Hey guys,
I'd like to toss up two items. A question and a...realisation. Any input welcome.
Question: Supposing you get to a point in a game where it is clearly entirely hopeless for one side (notablly w the dwarves) to continue - where whatever they do, there is no way they can do ANYTHING but try to run around madly and try and get out of the way of trolls, getting captured left right and center.
Supposing the opposite party realises this too, and refuses to call an end to the game, instead wishing to continue capturing (for the points) untill It would take more time and effort than your average game would take just to capture one more dwarf.
At what point can you stop the game? Can a player unilaterally call an end to a game as this?
It strikes me that that sort of gameplay tho may go against the feel of the game - where a game may stop being thought provoking or entertaining and simply frustrating (on the part of the player who has to powerlessly sit and watch his dwarves getting captured of course).
Hm, given the unexpected length of this 'question', I think I'll put the realisation as a separate topic.
Hi Stone Giant,
At one point or other, all of us have been there. You're talking dwarfs. Imagine me playing night after night, same online game, watching all my remaining Trolls
being wiped from the board because I made that tiniest mistake in middle game. It's called Hunting (yes, sadly there's even a name for it...).
That's no consolation, I know.
I'm very sorry, but the rulebook simply states that both players need to agree. If your opponent thinks (s)he can whack a couple more dwarfs, (s)he's entitled to. That can be a bore, especially at the receiving end.
The only thing I can tell you is: watch and learn. It only happened to me once, but I'm fairly sure it'll never happen again.
It's a game of several phases. I'll give them names, though for all I know they already have them.
Every one of these stages takes a different kind of skill, and so will be enjoyable to a different kind of person. To some, the diaspora is just beancounting, and they'd be happy if they could just say "Yeah, let's agree you can catch another... hrm, eight dwarves?" and change sides.
There is no way to do this in Thudgame (aka "quickfire thud"). The closest is to move eight dwarves near trolls for the fastest possible deaths.
I'm not sure I *should* build in a way to come to a gentleman's agreement about score differentials, either. It's not covered in the rules, after all, but in RL thud, it does seem to be a common practice. But, online, it coud be rather exploitable.
Hi, Stone Giant, and welcome to the forum. My fellow Thudsters must get tired of me bringing this up, but I think the business of having to agree when a round is over is a crucial part of what the makers of this game intended.
The idea is to think, while we're having fun, of what is involved in really ending the conflict between trolls and dwarves (or Arab and Israelis or Catholics and Protestants or Muslims and Hindus...dot dot dot). It means sitting down at the table and negotiating.
I mostly lose games, and the best players always say to me when I am desperate, "Well, I think I could get a few more, but yeah, let's switch sides." That remind us all that we're just having fun, and that process has a lot to do with the nice tone on this forum, I think. Really.
In the process of being eliminated from the recent tournament, which I thoroughly enjoyed, the opponents who beat me needed to go on a little longer than they would otherwise, to improve their points. I was happy to play until they were done. But that's probably because I knew that they would never crush me for the fun of it - they want me to come back and play more.
Stick around and play with us, and you will get better (even I might get better.) Then you will find yourself in the position to say, "Yeah, I could get a few more, but let's switch..."