FTA

[Harti]

The fact that wits are limited somehow relativises the extent of FTA.

I've played Advance Wars competitively and created lots of maps myself so I do know what you're talking about. In AW, you can move every unit every turn, there is no limit on actions. This is what made FTA a huge problem.
In Outwitters, however, with the 5 starting wits you usually tend to get one bonus point or two and move some predeployed units around. You can't do soooo much to exploit FTA here. Yeah, being P1, you're the aggressor, which is definitely something to worry about. You act and P2 has to react to your actions, in some cases crippling their strategy. But luckily, P1's actions are limited and during beta testing we found that it's easier to defend than to break through a defense.

Except for two (and a half) maps there are no outstanding advantages to be P1, and usually those strategies will only work if the opponent doesn't have at least some kind of foresight and is busy with himself/herself.
If P1 doesn't understand when P2's fended off the FTA exploit completely, they might overextend and get crushed.


Unfortunately, there are not so many high-level games between equally skilled players right now, and there haven't been any during beta testing phase either. The metagame is still developing and One Man Left is always having a close eye on imbalances regarding teams or maps. We had some nice ideas to limit FTA exploitability, so once there's 100% proof for heavy imbalances OML's gonna throw them in.