by YoursFalsey on Mon Jun 22, 2009 11:49 am
Not sure I agree with the statement that spoils mean poo. In most games, certainly the general scenario you described, you ultimately want to gain an advantage in armies/turn over your opponent. Balancing your priorities between getting armies by territory, by spoils, and by bonuses is part of the art of gameplay. A small bonus early on can be critical, so first move, particularly if taking one territory can reduce a foes territory armies, can be huge. Territory bonuses are tougher to come by in a doubles game, I think, because it can be hard to coordinate peaceful transfer of territory w/o another team taking advantage of the gap between your turn and your partner's turn. Spoils has two big effects.
One, it forces you to be more agressive- sometimes games hit a stalemate/standoff position where players don't wish to risk weakening themselves by attacking- in a no spoils game, they just slowly build and make timid attacks, backing off if they lose more troops than they want. With spoils, they attack because they cannot affort to let opponents gain the advantage of getting spoils if they do not.
Secondly, almost every escalating spoils game I've ever been in has ended by steamroller- one player cashes in a set for a decent sized stack of armies, uses that set to kill another player, which gives him another set that he has to cash, which allows him to kill another player, etc. Many player's whole escalating spoils strategy is simply survive long enough that I can be the steamroller. (Not elegant, but it does work sometimes)
If anything, I would say escalating spoils have less effect on a SMALL map, because it is lesslikely the game will last long enough to see the spoils escalate.
I would say the trick to doubles play is to find a good partner- I mostly play pickup games I find on the game finder screen, and it's amazing how many people want to play doubles games without ever sharing any plans/requests with their partner...
