[OEAO]

Originally Posted by ollie

Here's one that hasn't been explicitly described yet, although I think it's similar to some, especially Cleon's Micro vs. Macro.

412. Think about the endgame first. Which units are favoured in head-to-head battles can be wildly out of line with their point costs (while everything is roughly balanced in the big picture). So planning to leave yourself a winning endgame does not necessarily reduce to killing points faster than your opponent. I learnt this as a newish player the hard way from @Bengi in a game we were, I think, both very happy with its progress until it came down to my Charos against his Marro Warriors, at which point I quickly became less happy. I don't remember the units any more, but I do remember getting the better of @loborocket using this principle (and almost nothing else) in a game soon afterwards.

On the more important issue of the interaction of punctuation and quotation marks, the question is whether a logical mess is better or worse than a visual mess. If it helps you decide, note that the visual mess is not a mess at all. People are quite capable of taking in symbols at different heights within the line. It's far more important to not jar them with illogical punctuation (unless they've had the illogical rules pounded into them for decades---while it would be rude to mention names, I fear that some among us are lost causes.)

Good point on endgame. Will include in an update, thanks!