> Two-player is the bestest, but my son crushes me fairly
> easily... :-) Has anyone found any good, scalable
> handicapping mechanisms?
I've thought about this a lot while recording my Learn to Play Homeworlds video. Here's what I've come up with. I started putting them in increasing order, but then realized that I can't tell which of some of these is more difficult. This isn't scalable yet, but you can try some of them out and let us know.
* First Move to weaker player
* Stronger player plays fortress and weaker player goes first
* Stronger player builds first, plays second*
* Dead Star (the stronger player builds his homeworld with a dead star- use a black or gray pyramid)
* Regeneration - weaker player can take a move to regenerate a lost start in a homeworld. Less powerful would be that they can convert a ship into a star in the homeworld, but have to ensure that the homeworld is not completely closed off (i.e. has a star of each size)
* Stronger player can't start with green in homeworld (this is extra move in disguise - first turn for stronger player will be to swap to green ship)
* Extra move for weaker player - give them X chips to use for a one shot extra turn
* Stronger player can't start game with blue in homeworld
* Weaker player gets n+1 actions for a sac action (max of 3 is probably a good restriction.)
* Stronger player gets n-1 actions for a sac action. This might be too brutal, as sac'ing a 1 point would do nothing but put a pyramid back into the stash. Alternatively could be sac actions for stronger player gives a single action. This would change the game quite a bit.
*I'm actually playing this agaisnt TwoShort on SDG, I'll let you know how it works out.