Zone (continent) bonus calculations

[ender516]

I have seen a few spreadsheets in the Map Making Tools topic which calculate bonus values for zones (or continents) using a formula which accounts for the number of defending regions (or territories), the number of attacking regions and the number of neighbour zones. I noticed that two of them use essentially the same formula and the third (oaktown's) seems to have dropped off the net. Does anyone know how this formula was derived? These values are often quoted in the Gameplay Workshop, but as often as not, an adjustment is suggested. Are there other parameters which commonly figure into these corrections? Does this formula need an extension or perhaps an overhaul?

I am wondering because I am thinking of creating a tool which would do these calculations directly from the XML, thus eliminating hand-counting regions and borders, and the chance for human error that goes with that. The first part of such a tool would be an XML analyzer that would count regions, borders and what-not. Those results could then be fed into one of the existing spreadsheets, or processed in a similar way within the tool itself. Ultimately, such calculations would be a nice addition to the XML Wizard, don't you think?

[Evil DIMwit]

If you do that, I'd love to have the option to look at the recommended bonus for holding other combinations of territories, as that is involved in bonus calcuations as well -- for example, when deciding on NA and SA's bonus values in Classic it would be useful to consider how much they should be worth if held together.

[natty dread]

it would be useful to consider how much they should be worth if held together.

Agreed. This feature would really make it worthwhile.

[ender516]

it would be useful to consider how much they should be worth if held together.

Agreed. This feature would really make it worthwhile.

The easiest way to do that might be to create super continents in the XML (provisionally) and let the tool do the math on them as well.

[MrBenn]

chip and I had a conversation about this during the early stages of the xml wizard development. My conclusion was that there are actually too many variables to hard-code specific formulae, as you need to take the whole of the map (connectivity, bottlenecks, expansion options etc) into consideration when selecting bonus values.

The current calculators act as a guide - and we have always said that they are only a guide. My concern is that anything purporting to be more than just a guide may remove a critical layer of thought from the tasklist of the mapmaker

[ender516]

chip and I had a conversation about this during the early stages of the xml wizard development. My conclusion was that there are actually too many variables to hard-code specific formulae, as you need to take the whole of the map (connectivity, bottlenecks, expansion options etc) into consideration when selecting bonus values.

Well, as I said, my initial idea was to create something which would do some of the gruntwork needed to use the calculators.

The current calculators act as a guide - and we have always said that they are only a guide. My concern is that anything purporting to be more than just a guide may remove a critical layer of thought from the tasklist of the mapmaker

Then by all means let us discuss that layer of thought. I often see comments about bonuses being too hard or easy to hold, or not being worth taking, or how fast taking a bonus would get paid back. Would anyone care to talk about how they reach those conclusions?

[natty dread]

I often see comments about bonuses being too hard or easy to hold, or not being worth taking, or how fast taking a bonus would get paid back. Would anyone care to talk about how they reach those conclusions?

Well, when talking about conquest maps or other maps where you need to take a fixed amount of (neutral) troops to take a bonus, you can assume to lose a proportional amount of troops to get a bonus area. Thus let's say you need to kill 10 troops to get a bonus of +3... This bonus would pay itself back in 4 turns (you get 12 troops in 4 turns).

Of course in this kind of thought you need to take in account that your odds get better when troop numbers grow higher. So the higher the troop numbers to kill, the more troops you can substract from the expected losses.

As for bonuses being too easy or too hard to hold... I once heard someone say he doesn't go for bonuses that give less troops than they have borders to defend. This makes sense, although other factors need to be taken in account - map size for one... on a large map where you get lots of troops for the territory count alone, the bonuses need to be even more worthwhile.

I've been developing my own formula for bonus calculations... this is what I have so far:

n= number of territories
b= number of borders
p= bonus value (payoff)

p = b + ((n - b) / 3)

So for example, if you have a 7 territory bonus with 3 borders

p = 3 + ((7-3) / 3) = 4.33

Of course this doesn't take in account the neighbouring bonus areas or other factors. But IMO these vary so much map to map that there's no need to take them in account in the initial calculation....