>Whethee that was because of tough bidding >or our abysmally low APs is another question.
Size of AP pools is not relevant. Given that, as Dave pointed out, that extended contests will not usually be of great disparity in abilities, no participant will have less than half the AP of their opponents, usually. Meaning that it's always possible for one side to conclude the contest in one bid, and the other at most two if they so desire. In most cases, the number of rounds has a very small lower limit (1). Meaning that duration has more to do with player desires than anything else.
Even if you're fighting a fight "against impossible odds" where the opponents have many times your AP due to numbers, they can still conclude it at any time, and you can do so in less rounds than your number of opponents likely (if your ability from which you're getting AP is also lower, you're pretty much doomed in this situation). In a fight against ten guys each represented with their own AP, I'd be trying to take out as many as I could each round to get rid of the multiple attacker penalties. Might only take 7 rounds or so if I'm good, and less if I'm really tough.
One of the things that can stretch out extended conflicts is players forgetting to bid, and thus bidding the default 3. I try to catch that, and ask for a considered bid.
So, IME, I see a lot of extended conflicts going something like this:
That's four rounds to a certain result, and lots of chances that it'll be over earlier. If it's more subtle, or more dramatic, it might get drawn out as many as another 3 rounds or so. But I'd be very surprised to see an extended Conflict ever get to 10 rounds.
Mike
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