FTA Bonus on Highlevel Games means nearly Autowin

[QuantumApocalypse]

(08-14-2012 06:54 PM)Alvendor Wrote:  I agree completely with everything said about the problem with FTA. But there are problems with the solutions suggested. To give the first player less wits severely limits the strategies available to P1 as he is forced to take the wit spaces. To give the wit spaces from the start to P2 certainly reduces the FTA but would far from eliminate it, remember that P2 still probably have to move units on them to defend them.

If instead extra wits are given to P2 it would not limit available strategies, rather it would increase them. It would also be easy to calibrate it to close to eliminate the FTA completely.

Here are some examples of the wit differences for each turn on different sized maps. Each row is one turn. First number is P1's wits, second number is P2's wits, third is the difference from P2's point of view.

P2 gets 4 bonus wits - map with 2 wit squares
5 0
5 9 +4
12 9 -3
12 16 +4
19 16 -3

P2 gets 4 bonus wits - map with 1 wit square
5 0
5 9 +4
11 9 -2
11 15 +4
17 15 -2

P2 gets 3 bonus wits - map with 1 wit square
5 0
5 8 +3
11 8 -3
11 14 +3
17 14 -3

Giving P2 4 bonus wits on large maps and 3 bonus wits on small maps looks pretty optimal to me?

I think a big thing is not letting the players get a special on turn one. That would imbalance the game quite a lot, and probably turn the FTA on it's head and disadvantage the first player.