns away from a decent weapon if they're not careful. c) They must not accept half-a-dozen useless techs from a submitting UoP pre-impact weapons (see b) above or refer to ACT021 ).

And although it's tough, it's by no means impossible for a builder to halt even an early-game momentum onslaught, given a lot of luck with terrain, pod pops, artifacts and so on.

As the Spartans in ACT021, I found 3 artifacts in the first 20 years. Great. If I were UoP, they would be 3 techs in next to no time if I were under pressure. But as the Spartans? With -1 industry, where am I going to find the time or the minerals to build three net nodes in a sensible time frame? My best bet is to go and capture 3 UoP cities - it'd be faster And then, chances are I'd get Ind Base, Polymorphic and Ind Econ ... plus ending up exactly 56 years away from non-linear.

If any of these things go wrong for the momentum player, the position seems very hard to recover? Survive the first few decades (depending on map size) and I still think that the builder should have a much better chance of victory.

I suspect we're in agreement here actually. Your definition of a builder player might include no serious offensive capability? Mine would be that a builder has no inclination to waste resources on a serious offensive capability, but can and will build a highly effective attack force if attacked.

Mark: Yes, map size is key, no question. It is possible to win on every size map in SP playing builder style, but I'd agree that the tiny map is tricky. To say the least. In tiny map MP, yes, you'd have to get very lucky to play a builder game and win. That kind of luck doesn't happen much. But again, these are special circumstances. Without the early rush opportunity, momentum players face a fairly uphill challenge. With every extra year, the builder's chances improve while the momentum player's diminish.

[Garth Vader]

When you are talking about a MP game it makes a big difference in the number of players. I have played 2 human with 5 AI, 4 human with 3 AI, and 3 human with 0 AI, and the easiest for momentum is the 2 player game.

If a momentum player can take over 2-3 AI factions and quickly double their population they can easily beat the other human to DAP.

[Misotu]

Well, Garth has offered a me a 2-player game on the strength of this thread.

Still ... I've had to eat my words so many times recently, I'm quite looking forward to another yummy dish of them. Don't expect an update on the progress of the game ... eating is best done in private I find, especially when it's humble pie