[teal]

What does "gamey" mean? I'm confused. I thought it was a game.

Some points.

I am under the impression that it is currently considered to be "just smart" to dogpile on anyone who is silly enough to choose deeply religious as a trait so as to eliminate them before they get the talisman. *If* it is determined that bezerkers/maxed defense agressiveness is equally as bad as the talisman, then doesn't that make it "just smart" to try and win agains them any way you can?

Second point. Don't you consider your relative strenghts weaknesses in every diplomatic exchange you make? If one race is stronger than all the other players in the game, then doesn't it make sense that the lesser powers form an alliance against the winning race? Whether they are stronger because they took bezerkers and no one else did, or if they are stronger because all four adjacent systems next to their homeworld contained huge breathable/colonizable planets is immaterial. The lesser powers will unite or die.

Finally. In the particular game being alluded to. The bezerker race was in a strong first place position and forming an alliance to stop them seemed to be the reasonable solution, regardless of whether they were bezerkers or not.

All this brings up another interesting question. Does Space Empires suffer from a "get the leader" problem often seen in the world of multi-player board games where being in first place is often a large disadvantage as it is extremely easy for everyone else to gang up on the leader and stop them. I think that it does in the sense that their are no, or few, mechanisms which stop people from ganging up on the leader. In practice perhaps their is an unspoken social norm among SEIV players not to do this. Perhaps provoking the remarks that using diplomacy as a balancing mechanism against a stronger empire set up is "gamey".