I think a lot of the challenge in 3-or-more player conflicts is knowing when it actually is better to leave attacking the leading player to someone else. This is usually made even harder in 4-or-more games because you can’t reach everyone (due to board position). It’s hard, but I enjoy the challenge; the evolving interaction between players is what keeps these games without chance elements interesting.

See you soon!

Valerie,

Have you ever played Kill Doctor Lucky?  Would you consider the mechanism to stop a murder to be these situations less to be about simply not doing something and more a matter of the weaker players trying to get an edge by forcing their later opponents to do it instead.

Obviously, one solution is to have a greater amount of diplomacy in the game.  Depending on your group, your immediate reaction could have been to point out Dale’s greed before even moving, and built a tentative alliance with any player after you who was left without a planet as a result.  Of course, that may be a different experience than you enjoy playing, but I think it necessary to balance games of this style.

"At the start of the game 5 player game, there are just enough planets for each player to claim one.  Instead of starting the game with a conflict with Dale, I claimed my own planet and prepared to defend it.  Tyler played next and grabbed a planet for himself, while also threatening my claim.  Erin grabbed the last free one.  Ian, with no empty planet to start with, used all of his initial resources to pose serious threats to both Tyler’s and Erin’s planets.  At the end of the initial set-up, Dale was left with 2 planets all to himself.”

I would have slapped Ian, or at least loudly berated him.  Then I probably would’ve been kicked out of the venue.  But that would not have changed the rightness of my actions.

This is a common problem for many games. First off, when people are sitting down to play a game they will more than likely not try to start off a game in a confrontational manner. If a person does, it will most likely be with a person with whom they are comfortable.

There are some games where it is necessary. However, this may not be known until a few plays. My copy of Gheos is collecting dust because the first few plays, people didn’t understand that part of the game and haven’t tried it with that mindset.

The basic problem is, while leader-bashing mechanisms are in place, there are seldom rewards enough to take the action. If you are in the lead and I send my units to attack you, I am weakened and you are weakened while everyone else stays strong.

Rewards should be in place for leader bashing in games so that if you are willing to take on a leader, there is some reward for the risk. Capturing planets can be a reward, but it seldom is easy and often there is failure without reward or success with too little reward.

These games cause many turtle type problems that can be created when there just aren’t enough rewards to outweigh the risks.

I think what everyone is failing to notice is that I simply had the superior strategy (sitting to the left of Ian)…

But, I think that this problem is the same as in Kill Doctor Lucky (and many other games).  Those games can be loads of fun, but they are also fairly fragile.  I’ve often seen the same issue in Power Grid if one person is allowed to have a single area of the map to themselves. Without needing to spend resources/priorities in competition, the road to victory seems easier.

Dale

Seems to me that Ian should have gone after one of Dale’s planets, since Dale had divided his forces and Ian would presumably have had a 2-to-1 advantage at one of them.  Or was that impossible for some game design reason?  You should be careful not to blame the game for poor play.

I haven’t played Supernova, but El Grande is one of my favorite games, and it can suffer from similar phenomena.  Good play in El Grande involves working to hold down any obvious leaders so they can’t achieve an unassailable lead, while at the same time advancing ones own position.

Similar considerations come into play in other classic games, like Diplomacy, Age of Steam, Settlers, Taj Mahal, Civilization, Through the Desert and Union Pacific, just to name some examples in the BGG Top 100 (and of course, Power Grid, which was already mentioned.) It’s often more interesting when there’s enough going on that you can’t quite tell who’s ahead (in both Power Grid and El Grande, it’s not necessarily the person who can currently power the most cities or who’s currently ahead on the scoring track.)

Gosh, I didn’t mean to make it sound like it was Ian’s responsibility in turn 1!  In fact, I was the one who had a planet close enough to Dale’s to threaten his position early on and I didn’t.

It’s funny that people mention some of my all time favorite games (Age of Steam, Union Pacific, Power Grid) as having the same issues.

If I think about Union Pacific, I imagine a person with a monopoly and one of their shares pops up for taking.  If we all work on our own investments instead of stopping the monopoly, I think we deserve to lose!  On the other hand, as William mentioned, the key is how rewarding is it to take a turn off from your own plans to stop the leader?  In Union Pacific, taking a share to break up a monopoly earns you second place in that company.  That’s a clear reward for doing it.  Since there was no second place scoring on the planets and attacks weren’t guaranteed to be successful, it was far less rewarding to try to attack a planet in Supernova.

In games where conflict opportunities are limited (as you imply in this one - only some people can attack others) it gets even more difficult to access who is responsible for taking on the leader.  It is a definate issue in many games, and when I see it occuring in a game it often makes the game less palatable for me.

One huge problem with this situation is in playing with beginners.  If you can’t access who is “winning” or at least the biggest danger it is hard to access who needs to be taken down a peg.

I’d even put Puerto Rico in with the games that have this sort of problem.  If someone is running away with a shipping strategy, the other players shouldn’t be helping them out by choosing the production role over and over again… It isn’t as drastic as seen in direct conflict games, but it is still an issue.

One additional thing not mentioned, not only is it often detrimental to take on the leader (you both lose) all too often it is to your advantage to pick on the losing player, as they are the weakest and least defended....

Like most “tech tree” games Supernova has a rich get richer power curve.  That is you have the toughest odds when you attack the leader (who is using his lead to up his attack and defense abilities and increase his ability to lead even further). You will get better rewards by attacking weak players.

In that way Supernova is not like many of the games Eric mentioned but is like other games such as Twilight Imperium 3 or Age of Renaissance. As you would suspect these types of designs are hard to balance. Some of the tricks other games use are:

1. Have limitations that make managing a larger empire more difficult.
2. Have advantages that players who cooperate can leverage.

I think it’s just a matter of how aggressive people in your group are. I know that when we’ve played Galactic Emperor, which has been accused of much the same issues, that we never have them, as we are very aggressive, and are unwilling to let this group think take hold.