Conquer Club

Insomnia and I had 2 dub games start these last 2 days. The opponents dropped the island bonus in both of them. Fog games of course. And they had 1st move too.

Thats 2 of 3 games I've played.

2 things. WHY allowed....

and why is it worth as many as it is... 3 for 3 terts...

Think this map needs looked at a bit closer.

I don't know, maybe, they too should be starting locations.

As for them being 3 for 3 it's because they are in no way connected. Since they are scattered there's no real way to defend them as a group and you have to stack on them individually. Also I like the idea that they are a little stronger than the land bonuses because it forces players to take action more, and you can form a strategy around collecting the islands and building on the surrounding bonuses in other ways. In short I think it's just more dynamic.

Game 7857092 If you can drop this in 1 v 1 or dubs this is silly. Pearl Harbor gives you a chance to come back from unbalanced drops by being so large, but with an 18 region start it's impossible to come back when your opponent drops 12 to begin.

danryan wrote:Game 7857092 If you can drop this in 1 v 1 or dubs this is silly. Pearl Harbor gives you a chance to come back from unbalanced drops by being so large, but with an 18 region start it's impossible to come back when your opponent drops 12 to begin.

can you be specific?

I don't know if it's too late for comments on this map, but I also think that the island bonus should be less than +3. I recently played a 1v1 tournament on this map and the island bonus makes a real difference to the game if the player who starts also gets +3.
I'd be happier if it was +1, or maybe +2 at most, but with 6 troops to begin with, an extra 3 can really unbalance things.

Apart from that, I think the map is great, really interesting with a high skill level, but not too confusing.

danryan wrote:Game 7857092 If you can drop this in 1 v 1 or dubs this is silly. Pearl Harbor gives you a chance to come back from unbalanced drops by being so large, but with an 18 region start it's impossible to come back when your opponent drops 12 to begin.

Lol, I was actually going to bring this up myself, so it's cool you got to it first.

The Bison King wrote:

danryan wrote:can you be specific?

Basically, it's been thrice in a row in my games on a thyseneal where someone has dropped a bonus. In a trips game, the opponent got the 3 islands bonus, in a 1v1 the opponent got a +4 bonus, while I got a +3 bonus dropped, and now in this game I dropped a +6, so basically the games are decided before even properly beginning...
I didn't have this in 2 previous tourneys I played thyseneal in, so I'm actually wondering if you've made some changes that could have created this? I know sometimes drops are a bit unequal, but if bonuses are dropped on a consistent basis than it basically sucks. I'm not sure what you can do to fix this, but hopefully it's worth looking into...

There are a lot of bonus in a relatively small amount of space. This map is made for a larger number of players...

One of the things that could be done to even the drop out is to put neutrals which would bring down the dropped territory count and make it less fair for players overall.

The Bison King wrote:

danryan wrote:Game 7857092 If you can drop this in 1 v 1 or dubs this is silly. Pearl Harbor gives you a chance to come back from unbalanced drops by being so large, but with an 18 region start it's impossible to come back when your opponent drops 12 to begin.

can you be specific?

Sure. It's foggy, but judging by the drop I'm guessing he has two continents. I think Dalmus starts neutral, right? If so he can't hold the 3 Island bonus, but he does have Cratica and Tyross. Caspiar is neutral. Given that, he dropped The Desert (+3) and Lyalia (+3). Now, on classic for instance, I've seen drops where one side got Oceania or South America, and even Africa (very rarely), but never two continents. I don't know whether the answer is in coding starting neutrals and the odds are obviously slim this would ever happen but I don't care for maps where the game can be over on the drop, without rolling a single die. The Siege map is a similar size and can have this problem as well (with the throne and with the camps), but it's fairly old as far as cc maps go.

danryan wrote:

The Bison King wrote:

danryan wrote:Game 7857092 If you can drop this in 1 v 1 or dubs this is silly. Pearl Harbor gives you a chance to come back from unbalanced drops by being so large, but with an 18 region start it's impossible to come back when your opponent drops 12 to begin.

can you be specific?

Sure. It's foggy, but judging by the drop I'm guessing he has two continents. I think Dalmus starts neutral, right? If so he can't hold the 3 Island bonus, but he does have Cratica and Tyross. Caspiar is neutral. Given that, he dropped The Desert (+3) and Lyalia (+3). Now, on classic for instance, I've seen drops where one side got Oceania or South America, and even Africa (very rarely), but never two continents. I don't know whether the answer is in coding starting neutrals and the odds are obviously slim this would ever happen but I don't care for maps where the game can be over on the drop, without rolling a single die. The Siege map is a similar size and can have this problem as well (with the throne and with the camps), but it's fairly old as far as cc maps go.

From your description this sounds like a complete freak accident. The Desert and Lyalia are both over 4 regions, it's very unlikely that one would be given in the drop, but for both of them is just insane. Sometimes that just happens I guess. It's nothing wrong with the map or coding, you could probably play 100 games on the map with out that ever happening again.

