[Micah]

After Zeldor's post about calling the game due to the staling I asked if we might be able to get a victory by decision since I felt we were clearly in the best spot once homer/atul were out of the picture.

Zeldor asked that I talk to Atul about the situation and Atul said he was fine conceding to us. This all happened on IRC.

Since the two biggest teams were fine ending the game with a decision in our favor we (QM, Zeldor, Atul and myself) were hoping that the rest of the players would also agree to it, since continuing the game was becoming increasingly problematic for the reasons I detailed above.

And to answer your question: what made earlier games on large maps (more) fun was mostly that the player base was more widely spaced in terms of skill when the game was newer, and it was easier to crush inexperienced players and get an advantage to press on into a new conflict, snowballing your wins into a victory around turn 60 before the recursive gem generating really kicks in. I think knowledge about the most optimal tactics was also less widely available, so games didn't turn into as much of a horde-fest. After the experienced of this game I'm hoping to start playing gem-gen free games, it seems like it'll make for a lot more fun.