1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

While large multiplayer games are a lot of fun the ability to win seems as much a factor of diplomacy as it does with your skill directly related to the game.

Obviously the nations are not balanced in a way where you could have 2 people play with Random nations and get a fair match, but their are certainly many different 1v1 mathups that would work well. Particurarly if you can specify a map size to help counter the strong rush nations... compared to the ones that gain power over time.

So what do you guys think are fair (and fun!) matchups? Assume that you will know you the nation you are playing against so you build your pretender and scales to suit.

I like the simplicity and direct give and take of a duel game. You know who your enemy is, you don't need to worry about exhausting all of your forces against an enemy only to have a third nation come in and take you both out at the end.

It might even be interesting to setup a ladder or some kind of tournament game with duels.

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

How about
Early Era
Caelum vs Neifelheim
60 Provences, all other settings at default.

Sound fair?

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

Pretty fair though if neifelheim can get lightning resistance caelum seems fairly screwed. A fair match up(imo) would be EA vanheim vrs EA helheim. Another possibly fair match would be EA abysia vrs EA Neifelheim (both have strong recruitables, niefelheim is slightly stronger in the troop and powerful commander area but its weakness to fire should make up for it)

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

The most fair of all matches is Nation A versus Nation B, where Nation A = Nation B.

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

You mean, like an A9 bless? :X

I agree with the rest of your post though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Its kind of hard to find complete match-ups.
There is however one guaranteed way to get both of you satisified and a fairly even match, though it may take some time:
One of you picks a nation, the other guys picks another nation (probably, one that is a good counter to the first one), the first guy gets to repick, now that he knows the other guys nation. Now the other guy gets to repick, untill someone decides not to repick.
If you want to avoid infinite loops, or just make sure it doesn't take forever, make it so one nation can't be picked twice, or maybe can't be picked twice by the same player.

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

I agree the most fair would be a duplicate nation battle... but frankly that is pretty dull.

Vanheim vs Helheim would be an interesting battle although not that far off from a mirror battle.

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

What about an LA Marignon vs. Caelum game? They have vastly differing troops, but at the same time they're sort of similar. Strong archers, two main schools of magic, and units with an average resource cost.

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

I have an idea. Actually I haven't thought about first. It works for cakes, it should work for Dominions.

First person selects 2 nations.
Second person chooses one of them. First person gets the remaining nation.

Proof: unless we're dealing with masochists or complete newbies, First Person will select 2 nations with fairly equal chances of winning.

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

Nice idea B0rsuk

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

I do like the idea B0rsuk. Of course the ultimate test of skill would be to play the same map again (but switch sides).

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

I do like the idea with the ladder, duels will be great, and we can play them much faster that standard PBEMs, just to agree some hours and you can play lots of turns each day...
Only question, who's gonna arrange this legaue;)

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

It sounds good but I suspect we would end up proving that there is rock-paper-scissors balance in the game. Without other nations to affect the ups and downs in the game, some combos would be pretty pre-decided. Especially since it would only represent the results of that nation on a small map which is very different.

What Id like to see are competitions of Ulm-vs-Ulm and Ermor-vs-Ermor. But that would be such an unusual situation that they would have to change their tactics and it wouldnt prove much.

Maybe someone could create a ladder mod that gives us a single nation which can support everyones play style, and use it as a standard base to test each other.

Or possibly, ladders of Player-vs-AI with a final score being recorded so that player A's score of Ermor-vs-AI could be compared against player B's score of Ermor-vs-AI. Use a very generic AI. Maybe a modded one using indepts.

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

I think if both people agree on map types you can come up with some fair matches. You might counter a strong bless rush nation vs a "take time to develop" nation by making indies relatively weak, and set the provences to 80 or 100 (for 2 people).

With b0rsuk's idea you would have 1 person pick all the variables for both nation and then let the second player pick the nation they want to play.

While a mirror match (with a mirror map) would be the ultimate balanced test it doesn't sound nearly as fun to me.

Another idea that might be a lot of fun is to have each person pick 2 nations. So its a 2v2 but each person controls their 2 sides. This might work out some of the rock paper scissors issues while still eliminating the unpredictable nature of diplomacy.

The nice thing about a 1v1 duel is even if you have a hard time cordinating a time to play together you still get to take 2 turns at a time.

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

Great idea. I'd love to see a ladder of some kind. I think all of your ideas are great even though it sounds abit boring playing against an identical matchup.

I'd like more the concept of each player chosing a nation and then starting two games one with your choice of nation the other with your opponents choice of nation, playing both games at the same time and the first to lose either game lose the match.

Whatever system used what would be the most fair game settings all around?

edit: Perhaps starting with random nations would be a good idea because I think some people specializes in certain nation with bless rushing and that doesn't show anything about the skill of the game. Also playing random nations can be fun as you could get nations you don't often use.

