Joshua Kronengold <mneme@xxxxxx> wrote: > 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. > I've played a few games with in a "microverse" - homeworlds that are immediately adjacent. It's not as bad as you'd think. You quickly achieve, and must both be careful to maintain, a detente - you can't build many ships at your homeworld because the other guy will get the first chance to move in and blow stuff up. So you wind up having to move out and go around the long (3-hop) way. I'd actually say the first-player advantage is about the same in a micro-verse as for large-universe. Even in a small universe I'd say it's only slightly increased. In any case, that's not what I think is a problem in second-builder-goes-first.