From: irilyth@fenris.claremont.edu (Josh Smith)
Subject: Re: Titan - who does NOT like it?
Originator: irilyth@fenris
Organization: HMC Academic Computing Services
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 16:45:28 GMT

In a prior article, Gerld Siek (jerry@uni-paderborn.de) writes:
> [Tell me why I shouldn't buy Titan.]

The main problem I have with Titan is the huge amount of "dead time" in the
game. By dead time I mean time when one or more of the players is doing
absolutely nothing. FTF Diplomacy has very little dead time, since if you're
not spending every minute talking to other players, you probably should be.
Civilization has some, while you wait for other players to move their
populations (but the trading round has none, and others' moves can affect
you if they invade your territory).

Titan has a _lot_ of dead time. When one player is making her move, there's
virtually nothing the other players can do except wait for her to finish.
Her moves don't convey much information about her stacks, though it's worth
paying attention to her recruiting; there's really no reason to do anything
except go get a cup of coffee and ask for a summary when you get back.
Because it's not really polite to make the other players sit and watch while
you head out for drinks, you end up either sitting and watching yourself, or
deciding it's not worth the trouble and talking to other players or reading
a book or playing Hearts on the side or whatever.

This problem is amplified in games with six players, where you have five
dead turns in between each of yours. It is further amplified with novices,
who can take forever to move their stacks, especially if they have more than
three or four. I've played enough that I can keep track of what's in all of
my stacks and where they're trying to go, and just roll the die and move
them, but for each stack on every turn, new players need to check through
the entire stack to remember what's there, painstakingly count out their
move to see where the stack can go, check the recruiting tables for each of
those spaces to see if the stack can recruit there, and finally move the
damn thing. With seven or ten stacks, this can get really agonizing, and
four such players in a single game makes the game almost intolerable.

And then there's combat, which pulls two players off to the side for five
minutes to half an hour, when there's not even any point in _watching_,
since all you care about is the result, and you can get a summary of that
very easily by just looking at the victorious stack when it all ends. Combat
in Titan just isn't exciting enough to watch the entire thing, especially
after a few hours of playing... And novices again make this worse, as they
don't have any clue about the tactics of Titan combat, and spend all sorts
of time trying to figure out how to maneuver their creatures so as to avoid
getting massacred.

So the real problem I have with Titan is that you spend much of your time
watching rather than playing, and that's generally less fun, because Titan
isn't a particularly exciting game to watch.

Having said all that... I like Titan a lot, and don't recommend that you
avoid it on the grounds I mention above, for one simple reason: once you've
played a few games and know what you're doing, the game flows much more
quickly. Experienced players can make moves in only a minute or two, and
their combats are much quicker than those between novices. Once your an
experienced player, I think Titan is a lot of fun, and much of the dead time
problem fades away.

The trouble is that you have to play a few games as a novice and with
novices before you can become experienced, and that if you play these games
to the end, they will probably take 6 - 16 hours, much of which time you
will be watching rather than playing. Most people I've met who have played
Titan either like the game, because they suffered through the novice stages
and are now experienced enough to move quickly, or absolutely hate it
because they found the novice games so intolerable.

So, the summary here is that this is not a good game to pull out at a party
where no one knows how to play yet, because the game _will_ be long, boring,
and frustrating to most of the players. It is a good game to play with a
regular gaming group, who can play it a few times, get the hang of it, and
then play for real once they've gotten good enough to keep it running
smoothly.

Alternative viewpoints welcomed, as usual, but my experience have definitely
been that Titan is not fun to play with novices, and that the only reason to
do so is to give them some experience so that you can play more enjoyable
games later. The fact that Titan requires this kind of painful breaking-in
is something of a flaw, but given that there don't seem to be other games
which follow a similar concept but do it any better, it may be worth it.
-- 
original text by Josh Smith    ::   Comments, questions, etc. welcomed
irilyth@fenris.claremont.edu   ::   #include <std.disclaimer>
"If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll
look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy."