pancakemix wrote:To that I'd say that games are what they are. Strategy doesn't change fundamentally between a 5-player and a 6-player. Obviously, your approach will be slightly different, but I'd think different maps would be a far greater factor in determining the chances of winning. Maybe I have a pretty good track record at 5-player Classic games, but that's very different from a 5-player World 2.1 game or a 5-player Doodle Earth game or a 5-Player Clandemonium game. It would make far more sense to adjust someone's EV based on the map instead of number of players.
But that's not practical. I'm not sure on the exact number of maps, but it's getting close to 200, I believe (If anyone has this figure, it'd be nice to know. Thanks). That's a lot of maps to determine an EV for based on each person. Especially when you consider the scoreboard gives over 20000 hits. I've never even played half these maps to begin with. How would you expect to calculate my EV for a map like Oasis that I've never played on?
There are other things I'd take into account before number of players, too: spoils type, fog, fortifications, and play order all have a big impact on strategy, arguably more so than player number because they effect the way you actually play the game rather than where and how you start out which could be just as bad even with less players and the way you play a game of Risk is just the way you play a game of Risk. It's still holding continents, trading in for troops, etc. I will agree, EVs should take more into account than win %, but I will say that:
1. Win % should be the bulk of EV determination
2. I'm not sure how much player numbers should be taken into account for EVs, but beyond the scaling I doubt it should be much if anything at all because player number's effect is really a function of what map you're playing on more than anything.
177 quenched maps, 7 in beta.
