>Noble points are not the problem. I believe that the single biggest
>problem in olympia is the fact that old players who got a jump on
>the "lair cleaning" during the first few turns have a serious
>advantage over either players who did not participate (largely their
>fault) and newbies (faultless).
Not necessarly older player's faults, either.
Someone who was lucky enough to get an elfstone, orb, or control
artifact early on had a big advantage at getting many more lairs than
other folks. So there are "old" players who got pretty stuck, on that
score. These days most lairs are probably cleaned out everywhere,
because units travelling through Faery have gone to all continents.
And new control artifacts aren't as good as old ones, and everyone's
orbs got crippled, but old players who had them early got more mileage
at spotting hidden inner locations with them. And, finally, the fact
that inner location names are in a sequence makes it easier for the
folks with orbs or priests to guess lairs that are in their
territory... All these are flaws which make Olympia less of an
open-ended game. But designing such a game is difficult, and I've yet
to see a game which did a great job at it.
-- Oleg & greg