Christopher Hickman writes:
>What is fools mate?
Dale explained the general term here, but in the context of the
discussion, a start was pointed out in the "2nd player goes first"
variant that would result in the opponent effectively losing
immediately (if opp starts with y1b2 g3 ship and opponent starts with
a g3y3 r3 ship and builds a small, the opponent is caught between
swapping their ship to R3 (and losing in a turn or two, as they must
then either swap again (and lose) or move away from their homeworld
(and lose)) or building, and losing pretty much immediately as the
opponeng moves the r3 into their homeworld and takes over. Thus,
fool's mate.
Despite this, I'd forgotten about gemini starts, which, of course,
break "2nd player goes first" even more throughly than small universe
starts. Being a turn behind your opponent when they have direct
access to your homeworld from theirs is bad, bad juju.
--
Joshua Kronengold (mneme@(io.com, labcats.org)) |\ _,,,--,,_ ,)
--^-- "Did you know, if you increment enough, you /,`.-'`' -, ;-;;'
/\\ get an extra digit?" "I knew," weeps Six. |,4- ) )-,_ ) /\
/-\\\ "We knew. But we had forgotten." '---''(_/--' (_/-'