Balance without a Mod? A Discussion (Long)
 

I’m a sucker for game balance design discussions so I got to thinking….

Not being the most experienced Dom3 player I’ve read the Vanheim/Helheim threads with a gamer's interest and I’ve found the disagreements interesting. Interesting enough to where I would like to see some testing done – not to prove any position – but just out of curiosity to answer the question: In an average game, using standard rules and settings, which nations have a distinct advantage/disadvantage and to what extent does this advantage/disadvantage matter?

So then I had to ask myself… how would I go about making a test? First of all one test doesn’t really prove anything. In a true MP game there will be personalities and diplomacy involved, so I know even the perfect test is inconclusive. That, however, doesn’t make it any less interesting to try. I though about Mods, but really they are one person's (or a select group of people) take on balance and many of those (e.g. conceptual balance) are hotly debated and don’t only take on the “balance between nations” issue but also address many other things – like “equality of options” – which won’t be the central issue I’m curious about.

So we stick with vanilla. How can balance that out? I've played hundreds of boardgames (a large hobby of mine) and a very popular way to even out balance issues, especially in a tournatment scenario, is to have a bidding mechanism where players bid using a resource to play differnt factions. To me this seems the easiest way to achive what we are trying to do. We let players bid on nations with resources from the game.

Ok – now what resources will a player bid with? We could mod the starting gold I suppose? But really that probably isn’t enough. It might still be more than worth it to play Helheim in the early era with no gold starting. And some nations (LA ermor) don’t give two licks about gold. So we need something else. Starting provinces? That might not be incremental enough. How about a victory conditions? Maybe provinces needed to win? Perhaps, but dom3 is often a momentum game – once you really have it then does it really matter if you need 10 more or 50 more provinces? As long as you have a steam roller going it will simply take time. So that’s out. Then I realized what would be a great bidding currency… Pretender Points!

We would need for the respective players to bid on nations and once the bidding is over the player designs a Pretender making sure to leave his bidding cost as unused pretender points. The player would then write down the stats, rather than actually creating a god. Since you can’t modify a created god we have no way of verifying if someone is following the rules so we would need a neutral party to create the gods based on the stats given and upload them to the server. I would think players would have to bid in 10 point increments so the bidding doesn’t take forever – though 5 pts might be ok as well.

How would the auction work? Multiple player auctions are difficult, but completely possible. Basically you would do the following (in a thread devoted to bidding perhaps):

1) Player A would bid (whatever increment they want) on a nation. A bid of zero is possible.
2) Player B would do the same but if they wanted to play the nation Player A choose they would need to bid higher than player A.
3) Player C would do the same bidding on any nation they wish. Continuing with Player D, ect…
4) Now it comes back around to Player A, assuming player A has been outbid he has to bid somewhere else either bidding higher than another player or taking once of the open nations that was never bid upon.
5) Repeat with Player B, Player C, etc until there comes a point where no one has been displaced. The final standing are the costs you pay in Pretender points you pay when designing your pretender for the nation you won.

So who plays? Bidding naturally favors those who are familiar enough with all the nations to a point that they can make experienced evaluations of the worth of nations. Also for the test to be good, you need players who can utilize whatever nations they have. The closer that all the involved player’s skills are the better the test should be. So in that vein it would seem that experienced players would be desired. How experienced? I’m not sure. I would *guess* that Dom2 experience would be a plus, that 10+ multiplayer games would be a good minimum and often really experienced players can identify others so a “referral system” might be good. Obviously trying to limit a game to experienced players could be controversial. In the end it might simply be that the top few well known experienced players who are interested in playing each invite one or two people to the game, and those players in turn invite others. We would have to trust that players do the invitations based on their assessment of the skill in other player, rather than personal preference. I’m not entirely sure I should have a hand in determining who plays as I am certainty not experienced enough to take part in the game itself.

One thing that would have to be taken into account is player mindset. Players desire to play a nation depending on their style or theme (I know I do). For this test however, those desires would have to be put aside for strict game play evaluations. You should basically bid on the nation that will give you the most bang for your buck. Ignoring the bidding on what you perceive to be an overpowered nation simply because you dislike their theme is fine for a normal relaxed game, but defeats the purpose of this sort of “testing” game.

As far as other game options I would want to stick to the base game suggestions as much as possible. The only thing debatable might be victory conditions. Since games using the standard victory conditions never end naturally it might be more prudent to have victory conditions based on controlling a certain portion of the map (provinces). But then again, perhaps the standard would be fine assuming players know when to concede the game.

I would highly recommend a mapsize of medium (15 provinces per player). Some builds are better for smaller maps and others for longer, so a medium would be the best way to determine overall balance. Graphs could be on or off, perhaps depending on a vote. Personally, since other players will be following the game (I will be) graphs on would be nice as (using the scores.html file) the general progress of the game can be followed by general observers. But that should be left up to the players.

Just seeing the bidding develop would be fascinating and informative I know to new players. I’d be curious to see how the bidding balances the nations and, after the game is all over, if players think they under or overbid for certain nations.

