Re: Vote
I will say one thing for certain about this poll- it has caused me to reconsider the removal of powerful bonus sites. While people seem to regard being unique and being removed as interchangeable for items, I personally find the fact that they are still in the game a significant plus, and likely would not have considered an outright removal of them. The reasoning with sites is that their removal is not really removing on option, but it is admittedly removing content. I think sites do have the potential to 'ruin' games, but probably not consistently, so if the general opinion is they should stay, that seems fair enough.
Hammers are a very different matter, and not just because making them unique is not strictly removing content. Almost all complaints I have heard about the change seems as though they can be fixed with a bit of national balance and/or a slight increase in site frequency in games (this while maintaining the benefits in terms of reduced micromanagement, and the bizarre skewed pretender design hammers caused). There may also be repercussions for specific items in terms of worthwhileness of pricing, but this swings both ways- the available prices for things are no more or less finely grained than before, some items can be priced more appropriately while others must be priced less appropriately.
It has been said the most recent CB actually goes in the direction of reducing possible strategic options, but this seems a difficult interpretation to take. Whatever there is not to like about the hammer change, it is hard to argue that not requiring 3-4 e on a non-e nation's pretender doesn't present more options, or that not needing to beeline right for SDRs with a blood strategy doesn't open up new possibilities. It's the fact that these so called 'options' were indispensable that causes the difficulties, and while it's possible that changing them can cascade into making other options less attractive, these are all presumably independently addressable problems.
|