So is a complete freak accident ok, or given what Leehar posted above, should you be revisiting the possibility of adding some neutrals? I'll be the first to admit this is is probably the first time I've seen this, but I wonder what the actual odds of a drop like that are before I'd write it off as a freak occurrence not to be worried about.

danryan wrote:So is a complete freak accident ok, or given what Leehar posted above, should you be revisiting the possibility of adding some neutrals? I'll be the first to admit this is is probably the first time I've seen this, but I wonder what the actual odds of a drop like that are before I'd write it off as a freak occurrence not to be worried about.

Its happened to me too. The bonus going to +2 might be the best way to solve this.
But I write off any map as a 1vs1 that starts 18 vs 18... the first person to play wins a strangely high percent of the time.

Game 7792135 was the other one in which I felt the drop basically determined the game... (tho admittedly I could have played better given that I had a drop as well, but I plead the 4th)

danryan wrote:So is a complete freak accident ok, or given what Leehar posted above, should you be revisiting the possibility of adding some neutrals? I'll be the first to admit this is is probably the first time I've seen this, but I wonder what the actual odds of a drop like that are before I'd write it off as a freak occurrence not to be worried about.

A complete freak accident is a complete freak accident. Would you buy flood insurance if you lived on a mountain and your basement flooded 1 time?

Honestly I never play 1v1 because I find that the first person to take their turn always wins no matter what map you play on. Also I've never played a map where someone didn't start with a bonus at least once. The simplest solution I have would be to play games with more players. This was always intended to be a 4-8 player map anyway.

I'll consult Ender to see if any XML changes could be used to balance this out, but to me it sounds like there isn't a problem with the map but there have just been some issues between people and random chance.

The Bison King wrote:Honestly I never play 1v1 because I find that the first person to take their turn always wins no matter what map you play on. Also I've never played a map where someone didn't start with a bonus at least once. The simplest solution I have would be to play games with more players. This was always intended to be a 4-8 player map anyway.

I'll consult Ender to see if any XML changes could be used to balance this out, but to me it sounds like there isn't a problem with the map but there have just been some issues between people and random chance.

A map is supposed to be as rounded as possible to fit all game types and all amounts of players. I got my ranking by playing almost all 1v1 standard games so there is more than luck 1v1 outside of freestyle.

For smaller games on this map (2-4 players) can't you write a code that would drop only 14 territories each for 2-3 player games and 11 territories each for 4 player games? This would lower the probabilities of dropping a bonus in smaller games and would truly make it a freak accident to drop huge bonus'. I know this would take more work Bison but this would make a better rounded map that more people would play and enjoy

Proposal (discussed above)

Proposal: Make 2-3 player games starting territory positions 14 territories (currently 16 each) and 4 player games starting territories 11 each (currently 12 each)

Reason: To balance first turn advantage more evenly and decrease probability of dropping bonus'

mattattam wrote:Proposal (discussed above)

Proposal: Make 2-3 player games starting territory positions 14 territories (currently 16 each) and 4 player games starting territories 11 each (currently 12 each)

Reason: To balance first turn advantage more evenly and decrease probability of dropping bonus'

+1 post ...

this would fix a lot of these gripes.

mattattam wrote:Proposal (discussed above)

Proposal: Make 2-3 player games starting territory positions 14 territories (currently 16 each) and 4 player games starting territories 11 each (currently 12 each)

Reason: To balance first turn advantage more evenly and decrease probability of dropping bonus'

Can you do that? I was under the impression That you could only create 1 scenario, regarding how the initial drop is distributed.

I thinking we will have to put in some block to keep someone starting with the island bonus though.

The Bison King wrote:

mattattam wrote:Proposal (discussed above)

Proposal: Make 2-3 player games starting territory positions 14 territories (currently 16 each) and 4 player games starting territories 11 each (currently 12 each)

Reason: To balance first turn advantage more evenly and decrease probability of dropping bonus'

Can you do that? I was under the impression That you could only create 1 scenario, regarding how the initial drop is distributed.

I think you can do this. Ender or someone in map-foundry will know for sure. If you can't do two scenarios it still could be changed to 14 territories overall instead of 16. This would still make a big difference with the drop.

I got wrapped up with other things this evening and so I have not had time to analyze this in detail. I hope to check it out tomorrow evening.

EDIT:

Well, a day has come and gone and I did get a look at this, and I think I understand the problem now. I had been checking bonus probabilities with a copy of MrBenn's spreadsheet. I had to expand it a bit to handle all the zones on this map, and I guess I broke it, because I ended up with something that didn't calculate the probabilities the same way in different parts of the sheet.

