Conquer Club

After reading the feedback from the Initial Troops announcement, I decided to see for my self how lopsided games really are when Initial Troops are set to Manual. The results are not what I expected, and I need some smart minds to help me understand what's going on, so that I can make the right changes to improve things.

I ran a script that went through all recently completed games, and counted how often the first player to take a turn won the whole game. It then calculated the increase in wins over what would be normal if all players had an equal chance. Here are the results:

Sequantial Automatic: +31%
Sequantial Manual: +26%
Freestyle Automatic: +0%
Freestyle Manual: +29%

With Automatic Troops, why is there an advantage to first player in Sequential games but not Freestyle??

It seems clear that Manual Troops gives an advantage to the first player in Freestyle games, so to prevent manipulation I should put in a "double turn block" against the last player to deploy initial troops. But why does Manual Troops give a slight disadvantage to the first player in Sequential games??

i think that the fog at the start should be cut out

Ok, the reason the first person doesnt have an advantage in freestyle automatic, was that enough used the double turn to offset the inherent advantage of going first.

I set up 11 world games and won 9 of them on non speed, freestyle world 2.1. I partially felt guilty doing it..but I had to see if it would be as cut and dry as I thought it would be. The ones I lost the people saw me on turn one. If I waited, i had them easy

No ideas how to fix it...but I answered one of the questions I think

kylegraves1 wrote:i think that the fog at the start should be cut out

Losing the fog would only work, in a progressive deployment of armies. I think in the end, a progressive deployment may be the only answer...it will still give advantage to first player to go though

lackattack wrote:With Automatic Troops, why is there an advantage to first player in Sequential games but not Freestyle??

No offense of anything, but I find this numbingly obvious…

I truly believe, this may be the most difficult option of the game that CC has ever had to figure out. The combination of all the other variables, makes it impossible to forsee how they all interact on all maps. I knew the second...i mean the second I saw the anouncement that I could win on world with it...especially if I really tried to exploit it.

the.killing.44 wrote:

lackattack wrote:With Automatic Troops, why is there an advantage to first player in Sequential games but not Freestyle??

No offense of anything, but I find this numbingly obvious…

Your suggestion of just cutting out the fog was pretty basic, and not well thought out either. Maybe not numbingly so...but pretty close to it.

To answer you question lack...

lets say one player is red other is blue and here's a simple outline of a map they're playing

(40)(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)40

we both stacked forty on said territories and the 2s represent neutrals...

red player takes his turn first and comes looking for blue the 2s will wear him down and when blue starts his turn he can easily take out red...

the reason this is such a difference on manual than automatic is that in an automatic deployment people can only do so much with X amount of troops spread out... even if you waste quite a few troops on first round and i make ya pay the dice may catch me in a later round... but on manual placement, when you screw up and attack first and waste troops and i make you pay for it, you've no reserves and game is over...

with my speed i can easily win 80 percent on this in freestyle classic

lackattack wrote:After reading the feedback from the Initial Troops announcement, I decided to see for my self how lopsided games really are when Initial Troops are set to Manual. The results are not what I expected, and I need some smart minds to help me understand what's going on, so that I can make the right changes to improve things.

I ran a script that went through all recently completed games, and counted how often the first player to take a turn won the whole game. It then calculated the increase in wins over what would be normal if all players had an equal chance. Here are the results:

Sequantial Automatic: +31%
Sequantial Manual: +26%
Freestyle Automatic: +0%
Freestyle Manual: +29%

With Automatic Troops, why is there an advantage to first player in Sequential games but not Freestyle??

It seems clear that Manual Troops gives an advantage to the first player in Freestyle games, so to prevent manipulation I should put in a "double turn block" against the last player to deploy initial troops. But why does Manual Troops give a slight disadvantage to the first player in Sequential games??

Did your analysis count the manual troop placement as a turn?

My guess at your question:
In sequential games, the first player can gain an advantage by taking territories from other players before they have a chance to act. Sometimes they even drop a bonus, which is a huge advantage. Especially in 1v1, which is probably included in your data. Obviously, in freestyle this can be prevented by allowing both players to act simultaneously.

If I'm understanding your explanation correctly, you're saying that the first player in a sequential automatic game wins 31% more than they should, assuming the odds of all players is the same? So, theoretically, for a 4 person game, the first person wins 56% of the time? Wow.

