by tonylhf
In the start of the game, you really have only got a limited number of actions. If you happen to explore into empty or single-planet hexes with a discovery tile on them. What do you do?Do you take the discovery tile by placing an influence disc on the hex, to get some use out of your explore action?
However, a discovery tile is good, of course, but in the first couple of rounds double-planet systems (non-advanced) are much more valuable. If you had only got the discovery tile (which may only give you a small boost/or useless tech) and your opponent could find a good production system, you and your component have both used the same amount of influence discs but the production player is in much better position. It seems to be not worth to keep the planet with discovery tiles on it. This situation much worse if this happen to be your 2nd or 3rd discovery hex in the very first 2-3 exploration action.
But if you skip this, you will waste an valuable action and getting nothing (especially in the start of the game).
This is also apply to a situation where you draw a 2nd or 3rd ancient hexes which you probably could not deal with at the start of the game. Again, you will need to upgrade/build/move which is very time consuming while the production player could generate resource for 1-2 rounds ahead of you.
It appears that a player with bad drawing of hexes could be very disadvantages. I don't see the player can do anything. Is the luck of drawing exploration hex really that crucial and game breaking? What do you guys do when you are having a very bad draw?