[geoschmo]

Originally posted by spoon:
Well, that is the point I'm trying to make. There are "gamey" things you can do to give you an edge. I guess I have to repeat this in every post, but I never claimed that there was a way to guarantee a win. That's silly.

Spoon, I think that your position in total is fairly reasonable. You don't appear to believe that there is one "Uber weapon" or that there is "One way" to win at SEIV. Although others in the past have tried to make that claim. Please pardon our zealousness if we felt as if that is what you were saying at the begining.

I still don't accept the idea that these things you speak of are "gamey". They are part of the game. These are choices, either in empire setup or in game tactics. If you choose one you likely are not choosing something else that may help just as much, or nearly so. So it's all about tradeoffs and what makes you the most confortable.

Every game depends heavily on decisions you make before the game, or very early in the game. People don't claim that taking the center square in tic-tac-toe is gamey because it gives the player an advantage do they? Gaining an advantage is what games are all about. SEIV just gives you a lot more ways than the average game to do that. And it gives you ways to overcome disadvantages and poor decisions more than just about any game I have ever played.

There are two dozen things or more that you can do at game startup to get an advantage over an opponent. If you do all of them it will require a lot of racial points, even in the stock game. If you do them though and your opponent doesn't, you will have a big edge. That much is frankly undeniable. I would be an idiot to claim otherwise.

What I reject is the idea that any one of them makes you unbeatable. So you didn't make that claim, many have at one time or another.

Here's how it goes. Someone steps up and says, "PPB are unbalenced uber weapons!". I chime in and say, "Bah, there are no UBER weapons. The skill of the player is what matters most." Then the PPB cultist and I have a long discussion about why someone usign PPBs can or can't be beaten. In the end the person is always saying, "Well if you do this and that and this AND have PPB, you will be unbeatable.", at which point I simply laugh because the player that has the skill to do the "this and that and this" will do well regardless of weapon choice. That's was my point to begin with. They all come around to it in the end, wheether they know it or not.

Geoschmo