Conquer Club

Afternoon all,

Hope all are well!

I wanted to start a discussion here to see if anyone else has noticed this. In a handful of games, maybe 4 out of 20 or so, recently I've noticed a lot of players are starting with large bonuses making it very, very difficult and unfair to the other players. I've been given them myself, and I think this is an unfair advantage for myself in those games as well.

For example, I just started a World 2.1 game, and I started with 2 different bonuses in full. This also happened maybe a week or two ago in another World 2.1 game where I started with the entire China bonus, Green started with Mexico, and Yellow started with I think the Dark Brown SA bonus.

I've also noticed this in the World War II map, where players will start with multiple bonuses. Last month, I started with the whole of Vichy France. In another game, I had all of the Italy bonus.

I haven't noticed anything remarkable myself lately.

It shouldn't happen often, but it happens, especially on large maps with few players. If there are only 4 players to divide the territories amongst, a 3 territory bonus has a chance of 1/16 to go to a single player (there is a ~ 1 in 4 chance for each other territory in the bonus that it goes to the player who got the first territory). A 4 territory bonus gives a ~ 1/64 chance, a 5 territory bonus ~ 1/256.

World 2.1 has 3 bonuses consisting of 3 territories, 3 bonuses consisting of 4 territories and 3 bonuses consisting of 5 territories. That means that in a 4 player game, there is about a 58% chance someone starts with a 3 territory bonus, a 5.6% chance someone starts with a 4 territory bonus, and a 1.2% chance of someone starting with a 5 territory bonus. Also note that these aren't completely independent: if someone starts with a bonus, they hold less territories elsewhere on the map, so the chance that someone else also holds a bonus is slightly higher then normal.

You have played 81 4-player games on world 2.1. Given those odds, I would expect that out of those 81 games, roughly 47 had a player start with a 3 territory bonus, about 4 or 5 of them had a player start with a 4 territory bonus, and 1 of them had a player start with a 5 territory bonus. Note, however, that these are expectations, there will be variance. If 100 players play 81 4-player games on world 2.1, each of them has ~ a 62.4 percent chance of seeing a game with at least one 5 territory continent drop, which means that about 40 out of those 100 players will see 2 such games.

What you are describing, though unlikely, is still something I would expect to happen to someone on the site at some point, with someone dropping Vichy France or Italy in WWII Europe by far the most remarkable

Two player pearl harbour is tops for this

MichelSableheart wrote:I haven't noticed anything remarkable myself lately.

It shouldn't happen often, but it happens, especially on large maps with few players. If there are only 4 players to divide the territories amongst, a 3 territory bonus has a chance of 1/16 to go to a single player (there is a ~ 1 in 4 chance for each other territory in the bonus that it goes to the player who got the first territory). A 4 territory bonus gives a ~ 1/64 chance, a 5 territory bonus ~ 1/256.

World 2.1 has 3 bonuses consisting of 3 territories, 3 bonuses consisting of 4 territories and 3 bonuses consisting of 5 territories. That means that in a 4 player game, there is about a 58% chance someone starts with a 3 territory bonus, a 5.6% chance someone starts with a 4 territory bonus, and a 1.2% chance of someone starting with a 5 territory bonus. Also note that these aren't completely independent: if someone starts with a bonus, they hold less territories elsewhere on the map, so the chance that someone else also holds a bonus is slightly higher then normal.

You have played 81 4-player games on world 2.1. Given those odds, I would expect that out of those 81 games, roughly 47 had a player start with a 3 territory bonus, about 4 or 5 of them had a player start with a 4 territory bonus, and 1 of them had a player start with a 5 territory bonus. Note, however, that these are expectations, there will be variance. If 100 players play 81 4-player games on world 2.1, each of them has ~ a 62.4 percent chance of seeing a game with at least one 5 territory continent drop, which means that about 40 out of those 100 players will see 2 such games.

