Twilight Struggle is generally played at DEFCON 2, which means that you are always one mistake from starting nuclear war and losing the game. At the start of every Turn (not round) DEFCON is raised by one level - so generally DEFCON 3.
The Soviets always go first, so they can always coup a battleground ( DEFCON 5 you can coup in any region, 4 means no coups in Europe, 3 none in Asia or Europe, 2 none in Middle East, Asia or Europe). You can coup non Battleground states in Africa and the Americas at DEFCON 2.
In each Turn you need to perform a required number of military ops and you lose points if you don’t meet that target and have fewer than your opponent. Ben has taken 2 points of us in each of Turns 2&3 by couping in his first Action Round and then leaving us no target for our coup.
The only other way to get military ops are from events - usually wars, but they are mostly Soviet events or a few other cards.
So, DEFCON is currently at 3. The only country of ours he can coup is Jordan, which is non Battleground. That means he can remove our influence, get military ops, but it won’t reduce DEFCON - so we could coup back. We could target a battleground though - Iran, South Africa, Algeria or Panama.
An African or Panama coup (if successful) gets us access to those regions so it’s a really good play. However, we have Puppet Government which will enable us to play into Africa or the Americas. With DEFCON at 2 he can’t coup us out. Under Cuban Missile he also couldn’t coup us out of a non Battleground state. We miss the chance to coup, but he can’t coup anywhere for the entire turn. If he gives us a non Battleground target we could still coup there.
I’m on the app (chrislear, predictably), and I enjoy TS, but I have one infinite game going on (we just reset every time I lose - I mean every time it ends), and I’m so bad at ignoring the little icon on my phone that I don’t want to add more distraction, much as I’d enjoy it. Being an onlooker in this thread was the perfect level of additional involvement.
I have an account on playdek under this name as well. Having finally beaten the AI a couple of times in a row now, I feel qualified to lose against a human opponent.
I just noticed this exchange of Playdek names. I hope this experiment doesn’t put people off playing with me - I got lucky in this game, I don’t (can’t) sink this level of analysis into normal games, and I do lose sometimes! I’m in the process of losing 3 games at the same time against 3 different opponents right now…
You have become quite the legend. The main problem I experience with the app is that I can lose track easily if I have more than 3 games on (probably even with less); I have had big blunders considering I was playing as the USA when I was actually playing with the USSR, and vice versa (@Captbnut and @lalunaverde can testify to that). In a game with an expert, I know that is the beginning of the end.
But I would love to have a go against you, just for the experience of playing a different opponent. I’d like to say, I am still to beat a human being, so that may make me slightly more popular
Yeah, I don’t really like playing multiple games at once, but I entered a small tournament that required starting two games while I had one ongoing. Once I lose them all I’ll have some free focus to spare.
