Footholds Archetypes: "Food for Thought"

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by kaffis

Which is why having 2-faction "home-continents" seems like a better idea. Then, the fighting can be over not only the warpgates that open up access to other continents, but also the home continents themselves (because they're never "safe" from at least one other empire).

Those warpgates, then, can lead to either other 2-faction home-continents (providing either access to that continent for the non-footholded empire or a tactical foothold that grants access to push into the opposition's holdings from multiple fronts) or to completely neutral continents, which may get locked but will never have a stranglehold by the locking empire, because they must hold their beachhead access with no special advantages of permanent access.

Yes that's option #3 in the OP. It isn't particularly bad, but still less space utilization than #1, which I think has to be the priority. #3 would be an interesting option to consider with more continents. For launch they need to maximize player density, because that density will drop the moment a single continent is added and with each additional continent. As density drops the need for a different continental layout goes up, both to keep density high in a local area and to add more strategic depth to the game.