How Do You Balance Growth?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by incognito:
One person posted the ability to build 20 castles by turn 21. Still others are fielding at least a SC or 2 by that same stage. Still others have completed significant research in several fields. In most of these cases, I get the strong sense that they are not horribly unbalanced at these stages ie they did not sacrifice any hope of winning the game to accomplish these objectives.

The thing you're missing is that some sort of "horrible unbalance" is the key to winning in the first place. You generally *NEED* to focus on a subset of the to-do list in order to be successful. Otherwise, you end up being average in all categories at best, having no real strengths to leverage off of. Thus, when we veterans cite having accomplished some monumental task earlier than you'd have thought was reasonably possible, that's because that was our objective, and it likely represents an important element of the strategy we're pursuing. If there's some shortfall in another area....we're not going to tell you about that. Instead, we're going to hide it while bludgeoning you over the head with the thing we're strong in. While we pummel you ruthlessly using the strength we've rushed to develop, you're in no position to exploit any weaknesses we haven't told you about, and are forcing you to find on your own....if you can get out from under being bludgeoned. The "veteran" thing to do is often to intentionally rush for some key instrument at the expense of some other thing....and then bludgeon the nearest victim over the head with it brutally before he can develop an effective countermeasure to it, by which time we'll be larger and healthier, and able to easily rectify the imbalance we created by our initial rush for some instrument. It's much easier to do one thing right, then use that as leverage, then it is to try to do everything at once, have nothing to use as leverage against your opponents, and thus get bludgeoned.

[ July 27, 2004, 19:33: Message edited by: Norfleet ]