72o wrote:So, theoretically, for a 4 person game, the first person wins 56% of the time? Wow.

You're forgetting strategy. With 1v1, it's very straightforward. With 4 players, even if 1 player owns half the map, if everyone else teams on him he can still lose.

Slow

can i assume all this fuss is primarily with 1v1 ?

perhaps exploitation can occur with more players too, but i'm guessing the problem get's reduced as the # of players increases...

If so, then those stats are truly alarming, considering that they have been weighted by all games
(meaning 1v1 will be even worse) - i hope that made sense...
*sigh* why am my sentences so incoherent today *

AAFitz wrote:

the.killing.44 wrote:

lackattack wrote:With Automatic Troops, why is there an advantage to first player in Sequential games but not Freestyle??

No offense of anything, but I find this numbingly obvious…

Your suggestion of just cutting out the fog was pretty basic, and not well thought out either. Maybe not numbingly so...but pretty close to it.

What did I suggest? I hope you're not mistaking me with kyle …

lackattack wrote:After reading the feedback from the Initial Troops announcement, I decided to see for my self how lopsided games really are when Initial Troops are set to Manual. The results are not what I expected, and I need some smart minds to help me understand what's going on, so that I can make the right changes to improve things.

I ran a script that went through all recently completed games, and counted how often the first player to take a turn won the whole game. It then calculated the increase in wins over what would be normal if all players had an equal chance. Here are the results:

Sequantial Automatic: +31%
Sequantial Manual: +26%
Freestyle Automatic: +0%
Freestyle Manual: +29%

With Automatic Troops, why is there an advantage to first player in Sequential games but not Freestyle??

It seems clear that Manual Troops gives an advantage to the first player in Freestyle games, so to prevent manipulation I should put in a "double turn block" against the last player to deploy initial troops. But why does Manual Troops give a slight disadvantage to the first player in Sequential games??

The first turn advantage in manual only applies to 1v1's in fact in some other games the reverse can be true. Is this sampled in 1v1 then fair enough, it is in all games then it doesn't show anything.

slowreactor wrote:

72o wrote:So, theoretically, for a 4 person game, the first person wins 56% of the time? Wow.

You're forgetting strategy. With 1v1, it's very straightforward. With 4 players, even if 1 player owns half the map, if everyone else teams on him he can still lose.

Slow

I know this. I'm going by lack's data. He said in automatic sequential the first player has a 31% advantage over the normal probability of any player winning, all things being equal. That would mean that in his data set, even assuming it was all 1v1, the first player won 81% of the time. That's a huge margin. Hence the 'wow'.

72o wrote:

slowreactor wrote:

72o wrote:So, theoretically, for a 4 person game, wins 56% of the time? Wow.

You're forgetting strategy. With 1v1, it's very straightforward. With 4 players, even if 1 player owns half the map, if everyone else teams on him he can still lose.

Slow

I know this. I'm going by lack's data. He said in automatic sequential the first player has a 31% advantage over the normal probability of any player winning, all things being equal. That would mean that in his data set, even assuming it was all 1v1, the first player won 81% of the time. That's a huge margin. Hence the 'wow'.

ummm. NO... not quite...

a player who wins 31% more than they should, for a 4 person game, the first person wins 33% of the time.

25% is normal (100/4)... 31% more would add +8% to the 25% for a total win rate of 33%...

and for 1v1, the normal 50% would be 66% for the 1st player...
still 'wow', but not the 'WOWWWWWWWWWWW' you thought it was...

but actually, if this includes all sizes of games,
then the effect is probably under 30% for 4p, and probably over 70% for 1v1... WOW!

yes i would assume the first turn % would be much higher for 1v1 than 66% but robin's maths makes sense....to me anyway lol
as to a solution. People have already mentioned it, A freestyle block of the last player is obvious. Perhaps removing the fog in drop (unless the setting is fog) this made no sense to me anyway. A progressive drop as well, perhaps x% at a time of the troops
whatever that may be

am i missing something here?
it seems that most of the posts in here are from regular 1v1 players. i rarely play 1v1 so would`nt know the % of wins of players going 1st. but surely this evens itself out over time anyway.
its pretty obvious that player 1 has a tremendous advantage in 1v1. in 8 player its less of an advantage and even more so the larger the map. we cant determine who takes the first turn in any game, even though we all hope for that stroke of luck. so our misfortune in one game could be advantageous in the next.

the.killing.44 wrote:

AAFitz wrote:

the.killing.44 wrote:

lackattack wrote:With Automatic Troops, why is there an advantage to first player in Sequential games but not Freestyle??

