unbalance, micromanagement due to all-vs-all

[Ironhawk]

Zooko said:
In an "all vs. all" format, if you make war on a neighbor before you have gained a substantial strategic advantage, you will almost certainly lose the game. You might succeed at conquering your neighbor, but even if you do the other players who spent their resources conquering independents...

I dont feel this is a valid example. It is almost always more valuable to attack independents than human players. Who would make war before all thier indies were taken without some kind of unbelievably lucky advantage? And if you choose to attack a neighbor and win, do you not have 2x the resources of any neighbors that were not at war? Additionally, why would you allow a hoarding nation to remain unmolested? Sign war pacts against them or clandestinely encourage thier neighbors to skirmish or attack them.

In a "proper incentive for war" format, such as a format with exactly two teams (one vs. one, two vs. two, etc.), then this is just not an issue. The Ascension War is a hot war from the beginning, and the game is over long before the micromanagement becomes boring or the spell casting becomes unbalanced.

This example, along with most of those in this thread all rely (either explicitly or implicitly) on there being no diplomacy between players. And while that is fine if you are just looking for a wargame, I personally *like* diplomacy. In my opinion it is the mark of a good player if you can make war on a neighbor and keep your neighbors off-balance enough themselves that you remain competitive until you can capitalize on all the lands you gained.

But! I will not argue about the preponderance of turtling, even tho I personally dont persue it. My only suggestion would be to keep diplomacy in the game and instead just put an artifical time limit on the game. Say, 50 turns. Whoever has the most territory at 50 turns is declared the winner. Then you still get lots of trade and diplomacy, but you also get vicious war and scrabbling amongst all the players.

[Zooko]

The time-limit and King-of-the-Hill variants would both seem to solve the problem, too.