Some people have called the "Step One Stall" but this is how I've always heard it. This article will address what it is and how to position yourself to either benefit from it, or to not suffer from it.
The Step Two Stall happens in games of Power Grid where nobody builds their seventh (in 4/5 player games, sixth in 6 player games) city for a while, there can be two or more turns where nobody builds any cities and just powers the five or six that they have. I've even heard legends of games where the Step 3 card is revealed before Step Two is triggered, but I've never seen it happen. I've only seen Step Two Stalls in games with four players or more.
Why does it happen?
The Step Two Stall usually happens because none of the people who are able to trigger Step 2 want to do it. The people who want to start Step Two (those not benefitting from a stall) are unable to do it, usually because of prohibitively expensive connection costs; i. e. their cities are blocked in. The people who can easily start Step Two are benefitting from a stall because they are making more money each turn than their opponents (unless they build enough to trigger Step 2), or they can be towards the back of the turn order and it's important for them to get first crack at building those juicy cheap connections in Step 2.
The longer the stall goes on, the larger cash reserves people usually have, so the more important it is to continue the stall for those people benefitting from it. Being towards last place when Step 2 hits is a strong move, but if everybody is building five or more cities before you ever get a chance to build any Step 2 Cities, you're going to be hurting even more. In general, the longer the stall goes, the more incentive the people causing it have to continue it.
What can I do about it?
The easiest thing, and most of the time the best thing you can do is to position yourself to benefit from the stall. This puts your opponents in a difficult position because either they can give you an advantage by stalling with you, or you get to have good initiative on the first turn of Step 2. How can you position yourself this way? Well it comes down to having at least one of two things: good plants and good board position.
An ounce of prevention...
What does it mean to have good plants for a Step 2 Stall? You want to be able to efficiently power 5 or 6 cities. Usually a single endgame plant will suffice for this, and the 13 Plant (nothing -> 1 City) helps as well. You want to profit a lot by powering less than 7 (or 6 in a 6P game) cities, so this should be a significant factor when you're looking for your second and third power plants of the game. Operating efficiently here is very valuable; the more prepared you are for this point in the game, the more you can benefit from it.
...A pound of cure.
Sometimes you don't get that luxury of being efficient in the early game. Hopefully in return for that, you have at least a strong board position. This means you're in a place where you can build the few cities remaining on the board for Step 1 at a reasonable price. If you're lost on both of these accounts, then you've probably misplayed the beginning of the game and you're about to pay for it, but the course of action is still the same (it just hurts more).
If you're not benefitting from a Step 2 Stall, then you don't want it to happen, or at least you want it to be short: you've got to build those cities and trigger Step 2. Now don't just go building them if you can't power them, that's even more of a waste. Once someone builds up to Step 2, that almost guarantees them first place in the turn order, so you have to be prepared for the consequences of that.
If you've prevented the stall by doing this, that's pretty good, you have just a slightly weaker position than your opponents, and hopefully the extra money you made from powering one or two more cities than everybody else will compensate for that. If the stall has been happening for a while now, though, you need to go big, since you likely won't be able to expand at all next turn.
Positioning yourself for a potential Step Two Stall is one of the more subtle tactical plays you can make in the early game and it can carry a big advantage. Look for these things to maximize that advantage, or to deny those advantages to your opponent.
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Topic: The Step Two Stall (draft) (Read 5186 times)