Bajong:I only really have a few things to note:
1. It's important to remember that the cost of researching Returning Armada at any given time can be either neutral or negatively. As I said earlier, it's striking a
balance being capable of fending off the enemy, while getting edging closer to introduce Returning Armada. You have to adapt to the flow of the game. In other words, it's about ensuring that the two sides of the equation conjoined by yours are equal.
Vasari Skill + Defensive Advantage - Returning Armada Cost = Enemy Skill
If one of the two sides inherently (due to player skill) are bigger than the other, there's no need/use for Returning Armada, the game should be decided already.
2. The offensive player's advantage isn't tangible, but solely consists of minimizing the advantage of the defensive player by utilizing the fact that he has the initiative to the fullest and attack the enemy's weakest planet(s). It's effect is 100% of the player's skills (but then again, so is the size of the defensive advantage).
3. Given what you call an economic cold war, I think it'll be essential for the outcome that, relatively speaking, the Vasari economy has the potential to grow stronger over time compared to the TEC/Advent economy which becomes weaker over time. This is naturally caused by the fact that a large percentage of the raw income the other race enjoys (typically larger than the Vasari's) is tied to fleet production, while the Vasari economy is largely independant from the Vasari fleet and can be used to improve itself.
4. You're right that, unless a player is completely ignorant, he's going to have to adjust to his opposition's tactics. There's a causality (action and reaction) at play when it comes to tactics and I wouldn't have it any other way. My issue, however, is with the fact that a player's chosen race predetermines the overall strategy another player will have to use in order to win. That's to limit a player before the causality of the game itself goes into effect (first contact with the enemy).
Finally, I would like to admit that yes, most of my statements require that there's something resembling stalemate (or equality of skill) in order to really come into play. And add that I never intended to insult you and I've enjoyed our discussion, so I honestly hope you were just kidding!
To Maldon:
You're looking at definitions of the term when used in a scientific context, which really aren't applicable to what I said, or at least intended to say. I don't demand statistical evidence, nor that everybody adheres to rigorous scientific methods. So, despite what you and others might think, I'm not asking every poster to write a Ph.D. about Returning Armada
Now, just for reference, take a look at what I said:
With regards to what Maldon said, Bajong is right when makes the point that purely anecdotal evidence just doesn't cut it when you're trying to refute something, it can support your point, but not be your point. Too many incontrollable variables exists.
I checked Wikipedia to see if I'd misused the term, and figured that you had probably done something similar. So, I'm going to use it as basis for what I'm going to say. As Wikipedia says, the term "anecdotal evidence" is often used to describe evidence for which there is an absence of documentation. Lets take a look at your own example of anecdotal evidence:
Oh, and in regards to the claim as to culture not being an effective weapon, Ill simply say this, I was playing as the Vasari once, and researched the first two tech levels for culture, I had kicked off an opponents culture off his planet with five minutes, and the Vasari are not particulary strong in culture research in the beginning, thus, if you simply used more than one or two, or three broadcast centers for advent, as well as sufficient culture research, you could give your opponents quite a hectic time.
There's no way for me to adequately refute your conclusion as I can't reliably replicate your results since many variables are unknown. i.e. what was the allegiance of the planet in the beginning (25? 110?), how many broadcast centers influenced the planet? Did he have any anti-culture technologies researched or any culture structures of his own? Was he human or AI and what race was he? My own anecdotal evidence when it comes to culture is that I, in several AI games and 75+ games online, haven't once lost a planet to culture. But there's no way for you to know what factors where in effect for me to achieve this. This is a problem due to the fact that anecdotal evidence is not necessarily typical; statistical evidence can more accurately determine how typical something is. Another issue is that people actually have a tendency to trust anecdotal evidence more than statistical evidence.
Good examples of wrongly used anecdotal evidence is a few of the strategy threads made by Kruelgor, who didn't try to neutralize the variables that only implicitly affected his strategies when he tested them. In effect they were flawed but widely used. At least we got some good discussions out of it (albeit far too much flaming on the part of others). Thanks to flawed inductive reasoning, far to many make hasty generalizations based on their own subjective experiences (I think that's called the availibity heuristic in English, looks like it on Wikipedia). Everybody is prone to doing it, me included. I'm not saying that I'm entirely in the camp of the theorycrafters like my discussion with Bajong would indicate, but rather that the best way to constructive discuss unbalances, and aid the developers, is making use of both well-documented anecdotal evidence and statistical evidence. After all, as Frogboy said, there are a lot of factors that just have to be played to be seen in games. Finally, this rhetoric related explanation of anecdotal evidence captures my point fairly well (in case I didn't - I'm tired):
Anecdotal evidence, for example, is by definition less statistically reliable than other sorts of evidence, and explanations do not carry the weight of authority. But both anecdotal evidence and explanations may affect our understanding of a premise, and therefore influence our judgment. The relative strength of an explanation or an anecdote is usually a function of its clarity and applicability to the premise it is supporting.
