I was wondering, would it possibly be better to limit categories to specific tribes?

Any% being any tribe, Free (only starting 3), Rubies (only Ruby bought), and last being the purchased tribes (I don't know a name that sounds nice).

Because Arabis is available in all runs and possibly is the best for speed, meaning all categories could be dominated by only Arabis. Having categories limited by what groups can be used would make the categories more diverse for tribe use.

Right now an Arabis run could be submitted to all 4 categories. Just my thoughts.

You are right, the catagories could receive an overhaul.

I have been considering deleting Free% since once you buy a tribe via real money or rubies you can't run Free% the way the current rules intend since you can't disable tribes.

Any% and Free% would be dominated by Arabis so it makes sense to default to Any%. Unless Free% only includes the first 2 tribes.

I could change the Ruby% rules to what you are mentioning because with the current rules you would be forced to not make any purchases.

Then the payed for tribes could be Pay% or Whale%. We might see more variety in runs if it is broken up this way.

As for All% I would like to maintain that as the "slow" run of the board.

Let me know what you think and if you have anymore suggestions! Also any suggestions for other categories similar to the Full map reveal catagory. Thanks for sticking around!

Free% - Yeah, could possibly be better to limit free to the 2 tribes, but at that point that seems like a very small category. With that, might be better to remove it.

Yeah, limiting to no purchases to play Ruby% seems too strict. Limiting to only playing with Ruby tribes would be good enough since you could technically run into the other tribes in game anyway

Whale% sounds better and fitting. And yeah, variety is nice for a game like this I think.

Yeah, All% would be the slow version for sure. I think there needs some clarification for it though. All, like win on all tribes on trainee or just free tribes? Also, my 2 cents, trainee has the starting 50 gold. Do we want the category to have that easy money to buy any skills quickly?

Full map sounds like an okay small category. One thing that needs to be decided is if items are allowed. Can a person use an item to start with extra units or gold, or should those be not allowed? I'd say they shouldn't be allowed because they are fairly limited and you are slow to get them (meaning it'll take a lot of time to get the right item to make a run attempt) Unless we want a category specifically for it.

Yea, I'm thinking remove Free%. Also, changing Ruby% to be another 1v1 category that you just need one Ruby tribe to play. Whale% will be the same.

All% is meant to be for a 10 tribe game, so only the most dedicated would really run the category.

I thought about the Trainee free gold and limiting items. I can specify a Trainee - No Gold difficulty. As for items and mercenaries I wasn't too worried about limiting them for the main categories. I did want to see if any strategies would evolve involving the items.

The solution I could see is an Any% -No items category. I feel like there would be too much overlap with the current Any% though. I'll have to try out items myself to see what kind of difference they make.

If anything items and mercenaries would have the most impact on the All% category since all the other categories are 1v1s that rely on spawning near the enemy tribe and quickly outsmarting the AI. Any additional "menuing" could slow down the 1v1 categories ruining times.

I might try some runs with items see how things go.

Ah, might be best to mention it's for a 10 tribe game. My first thought was to do everything inside a single game (all upgrades, resource tiles, etc). As for the gold, I guess it's just something specifically for the All%. Just depends what kind of run it should be. Fast, where you have lots of gold to play with, or slower where you need to maybe upgrade some things and think a little more on which upgrades.

Gold would make the run easier/faster though if that is wanted.

Yeah, adding other categories for items seems a bit much, but just wanted your ideas on items. Would have the biggest impact for All%, though the extra gold item would make the other runs drop in time for sure, since you can skip a few turns of gold making to get the upgrades. I don't know how fast the items are used, but might be a guaranteed time save that is only available in a few runs a week.

But yeah, can only try it to see if it's a big difference. Also run the risk of using an item on a bad map, meaning the item is lost with no benefit.

Quick other thing as I see you make changes. I see you did a normal Trainee% no gold. I was thinking about the gold in the All%. Do we want the gold in there? I think the gold in Trainee is okay personally (if you disagree the no gold is okay)

I think the remedy for this is to make an All% no items category. For the Trainee no gold I'm just referring to the free gold they give you after the first turn.