From: farrell@woozie.cis.ohio-state.edu (christopher k farrell)
Newsgroups: rec.games.board
Subject: Re: Titan: 2 types of megacreatures in one stack
Date: 17 Apr 92 16:03:18 GMT
Organization: The Ohio State University, Department of Computer and Information Science

In article <1252@idacrd.UUCP> desj@idacrd.UUCP (David desJardins) writes:
>In article <1992Apr6.220136.28871@ils.nwu.edu> lopez@ils.nwu.edu (Chris Lopez) writes:
>>It surprises me how many people actually use tower teleport.  I
>>almost never do it at any time during the game.  My Titan is far
>>safer when people don't know which stack he is in.  Even if it they
>>can say it is in one of those two or three.  Am I alone in this
>>philosophy?
>
>If your opponent(s) keep careful track of your moves, they will almost
>always be able to narrow your Titan stack down to one of two: one
>containing your Titan and the other your original Angel.  If either of
>these stacks is ever involved in combat, or if you summon your
>original Angel, then the location of your Titan is likely to be known.
>
>So there really doesn't seem to be much ambiguity available.  The
>problem is that Titan is just not a very good hidden movement game.
>By keeping track of your mustering it is possible to identify almost
>every unit.  (Splits quickly reveal themselves because the smaller
>stack usually uses all of its units in further recruiting, especially
>in a 5-2 split.)
>
>An interesting possibility for a moderated PBM game would be to play
>with true hidden movement.  That is, all that the other players would
>know is that you mustered a unit, but not which one.  This would add
>significantly to the concealment aspect of the game and thus reduce
>the value of teleportation.  I'm not sure what other effects it would
>have on the game.
>
>					David desJardins

	I never reveal my Titan either.  When anyone sees your Titan, it
shouldn't take a brilliant player to track it for the rest of the game; on
the other hand, anyone who can determine your titan stack based on a 19th
turn revelation of your original Angel stack is probably very good.

	Revealing your Titan early is almost always suicide.  You can
mask your titan stack by ingenious 3-4 or even 5-2 splits, but once he's out 
there, the ability to hide him is small (and expensive - you'll need to 
hurt your position badly).  On the other hand, once the angel is revealed, they
should have no more than a fuzzy notion of where your titan is (provided it's
into the game a bit).  They may be able to eliminate half the stacks in the 
game due to memory of the split tree, but I can do that well just by looking 
at the board and watching the behavior of the various stacks.
	
	As an aside, you also want to avoid doing typical things with your
Titan stack; like waiting for ideal circumstances to make a move, always 
guarding it with two or three other stacks - that sort of thing.  If you
take risks (and maybe even guard a worthless stack closely), that will draw
attention away from you Titan legion - although you may get nuked out of
existance if you aren't careful enough.

	There are plenty of mind games you can play with your opponents - but
if you reveal your Titan early, those options are lost, and you have to hope
that your Titan legion will either lose itself of become too nasty to beat.
Still, for a strong Titan legion to be safe, you have to have a strong army;
if the rest of your stacks are dead, you'll have to keep moving until you end
up in the Jungle facing down Serpents with Collossi.