Me and @gaz123 'S game has ended with me coming out on top. After a rocky start on my end, I managed to claim the high resource center stars with some well placed/convenient warp gates and stick out by playing primarily defensively
Yes it was a good game! @HabitableFiction played really well. Need to practice my end game more I think! 
While some games are still ongoing, here’s the exit poll on this round’s setting change:
What would be your preference for future LLL rounds?
- Rare Random Gates (as in this round)
- No Random Gates (as in previous rounds)
- No preference
0 voters
I’d be interested to try a game with unlocked weapons
@spymort, if you’re interested in a little reading on this point - I had a similar feeling after my first 1v1 match a year ago and suggested ‘crazy expensive’ weapons research settings - here’s the initial after action report from @GluteusMaximusII suggesting more weapons and the response from @HULK saying why they haven’t implemented it.
I agree it would fun to mess around with a game with unlocked weapons though. But I have developed an appreciation for the tactical restriction of no weapons upgrades.
Congrats to @sarcophagus for finally grinding me down! Well played! I thought I might have one more trick to try, but the writing was on the wall. A tip of the hat to you!
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Thank you @AvacadoGuy for the very pleasurable game and for being a commendable opponent! Well-matched and you certainly made me work for it. I wish you luck and hope to share more games with you in the future!
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Looked like an epic game from the outside, congrats both and see you again soon hopefully.
The next round will likely start in two weeks already as two months are nearly up. Three games are still running.
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Have those three games been paused? on you stats page it doesn’t look like many ticks have passed in quite a while
No way to pause a game once it’s started, so I guess the games are just a bit bogged down by Christmas preparations - 6 ticks per 48 hours is the technical minimum.
Two games already look relatively decided, however at the Legendary Level @plug versus the challenger @FinrodFelagund still seems wide open. Any chance you guys see for someone to come out on top before the new year?
My game vs @FinrodFelagund is still continuing steadily - it’s very evenly balanced, although I feel it’s not a stalemate. However, if we’re out of time we could call it a draw. Not sure what that means for the LLL trophy.
No worries , as long as both players are submitting turns, I just couldn’t tell.
Indeed, it would make the game much more weapons based, but as higher weapons are less destructive to the attacking side, I feel that when a player is in a disadvantaged position and has a local ship advantage yet a general ship advantage, they are unable to attack because equal level of 4 weapons means that unless there is a high advantage, they are unable to push back. This would result in players able to make more strategic plays and comebacks in the area.
Again, the weapons advantage doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. We’ve already nullified exp, so no one can get an advantage per chance, but the weapons buff would increase science demand and change up the game. It’s not bad, just different.
Because from my experience in this games, its whoever gets a lead in credit production first wins, because lead in ship productions are marginal early game and therefore have little impact. I feel this would give another aspect to spice up the game.
I think one thing you guys have neglected to discuss is that if weapons are an option to research, weapons become the ONLY thing that is researched. It trumps the other tech too much and makes research choices feel less important.
I agree with this. I just played a friendly with @Tanktress. Weps were not locked. I got a weps lead, and because she did not keep up it completely negated an otherwise reasonable strategy. So if one player gets the lead, the other must immediately counter, and off we go, just as @Solfyre stated.
With weps locked, multiple infrastructure strategies are possible. For one player starting with banking works. With me, I try to get ahead on ship count. And tf becomes more important for ind as well as gates.
Totally agree with @Solfyre, @wfmcgillicuddy and of course @HULK. Unlocked weapons would change the entire 1v1. Whoever gets the next level of weapons first has a huge advantage in time. Doesn‘t matter at which tick this would be: Tick 50, 100 or 200… it would lead into a big advantage to the first player and from this moment on it only would be valid to research the next level of weapons.
I disagree with you. I, and other players, too, have managed it several times to equalize a gap in eco. As long as the star count is even, it‘s not impossible to close that gap! And if you close it, you will not fall behind in indu and science as well.
In case you fall behind in eco because there already is a gap in star count, you also fall behind in indu and science. That would rather not allow you, to research the next level of weapons first. The other player would be first and your chances of making a comeback would be worse than they would be with locked weapons.
Plus, weapons 5 (next level weapons in case of LLL) would need 1440 points in research. That is not a tech you would go for right from the start because that would cost you the game immediately. Would be more a tech you go for in mid game, so the starting game would still be dominated by the others techs, like they do ATM.
And TBH, it‘s not about ship count and ship production. It‘s more about expansion, how you use your ships and your infrastructure in the right way (including warp gates etc.). In my games against @Solfyre, @HULK or @Karmadrome I lost with lead in both: ship count and ship production. There is so much more in these 1v1 than just raw numbers.
So from my point of view, unlocked weapons would not benefit the 1v1 games. They would rather limit them after a couple of cycles when researching weapons would not cost you a lot of time any longer…
My initial strategy of denying my opponent the access to a flank worked - at least temporarily. Enough to gain an edge. But I forgot to buy econ before first production. I thought that’s it, but for some reason I could recover. We both missed some turns, but I was in the lead and then my opponent was kicked due to inactivity.
You know, I played one game where I forgot to purchase econ in the first cycle as well and it didn’t hurt me at all. In fact, because I was able to get terra 2 by the time the second cycle came about, I might have covered the initial losses with the newfound savings. I’ve wondered in the past if that could be a strategy to employ… But I can’t seem to make it seem financially sound when doing the math. There is also no way to account for extra gained stars in the mean time when trying to build any sort equation about which way is better.
I disagree with this. If we had weapons starting higher, say level 5 or 6, and weapons tech research expensive (say 2-3x as long as terra or so) research progressively more expensive, it would mean that at a point weapons would be an option, but not the best option all the time.
Even so, we could play around with the costs, base techs, and figure out a balance for unlocked weapons. IMO it wouldn’t be too hard to find a balance.