"I do not believe that anyone could come up with a 100% best expansion pattern."


look at the Insane challenge threads on this forum...

there are maybe 3-4 best ways, and that's with 75% luck, and random relatively dumb AI's.. you think if you had 2 players on a smaller map, playing dozens of games a day with the same starting locations, no, or next to no luck, and something more then *insane 29* being the reward,that the 'best' strategies wouldn't brew out? that sounds like borderline insanity.

chess is so much more strategic purely based on the odd movements of the pieces.. if you started a game with chess of all Kings It'd be less complicated then this game, but all this game has over that design is size of armies, *not being 100% attack 0% defender on combat ratios*, size of maps, and bonuses.. which all have optimal ways to obtain or use...

I think the mere implimentation of the 'Order' Modification cards with the default difference in offense/defense provides more of a skill showing then default locations would.

all Imho of course.

It would be interesting to test that theory out - I strongly believe that if anyone came up with a "best" method of expansion, you could actually program it in as a scripted AI in a challenge game, and strategies to crush that "best" method would soon follow because of the hard work of brilliant human players. In any event, if one were to look at the win statistics for a certain starting location which was the crown jewel of the "best strategy" and find them to be significantly higher than win statistics for all other starting locations, then it could be eliminated as a starting location in a succeeding ladder or tournament, and the cycle would begin again, eventually refining itself towards the ultimate balance. Also, since starts would be auto-assigned randomly out of predetermined sets, noone could ever truly know at the start where the other player was starting, which would complicate a "best" expansion pattern mightily.

Even if all that I have said is dead wrong concerning the possibility of a solution to WL 1v1 under the rules described, in the end you'd still have the ultimate leveler - 2 players, each with the same potential knowledge of how best to execute a 1v1 game, each potentially getting the best pick spot or facing an opponent that has it. Someone would call this unchallenging? I for one would like to see myself proven wrong, I'd like to see the hands down best expansion pattern rooted out of the murky bounds of possibility, because if it exists then the game isn't as balanced as it could be, so it would be the first step in solving that flaw.

At some point I'll swear I'll shut up about all this, honestly I care only in an academic sense - In truth I just find the discussion to be mentally stimulating and interesting, and it seems as if others have put some serious thought into it as well, and I think that's cool whether or not I agree with the consensus.