Whodunnit? [19 Apr 2014] v10, p10 - Gameplay

[isaiah40]

Supersize has been approved with your current large of 775x800 for your small with 930x960 being your max large. We ask that you use every single pixel.

[degaston]

Thanks for the supersize approval, CA's. Here's an update:

Version 3, Small (775x800):

Click image to enlarge.

Changes:

• Changed Warrant to a notepad and reorganized the territories on it.
• Updated the legend

Possible changes / Points of discussion:

• Split H, L, M & Q into two territories each?
• Neutral values and bonuses may need adjustment.
• Hoping that "Killer neutral as part of bonus" feature is implemented before this is done so I can make the warrant a killer neutral.
• Would also like to have "Conditional bombardments" feature for notepad territories.
• Add a note saying that all hallway territories border their nearest neighbors?
• Is the Police Station Door --> Squad Car --> Exterior Hallway Doors connection clear enough? (Is that even the best way to do it?)
• Make Crime Scene and Police Station bonuses the same type? (Both picture or both text)
• Other gameplay suggestions???

[koontz1973]

degaston, please do not hope for an xml update for this map to be made with, xml updates come very few and far between each other.
What do you mean you would like to have CB for the notepad? Do you want them and how do you want them?

[isaiah40]

degaston, please do not hope for an xml update for this map to be made with, xml updates come very few and far between each other.
What do you mean you would like to have CB for the notepad? Do you want them and how do you want them?

This is true, it maybe months before we get any new XML toys to play with.

[degaston]

degaston, please do not hope for an xml update for this map to be made with, xml updates come very few and far between each other.

I am okay with the xml as it stands. I've listed the warrant as a killer neutral out of wishful thinking, but it could easily be changed to a decay of INTMAX, which would work almost as well.

What do you mean you would like to have CB for the notepad? Do you want them and how do you want them?

I think it might be better if the special attacks (location, suspect and weapon -> notepad) were able to conditionally bombard the other notepad locations, suspects and weapons, respectively, instead of from one notepad location to another. But it's not a requirement, and I'm not even that sure about this one.

I'm glad this map was delayed for a couple of years, because I think it works much better now that conditional attacks have been implemented, but I'm ready to move forward if anyone has any gameplay issues to discuss.

[koontz1973]

Please remove the warrant from the killer neutrals.
The conditional borders for the warrant, add these for now but I am not sure what the idea is behind this?

[degaston]

Please remove the warrant from the killer neutrals.

I'll include this change in my next update.

The conditional borders for the warrant, add these for now but I am not sure what the idea is behind this?

The idea is that an "officer" can't get a warrant until he has identified a suspect, weapon and location. This is similar to making an accusation in the board game. Other players can take the warrant if they also have a suspect, weapon and location, or they can take away part of the first player's winning condition by bombarding his suspect, weapon or location from a similar territory on the notepad. I thought it would be more interesting if this was done by a conditional bombardment from the special attack locations, but it's not a problem to do it from the notepad territories.

Perhaps the warrant should be changed to "Make the arrest". That might make more logical sense, since they already have the suspects in the interrogation rooms, and wouldn't really need a warrant to arrest them. It would also fit better with having the warrant territory lose its troops (either as a killer neutral, or a decay of intmax), because warrants don't expire, but you can only hold someone for a short time without charging them.

[koontz1973]

A few things to clear up for me please.
I can assault a suspect from the hand symbol in the rooms. Each suspect has its own hand symbol. The looking glass assaults the weapon, like the suspect, the same colour. And lastly, the ? symbol assaults the notepad region for that room. So to win the game via the winning condition, I need to attack and take:
Suspect 8+1 neutrals, Weapon 6+1 neutrals, location 1 neutral and the warrant 20 neutrals. If this is correct, then you need to go through 36 neutrals and also hold them from 3 different locations. Am I correct in the above?
The 8 doors from the hallways attack the police car 8 neutrals, that then attacks the police station hallway A. Why would anyone go this way? What is the guard for?

