Michael Kelley writes:
>Exactly. In Sinister, destroying a Homeworld across the table from me
>doesn't give me any kind of reward. It's a penalty, really: I have to
>sacrifice ships in order to keep myself in the game.
Except that you don't have to -- because freqently, you have a choice
between setting yourself up to stop a win and setting yourself up to,
you know, win.
>> Seems like the simplest hack would just be "first player whose prey is
>> eliminated wins". That way, you might very well want to aid the
>> person who's trying to eliminate you (just as you don't want to
>> eliminate them), but you don't have the "quick, can anybody -else-
>> kill them?
>
>The first time I ever played Sinister, we tried using that rule, and it made
>the game even more unintuitive. "Wait, so... You're trying to destroy my
>Homeworld. I sacrifice my ships in order to blow up your homeworld first...
>and I don't win? *He* wins? Huh?"
I don't find it unintuitive, but it seems like you'd be happier
playing "last man standing".
>IMO, the underlying problem with Sinister is that it has a single victory
>condition, and no way to share victory. What I really *want* in a
>multiplayer Homeworlds game is a Diplomacy element.
Whereas I don't want that much of a diplomacy element; if all games
have full-on diplomacy, all games will be Diplomacy.
>> I could see using a Vampire-like scoring system (the "Jyhad" card game
>> was renamed to "Vampire, the Eternal Struggle" over a decade ago),
>> though I could totally see a cycle of death -- as eliminating someone
>> really does weaken you quite a bit. Mabye if you got to take all
>> their remaining ships? (that would be way strong, but not necessarily
>> too strong).
>I can see what you mean about a cycle of death. And I agree, taking over
>the eliminated player's ships would be way strong. But it makes logical
>sense, and it could introduce another interesting strategy element: Do you
>go after a strong Captain with a big fleet... and potentially gain a lot of
>ships as the spoils? Or do you go after a weak Captain with a smaller
>fleet... and gain fewer ships?
*nod* This would be interesting, though, of course, the problem with
eliminating someone with a lot of ships is that they'll probably
launch a final strike at you, which may result in mutual elimination.
That said, I like "inherit all remaining ships controlled by someone
you kill" better than "gain points when you kill."
--
Joshua Kronengold (mneme@(io.com, labcats.org)) |\ _,,,--,,_ ,)
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