Alveole

[Cragatz]

I just finished a game (#30418084) in which I claimed 8 of my worthy opponents pieces and still held all nine of mine. Upon taking his 8th piece the game ended and he was declared winner.

Is this supposed to happen? Is a good strategy then to try and lose all of your pieces before your opponent can connect all of theirs?

I had been wondering, before capturing piece 8, whether the game might end in a draw because I would not have enough moves to connect all my pieces. If a player has only 2 or three pieces left and they connect those few pieces before their opponent can connect their eight or nine (or seven, six, five, etc.) pieces would the player with the fewer pieces win? Any of these situations would be alright, it's just that reading the rules as they are now my assumption was that it was a good thing to remove the other player's pieces from the board...perhaps that old saying about 'assume' is quite relevant in this case.

I had the same question. I didn't take all of my opponents pieces, but I was eliminating a lot of them and noticed that he had a small clump of 3 pieces together. I had way more pieces together in a section than he did, but I was concerned that he would win by losing pieces.

I get the idea of making that an additional strategy to the game, but it just seems like kind of a "cheat win" to become the victor by losing too much. It's like saying, 'don't worry if you're losing horribly, just purposely lose even worse and then you win!' Again, it feels like giving the loser an easy out.

I feel like there should be an alternate winning condition allowing a player to win if they take say 6 of the opponents pieces. I think by including that rule, it would still allow for an additional strategy element to the game but without coming off as a "cheat win" type of feel. (FYI - In the end, I won that particular game the normal way by getting all of my pieces together.)

[sourisdudesert]

Hello,

Let's be 100% clear : at this game, 90% of the time this is a BAD move to capture an opponent piece. This may be a good idea to split the opponent "pack" in 2 parts, but capturing an isolated piece is probably a bad move 99% of the time.

That's it. The goal of the game is to gather all pieces together, not to capture enemy pieces.

[JrmC]

Actually I think it's a good move to capture a neutral opponent piece as it gives you more control over the board.

As for the 'cheat win', I think you guys are overreacting, if your opponent manage to win by forcing you to capture its pieces then they deserve the win because that's a pretty hard thing to do.

[Liallan]

So... I tried to click on the Edit for the Rules Summary that came from the Wiki, but once over there it doesn't let me do anything. I can understand if no one wants people just messing with the Wiki, but it certainly sounds like an invitation to do so.

Can someone explain this? (I know this isn't really about Alveole specifically, but that just happened to be when it came up. I don't think I can use the string translator to do something from Wiki.)