[degaston]

A few things to clear up for me please.
I can assault a suspect from the hand symbol in the rooms.

Yes, but you have to control the entire room for that conditional assault to be enabled.

Each suspect has its own hand symbol.

Each hand symbol has a different color which matches a suspect in the interrogation rooms. There are twelve hand symbols on the map, two for each suspect. To aid the colorblind, the hand symbols also point in different directions, like the hands of a clock centered on police station hallway B.

The looking glass assaults the weapon, like the suspect, the same colour.

Yes, and the handle may be used as a pointer centered on police station hallway E. There are 14 looking glasses on the map, two for each weapon. You must control the entire room to enable the assaults within that room.

And lastly, the ? symbol assaults the notepad region for that room.

Yes, if you control the entire room.

There are also the mug shot and weapons symbols (on the suspect and weapon territories) which assault their matching locations on the notepad. The interrogation or evidence room must be held in order to enable these assaults.

So to win the game via the winning condition, I need to attack and take:
Suspect 8+1 neutrals, Weapon 6+1 neutrals, location 1 neutral and the warrant 20 neutrals. If this is correct, then you need to go through 36 neutrals and also hold them from 3 different locations. Am I correct in the above?

Not exactly. To win via the winning condition, you need to:
Take a crime scene room (unknown number of player and/or neutral troops)
Take the location on the notepad (1 neutral)
Take a suspect and an interrogation room (8+4+4 = 16 neutrals)
Take the suspect on the notepad (1 neutral)
Take a weapon and evidence room (6+3 = 9 neutrals)
Take the weapon on the notepad (1 neutral)
Take the warrant (20 neutrals)
Total = 48 neutrals + whatever needs to be defeated to control a crime scene room.

I'm open to suggestions for changes to neutral values.

The 8 doors from the hallways attack the police car 8 neutrals, that then attacks the police station hallway A. Why would anyone go this way?

No. Only police station hallway A (the front door of the police station) attacks the police car. The police car only attacks crime scene hallways A, B, E, K, N, T, W, and X.

In the old map (before restarting it), there was no way to get from the police station back to the crime scene, and it was a losing condition to lose all your troops in the crime scene. It was suggested that there should be a way to get back to the crime scene, so this was my attempt to implement that suggestion. I know it is not very clear from the map what is going on, but I don't really know how I could rearrange things to represent it better. I am not sure that I even approve of this change, but I didn't have much justification for rejecting it, so I did the best I could in the space available.

What is the guard for?

The guard is there to put some limitation on travel between the interrogation and evidence rooms. You wouldn't want a suspect to have easy access to all those weapons, would you? It might be interesting to make it so that you have to control the guard to enter the evidence room area, but not to leave?

Thanks for the comments.

[koontz1973]

Total = 51 neutrals + whatever needs to be defeated to control a crime scene room.

So not only do you have a huge amount of neutrals to get through, you need to hold entire rooms to even get to them. So why would anyone even go for the winning condition? I would make this a lot easier to get. Allow the attacks without the condition and lower the neutrals. Imagine going through that much in a flat, nukes, no spoils game. Removing the attacks lets player get to the winning condition faster, lowering the neutral means they can have a go.

How do the hallways attack? Are they all adjacent now to each other?

[degaston]

Total = 51 neutrals + whatever needs to be defeated to control a crime scene room.

So not only do you have a huge amount of neutrals to get through, you need to hold entire rooms to even get to them. So why would anyone even go for the winning condition? I would make this a lot easier to get. Allow the attacks without the condition and lower the neutrals. Imagine going through that much in a flat, nukes, no spoils game. Removing the attacks lets player get to the winning condition faster, lowering the neutral means they can have a go.

How do the hallways attack? Are they all adjacent now to each other?

I made a minor mistake in my earlier post - it's actually 9 neutrals to control an evidence room, and 48 total for the winning objective. I've corrected it there.