In conclusion I thought I would just throw this idea out there. I’d be interested in hearing people’s thoughts on the fairness of such a test and experienced players general interest in perhaps participating in a test like this. IF you’ve read this far I salute you! :)

I have a feeling that this sort of game will be invitation only so expressing interest in playing doesn't reserve a spot if it ever does happen.

Re: Balance without a Mod? A Discussion (Long)
 

Deleted.

Re: Balance without a Mod? A Discussion (Long)
 

Seems to me that if someone bids the exact amount you have left over after enough points to run a dual bless, no one will be dumb enough to bid higher to get a lamer version of the nation.

Re: Balance without a Mod? A Discussion (Long)
 

Thanks for the input! I'll address my comments below:

Well the goal is to bid the least for a nation compared to the other bids, not to pick your favorite nation. If it comes down to playing Agartha or Tien Chi someone might think it is worth 10 Pretender Points to pick one over the other, or perhaps not. A number of the nations might be won with a bid of zero, that *should* mean that those players don't think it is worth a bidding increment to go over to the other side. Perhaps not equal - but fairly close.

1) I agree to a certain extent. That is sort of the purpose of the designed test. People can try to put thier money where thier mouth is and prove they can evalute the worth of a nation better than other players.

2)One game is not enough for real info I completely agree - but it would be interesting. 4-5 games *might* give people a general idea of what is generally worth what (in a broad sense). For me... I think it would be interesting just to see the bids.

3) Why don't you think Pretender points would be good to bid with? (other than the fact that such a bidding mechanism requires a neutral party?)

On a side note I agree that there are lots of blitzers on there that are tired of a few nations - but small blitz maps are one extreame. That's why I highly suggest a medium map be used for any testing.

Re: Balance without a Mod? A Discussion (Long)
 

Quite possible - but you are bidding in blocks of points, not a point each. And usually there is always something else you can sacrifice to get a dual bless (get worse scales, lower domain, etc...) How low would you go? I would bet that most people would disagree about the exact amount - I don't think it is as cut and dry as you think.

Re: Balance without a Mod? A Discussion (Long)
 

The ability to have a strong early game is absolutely essential to a competitive nation. Faster expansion always snowballs into a BIG advantage regardless of what most people think. Take Patala for example, their expansion ability is ridiculously sluggish and despite their good late game potential will never rise to the same status as say LA Mictlan. Also MA Ermor and MA Ryleh doesn't have a bad early game at all. Ermor has reanimation + recruitable ethereal units for their turbo expansion while Ryleh has very good gold sink troops in the form of crab hybrids/lobo guards and armored slave troopers for resources to allow a very smooth early game themselves. MA Argatha on the other hand ...

Re: Balance without a Mod? A Discussion (Long)
 

I agree that early advantage translates often into late advantage. Momentum is huge. Thats why I dismissed victory conditions as a bidding currency and think something that has an immediate effect like Pretender Points is a better choice. I'm sure there is point that point were early momentum is superceded by long-term strategies, but I'm also sure almost everyone will disagree when that actually is - hence the bidding!

Re: Balance without a Mod? A Discussion (Long)
 

This is a great idea. Velusion mentioned god points for the bidding process, not turns, not sure why Frank brought up using turns, I looked it over and cannot see any mention of that in Vel's post while he does go into some detail about using God creation points.

I would suggest not keeping the bid points to 5pt increments, because allowing any increment would be an interesting way of using those unused build points in most God creations. If it takes a little longer, no big deal, that would be an interesting pregame to the actual game.

I also suggest making bidders in the auction secret, with the host giving each player a player number and they bid for nations as a secret bidder. This keeps the spoiler factor down, and makes the bid process less personal.

I would love it if you could bid negative points for the really unpopular nations and possibly get God points, but I suppose that is not possible?

I bet there are other ideas out there for bid currency other than god points too. Anyone?

One way is to create your own curency and leave the god points alone. It would be fun to just give everyone say 500 bid points and have them bid for nations AND a set of extra heros/pretenders and troops. Mod time, but hoo yah, that does sound fun. This way you leave god points alone too, which would keep things clean in that way and yo would still get an interesting picture of realtive worth of nations.

I do not share Franks contempt for everyone else's ability to price these nations. Mistakes would be made, but out of this would come the truth.

Great beginning idea Velusion.

Re: Balance without a Mod? A Discussion (Long)
 

Right off the bat Im thrown off of the "discussion of balance" by the fact that you didnt define those parameters. I would think that the other discussions on it would have shown you that there tends to be a wide difference of opinion on what an "average game" is. And you cant balance for the small-map PvP blitzers, and the mid-map VP games, and the large-map solo games.

Once you pick a game-type then a starting point is usually to put all of the AI into the game with a score graph output. Then set it to process turns every 10 minutes for a couple of days.

Re: Balance without a Mod? A Discussion (Long)
 

Standard Game = defaults settings when you create a game. Medium is the average between small and large (hence it is the average). Those are the settings I'm interested in seeing as far as envrionment variables. Since the designers designated them as defaults and averages I would also assume that these settings are what they consider to be the "average" game. I don't think that is an unreasonable asssesment.

I'm interested in multi-player - not AI. All that would tell us is which nation the AI is coded to play better against other AIs.