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

Saarud, I don't like your solution, because it's force Fire 9/ Water 9 bless rush strategie

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

MA Ermor vs MA Pythium seems an interesting match.
Majority of their troops are the same, with variations in sacreds, elite infantry and lizard cataphracts.
Mages and reanimation make an obvious difference betwwen them, and the background story is perfect for a believable civil war scenario.

Re: 1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?
 

You have a point about F9W9 bless rush strategy but this applies to all 1v1 games. I think with the right settings this can be evened out abit (unless you play Vanheim that is http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ). It should be a viable strategy but not the only one.

Caellum vs Neifelheim
 

I played out the duel over the weekend. It was very interesting. While my opponent (Neifelheim) won almost every major confrontration I was able to win most skirmishes and take over the majority of his lands. With the ability to use call of the winds to rapidly bring in reinforcements for beseiged fortress and to take low PD lands being a large key in the victory.

Probably the biggest turing point is when he attacked with his uber SC god (with beserk) but a lucky arrow pegged him before he could cast the crucial "mistform" buff and he was promptly destroyed by a group of flagrents.

Interestingly he didn't go with the Air9 bless or even use his nations sacred troops (they are very expensive resource and gold). What turned out to be incredibly effective were the skin shifters. With 70 hp (35 in both forms) it takes a good solid 3 thunderstrikes to take one out. An unbuffed (with items) Eagle King can cast 3 thunderstrikes before being fatigued.

As a big plus the shifters don't take any resourcs so a sloth 3 scale is possible, however that wasn't fully apparent when the game began so he was only running Sloth 1.

Two castings of Call of the winds would always take out a PD of 6 (only 3 giants for Neifelheim). If he increased the PD higher (7 or more gives a different message for scouts) then I would bring in an eagle king and some archer chaff to take it out.

Was a fun game... I had thought I had lost before taking his god out in that lucky battle. If we played the same two nations again I'm not sure the result would be the same (although I've got several new ideas to try the next time around).

Re: Caellum vs Neifelheim
 

I'm surprised by that result. Sure, Caelum's raiders can be annoying and eagle kings or serpahs can easily take care of Niefel's PD (no point buying more than 1), but he could just park Niefel Jarls everywhere (with Air-9 bless). There's not much Caelum can't do about that. Lightning doesn't work, favourite magic bows (vision foe, pierceer) miss too often to be practical. And in a single combat eagle kings (even fire-9 blessed) can't match a Niefel Jarl. And to make things worse, Niefel's regular army is better as well...

Re: Caellum vs Neifelheim
 

Well the the short nature of the conflict prevents a Niefel Jarl in every provence. Air-9 is 70% shock resistance, so alone is not enough for a Jarl. Of course a Jarl with Air 1 or a ring of lighting resistance takes care of that soon enough.

A lone commander is not enough though. A batch of Iron Crow would quickly kill a loan Jarl. You would get 16 attacking per turn if he was fully swarmed, and the last 10 would likely hit with an average damage slightly above protection.

I'm certainly not saying that Caellium would triumph in a rematch, but it was a lot of fun taking advantage of the various strengths. Big battles almost always went in his favor, but moving three provenes a turn would let me avoid the big battles and attack him everywhere else.

Also with a pretender design you could do things like forge wands of fireballs. Even 5 scouts with skull tailsmans would probably defeat a lone Niefel Jarl.

Re: Caellum vs Neifelheim
 

Just 70% shock resistance is good enough for practical purposes. Some lightning damage passes, but too little to really hurt and part of it gets regenerated. Even to take out stock (unequipped) Niefel Jarl you need 5-6 seraphs and quite a bunch of other troops to have enough time to kill him (and a lot of those troops will die). Besides, seraphs are getting discouraged by inefficiency of the lightning bolts and stop casting them. Of course on defense it may not be that bad as they can probably spam enough phantasmal warriors to stall the jarl. Considering that those jarls appear at 1 per turn rate it's not very efficient way to counter - you just can't hold enough provinces. Then very soon (if not right away) those Jarls will start coming equipped with lucky pendant and air-Jarls can't even be defeated with that plan at all.

It never came to my mind to try non-cold-resistance Iron Crows vs Niefel Jarl. I've tried it with completely disastrous results for Caelum. Initial attack did very little - I guess they were passing defense, but not the armour (Jarl had lucky amulet though). Then all nearby crows just got frozen while Jarls was killing them one per turn. Couple of seraphs weren't doing much better and eventually they got tired too. Only seraphines were desperately trying to get through MR until the end. The end happened when most crows were frozen to death (I think many more than Jarl has slayed with a sword). Of course, those crows that were close enough has already passed from chill and they've died too few turns later. I haven't tried to do exact calculations but I think that in your calculations you were underestimating the effects of cold and shield. Crows have virtually no chance to damage through both armor and shield (total protection of around 40) so they have to overcome shield parry (which I believe is irreducible). As they get tired from cold they chances quickly drop, so they really have chance to do any damage in first couple of rounds (and even that didn't happen in a couple of tries I did) which Jarl can regenerate. After that everything is stacked for Jarl - by the time closest crows freeze to death the further ones has already passed out, so nobody even tries to attack him anymore. With more seraphs that battle could be won, but essentially Caelum needs to bring an army to defeat a single Jarl while Niefelheim can just spread those Jarls everywhere while they still have an army to threaten Caelum's strongholds.