It looks like we're coming from different perspectives when it comes to playing these games. I rarely play 1v1 (except for some bot games), and many of my games get into triple digits for the number of rounds. For those games, using 16 troops to get a +3 bonus or 9 for +2 is pretty easy to justify. One of the complaints on the old map, before conditional attacks, was how easy it would be to get the winning condition.

I could try it without the conditional attacks to get to the suspect and weapon, but I kind of liked that feature. It meant that once you took a suspect or weapon, there were two ways to protect it: either build a large stack to defend it, or prevent someone else from controlling the room with the other link to it. In any case, I don't think it would change the beginning strategy that much. I suspect people will want to lock up a room and reinforce their borders before they venture into the police station anyway.

I could also consider making it a conquest-style map, so that the only way to win is through the objective, but I think I would need more space to do that.

I'm open to adjusting the neutrals, bonus values, or adding other bonus conditions to make the police station more attractive. Do you have any details about what you'd like to see change?

Yes, all the hallways attack their closest neighbors. I'll try to make that clearer in the update.

[koontz1973]

It looks like we're coming from different perspectives when it comes to playing these games. I rarely play 1v1 (except for some bot games), and many of my games get into triple digits for the number of rounds. For those games, using 16 troops to get a +3 bonus or 9 for +2 is pretty easy to justify. One of the complaints on the old map, before conditional attacks, was how easy it would be to get the winning condition.

You have to consider all game types. So a large esc quads game, the neutrals may look small, but a 1v1v1 game where you have no spoils, you have no hope of taking them or holding. When you consider 1v1 is the most played game on the site, you have to take that into consideration.

[ViperOverLord]

I'd change the name to Murder Mystery or something like that. Murder by itself is a bit cold.

[degaston]

New update:
Version 4, Small (775x800):

Click image to enlarge.

Changes:

• Completely new style for legend.
• Title changed to "Whodunit?" (This looks too much like "Who'd Unit?" to me, so I'll probably switch this to "Whodunnit?"
• Living room bonus reduced from 5 to 4.
• Added notepad bonuses: 1 for each territory, 2 additional for each set (Suspect, Weapon & Location).
• Changed police station bonuses to auto-deploys. 1 for each suspect, 2 for each weapon, 3 for each detective.
• Changed starting neutral values in police station.
• Moved police car connection to center of police station.
• Added 4 hallway territories to mansion.
• Mansion hallways referenced by Letter, Number coordinates (ex: C5)
• Changed "Warrant" to "Book him!". No longer listed as a killer neutral.
• Minor changes to paths and conditional attack locations.

To Do:

• Change folder name from "Crime Scene" to "Mansion"
• Add arrow heads to show that exterior door connections are "in-only"
• Swap letters & numbers in coordinate guide.

[degaston]

You have to consider all game types. So a large esc quads game, the neutrals may look small, but a 1v1v1 game where you have no spoils, you have no hope of taking them or holding. When you consider 1v1 is the most played game on the site, you have to take that into consideration.

From what I can tell about the starting positions tag, it looks like it could be coded so that in a two player game, each player receives 1 territory in each room. This would reduce the advantage of having the first move, and would make it more advantageous to control suspects, weapons, detectives, and notepad territories.

[degaston]

Version 5, Small (775x800)

Click image to enlarge.

Changes:

• Changed folder name from "Crime Scene" to "Mansion"
• Added arrow heads to show that exterior door connections are "in-only"
• Swapped letters & numbers in coordinate guide.
• Added connection: "Book him!" now bombards all detectives.

[degaston]

Version 6, Large (930x960)

Click image to enlarge.

First large version.
Made some changes to the legend to make it more understandable.
I kept the territory markers, special symbols, and number pads the same size as the small version, but I could try increasing them in the next version.

[degaston]

I see the "views" count going up, but no new comments. I don't have any changes planned for the game-play at the moment. Is there anything about the map that someone thinks doesn't work?

