After playing a couple of games with 24+ players, or lets rather say - Whole world maps, I've noticed that the size matters . However, in this particular case, size is a huge disatvantage.
If you start with Sweden, you're surranded by a couple of countries and your starting size is relativly small in comparison to the other nations. While, when you start as communist russia, you have huge amount of territory and a lot of potential threats. I know this is historical game and Sweden didn't change that much in size in the last 60 years, and the Russia is still huge country today. The that I see with huge countries is that they have a TON of useless teritory without, meaning that they're without any resource, while small country like Sweden has it all what it needs and its packed up and safe.
I know that, in this way, every player have a relativly even odds at the start, but the amount of space that one Communist russia needs to protect (nationalist china, British India, Xijangjang - or whatever) is huge and what I've witnessed so far - almost impossible!
The crucial part is Europe. Fullfilled with small countries with HUGE amount of resources staggered between them. And the player who dominates the Europe is almost unstopable. Games almost always ends up fairly quickly. As soon as the rest of the world players see's that Europe is beeing dominated - they simply leave.
4 Replies
14 Sept 2017, 18:58
Strule wrote:
The crucial part is Europe. Fullfilled with small countries with HUGE amount of resources staggered between them.
That is really, really, really not true. If you observe carefully, you will see that every country in the 100 map is balanced. Some countries will produce more wheat (tanganyika), more iron (British Columbia), oil (Irak), but it is always by the same extra amount. Thus resources by country are balanced.
Now if you mean that as Europe is more densely packed, all resources are closer to reach, then that is a good argument. Nevertheless, the problem with Europe is that contrarily to what you could imagine, it is a pretty useless place to start a game in. 1) All countries are packed together, meaning war from day 1, 2) since everyone fights everyone till death follows, a clear "leader" only emerges weak and at a late date. 3) Europe can be attacked in every direction. If you own Europe, you have to protect the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, have a large land army to protect from Russia... it is an absolute disaster.
In most games I've witnessed, Europe emerged with 1 or 2 main empires, and swiftly got destroyed by Africa or Asia... happens more often than you think.
So no, Europe is not the best empire to have, and yes, starting in Europe is a very bad idea.
14 Sept 2017, 23:45
Well our experience is quite different. In 25p maps that I've played most of the late game empires that overcome whole map in late game were European ones.
It is crucial, however, for European players to form a strong aliance, to ovethrown other European countries. Yes, they are fairly vournauble by invasions from all of the sides, but who does ever encounter Europe from Asia at the very beginning of the game? Who invades Europe from S or N America at the very beginning of the game? No1!
No one tries to invade Europe, because most of the players are occupied by trying to build their own empire in their corner of the world. And while they're trying so, European countries are expanding over other countries that are full of resources. I mean, check the map of EU and the rest of the world. Its hilarous. And yes, maybe the victors from EU battle emerge fairly vounded by the end of the war (10-15 days), but the economy that they've provided by conquering other EU countries are staggering. It's totally uncontroleable and they're just overcoming the rest of the world in a matter of days.
15 Sept 2017, 11:06
Yeah, the 25p map is different than most maps; not all countries are equally powerful / resourceful. The other one is the 10p Blitz map. All other maps are more or less equally balanced.
When the enemy is driven back, we have failed. When he is cut off, encircled and dispersed, we have succeeded. - Alexander Suvorov.
15 Sept 2017, 20:51
Strule wrote:
Well our experience is quite different. In 25p maps that I've played most of the late game empires that overcome whole map in late game were European ones.
However, in this particular case, size is a huge disatvantage. 
