Dust Bowl [Quenched]

by **chapcrap** on Mon Mar 05, 2012 5:49 am

Can the XML be changed on this to have equal amounts of starting territories in the decaying zone?

It just makes sense. It would make games more fair and probably get more people to play the map.

by **chapcrap** on Thu Mar 15, 2012 6:30 pm

chapcrap wrote:Can the XML be changed on this to have equal amounts of starting territories in the decaying zone?

It just makes sense. It would make games more fair and probably get more people to play the map.

Was this a stupid question?

by **natty dread** on Thu Mar 15, 2012 6:45 pm

You'd have to ask RjBeals about that.

by **RjBeals** on Fri Mar 16, 2012 3:53 pm

I'm not changing it, but I don't care if someone else wants to.

by **Jatekos** on Fri Mar 16, 2012 4:15 pm

chapcrap wrote:Can the XML be changed on this to have equal amounts of starting territories in the decaying zone?

It just makes sense. It would make games more fair and probably get more people to play the map.

That would be great.

Decreasing the number of starting regions in 1 v 1 games would make the games even more balanced, in my opinion. Currently both players get 12 regions.

by **chapcrap** on Fri Mar 16, 2012 6:36 pm

RjBeals wrote:I'm not changing it, but I don't care if someone else wants to.

Thanks Rj! Let's get the XML out and start editing!

by **chapcrap** on Tue Mar 20, 2012 4:08 pm

Now that Rj said he doesn't mind changes, can I just work with the XML myself? Does someone else need to?

by **RjBeals** on Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:55 pm

you can do it if you know how.

by **chapcrap** on Tue Mar 27, 2012 7:07 pm

Well, the lastest version of the xml in this thread that I can find is about 6 pages ago. There is nothing in the first post for the XML. Can one of the Foundry mods take a look at this? Give me the XML and I will work on a proposed change to make the map even. Everyone can see that the starting positions need to be changed.

by **DiM** on Tue Mar 27, 2012 7:13 pm

here you go. this is the current version

by **chapcrap** on Mon Apr 16, 2012 4:14 pm

I've been trying to work on the XML for this, but I've not done it before and I'm a little slow...

Anyone who wants to offer lessons, I'm a quick learner and good worker.

by **chapcrap** on Mon Jun 18, 2012 7:22 pm

chapcrap wrote:I've been trying to work on the XML for this, but I've not done it before and I'm a little slow...

Anyone who wants to offer lessons, I'm a quick learner and good worker.

Anyway...

the drop on this really needs fixed so that one person/team doesn't get all of the decaying neutrals.

by **MrBenn** on Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:25 pm

chapcrap wrote:
chapcrap wrote:I've been trying to work on the XML for this, but I've not done it before and I'm a little slow...

Anyone who wants to offer lessons, I'm a quick learner and good worker.

Anyway...

the drop on this really needs fixed so that one person/team doesn't get all of the decaying neutrals.

The dust/decay territories should be lumped into starting positions (each terr in a different starting position). If the underlying territories are then coded as neutral starts the dust terrs will be handed out equally. However, this will change the total deployment as the remaining 24 terrs will be divided up equally among players. This will change the number of terrs each as follows:

2p - 6 dust, 8 normal = 14 total
3p - 4 dust, 8 normal = 12 total
4p - 3 dust, 6 normal = 9 total
5p - 2 dust, 4 normal = 6 total (6 terrs start neutral - 2 dust, 4 normal)
6p - 2 dust, 4 normal = 6 total
7p - 1 dust, 3 normal = 4 total (8 terrs start neutral - 5 dust, 3 normal)
8p - 1 dust, 3 normal = 4 total (4 terrs start neutral - all dusty)

Given how easy it is to take the dust regions off a player it doesn't seem worth capping the number that get given out, especially as it would need to be capped at 3 to have an effect, which would leave too many neutrals in the centre to start.

by **thenobodies80** on Sun Jul 08, 2012 1:39 pm

chapcrap wrote:Can the XML be changed on this to have equal amounts of starting territories in the decaying zone?