[degaston]

Setting
You’ve been assigned to solve the murder of Mr. E. Mansion. Several clues have been found which may assist you: a receipt from Al’s Sporting Goods, Weapons & Garden, a postcard with some suspicious information, and an unusual fortune cookie fortune. You have a map of the crime scene, a map of the police station where six suspects are currently being interrogated and seven possible murder weapons have been taken into evidence, and your notepad that you use to track possible solutions to the case. You must either eliminate your opponents or solve the case by controlling a suspect, weapon, and location territory on the notepad, along with the “Book him!” territory for one round.

Game setup
All police station and notepad territories start as neutrals of various values, along with all of the hallway territories in the crime scene.
For a 2, 3, or 4 player game, each player will be assigned one territory in each room. All others will be neutral 3.
For 5 or more players, the room territories will be divided evenly among the players. Any leftover territories will be neutral 3.

Special Attacks
Each room of the crime scene contains numbered evidence markers that are the territories for that room. Some of these also have symbols that indicate a conditional attack elsewhere on the map. The symbols are:

• Pointing hand – Attacks a suspect territory in an interrogation room. Both the color of the hand, and the direction it is pointing (like the hands of a clock centered in the interrogation room area) show which suspect is attacked.

Magnifying glass – Attacks a weapon in an evidence room. Both the color of the glass and the direction the handle is pointing (like the hands of a clock centered in the evidence room area) show which weapon is attacked.
Both of these types of attacks require control of all of the territories in the room they are contained in. Control of one room does not enable attacks in any other room. For each suspect and weapon, there are two attack symbols in the crime scene.
Notepad attacks
Once you control a detective, all attacks on the notepad territories are enabled. The attacking territories are:
Question Marks – Each crime scene room contains a ‘?’ territory that attacks the matching location entry on the notepad.
Mug Shots – Each suspect territory attacks his matching entry on the notepad.
Weapons Symbol – Each weapon attacks the matching entry on the notepad.

Strategy
The first goal should be to control a crime scene room. This will provide a bonus as shown on the receipt in the upper left corner.

Once you have a room, the connections to the suspect and weapon will be enabled. At this point, you may choose to take one of them, or you could attempt to take another room, or prevent an opponent from getting a room. Corner rooms have secret passages that connect directly to the opposite corner, so this is the easiest way to expand. All hallway territories lose 1 troop per round, so when advancing to another room it’s probably better to build a stack that can make it all the way into the room than to expand slowly and leave troops in the hallway. This will be more difficult in fog games, so plan carefully.

Suspects and weapons auto-deploy 1 and 2 troops respectively, but they do not attack directly back to the crime scene, so they may not be immediately useful. They can have an impact over a longer game, though, and because they lead to the detectives and the notepad, they are a bridge to more bonuses. A large stack of troops on a suspect, weapon, or detective may be used to attack another room in the same area, or you can go through the guard (killer 10) to get to the other side of the police station. To get back to the crime scene, you may take the squad car (killer 15), and from there you can attack any of the hallway territories next to an exterior door.

To get to the notepad, you must control a detective. Once you do, all of the attacks from the suspects, weapons, and locations (‘?’ territories) to their matching entry on the notepad will be enabled. You get 1 bonus troop for each notepad territory, and 2 additional troops for each complete set of suspect, weapon and location. Every notepad territory can bombard others of the same type, but they have no other attacks, so troops deployed there cannot be moved back to the crime scene or police station (except with the parachute reinforcements setting).

If you hold one of each type on the notepad, then any detective you control will be able to assault “Book him!”. If you hold a suspect, weapon, location and “Book him!” for 1 round, then you win. If you lose all of your territories in any notepad category, then your troops on “Book him!” will be reset to 1 at the start of your next turn..

[degaston]

Not sure what else to do with this at the moment, so I've written a detailed map description and strategy guide, and added a poll to see how people feel about this one.

Map description and strategy guide

Setting
You’ve been assigned to solve the murder of Mr. E. Mansion. Several clues have been found which may assist you: a receipt from Al’s Sporting Goods, Weapons & Garden, a postcard with some suspicious information, and an unusual fortune cookie fortune. You have a map of the crime scene and the police station, where six suspects are currently being interrogated and seven possible murder weapons have been taken into evidence. You also have a notepad that you use to track possible solutions to the case. To win, you must either eliminate your opponents, or solve the case by controlling a suspect, weapon, location, and “Book him!” (all on the notepad) for one round.

