Re: 1v1: Promontory Summit [10.3.14] BETA

[cairnswk]

... it's more just a luck of the die and who ever makes it to the center first... I'm trying to illustrate the fine tuned strategic elements that this game has and others seem to be missing....

OK. now i understand.

the luck of the die...that's what lots of players complain about, because the die always appear to be on the wrong side of the players...worst luck.
there are some strategic elements here.
but if you have some other suggestions...?

[koontz1973]

It is - but others claim this map has little to no strategy - it's more just a luck of the die and who ever makes it to the center first... I'm trying to illustrate the fine tuned strategic elements that this game has and others seem to be missing....

This map started with no strategy. This is why the little tweaks cairns has added on the advice of some has really helped this one. cairns, let me ask ian if he has anything.

[cairnswk]

Fiddling with title gfx while i await some feedback on neutrals...

Version 13

[cairnswk]

GFX slowly moving forward...above.

[cairnswk]

GFX additions...the two major figures in building the railroads have been added.
Thomas Durant faces west under a loco going west...and Leyland Standford (founder of Standford University) under a loco going east....to Promontory summit.
Although Standford was one of the Big Four that financed the CPRR, i beleive he was the major figure in that group.

[agentcom]

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agentcom
what deliberations!..and no, it's not going back to the recycled bin
thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!
thank-you for presentation in an understandable manner...you took a lot of work and wrote it so easily.

Overall, once each player has their second and third territs (e.g. Newcastle and Gov't Grants for red), green has to go through 2,3,3,3,3,2,2 and red must go through 2,2,2,3,2,2,2. That means that green must hit a total of 3 more 3's while red hits corresponding 2s. The penalty for this in my calculations is that green loses 3 more troops. In reality, I think the overall advantage is closer to between 2 and 2.5. (I tested this by running Battle Odds of an attacking stack of 40 through territs of those values.)

so from what i read, this sequencing above needs to be better balanced.

i will have a look at this later this week when i have time to do similar analysis.

Yeah. You've done a helluva job balancing it out as it is considering that you tried to keep green down already by giving more 3s to go through but just slightly underestimated it at least for a trench game (if my analysis is correct).

[cairnswk]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
agentcom
what deliberations!..and no, it's not going back to the recycled bin
thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!
thank-you for presentation in an understandable manner...you took a lot of work and wrote it so easily.

Overall, once each player has their second and third territs (e.g. Newcastle and Gov't Grants for red), green has to go through 2,3,3,3,3,2,2 and red must go through 2,2,2,3,2,2,2. That means that green must hit a total of 3 more 3's while red hits corresponding 2s. The penalty for this in my calculations is that green loses 3 more troops. In reality, I think the overall advantage is closer to between 2 and 2.5. (I tested this by running Battle Odds of an attacking stack of 40 through territs of those values.)

so from what i read, this sequencing above needs to be better balanced.

i will have a look at this later this week when i have time to do similar analysis.

Yeah. You've done a helluva job balancing it out as it is considering that you tried to keep green down already by giving more 3s to go through but just slightly underestimated it at least for a trench game (if my analysis is correct).

OK, i haven't done this yet, but let me look at it now for you....in a few hours for reply.

[cairnswk]

<b>TRench Warfare</b>
With trench warfare you can only assault from regions held continuously since the start of your turn.
If you conquer a region (or re-conquer a region) you cannot assault further from that region during the same turn. The one exception being 'killer neutrals' (explained on the Gameplay Notes page) from which you may continue assaulting. The game no longer involves steamrolling across the board. Instead you gradually advance your front!

Since both players have a starting point, they continuously hold the starting region from the start of the game so that is no issue - fine even for the bombardment of the bridges.
I understand that you can only progress assaults from your previously acquired position, yes?

Toward alleviating this, in order to assault two regions forward for trench game, would it help if there were "preparation advance parties" that were able to assault via land marked lines (not rail lines but wagons) to prepare the area ahead, i.e. having an attack range of two spaces.
So from Omaha, on the first turn or whenever you have enough troops to do so, if you could assault Freemont and Grand Island in one go, would this advance the trench game any faster? Even though you wouldn't be able to advance to GRand Island to fort it on first turn, you would be able to fort there one second turn.
Each region could thus have an extra assault line two in advance.
That would be that hard to graphic or instruct.

Next post...the neutrals

[cairnswk]

OK, there are currently 38n on each line, including decays and killers.