It just makes sense. It would make games more fair and probably get more people to play the map.

Chap, since the map is a old one and I've learned that change old maps is a problem if done without ask, I would like to understand what people think about this possiblity before to apply the changes.
To do that, could you please write here a detailed post with your proposal....I'll do the rest

Thanks
Nobodies

by **chapcrap** on Mon Jul 09, 2012 6:43 pm

My proposal would be to code starting positions for the Dust terts so that they get evenly distributed. It would also be good to have them start with 2 neutrals if they are neutral instead of given to the player.

Basically, hand them out evenly.

by **agentcom** on Thu Jul 12, 2012 11:53 am

Chap, I'm not sure I'm with you on this one. While I have suffered and benefited from this "problem." I always found it to be a unique element of the map. I am not one of the people who thinks "The possibility of dropping all of Aus on Classic is WRONG and should be fixed." Uneven drops are part of the game. In this map, the decaying territs are not always disadvantageous. They are centrally located and can give you valuable information. They are also slightly more likely than other territs to be near an opponent in the decaying region. Thus they may be helpful for an easy card later in the game.

As with any drop, there are better and worse drops on any map. The good players distinguish themselves by winning the games where they have an advantage and even picking up a few games where they do not have the advantage.

That said, I would strongly recommend that if you think this is a big enough problem to go back and recode a map that began it's life 5 years ago and after 35 pages of comments is what it is today, then you should be willing to, at the minimum, go back through the last 100 or so games and calculate the win/loss ratio of the players that have more or fewer decaying regions. 100 may be too small a sample size and you might have to control for first turn advantage (larger sample size would obviate this concern). If you find that it's 60/40, then I say leave it as is. If it's 90/10, then do something about it. If it's in between, there needs to be serious discussion about how unfair is too unfair.

by **agentcom** on Thu Jul 12, 2012 12:27 pm

OK, I just went through my first 11 1v1 games (I didn't have any team games on this map). You would of course want to take a random sample of all games, but this is at least instructive.

Your independent variables should be first turn (binary- "1" if Team 1 goes first, "0" if not), Team 1/Player 1 decaying regions, Team 2/Player 2 decaying regions; and your dependent variable would be Result (binary-"1" for Team 1 winning, "0" if not. You should also include the game number as the unique identifier for each row of data.

You will then want to run a statistical analysis to see what weight each variable has. If the decaying regions are deciding too many games, you should be able to see this from the statistical results. I think you can do this kind of stuff in excel, although it would be nice if you could get someone to code something to pull this data for you.

The coding to pull the data will be far easier in 1v1 games. Rarely is it a good strategy to attack a decaying region on your first turn, if you go first. So the code would simply look at how many times "received -1 for holding XXX" appears during that first turn for each player. You could probably get all the info you need about this map based on that BUT the results would be skewed toward your desired result (I think) because it seems like the effects of an "imbalanced" drop would be amplified in a 1v1 game.

You could use the same coding in a team game, but the larger the teams, the more likely it is that after a couple of forts, it may become advantageous to hit another team's decaying region before that player has played (especially in flat rate/escalating games, where the decaying region might be the player's only/best shot at a card). Thus the code mentioned above should still serve as a decent proxy for the information that you want, but there may be some territs that get missed.

The way around this would be a little fancier coding. You would have the names of all decaying regions in a set. The code would count player 1's decaying regions at the start of his turn. If during his or any subsequent turn, a decaying region of a player who has not yet played is successfully assaulted, then a +1 is added to the count that will be derived when that assaulted player begins his turn.

If you take the step of programming this additional element, then there is no reason not to use it for the 1v1 games above, even though it won't gather you much more data.

You will really only want to look for games that have two teams/players. Unbalanced drops in multi-player/team games shouldn't really matter as much, for obvious reasons.

