People should think about these kind of things after this round, (
and this is clearly lost on Kargool),
Don't settle for anything less than first if you're capable of first. NewDawn really impressed me this round, I haven't seen much more action than Sandmans but I can see they dispelled rumours and took initiative this round, throughout the round.
1up/eXilition/whoever else, when they've won these last couple rounds, it's always on a knife-edge. It can look like (and often they want to create this impression to their adversaries) they have everything under control but they never do. We shouldn't have the same two alliances winning five rounds in a row, this alliance system (so many people speak of so highly) is boring and predictable.
Wishmaster talks about his friend's concerns for the game, Kargool tells us about his, that the game should be dominated by value and the alliance system we've come to know so well these last few rounds. Planetarion isn't about the same two alliances winning every round. If alliances are to be considered the great fundamental base of the game (what seems to be a popular opinion on here) then in the latter weeks we should still have 3+ alliances going for it.
Comments like: "This just isn't our round" "If only we'd done this (now it's too late)" should have no place in top alliances (yet they do). We shouldn't have whole communities choosing to do nothing mid-round onards. The situation should be changeable until the last few days, that would make a better game.
I thought Round 15 was great for two reasons. The winning alliance had to really dig in to win, it was very easy for people to say that eXilition had won as we tried to catch NewDawn, actually trying to do that, with fatigue from 7 weeks of sleeplessness (across the whole alliance) and people leaving is something else. To actually pull it off was something special. I agree! That should be part of the game. Endeavour reaping rewards right at the last moment, an uncertain victory going to those to battled hardest all along. etc. That's great.
Round 13/14 were different stories, both rounds reached a state of stagnation much earlier. The blocks in Round 13 and the lack of resistance to the victor in R14 made that the case.
If the game wants to move on and alliances are considered centre-stage then the following *should* be accounted for:
Whether through use of a low alliance member limit (as this round), or another way, people should be better able to set up alliances and really have a go at competing with the established ones.
Value, more than anything else brings stagnation to the game. If Ascendancy hadn't been around, what would the outcome have been? Would that have been interesting? Is that what we want? I personally don't think so. More alliances at the top would solve this to a degree, as we wouldn't have such limited resistance to one with the best (unresisted) memberbase. Perhaps the game engine itself should better reward effort on an alliance scale. If XP had been different last round, eXilition might well have not beaten NewDawn, many of whom had huge attacking fleets and very little else because they'd received no incoming. I think that would've been the wrong result. It's good to be rewarded for effort. There's a balance to be found somewhere in this, it doesn't involve nerfing xp.