What if we had this:
Sacremento <-> Prom summit
4 3 3 3 3 2 3 2 2 3 2 2 3 2 2 3 38

Omaha <-> Prom Summit
4 3 3 3 3 2 3 2 3 2 2 3 2 2 2 3 38

Would this make things more balanced.
This allows for both bridges to be 3n, but takes no account of where the killer neutrals, nor the resources are advanced.
But it makes for a hard start for both players, and an easier run home, with some fluctuation in the middle.
It also ensures that games don't start too fast, and that everyone has the same chance to build resources for the advance ahead in the initial stages.

To be honest, i really don't think we're going to get this balanced properly to accomodate everyone's needs until this goes through beta substantially.

[cairnswk]

Version 15
These are the adjusted neutrals as per the discussion above. They appear to be more balanced

[agentcom]

<b>TRench Warfare</b>
With trench warfare you can only assault from regions held continuously since the start of your turn.
If you conquer a region (or re-conquer a region) you cannot assault further from that region during the same turn. The one exception being 'killer neutrals' (explained on the Gameplay Notes page) from which you may continue assaulting. The game no longer involves steamrolling across the board. Instead you gradually advance your front!

Since both players have a starting point, they continuously hold the starting region from the start of the game so that is no issue - fine even for the bombardment of the bridges.
I understand that you can only progress assaults from your previously acquired position, yes?

Toward alleviating this, in order to assault two regions forward for trench game, would it help if there were "preparation advance parties" that were able to assault via land marked lines (not rail lines but wagons) to prepare the area ahead, i.e. having an attack range of two spaces.
So from Omaha, on the first turn or whenever you have enough troops to do so, if you could assault Freemont and Grand Island in one go, would this advance the trench game any faster? Even though you wouldn't be able to advance to GRand Island to fort it on first turn, you would be able to fort there one second turn.
Each region could thus have an extra assault line two in advance.
That would be that hard to graphic or instruct.

Next post...the neutrals

I suppose allowing the starting point a bigger range might alleviate this to some extent, but I don't know. And again, if you're looking for balance, you have to make that change favor one side or the other.

Another, more minor, way of adjusting the balance would be to allow some sort of advance bombardment from the starting position, but again, you'd have to favor one side or the other if your goal was to create some sort of balancing effect.

OK, there are currently 38n on each line, including decays and killers.

What if we had this:
Sacremento <-> Prom summit
4 3 3 3 3 2 3 2 2 3 2 2 3 2 2 3 38

Omaha <-> Prom Summit
4 3 3 3 3 2 3 2 3 2 2 3 2 2 2 3 38

Would this make things more balanced.
This allows for both bridges to be 3n, but takes no account of where the killer neutrals, nor the resources are advanced.
But it makes for a hard start for both players, and an easier run home, with some fluctuation in the middle.
It also ensures that games don't start too fast, and that everyone has the same chance to build resources for the advance ahead in the initial stages.

To be honest, i really don't think we're going to get this balanced properly to accomodate everyone's needs until this goes through beta substantially.

I'm really not sure that I can run through my analysis again ... it was time-consuming enough the first time! I'm hoping that someone else might pick up the ball and maybe even improve on the way that I did things.

Also, keep in mind that it's not just about the total number of neutral armies or territs to go through that matters. There's a timing issue here too which concerns how quickly one can reach the designated bonus areas and whether critical turns will be spent on the decaying territs.

Maybe it's as good now as it can be. I don't know.

I think the key takeaway from my post would be that you either need to move some of the bottom player's bonus opportunities forward OR you need to exchange some of his early n3 territs that he hits with his later n2 territs.

[cairnswk]

...

I'm really not sure that I can run through my analysis again ... it was time-consuming enough the first time! I'm hoping that someone else might pick up the ball and maybe even improve on the way that I did things.

Also, keep in mind that it's not just about the total number of neutral armies or territs to go through that matters. There's a timing issue here too which concerns how quickly one can reach the designated bonus areas and whether critical turns will be spent on the decaying territs.

Maybe it's as good now as it can be. I don't know.

I think the key takeaway from my post would be that you either need to move some of the bottom player's bonus opportunities forward OR you need to exchange some of his early n3 territs that he hits with his later n2 territs.

And look agentcom, i wouldn't want you to run that again.
What we actually need is a good analysis/simulation tool that will run all that for us...although that is why we have beta to some extent.

Also apart from the assualts and timing, there is also the die which are the biggest random variable.

tbh. there is no such issue as the bottom or top player.
in the game engine, we don't actually get to allocate who starts where, red could start top one game and them bottom the next.
so going first or second is another variable in the mix because we don't allocate if first player starts top or bottom, only that those regions are the starting points.
for instance, in spanish armamda game at present, Don Diego Medrano M1 is part of first group of starting points.
but i was green and i got first group. it is all random allocation...
and that's what will happen here also.
so i don't know if exchanging some early aspects on one side will achieve anything against balancing the game against the other side.

