Conquer Club

Going last tends to get you hosed sometimes. Perhaps an option may be enabled in games which follows thusly:

The first player gets no additional armies during their first turn.
The second player gets one additional army during their first turn.
The third player gets two additional armies during their first turn....
....and so on, until all players have taken their first turns and the game has been incremented to the next round. On subsequent turns after this, there are no additional armies handed out thusly.

~OR~

At the beginning of your turn, you get an extra number of armies to deploy equal to the current value of the Army Increment.

At the beginning of the game, the Army Increment is set to zero, and is increased by one at the end of each turn.

Thusly, in the third round of a six-player game with nobody eliminated or missing turns, the sixth player would place 17 additional armies thanks to the Army Increment, plus however many they would get for territories and continents.

Huh, maybe that needs to be nerfed....how about this instead?

Army Increment equals Current Game Round minus one. I.e., no extra Armies during anyone's first turn, one extra army for each player during their second turn, et cetera....

Uh, maybe none of these are good ideas after all....

Going first can often be the hardest job - every territory is set to 3 and there are no easy cards... if you're lucky you might be able to sneak a continent - but more often that not you end up killing yourself before anyone else has had a go!!

C.

Indeed, if i got the chance to be last in an escalating game, ill be the first to get the mega bonus.
Usually other players dont have that big an advantage to take you out yet, but you have the great combocards..

or is that just me?

going last in an escalating game is the best thing that can happen

Speaking as a heavy advocate of escalating games, I find that playing last gives you the best shot at victory in a sequential game. The first players have already moved and fortified their moves, usually picking up a card and by the time your turn rolls around later, the sets have graduated from the 4-8 range and you can cash in and make some noise.

Just the usual .02.

I also prefer going last for reasons already stated, plus the added benefit of seeing everyone's moves before having to plan your own.

Just curious Creepy, have you won many escalating games?

sometimes i will choose not to attack just so that i CAN be last...

Yes, you're all right; going last (especially in an escalating game) usually gives a tremendous advantage, both by being able to see everyone else's moves first, assaulting already weakened and depleted armies, and getting to trade in cards last....unless everyone else happens to "gang up on pink"; most players only take a single enemy territory during their first turn, and if each of them happenes to take a territory from the same player....

What inspired my original post on this thread was a polar game I'm in, # 243037.

Round one....

Red places armies, takes a territory from Pink, gets a card. Hey, that's me! (red)
Green places armies, takes a territory from PINK, gets a card.
Blue places armies, takes ANOTHER territory from Pink, gets a card.
Yellow places armies, continues the tradition of taking a territory from Pink, gets a card.
Cyan places armies, takes yet another territory from Pink, gets a card.

....by the time Pink gets to take his first turn, he's down FIVE TERRITORIES from everyone else, and barely manages to take one territory (from Green), and continues to loose territories to the others over the next two rounds faster than he can get them back. Round 3 finds Pink barely holding on to three territories (two of which have only one army each) while the other players are about to solidify their continent-grabs.

wicked wrote:I also prefer going last for reasons already stated, plus the added benefit of seeing everyone's moves before having to plan your own.

Just curious Creepy, have you won many escalating games?

Actually, I am just about the worst player on the forums. Let's see, out of the two-dozen games I've played, I've won ONE, and it was a doubles classic map escalating game. You see, I'm not so much good at the game (which I'm not), so much as I APPRECIATE the game, enjoying the theoretical more than the practical aspects of it. That's why I play, get hosed, and post suggestions. Failure gives you a good perspective on any game, and a good perspective is necessary to make meaningful contributions to the evolving design.