I don't see how Caelum can resists - that Air-9 bless just totally destroys any strong sides Caelum might have had. I guess if you're desperate enough you could try to play Caelum with Heat 3(!!) which would make Jarls very vulnerable and negate their chill effect (in your dominion), but it would be very hard on money. Well, maybe taking luck instead of order and hoping for good events... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Your pretender would be the only one to search for fire sites and forge those items, so it doesn't really look promising. And I don't see 5 scouts defeating Niefel Jarl - they may stall him (by spamming) if he attacks, but the problem is that Caelum doesn't have any affordable way to defend their provinces. Affordable may not be a right word because they could afford to keep 4 seraphs with small PD per province, but they don't have capacity to produce those seraphs. Scouts (or anything else) with skull talismans would be too expensive in gems.

Re: Caellum vs Neifelheim
 

I'll admit I didn't actually try the iron crows. The one Jarl I did manage to kill was done in by a group of lucky flagrents I got. And there is a huge difference between Jarl and Jarls. If you have 4 jarls together then the iron crows can only gang up 6 to 1 and would be slaughtered.

If you are up for a duel alexti we can give it a try. I'm curious to see if an Air-9 would really be as effective as you believe. I'm certainly open to being shown that it is.

Re: Caellum vs Neifelheim
 

In all experiments there was only one Jarl vs Caelumians. Plural form came from several experiments. Sorry about confusion.

Sure, why not. What map and settings?

Re: Caellum vs Neifelheim
 

We can mirror this last match.

60 provences random map (very little water) all other settings at default.

Indy -5
Magic -45

I can host the game altough I need to look into a service that assigns a name to my dynamic IP... because sometimes it changes 3-4 times in a day.

If you have a better hosting option I'm open for it. We can also apply the hunter of hereos nerf mod if you want.

Re: Caellum vs Neifelheim
 

Sounds good to me. Unfortunately I don't have any better hosting option. Should we start in online mode to make first 20 or so turns?

I'm not sure about HoH nerf mod, it's up to you.

Re: Caellum vs Neifelheim
 

Alex and I played our duel (actually two) yesterday. The Air 9 blessing did not prevent a significant problem to Caelum. Primarly because he couldn't get out enough Niefel Jarls to make use of it.

For general Caelum strategy that I used see this thread
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...o=&fpart=1

The hurricanes were particurarly effective.

For the first duel I used order3, sloth3, cold3, death3, misfortune 2 and magic 3. My pretender was a vampire queen which "interesting". She was great for expansion after hitting Alt-3 but was not as useful as I hoped vs his giants (at least until the final battle). While I knew that she would be easily killed by a Neifel Jarl I was hoping that she could kill his normal troops and perhaps be positioned in a way where a Jarl couldn't reach her. Most of the time this didn't work out in my favor but few times it did. Immortality was great in that I didn't have to "risk" anything to try it out (compared to a ghost king or other stat superior pretender).

The second game I went with the same settings except production3 and a sage pretender. I was going to beeline toward huricane and thunderstrike but some unlucky events delayed it a few rounds. The production 3 was actually a huge help because I was able to field twice the number of archers compared to sloth 3. That helped a lot in the early expansion and later having a great meat shield against his forces. The second game ended quickly after the hiring of 2 heavy mercanary armies, 100 archers and 5 eagle kings destroyed the majority of his forces in one big battle. The 60 heavy infantry mercs played a huge role.

So besides Neifelheim who can challenge the mighty Caelum. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Caellum vs Neifelheim
 

Yeah, those hurricanes are a game winner. There's nothing Niefelheim can do to prevent hurricanes as early as Caelum can cast them and they work on non-coastal provinves too. So after the capital is shutdown Niefel's can't recruite their Jarls anymore. In a second game I just tried to go for rush which might have worked if our starting locations weren't too far apart (mayba around 10 provinces apart). In the end I couldn't really attack Caelum lands because of supplies (and I took growth 2!) so I had to split my armies and try to build fort in the middle which slowed me down and let Caelum gather forces. I'm not sure what would happen with luckier start, Caelum can still summon hawks to slow down the siege, but at least he'd have to spend gems he'd spent on hurricanes otherwise, and it wouldn't be good for his income either...