EDIT: In the above mentioned idea, I had a duel in mind as far as d6 v d6 goes. With 3 players, d7 v d6 would be the standard, and with 4 it would be d8 v d6. 

HUGH!!!

Hugh wrote:

Escalation's d8 v d6 (3 to 1 attacker edge) is an extreme example, but one I like as far as giving attacker an incentive. Yertle's examples are some of my favorite attacker incentive games.

I don't know if I've seen this implemented, but I would like to see a d6 vs d6 war of attrition game. No bonuses, no cards. Both sides start with some armies and whoever is alive at the end wins. Probably need an attack limit, some fog and some artillery border modifier spots to make it interesting. That would be an anti-crab game.

The problem with this design is that there is a potential for stalemate - when all territories are reduced to a single army.

Not a problem - use abandonment and dice that favor the attacker on 1v1. The design requires attacker edge on all dice rolls, preferably enough attacker edge over multiple opponents (again, likely fog is needed to be interesting). 

Anyway, I only advocate this idea because it solves the "crab problem" in a direct way. Sometimes with bonuses and cards, you have to ask the question of whether the cards/bonuses solve the crab problem or create it, which can be tricky. Here you can say, "ah 4 player board, attackers need at least 3 to 1 edge, let's use d8 v d6". 

I don't mean to favor ONLY aggressive attacking die solutions to Oz's crab problem. I just think this idea is one interesting approach. Smurfs and 3-Legged solve the problem beautifully, I think, on boards with defensive modifiers.

Thanks for the shout-out Yertle! 

Hugh wrote:

Not a problem - use abandonment and dice that favor the attacker on 1v1. 

That actually is a problem Hugh.  Tom has it set so that you cannot initiate an attack where you could possibly eliminate yourself.  So if you do get down to 1 unit a piece in a game with no units coming in, even with abandonment, the game is stalemated.

Good to see you again.

Bummer - well, you could make that scenario unlikely with larger numbers, or that aspect of the engine could be altered :) There are other work-arounds, such as making a spot that is extremely difficult to reach under normal circumstances (when lots of enemy armies are lurking about) that is the sole spot of continent bonuses, or of course, some sort of similar idea with capitals. Stranger work-arounds have been accomplished by existing boards.

I'm on it, Hugh!

Yes!!

Hugh wrote:

Stranger work-arounds have been accomplished by existing boards.

Here's one potential work around-

Make every pair of territories carry a -1 bonus, and every single territory a +1 bonus. Then the only way to earn a bonus is to have 1 territory.

Or give only a few (one?) territories a +1 bonus and the rest a -1 bonus.  And make those +1 bonus territories easy to capture.

Amidon37 wrote:

Hugh wrote:

Stranger work-arounds have been accomplished by existing boards.

Here's one potential work around-

Make every pair of territories carry a -1 bonus, and every single territory a +1 bonus. Then the only way to earn a bonus is to have 1 territory.

Your second suggestion might be the best realistic approach. This is the more fascinating one though! I'm assuming that whenever the bonuses are highly negative the site defaults to the min bonus (which would be set to 0).

It turns out that having exactly two territories would also give you +1 because you'd get +2 and -1 for the one pair. To have it be like you say, you could go -2 per pair and +1 per territory. Very interesting solution :)

Ok, so I like that idea because people would have to attack to get an odd number of territories or they will be maximizing their penalties.  The problem would be the map itself because there would have to be a great deal of territories to make this idea work but the amount of bonuses and putting them all together would suck.

I think I also like the idea of having a large elimination bonus because I like elimination chains especially in a map where the initial strategy would be to try and maximize your bonuses by controlling territories in pairs.  I also like the idea of having "Special" territories with attack, defense, vision or something like that along with the risk/reward of neutral capitals.

I was initially thinking of doing this with a Stratego map but now with this idea I don't want it to be just a 2 player map (although I may use some of this for Stratego).  I need a theme!

Though elimination bonus is against the theme of a pure attrition battle, it would definitely make the gameplay better. The pair suggestion and its variants aren't truly necessary - we are, after all, worrying about a likely to be rare 1 army v 1 army ending. Such an ending would be worthy of a draw anyway!

Themes: Old war movie stuff - bridges, rivers, bunkers, watchtowers, hard to get to howitzers (in the game, not so much in the old movies). Western in a small town. Office building with spy cams on one floor, some hard to get to demolition stuff on another (and other goofy stuff sprinkled in).  Paranormal sewer fight. 

Ghostbusters.

Great suggestion Hugh, have thought about this before but nothing played out well, so nothing was implemented.  Good luck Risky and Yertle, I am sure you can come up with something.

By the way it is nice to see you return Hugh.

Turtling is a problem in boards with single territory continents that have a defense bonus and no max unit cap <if there is a max unit cap and defense bonus, it needs to be attackable from multiple territories>.

The Feudal Japan here struggles to move forward. There are castles with a decent bonus and a defense advantage. The easiest way to win is to stockpile armies in the castles, get a card by taking a meaningless territory guarded by 1 army (the majority of territories are meaningless, ie non-continent). Leave a path out of the castle and wait for the card values to get high and you may cascade. But it is too obvious and easy to employ the same strategy... wait for someone to get impatient and get suicidal. These games drag on for months if everyone knows what they are doing.

A good example would be ant farm. Lots of bonuses, but the chokepoints ensure you can hold many continents, but only have to defend a few places. So even when it goes from 16 to 4 players, it can be well defended but the bonuses are large enough there are plenty of opportunities to attack and advance.

Turtling is a problem in boards with single territory continents that have a defense bonus and no max unit cap

This is definitely a recipe for disaster much of the time.

Gimli, you seem to be saying Antastic doesn't suffer from the crabgame?  I have to disagree (and I see that Oatworm said much the same).   The last game I played on it, we had to vote to terminate because it was obviously not going anywhere.  From what I recall, the three of us were all about equal, had about 100+ units on our chokepoints, and were each getting around 30-40 units a turn.   No one had an incentive to spent 100 units getting through a chokepoint, just to get another +5 or +10/turn bonus, if they could even hold those continents.

A lot of this, was as Risky said 'the players fault', but I hate to blame those type of players, because I am one.  I feel like if I can force a draw instead of a loss, I'll pretty much always do it.  That just makes sense to me, and I don't think there is anything necessarily wrong with that.  The only problem I have is that those games can get boring as we wait for everyone to come to the realization that the game has dead-ended.   That's one reason I think some sort of map designer built in safety valve (i.e. no players eliminated & no change in lead for X turns ends the game in a draw or win), would be useful. 

http://www.wargear.net/games/player/173051

This game of mine just finished, that had been going since July. It's a 16 player game, but by october or so there were only four of us. We pretty much built up our borders for a long time, occasionally burning a bunch of troops on each other while keeping it balanced. It was interesting how all of a sudden limburg had a big advantage and there was nothing we could do to stop him. Also intereting was that for some time ruthleggz was much weaker than us, but nobody had an incentive to take him out. Could be due in part to the cards being permenantly at 5.

The longest crab game of my WG career has finally finished!

 http://www.wargear.net/games/player/119120

517 days, 10 hrs., 32 mins, and 53 sec to finish

177 turns

In the end it took a boot to break the deadlock, without it I don't know if it would ever have ended.

Only 177 turns however. That doesn't seem like that many.