What you are describing, though unlikely, is still something I would expect to happen to someone on the site at some point, with someone dropping Vichy France or Italy in WWII Europe by far the most remarkable

That helps explain a lot! Thank you for being so thorough, the WWII one was the most surprising to me. I play that one a lot and haven't had those big bonuses often but it does happen, which they're 5 and 6 territories which is the surprising part. In World 2.1, the China bonus was the one that surprised me the most. 5 Territories. See, when I made maps yeaaaars ago, I put a part in the XML that helped mitigate the chances of people getting bonuses' on my maps during the drops.

All that said, devs could increase enjoyment by either:

1. making some game configurations incompatible (e.g. WWII Ardennes should never come up as a random when it's 1v1 as the first player's advantage is greatly amplified), or
2. tweaking xml to address those issues (so, for in the WWII Ardennes example, increase the number of terts that start neutral.)

Pearl Harbour and England, two maps that you can lose on before you even play. They should never have escaped the foundry.

Keefie wrote:Pearl Harbour and England, two maps that you can lose on before you even play. They should never have escaped the foundry.

in 1vs1 you mean.
Because in 6-8 players there is no issue with them
Pearl harbor especially is a very funny map in escalating 6+ players, lot of blocking/bombarding to do.
I don't think there are many maps out there that are really enjoyable in every settings.

1. making some game configurations incompatible (e.g. WWII Ardennes should never come up as a random when it's 1v1 as the first player's advantage is greatly amplified), or
2. tweaking xml to address those issues (so, for in the WWII Ardennes example, increase the number of terts that start neutral.)

Or just remove 1vs1 as a settings, solve the issue....
I don't really like 1vs1, as you can guess, but seriously your point number 2 is a good idea.
I know usually mapmaker mods don't really allow to change existing maps, but maybe if it's just changing the number of starting neutrals for 1vs1 they'd be up for it.
I think you could open a discussion on the Ardennes map thread about it and see if it's smthg that could be done.

Donelladan wrote:

Keefie wrote:Pearl Harbour and England, two maps that you can lose on before you even play. They should never have escaped the foundry.

in 1vs1 you mean.
Because in 6-8 players there is no issue with them
Pearl harbor especially is a very funny map in escalating 6+ players, lot of blocking/bombarding to do.
I don't think there are many maps out there that are really enjoyable in every settings.

1. making some game configurations incompatible (e.g. WWII Ardennes should never come up as a random when it's 1v1 as the first player's advantage is greatly amplified), or
2. tweaking xml to address those issues (so, for in the WWII Ardennes example, increase the number of terts that start neutral.)

Or just remove 1vs1 as a settings, solve the issue....
I don't really like 1vs1, as you can guess, but seriously your point number 2 is a good idea.
I know usually mapmaker mods don't really allow to change existing maps, but maybe if it's just changing the number of starting neutrals for 1vs1 they'd be up for it.
I think you could open a discussion on the Ardennes map thread about it and see if it's smthg that could be done.

Just had a quick look at the WW2 Ardennes map and yeah it has 73 territories none of which start neutral and so not one of the golden numbers for map territory count. As in both 2 and 3 player games players will start with 24 regions each and 18 in 4 player. As one of the map mods not opposed to adding some neutral territories but don't know the map very well to suggest which ones would want to be neutral. It would happen for all player amounts. 66-71 territories are the best for this sized map and if not them then yeah would be best to code some as neutral to get it to be one of those or similar golden numbers But yeah best to discuss on the specific map viewtopic.php?t=36886

Not sure how Iancanton would feel about making a change to a live map though

And yes all new maps we try to reduce bonus drops or number of territories to be advantageous as much as possible and iron out any issues we find as part of the map making process.

Keefie wrote:Pearl Harbour and England, two maps that you can lose on before you even play. They should never have escaped the foundry.

Conversely, you might win before you even play.

That's the whole point about all these 1v1 complaints... your odds of being the beneficiary of a lopsided drop are exactly the same as your odds of being the victim. Balances out over time.

This is so odd... It's almost like it is completely RANDOM... The black jesus is in disbelief... Get someone on this, STAT!! The black jesus has spoken...-Jesus noir