Never ending PBW games because of Stellar manip

[trooper]

Imagine two Groups of allied empires in an advanced PBW game. Both of them have stellar manip and both of them have cut their WP to the ennemy and protect their systems with shields facilities.

This type of game may not end, as any attack can be prevented or neutralized by cuting a warp point... Ever experienced that in PBW ? Do player declare a draw match in that situation ?

[Karibu]

This is unlikely expect in full tech game. This can be easily countered by agreeing houserules which prohibits total turteling. Or that winning rules can be made like: No combats in 3 years.

[freduk]

They will be able to attack whoever does not have these shield facilities, while in return they need zero defense ships, so chances are high they will win. If ALL borderline systems have these shields then there's a problem: you can only switch to using massive intelligence.

But in that case you would better call it quits, also for it must have been a really boring game letting it get this far.

[Alneyan]

You *cannot* use intelligence if your opponent has closed all the wormholes leading to his systems, as you will lose contact with this Empire if there is no wormhole connection between at least one of your colonies and one of his. And without contact, you cannot launch intelligence projects against this Empire.

Even if you put a ban on full turtling, you might encounter a situation where an Empire has only one wormhole leading to all its systems. You would then be able to blockade the said wormhole with all your ships/units, making a breakthrough almost impossible. Twenty thousand fighters, bases and the usual defence taskforce of warships would pack a lot of firepower, and it would be possible (and even easy) to make such a situation by creating ten wormholes in all your systems. You merely need some time to do so, but not that much in fact. On the other hand, building the System Shielding facilities would take a lot of time given how expensive this facility is both to research and to build.

[geoschmo]

My experience is an empire with the time and resources to do this has pretty much won the game anyway. Their defensive posture is really only prolonging the inevitable. I've not seen a game where two empires reached this state simultaneously. Usually one empire gets there first and can then pretty much attack the other on their own terms while being more or less impregnable themselves. Makes actually for a very quick end.

[Gozra]

I had to get in on this. In Last man Standing We have a turtler. But He opened into systems that an opposing player was able to turn on a system shield. So We (3/4's of the Galaxy) are on the out side and it has taken us over 100 turns to stop the turtler and push him back in his hole. He can't or won't come out and we can't or won't go in 'YET' so I think we may see the greatest warp point assult in all of SEIV history with 4000 or more ships and bases on each side. Even now PBW cannot process the game because it takes a dedicated computer over 30 min. To process the turn. So we are connected but neither side has the strength to attack. And it is well known that the only way to win is by attack. At any rate. all things being equal a big empire that gets warp tech first can usally write the final chapter in a game.