Finally, if this code is written in the manner that I described for teams, then this will actually be a useful foundry tool. Inputs would be map name; a user-defined critical territ set (in our case, the decaying regions) a game range (so that a mapmaker can limit results to only the period of the most recent gameplay changes); and perhaps a game-type limiter (perhaps options would be 1v1, team v team or both). The output would tell you, within the selected territories, how much the following 3 things determine results: first turn, quantity of player1's drop w/i selected territories and quantiy of player/team 2's drop w/i selected territs.

Example: I want to know whether the amount of territs dropped in Australia (or Australia and South America or Australia, South America and any immediately adjacent region) has a decisive effect on the end result. I could run this code and find out.

by **chapcrap** on Thu Jul 12, 2012 12:53 pm

agentcom wrote:I am not one of the people who thinks "The possibility of dropping all of Aus on Classic is WRONG and should be fixed." Uneven drops are part of the game.

First, there is no way Classic is going to change and I wouldn't advocate it.

Second, the probability of dropping a bonus is always calculated when maps are made now. So, dropping a bonus is unlikely. This is a different situation entirely. I'm just advocating an even drop for the decaying territories. The way it is now is like someone dropping more castles than someone else in Feudal War or King's Court. It completely unbalances the games and it happens too often.

The implementation of the change does not matter to me. I don't know the coding or XML enough to make a great suggestion there. Either have everyone drop them evenly, start them all as 1 neutral or 2 neutral, or start them maybe even start them with 4. But, I like the look, style, and gameplay of this map. I just wish the drop could be made to be even so that the map would be used more.

by **agentcom** on Sun Jul 15, 2012 4:39 pm

chapcrap wrote:
agentcom wrote:I am not one of the people who thinks "The possibility of dropping all of Aus on Classic is WRONG and should be fixed." Uneven drops are part of the game.

First, there is no way Classic is going to change and I wouldn't advocate it.

Second, the probability of dropping a bonus is always calculated when maps are made now. So, dropping a bonus is unlikely. This is a different situation entirely. I'm just advocating an even drop for the decaying territories. The way it is now is like someone dropping more castles than someone else in Feudal War or King's Court. It completely unbalances the games and it happens too often.

The implementation of the change does not matter to me. I don't know the coding or XML enough to make a great suggestion there. Either have everyone drop them evenly, start them all as 1 neutral or 2 neutral, or start them maybe even start them with 4. But, I like the look, style, and gameplay of this map. I just wish the drop could be made to be even so that the map would be used more.

First, whether you advocate change or not, people make this complaint often. Classic is the typical example, but from time to time you hear it about other maps.

Second, I do not think this "is like someone dropping more castles than someone else in Feudal War or King's Court." That should be an almost automatic win for that player. You have taken my argument ad absurdum. Whether it "completely unbalances the games and ... happens too often." Is up for debate. That was my point. I think the onus should be on you to show this if you want to make the changes to a map that is several years old. I pointed out a relatively simple (for a programmer or someone who doesn't mind data entry) way to evaluate this.

by **ooge** on Fri Jul 20, 2012 9:38 pm

yes change it,along with italy

by **puppydog85** on Sat Jul 21, 2012 7:14 am

I don't play the map much but it sounds like a fair suggestion to me. Go ahead and change it.

by **IcePack** on Sat Jul 21, 2012 11:16 pm

PLEASE do this. I can't tell you how many times i've been screwed on the drop. I remember the worst was a multi player game and i think 6 out of 8(?) territories were all in the decay zone.
Brutal, all they had to do was eliminate the other two spots and i basically had no chance...Needs to be addressed.

IcePack

by **nicestash** on Sun Jul 22, 2012 12:06 am

Do change it

by **pmchugh** on Sun Jul 22, 2012 12:43 pm

Remember Pearl Harbour? It got changed and no one liked it. I agree with agentcom in that a bad drop is annoying but part of the map.

I would also be willing to hazard a guess that first turn advantage would be stronger in 1v1 anyway.