Board Game Arena

Why do you have to wait 50% of the game to give up?

There are situations where it becomes clear who will win when playing with two players.

AvaDDon wrote: ↑08 September 2025, 00:32 Why do you have to wait 50% of the game to give up?

There are situations where it becomes clear who will win when playing with two players.

To make it more burdensome for people who make alt accounts to Elo boost with them. If you could just concede after one move, many of the cheaters would. Yes, it would be easy to see that pattern. But it's also easy to do, and we're already dealing with the type of people who are too lazy to try to get better, so some of them are also too lazy to Elo boost in a way that looks legitimate.

So yes, it's imperfect. It doesn't catch the more motivated cheaters and it restricts people who would like to concede earlier legitimately. Honestly, 50% does not seem like it was carefully thought out to balance all the competing concerns. It just seems arbitrarily chosen as the halfway point between 0 and 100%.

If you want to give up, the fastest way is to standard project oceans. Each parameter counts for 33% of the "game progression", so if you max out the oceans, it is very likely you will reach 50%.

ft029 wrote: ↑08 September 2025, 03:30 If you want to give up, the fastest way is to standard project oceans. Each parameter counts for 33% of the "game progression", so if you max out the oceans, it is very likely you will reach 50%.

Or standard project asteroids. Cheaper, though without the placement bonuses, so that might be a wash.

FrankJones wrote: ↑08 September 2025, 12:39

ft029 wrote: ↑08 September 2025, 03:30 If you want to give up, the fastest way is to standard project oceans. Each parameter counts for 33% of the "game progression", so if you max out the oceans, it is very likely you will reach 50%.

Or standard project asteroids. Cheaper, though without the placement bonuses, so that might be a wash.

There are 9 oceans. All the oceans account for 33% of game progress.

There are 19 (?) heat bumps. All the heat bumps account for 33% of game progress.

Then surely SP oceans are more efficient for game progress, as ft said? Why would you mention SP asteroids?

rambling_coherently is right: Each ocean provides 3.7% game progression; heat only 1.75%, oxygen 2.4%.

With oceans = 18, 1% costs 4.9 MC
With heat = 14, 1% costs 8 MC
With oxygen = 23, 1% costs 9.6 MC

Therefore, oceans are most efficient to get to 50%.

I had thought the game simply tracked the percentage of the necessary 42 TR steps have been completed, and used that percentage as the game progression number. In which case, any combination of 21 global parameter TR bumps would mean the game is 50% complete.

I never noticed until reading these last two posts that I had made an incorrect assumption. How about that. Learn something new every day.

So, yes, Oceans are the quickest path to 50%.

What is really annoying is when someone quits you only get the normal elo times the terraforming percentage. The game could be at 33%, but game has already been decided. They quit and now you only get 33% of your points. They do suffer an extra penalty but that doesn't help you.

It's a bit silly that a concede gives full points (as it should) but a ragequit (or a legit disconnect/emergency) only gives %progress, yeah

Conceding is a 2-player only thing whereas quitting is “available” at all player counts.