No offense of anything, but I find this numbingly obvious…

Your suggestion of just cutting out the fog was pretty basic, and not well thought out either. Maybe not numbingly so...but pretty close to it.

What did I suggest? I hope you're not mistaking me with kyle …

so sorry... i was indeed.. however, the numbingly obvious comment was not necessary, and that is numbingly obvious

I also turned around one of the losses... i expect to win 12 of the first 13 games I set up on manual casual freestyle world now. Granted I can usually win 75% ish anyways, but Id say this goes to prove that its nearly impossible to win going second. People have tried everything, droping everywhere, dropping on one pile...the only one that could counter me going first, was the one who didnt let me go first unabated.

Hey lack,

"With Automatic Troops, why is there an advantage to first player in Sequential games but not Freestyle??"

I am not surprised at all. However this advantage in sequential games , I believe is most telling in a straight fight (1 vs 1 & team 1 vs team 2). Simply put, if you (1vs 1 or 1 team vs another ) start first, you get to cut the poor 2nd guy's reinforcements. This happens round after round. All things equal, the first player clearly has an advantage. This cannot be generalised to 3 to 8 player standard or 3 to 4 teams settings where the first player advantage is greatly reduced by counter balances of other players or teams.

The reason why this advantage does not show up in freestyle is the possibility that the 2nd player can snatch back the first move from the first player by playing fast enough . In other words, by playing slow relative to 2nd player who happen to be online at the same time, the first player actually lost "his pole position". It is not unusual for this to happen.

I only just comment on 1 issue above based on straight fight settings. By the way, what portion of games are straight fight settings? I know they are popular. Do they exceed 40% of total games played at cc?

I won't comment on manual deploy for now.

Cheers, roadwarrior

interesting but i have no soluion...

AAFitz wrote:

the.killing.44 wrote:

AAFitz wrote:

the.killing.44 wrote:

lackattack wrote:With Automatic Troops, why is there an advantage to first player in Sequential games but not Freestyle??

No offense of anything, but I find this numbingly obvious…

Your suggestion of just cutting out the fog was pretty basic, and not well thought out either. Maybe not numbingly so...but pretty close to it.

What did I suggest? I hope you're not mistaking me with kyle …

so sorry... i was indeed.. however, the numbingly obvious comment was not necessary, and that is numbingly obvious

I also turned around one of the losses... i expect to win 12 of the first 13 games I set up on manual casual freestyle world now. Granted I can usually win 75% ish anyways, but Id say this goes to prove that its nearly impossible to win going second. People have tried everything, droping everywhere, dropping on one pile...the only one that could counter me going first, was the one who didnt let me go first unabated.

I am currently 11-0 on dust bowl seq manual, and i sure havent went first 11 times. I also managed to lose going first on world 2.1 so its not "nearly impossible".

lackattack wrote:After reading the feedback from the Initial Troops announcement, I decided to see for my self how lopsided games really are when Initial Troops are set to Manual. The results are not what I expected, and I need some smart minds to help me understand what's going on, so that I can make the right changes to improve things.

I ran a script that went through all recently completed games, and counted how often the first player to take a turn won the whole game. It then calculated the increase in wins over what would be normal if all players had an equal chance. Here are the results:

Sequantial Automatic: +31%
Sequantial Manual: +26%
Freestyle Automatic: +0%
Freestyle Manual: +29%

With Automatic Troops, why is there an advantage to first player in Sequential games but not Freestyle??

It seems clear that Manual Troops gives an advantage to the first player in Freestyle games, so to prevent manipulation I should put in a "double turn block" against the last player to deploy initial troops. But why does Manual Troops give a slight disadvantage to the first player in Sequential games??

