bigbullyweedave wrote:For instance a player niggles you the whole games and stops you getting a continent. By the time you have cards to trade in your effectively out of the game as all other players have strong fortified continents and you have nothing. My natural reaction is to attack the player who has pretty much put me out of the game rather than fight my own cause. I can't help sometimes thinking that the chances of me doing anything in this game are slim because of you so I may as well make sure you don't win! Even if it costs me the game and 30 points or whatever!
Depends on a lot of things.
First of all, about the player who niggled you the whole game and stopped you getting a continent, you can see why he did that, right? I mean he was better off having done that to you, right? It was in his self-interest, you were a potential threat and he acted to lessen your ability to damage him at some point. So maybe the phrase "it's business, not personal" comes into play.
As to your assessment that you are out of the game. I'm not sure exactly what you mean here. There are a lot of players ahead of you in the game, yes. But are you in danger of being taken out in the next couple of turns. In other words, how hopeless are things?
You don't have a continent, but you still have some armies? Fortify your armies adjacent to the continent you desire. Hopefully, there are singletons in the area you can feed on to get a card each turn. Go into rebuilding mode, that is, continue to eat but expend no energy beyond getting your card each turn. Deploy to the same country each turn, but never attack your target. Become a very big fish in a very small pond.
When you cash in cards, calculate whether you can take over your target country. Probably not. Can you at least continually prevent the current owner from enjoying his continent bonus? If you can't do either of those things stay in rebuilding mode and continue to grow until you can do one of those things.
Now if game situation is worse than I've described and you're in danger of being eliminated, then you have to think about different things. Can you seriously damage your target for revenge? Are you likely to play this player again? Will there be any deterrent effect in future games if you attack him all out now? Will he not pick on you so much in future games because of your essentially suicide attack now? Or is it more likely that you two will tear each other up in future games?
Revenge is complicated in that it almost always has consequences that are often not contemplated seriously at the time.
Also, comebacks are not unheard of in this game. When you are no longer on the list of threatening players even though you are well behind the other players you are not much of a target for attack (except as a candidate for elimination). While the top players are tearing into one another it's possible to sneak back into the game. Are there any possible candidates to form an alliance with?
If after all this you decide suicide is your only option, you may as well go for the Hail Mary pass. Pick a strategic objective where if everything went your way with the dice you could actually accomplish. Then go for it.
