Tournament Finals Structure Promotes Stalling

In my experience, timeouts in finals usually happen because finalists tend to be more conservative than usual, and therefore neither do they want to be ousted (the understandable "primum vivere") nor are they willing to let another Methuselah oust their prey.

Hence, they spend a considerable amount of time on tough negotiations in the hope of dealing a final blow in the last minutes (for those who are not the top seed) or to stay alive for as long as possible (for the top seed).

What in my opinion many players do not realise is that overall they should not prevent the oust of the first Methuselah (in fact, they should make that happen as soon as possible), because that would grant the remaining players more time, and would change the game dynamics and break the more-often-than-not overrated "game balance".

Note that if a final has a 2 hour time limit, each player has only 24 minutes available to win the game if the other four Methuselahs are still alive. And if we bear in mind that a VTES game lasts for 10 to 12 turns, that means that each player will have 2 minutes and 24 seconds to spend on their turns in the best case scenario.

However, what I witness quite often is finalists not being aware of the time factor. They play their turns as if the final were never going to end. They sometimes get into meaningless negotiations, or useless actions that are not in their best interest, thus wasting their precious time and that of others.

Do not take me wrong though. The top seed can obviously aim for the time out and not be necessarily stalling. That's a perfectly legitimate way of winning a tournament. But the other four finalists should know better and break the game as soon as possible.

Time is running...