Preface
Alright, I was already halfway through my explanation, when I realized that this is not just for 1v1 games, however, my explanation will still apply, because the effects are the same in multiplayer games, except maybe less influent.
Also I did a little Game Finder search and found that 66% of the manual deployment games is 1v1 anyway, so I think (I hope!) my explanation is valuable:

1v1 effects
So in 1v1 games, there is a struggle between 2 effects:
A) The player who goes first can decrease the amount of deployable troops the second player gets, by breaking bonuses and taking territories.
This creates situations where player 1 gets 4 troops for 12 territories, but brings the second player back to 11 or 10 territories.
B) The player who goes second has the advantage of being able to react to the first player. Here is a little example of this:
Let's say player 1 invested a lot of troops into taking every single territory of a bonus. the second player only has to take one of these territories to break the bonus, and he can then possible take another little bonus for himself.

Manual <-> Automatic
Another important thing to note is a difference about Manual games compared to the classic Automatic ones.
In Manual games, all troops are deployed in big stacks. That's why going first is an even bigger advantage in manual games; you can get the auto-attack off. In the big numbers that arise when you deploy in big stacks, the attacker dice have a significant effect.

Comparison of game settings
Now let's look at how these 2 effects work in the different settings.
Sequential Automatic:
Effect A is obviously very strong. Player 1 will bring the second one down to get a little less armies. Usually, because the game is sequential, Player 2 will only be able to bring the situation back to equal. Player 1 will then again have the advantage of going first. This explains why the player to go first will win a lot more games than the player to go second.
Freestyle Automatic:
This is where it gets interesting. The effect of going first is smaller, because often the other guy is already present when the "first player" goes.
Also, effect B is bigger. Player 2 broke player 1 and also took a continent for himself. And what's best, in the round after, player 2 can usually go immediately when player 1 starts. There you go, the player who went second has an advantage.
Apparantly in Freestyle Automatic, these 2 effects cancel eachother out perfectly. (I am so going to use this in the next discussion about freestyle vs sequential )
Sequential and Freestyle Manual
The reason I took these two together is because the effect in going first is determined by the same simple thing; being the first to strike the opponents stack.
I don't completely understand how going first in Manual is less of an advantage than in Automatic. I would expect that just autoing your opponent would give a higher winning % than when you play a slower game in Automatic... but apparently my expectations were wrong

lackattack wrote:With Automatic Troops, why is there an advantage to first player in Sequential games but not Freestyle??

My answer to this, as I explained above, would be that when Automatic, when in a freestyle game, the advantage of going first is smaller because opponents often are present quickly after the first player goes. also the remaining effect is cancelled out by the ability of the second player to react to the first player and for example claiming a bonus the next round after player 1 starts but before he's able to break it!

Although English is not my mother language, I hope I have made myself clear and also I hope I have kept it at least a little compact.

Please discuss
Cheers, KP

How about - minimum of 2 troops everywhere? And, maybe a maximum too?

Loads of people have moaned about the fog but without it everyone will try to wait to go last in deploying.

Ok. I think that what takes away the advantage in freestyle automatic is much simpler. In a 1v1, especially freestyle, you can start your turn before your opponent attacks and brings down your territ count. Also, in seq. automatic the first player is always up 1 deployment, in freestyle both are always on the same turn. No extra 3 armies for the first player (or however many).

In manual automatic the advantage comes not from bonuses, but from being able to attack first with almost all of your troops. So that attackers advantage is applied to a larger number of men.

Ex.

Free. auto: You deploy 3 guys. So maybe you have 6,3,3,3,3. so now you can attack with your 6 against a few 3's and you get the advantage of attackers dice. Then second player goes and drops his 3 on a 3 stack and attacks with his 6 against some 3's or even some of your newly created 1's (territories you went through).

Free. manual: You deploy 10 men, so you have 11,1,1,1,1. You attack with your 11, and wipe out most of your opponent. (maybe even kill him on first turn,this will acount for some extra wins). You even get to attack his 11 stack with your stack meaning that when he finally attacks, he will not get the advantage of attacking with his 11, men, so he looses attackers advantage for most of his troops.

In conclusion:

1. First player may win a lot on first turn (or have all his men in a bonus that he wants, no men wasted on the other side of the map).

2. First player gets to attack with all of his men (except for the 1's which have to be on other territs).

I believe that these are the two reason.