[Fyron]

Again, diplomacy is a very big part of the game. Have you ever heard of the team victory? The talisman player does not have to destroy everyone. His allies can very well win too. Your statements about the players all wanting to defeat the talisman so they do not lose is incorrect because if they ally with the talisman player, they will be quite capable of winning the game (assuming their alliance emerges victorious). They do not have to fight their allies later on.

It has nothing to do with controlling the other players, it has to do with using diplomacy to get some of them on your side. Failing on the diplomatic front means you are not playing well, as diplomacy is a big part of playing the game.

Well now, this is a few orders of magnitude less of an absulute statement then "Used correctly, the Talisman is an impossible trait to defeat."

No, that is exactly the same as what I said before because it is illustrating correct usage.

You are still going to have to explain to me how you can control the speed your opponent expands

No I am not, as I never said nor implied that you could.

You can play the best game you have ever played in your life, in fact you can play the second best game in the history of SE4 and still be behind you opponnent. And this somehow you define as not playing well? that makes no sense at all.

That is not what I said at all. I never said nor implied that you can not lose if you are playing well. Since you are missing my point and instead focusing on the term "playing well" instead of the actual content of the argument, let us replace it with "playing better" in this instance.

If the best game of your life leaves you far behind the competition, you need more practice.

Again correct, and again no one made this claim. But getting into fights against a tailsman player where all else is equal is suicide. The same could be said of anything in the game.
All else being equal, the player with dreadnaughts will defeat the player with frigates every time.

That is a rather contrived example, as the difference in magnitude is far greater than that between talisman vs. non-talisman.

As Gravey said, you can try. But you can't guarantee this. It depends on the experience of your opponents. If they are aware of teh effectivness of the Tailsman you will have an alliance of one, and that ain't gonna get you too far.

Only if you fail to convince anyone to ally with you. Awareness of the effectiveness of the Talisman will also allow them to be able to see that the talisman player would be a strong ally, as long as you tell them this. And, I never said you could guarantee getting allies.

Again you are talking about things totally out of your control and saying that you aren't playing well. That makes no sense.

No, what you say to other players is entirely within your control. It is entirely possible to gather allies in any game, if you are persuasive enough and if they have not already agreed to band together before you start trying to convince some of them to ally with you. If that happens, then either you have not met them yet and there is no chance of convincing them after they have already formed an alliance, or you are not doing very well with diplomacy, which relates back to not playing the game very well.

And what's irrational about ganging up on the Tailsman player? If you intend to even try to win it's irrational not to gang up on them and get them out early because as you said yourself allowing them to Last till the point of no return is a pretty sure way to guarantee you will lose.

The other rational possibility is to ally with the talisman player. You will only lose if you are their enemy. Being their ally will allow you to win (assuming the alliance wins). SE4 is not a one on one slugfest, you know (unless a game is specifically set up that way, which is well beyond the scope of this discussion).

Allying with the tailsman player is a sure way to guarantee second place at best. And who want's to be second?

Those that do not have such a huge ego that they only consider being in 1st place as worth their time for winning.

[ July 14, 2003, 22:36: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]