by fourmidable » Tue Dec 06, 2011 1:42 am
I have a related question. When evaluating if the dominating players as 85% of the ants, are the ants in the hive considered, or only on the map?
It seems to me that some games stop very quickly even when forces are balanced on the map, but there is a large unbalance in unhatched ants. On some maps, it is possible to collect food much faster than spawning ants, leading to huge hive population. This is a problem as it is not possible to know the number of unhatched ants of the opponents, and thus when the "not razing hills" might trigger. Even knowing time is short, it might not be possible to mount a successful attack with the ants on hand. I believe the intent of this cutoff would be best served by considering only the hatched ants against the 85% threshold.