[Jash_J]

There are a couple of key differences in both Ultimate Ascent and Stronghold that need to be re-stated.

1) There is only space for one robot to collect a boulder out of the secret passage at a time where as in 2013, there were three locations to collect disks.
2) In 2013 as long as you were touching the pyramid, you were warranted as protected, in this year's game you can only be protected from the outer works which typically depending on line-up is only useful from the 3 and 4 positions.
3) There are less boulders than there were disks, even if you take into account that in this year's game you can only hold 1 boulder and in 2013 you could hold 4 disks per team.

That being said, I believe that defense will always be played, in some form. Whether it be a starvation strategy, neutral zone defense or the classic courtyard defense, especially in this year's game. Mainly due to the fact that the lesser scoring robot will be starved for balls and having them fight for a ball over another partner of theirs who scores faster/more accurately may not be worth it. It may be wiser to play a form of defense to decrease opponent cycle time.

1241 ran the 3 cycle strategy a couple of times at North Bay, just to see how it would turn out and it did work somewhat efficiently at the beginning when balls were in the neutral zone. After the first 30 seconds had passed and the balls were cleared from the neutral zone, there were only two locations to obtain balls from and that was the secret passage or the opponents secret passage. The game then turned into 1 robot cycling through the low bar, the other bot feeding the robot who remained in the courtyard who would shoot into the high goal.

It all comes down to the opponents you are facing, if there is no clear indication of weakness, then defense may not be worth playing and 3 cyclers may be more efficient, especially with the abbreviated 1 robot cycling, the other feeding the courtyard bot. However, most robots have weaknesses and if you exploit them correctly, there should always be a form of defense that can be played.