FTA Bonus on Highlevel Games means nearly Autowin

[Harti]

@p1noyboypj:

I understand you're leading the top 100 list and thus got to have superior understanding about how games go strategically but to me it appears that you deny the FTA effects - which is simply wrong. I played Advance Wars competitively from 2008 through 2010 and I've had dozens of discussions on the first turn advantage topic. In many other games there's been thorough analyses about FTA, too. It does exist and it does always affect the gameplay in some way.

The less turns one can take in a TBS, the weaker the FTA effects are. This is why most people don't even realize that Chess has FTA until you tell them. In Advance Wars you can move and attack with any unit you got, so FTA becomes bigger and bigger every turn the game proceeds (you're always ahead in unit count and positioning).
Outwitters is different, I couldn't agree with you more. It's something in between of Chess and Advance Wars. Not as crucial and immediately visible as in Advance Wars, not as weak and subtle as in Chess.

Let both players begin with 10 wit in Outwitters and you'll undeniably consider gameplay to be biased to P1. With 5 you can't do as much; on large maps, that is. On small maps you can already spot the issues in turn 2 (SFI and Glitch, also Peekaboo a little) if player 1 made a good opening.
On the larger maps it usually takes up until turn 8 to eventually notice that the first player has some kind of positioning advantage.

For discussing FTA the premise is ALWAYS that it's a turn-based battle between two similarly skilled players on a symmetrical map. Hence your point of "this is about wit management" is obsolete, because if everybody knew the same tricks to wit management as you do, you wouldn't be able to outplay P1 even with clever wit management. Because they're simply 1 turn ahead.

I find your suggested fix highly amusing: "Just make maps balanced". How is that possible when it's symmetrical? At some point a player hits the center of the map and gains advantage through their attacking range - and that's P1. Always.
(Well, unless going to the center is useless, e.g. if there are hundreds of predeployed Snipers to kill all units coming close to the center. But then again, P1 will be the first person to destroy these threatening Snipers and will therefore be the first to reach the center AGAIN.)


I like the idea of the mirrored rated games very much, though. It would be confusing and disturbing for low-level casual players (who maybe only want to play 1 single game) though.