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Conceptually, I like the idea of heads-up Subterfuge, but I'm thinking that drilling up 200 NP might take way too long, and every match would just end with elimination. Part of the reason I dig this game is that everyone needs to strike a balance between the victory conditions -- it's not just "last player standing," and (diplomacy aside) if you just build a military force, you can be easily countered by someone that builds three mines and turtles before you can get to their queen.

The official forums just had a 2v2 tournament start, and I feel like that's a more interesting way to play a very small game, because you can have players take up different roles in different positions. The rule that I don't like from that tournament is the victory condition for it: "the team with the player that comes in first wins." This means one person can just gift most of their drillers and outposts to their teammate and turtle their queen for as long as they can to generate specialists for them; in fact, that's arguably the most effective strategy.

So, I'd like to propose an idea to balance this format, which extends naturally to 3v3 or 2v2v2 or whatever else.

At the end of the game, each surviving player gets a number of points equal to the inverse of their position. (In a 4-player game, first gets 4, second gets 3, third gets 2, fourth gets 1. In an 8-player game, first gets 8, second gets 7...) The team with the most points wins.

The kicker? If you don't finish the game due to elimination (or resignation), you get 0 points. If points are tied, the team with the single player finishing the highest is the winner.

This leads to a bunch of different strategies -- if, in a 2v2 match, one player is dominating the game, all the other team would need to do is assassinate her teammate and they'll win 5-4. (If their teammate survives to finish fourth, it'd be 5-5 and they'll win based on the "highest player" tiebreaker.)

In a 3v3 match, one player dominating the match still needs to assist their teammates, or else they run the risk of the opponents finishing 2nd/3rd/4th to their 1st/5th/6th and winning 12-9. It might even make sense at that point for one teammate to leave themselves open to elimination to boost their teammates' chances of getting 1st and 2nd (and win 11-9); obviously then it would be a 2v3 game with driller output and specialists to match.

Hey ! I'm the one who organized the 2v2 and I like your proposed idea. I agree the 1st place winner is not that great however, we implemented a system in which no mines are allowed for 10 days. In that case the winner is the team which eliminates the other 2. TO avoid games lasting for months, after 10 days you can have mines which will eventually lead to one player winning 1st place for his team.

Think of it this way. In a real war, the last man standing or the man with the most army / minerals/ resources at the end of the war is pretty much the winner. Regardless of the enemies being allied against him. This comes from the time limit problem.

But as I said in the first paragraph I like the idea with the points. This would also be a good way to create a long term league where n players face each other by rotation and accumulate points.

There are also problems with your system.. let me give you an example for 3v3:

1 Team 1
2 Team 2
3 Team 2
4 Team 1
5 Team 2
6 Team 1

This would lead to team 2 winning. Im not sure I would agree to that. Team 1 has 2 players in the top 4, same as team 2. and on top team 1 has the winning player. Why would they lose? Just because 5th and 6th place? Basically 5th and 6th dictate the outcome in this case.

I think this idea works best in single player. not teams necessarily. A league..like i mentioned above.

TL DR: i like the idea but i see some flaws with it. I think it would work best in a single player league where players play each other on a rotation basis and they accumulate points. Kind of like any major league sport.

So when the game was first released, I create two games titled: "Casual Head to Head".

In one of them, the other player auto resigned (lame).

In the other game, we had a very balanced, 6 day long game where we both had two mines and our outpost count was the single most important thing. It was a great game. I don't think 1v1 matches need to end in elimination, especially if the players are well-versed in defense tactics.