Game setup
All police station and notepad territories start as neutrals of various values, along with all of the hallway territories in the crime scene.
For a 2, 3, or 4 player game, each player will be assigned one territory in each room. All others will be neutral 3.
For 5 or more players, the room territories will be divided evenly among the players. Any leftover territories will be neutral 3.

Police Station Attacks
Each room of the crime scene contains numbered evidence markers that identify the territories for that room. Some of these territories have symbols next to them that indicate a conditional attack elsewhere on the map. The symbols that lead to attacks within the police station are:

• Pointing hand – Attacks a suspect territory in an interrogation room. Both the color of the hand, and the direction it is pointing (like the hands of a clock centered in the interrogation room area) show which suspect is attacked.
• Magnifying glass – Attacks a weapon in an evidence room. Both the color of the glass and the direction the handle is pointing (like the hands of a clock centered in the evidence room area) show which weapon is attacked.

Both of these types of attacks require control of all of the territories in the room they are contained in. Control of one room does not enable attacks in any other room. For each suspect and weapon, there are two attack symbols distributed throughout the crime scene.

Notepad attacks
Once you control a detective, all attacks on the notepad territories (except "Book him!") are enabled. The attacking territories (and special symbols) are:

• Locations (Question Mark) – Each crime scene room contains a ‘?’ territory that attacks the matching location entry on the notepad.
• Suspects (Mug Shot) – Each suspect territory attacks his matching entry on the notepad.
• Weapons (Weapon Symbol) – Each weapon territory attacks the matching entry on the notepad.
• Detectives (Badge) - Hold one suspect, weapon and location on the notepad to enable an attack from a detective to "Book him!"

Strategy
The first goal should be to control a crime scene room. This will provide a bonus as shown on the receipt in the upper left corner, and enable the attacks to at least one suspect and weapon in the police station. After that, there are a variety of things you can do depending on your goals, your drop, and what your opponent(s) are doing.

Your options include:

• Take more crime scene rooms – This will provide more bonuses, more opportunities to take suspects and weapons, help you protect suspects and weapons you already have, and provide easier access to disrupt your opponents' plans. Corner rooms have secret passages that connect directly to the opposite corner, so this is the easiest way to expand. All hallway territories lose 1 troop per round, so when advancing to another room it’s probably better to build a stack that can make it all the way into the room than to expand slowly and leave troops in the hallway. This will be more difficult in fog games, so plan carefully.
• Take suspects and weapons – These auto-deploy 1 and 2 troops respectively, but they do not attack directly back to the crime scene, so they may not be immediately useful. They can have an impact over a longer game, though, and because they lead to the detectives and the notepad, they are key to getting more bonuses. A large stack of troops on a suspect, weapon, or detective may be used to attack another room in the same area, or you can go through the guard (killer 10) to get to the other side of the police station. To get back to the crime scene, you may take the squad car (killer 15), and from there you can attack any of the hallway territories next to an exterior door.
• Take a detective – Detectives auto-deploy 3 troops, enable all of the attacks from suspects, weapons, and locations to their matching entry on the notepad, and can assault "Book him!" for the winning objective.
• Take notepad territories – These provide a +1 bonus for each territory, and an additional 2 troops for each set (suspect, weapon and location). Every notepad territory can bombard others of the same type, but they have no other attacks, so troops deployed there cannot be moved back to the crime scene or police station (except with the parachute reinforcements setting).
• Take "Book him!" – If you think you can hold the requirements, then this can end the game quickly. Be careful, though. If you lose any of the requirements, then at the beginning of your next turn you will lose all of your troops on "Book him!" except 1.