Anyway, I played around a little more, keeping in mind that the starting positions reduce the map effectively to 43 regions to be split among the players. Also, because Dalmus is part of a starting position, the probability of getting the Islands bonus becomes more complex. In a 3 player game, one player definitely has Dalmus, and then must pick up at least two of the remaining four islands, which has a probability of occurring 29.9% of the time. The other two players must get three of the four islands apart from Dalmus, and each of them has a 8.6% chance of doing that. Altogether, this gives about a 47% chance of somebody getting that bonus. There are two 4-region zones and for the player getting Scaralact in a starting position the Skyatica bonus is effectively one as well. In a two or three player game, the probability of dropping a 4-region zone in the 14 regions that one gets out of 43 is 0.81%, but that is multiplied by the number of players that have a shot, so that is 3 times the two regions and the one shot at Skyatica, so we get 7 times 0.81% or 5.67%. All of these probabilities would seem to explain why so many games are starting with bonuses in the drop. I'm not sure what our best solution would be, and I am a little too tired to sort one out just now, but I suspect we might want to bring the islands into the starting positions. We also have the problem that in a two player game, the regions in the unused starting position are returned to the pool, so we have 46 regions divided three ways (the two players, plus a share of neutrals). That means the two players each start with 18 regions, for an initial deployment of six. This is bad for the second player, since the first player could quite easily take a region and drive the second player's deployment down to five.

You're math is off on the amount of territories that players start with for a 2 player game. They start with 16 each. Same goes for 3 player games (16 each)

This is my proposal as stated earlier:

mattattam wrote:Proposal (discussed above)

Proposal: Make 2-3 player games starting territory positions 14 territories (currently 16 each) and 4 player games starting territories 11 each (currently 12 each)

Reason: To balance first turn advantage more evenly and decrease probability of dropping bonus

The question Bison asked is can we put two different amounts for starting positions? (14 for 2-3 player games and 11 for 4 player games)
At the very least the amount of starting territories can be taken from 16 to 14 in 2-3 player games right? Although I do not know how the technical aspect of creating this works I'm sure there is some way you can change this.

My math is correct. Check a recent game like Game 7871873 and you can see that green, playing first, had 18 regions.
There are 52 regions on the map, with 3 starting positions each containing 3 regions, leaving 43 regions in a pool for random distribution. So with two players, two of the three positions are handed out to the players, and the regions in the remaining position are returned to the pool, leaving 46 regions to be divided by three (one third to each player, and the remainder left neutral).

As far as 3 player games go, look for example at Game 7833975. Each of the three players gets one starting position of three regions, then the pool of 43 is split three ways, for 14 more regions each (17 in total each), with one region left neutral.

Now that danryan's game, Game 7857092, has completed, we can see that Leehar did in fact drop Lyalia and the Islands. With the Islands bonus only requiring 3 out of 5 regions, and one of them, Dalmus, being a part of the starting positions used to prevent the drop of the Chunjaris-Theraland road bonus, we now have a high probability of a player dropping it, as I outlined above.

In order to have 4-player games start with 11 regions each, presuming no changes to the current scheme of 3x3 starting regions, the total number of regions in the pool would have to be between 44 and 47 inclusive. This would require 6 to 9 regions designated to start neutral.

In order to have 2- and 3-player games start with 14 regions, presuming no changes to the current scheme of 3x3 starting regions, the total number of regions in the pool would have to be between 33 and 35 inclusive (yielding 11 regions to add to the 3 regions in a starting position). This would require 8 to 10 regions designated to start neutral.

So, choosing 8 or 9 neutrals would give the starts that mattattam proposes.

An entirely different approach to our problems might be to simply make all the cities start as neutral 2's. No one can drop a road bonus, or any other bonus, apart from the Islands. Divide the non-city islands with a set of starting positions, and the drops should be much more fair.

n order to have 2- and 3-player games start with 14 regions, presuming no changes to the current scheme of 3x3 starting regions, the total number of regions in the pool would have to be between 33 and 35 inclusive (yielding 11 regions to add to the 3 regions in a starting position). This would require 8 to 10 regions designated to start neutral.

So, choosing 8 or 9 neutrals would give the starts that mattattam proposes.

An entirely different approach to our problems might be to simply make all the cities start as neutral 2's. No one can drop a road bonus, or any other bonus, apart from the Islands. Divide the non-city islands with a set of starting positions, and the drops should be much more fair.

What I need to know is how would this effect 6-8 player games? Would the amount of territories players receive in those games be reduced do to these changes?

I see the recent games ender with 2-4 player games. Got it.

I'm on the fence about the idea of making the cities start neutral 2. This would drastically change gameplay where you would have to take a city to get any bonus. This could be good though and make this map very unique. The idea that you wouldn't be able to drop a bonus is very attractive idea since it would drastically cut down first turn advantage.

The only concern would be the Chunjaris to Theraland bonus which is comprised of 3 territories and are all cities.
Also the question of how it affects 5-8 player games is important but not my area.