Quote:
Originally Posted by Clouds
What complete utter crap. Last round was all about politics. Plain and simple.
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Politics means a lot, and it can make a huge difference in performance. However, you also need military power/strategy/consistency to really make it count. Many alliances have finished 2nd but not been able to make 1st because quite simply, there was too much opposition out there for politics on its own to overcome it, and they weren't good enough on their own. ND for example, have done this many times.
If alliances react to defeat by playing to stop others from winning rather than to improve their own position, then the answer is quite simply to not play politics or be a factor at all until very late in the round, if you can get away with it. This is pretty much how Faceless played last round, and I have my doubts that it was an intentional strategy beyond trying to get individually big planets. Of course if everyone plays like that, then the best alliance (Ultores) will win and then you get back to a state where you need to be more proactive.
The scenario for next round is pretty obvious. Ultores are going to throw a huge block at Spore, so there's no one to stop them using a combination of politics and military. This is a good strategy, because arguably there's no one as proactive as Spore to take advantage of that, and there looks to be some kind of attempt to take them out the running, early. The only reason you had politics as such a factor in r55 was because Spore created a scenario where it could happen (the alternative was everyone getting stomped by Ultores).