[Armandolas]

Didnt analyse it properly, but looks good and fun. Keep up the good work

[degaston]

Didnt analyse it properly, but looks good and fun. Keep up the good work

Thanks! I know it may look a little intimidating at first, but the map description I wrote may help, and overall, I feel that the attack structure is logical and fits the theme pretty well.

[koontz1973]

OK degaston, here is the idea I alluded to in the transformations thread. Your neutrals are pretty high now but I think you can make them higher if you like this idea.

Find a round number that you like - I would suggest round 6 or 7 so the games do not go on too long and force the eliminations.

For the win you have to go through a lot of neutrals, but you can now have all of them decay every round. Start the weapons and suspects at the same number of neutrals as the round number you pick. Round 7=7 neutrals. Have each one decay by one neutral every round.
Police car car start at 21 neutrals and decay by 3 each round.
Do this for all of the neutrals you have that are needed to get to the winning condition. Make sure that all end up at one neutral at the same time though.

What you end up having is a winning condition that is very hard to get in the early rounds but will become easier over time. So in escalating and flat rate games, it should be fought over sooner but in no spoils games, you end up with a condition that can be gotten and not ignored. All you would need for the legend part is a note saying - All police station neutrals decay to 1

[degaston]

OK degaston, here is the idea I alluded to in the transformations thread. Your neutrals are pretty high now but I think you can make them higher if you like this idea...

I actually think the neutrals are set pretty low right now, and if anything, I'm concerned that the objective may be too easy to get.

Here's what I see:
Crime Scene:
88 territories = 29 region troops
9 rooms = 39 bonus troops

Police Station:
38 territories = 12 region troops
6 suspects = 6 auto-deploy
7 weapons = 14 auto-deploy
6 detectives = 18 auto-deploy

Notepad:
22 territories = 7 region troops
22 suspects+weapons+locations = 22 bonus troops
6 sets = 12 bonus troops

So there are 68 potential troops in the crime scene, but if the players never venture past that, then they're giving up on an additional 91 troops that are available. I really don't think that the neutrals as specified now should discourage them from expanding into the police station and notepad.

If someone wants to play a quick 1v1 game, there are many small standard maps to choose from. This map may not be for them. There are not that many maps for those of us who like games with several players or teams, that last for months and maybe 100 rounds or more, that minimize the "luck factor", and that require diplomacy, careful balance, good strategy and long-term planning.

I wouldn't be surprised if some values need to be adjusted once testing starts. I wish that it could be tested now, but since that's not possible, it doesn't make sense to me to try changing neutrals and bonuses when no one knows if that would make it better or worse. The only way to really know is to try it both ways and see which one works better.

[koontz1973]

I actually think the neutrals are set pretty low right now, and if anything, I'm concerned that the objective may be too easy to get.

Right now, why would anyone go for it.
The winning condition is made up of:
Suspect = 3 neutrals
Weapon = 5 neutrals
Detective = 6 neutrals
"?" I assume is the room icon (not noted anywhere on the map and needs to be) = what ever is on there
notepad = 23 neutrals
A total of 37 neutrals, and that is if you hold all of the correct info on the board.

So why would anyone want to waste troops trying to grab and hold all of that in any game when they can go for the elimination. In flat rate, nukes and no spoils games, you do not get the troop numbers you are hoping for to even go for the WC. To get the numbers of troops to go for the winning condition, you need to hold at least 4 rooms for bonuses at which point you are holding nearly half the board (if not half or more depending on the rooms) so why would any player want to deploy troops and attack all of those neutrals? Why would you? Also, the above requires you hold entire rooms as well. So not only do I need to gain all of the above neutrals, I have to fight for two rooms.

You mention that you have auto deploys in the police station:
Suspects = 1
Weapons = 2
Detectives = 3
great for unlimited reinforcement games, but auto deploys are useless after that one setting. Considering you have a 15 neutral at the police car, the auto deploys do nothing to help you gain a stronger footing on the board. All that will happen is they will stay there and grow.

I wish that it could be tested now,

Get an xml made up and I will send the files for testing. But testing is not going to prove one way or another. That will come in beta.