Perhaps you are correct...this might be as good as it gets until BETA given that lots of people have had opportunity to input.

[koontz1973]

Perhaps you are correct...this might be as good as it gets until BETA given that lots of people have had opportunity to input.

I sort of agree with you here. I cannot see anyway to improve the game and the mill has been gone over quite a bit on this one. Sticky cairns, will stamp you in 48 hours is no one objects.

koontz



Done. Enjoy.

koontz

[agentcom]

What we actually need is a good analysis/simulation tool that will run all that for us...although that is why we have beta to some extent.

Also apart from the assualts and timing, there is also the die which are the biggest random variable.

tbh. there is no such issue as the bottom or top player.

Yeah, a game analysis tool would work well for this simple map that is so linear. But would probably be hard to code for a more complex map, let alone one with all the special features available in the Foundry. Perhaps the bots are a start of some AI that could be used for coding, but as anyone who played them knows, there's still a long way to go on that front. (Before the bots were released, I got to play the bots on St. Pats, which has a win condition, and the bots would lose almost every time because it couldn't figure that out.)

I understand your last two points, and meant to fully disclaim that in my posts. The dice are a bigger variable than skill in many, many game types. I would say dice being a bigger variable extends to all but very few maps and settings if you look at everything available on this site. (Note: bigger variable simply means larger impact on victory not absolutely decisive.)

But that doesn't mean you don't want the map to be perfectly balance IF both sides could get exactly even dice. On a map like this, I think you want to shoot for perfect balance.

One tool that could be used that would be simpler than programming AI to play the map out even on this map, would be to simply look at the results from beta testing. I'd say if you had a thousand games or so, you could look at games in which an officer played an officer, then divided them up on whether the top or bottom started first, then analyze the stats. It would be fairly easy statistical analysis, if the data were provided to someone who knew what they were doing.

Finally, I realize that there isn't a top or bottom player by design. I was using that as shorthand for the analysis that I was running. The important thing to take away from that was that EVEN if a player who starts on one side goes second and gets even dice with the other player, he's still at an advantage. You would want the player who starts first to have the advantage, since the counterpart to my findings is that if the player going second already has an advantage, imagine what it would be like if that player went first.

I think that you're well aware of all of this, but I just want to make sure that my main points don't get lost in the weeds of the other related discussions.

[SirLindsley]

As a rail fan, I look forward to trying this.

agentcom wrote: "Sure if you play no spoils it's all about the luck,..." Funny, I always avoid spoils games if I can, I think spoils just adds to the luck factor.

[cairnswk]

...
But that doesn't mean you don't want the map to be perfectly balance IF both sides could get exactly even dice. On a map like this, I think you want to shoot for perfect balance.

Is that ever likely though? Not i my experience at least.

[cairnswk]

As a rail fan, I look forward to trying this.

agentcom wrote: "Sure if you play no spoils it's all about the luck,..." Funny, I always avoid spoils games if I can, I think spoils just adds to the luck factor.

Thanks Sir LIndsley.
R U looking forward to Rail S America also?

[cairnswk]

Perhaps you are correct...this might be as good as it gets until BETA given that lots of people have had opportunity to input.

I sort of agree with you here. I cannot see anyway to improve the game and the mill has been gone over quite a bit on this one. Sticky cairns, will stamp you in 48 hours is no one objects.

koontz



Done. Enjoy.

koontz

Thanks koontz.

[cairnswk]

OK what else does anyone want to see on this re graphics?

[cairnswk]

Current Version 15



Question asked above...so suggestions forthcoming, i guess everyone is happy with it then?

[isaiah40]

Click image to enlarge.

[cairnswk]

SCHULTZ! VAT ARE YOU DOING?

[isaiah40]

How happy are you with the this graphically cairns??

[cairnswk]

How happy are you with the this graphically cairns??

As it curently stands, not.
I'm happy with the overall layout, but there is a fair bit of tidying to do.
I am in the process of applying some changes, but that is taking time as i have so many other things on.
Any suggestions will be helpful however and appreciated

[isaiah40]

How happy are you with the this graphically cairns??

As it curently stands, not.
I'm happy with the overall layout, but there is a fair bit of tidying to do.
I am in the process of applying some changes, but that is taking time as i have so many other things on.
Any suggestions will be helpful however and appreciated

Hmmm .... see three posts up,