unbalance, micromanagement due to all-vs-all

[Zooko]

The time-limit and King-of-the-Hill variants would both seem to solve the problem, too.

[Boron]

I think i can say that i am one of the biggest hoarders .

My experience so far is that a hoarder is easily beaten until turn 70 , has still problems until turn 90 and only after that he is nearly invincible .

Especially from turn 40-70 a hoarder is EXTREMELY vulnerable though .

This is only a rough turn estimation cause it depends on the site frequency , world richness and research difficulty especially .

Hoarding is really no problem .
If you can't win with rushing until turn 90-100 then the hoarder deserves the win .

With 50% site frequency and normal world richness 1 Province is worth about 3 clams and 2 fever fetishes averagely if you only look at the resources .
But more territory provides other boni :
1st and most important you get more flexibility by special sites + indies like blood bonus sites , crystal mages etc. .
2nd and almost as important you gain time because you can afford to temporarily lose a few provinces just like russia did in the 19th and 20th century .

If you hoard hardcore you will be rather small in territory normally . By turn 80 you can have 200-300 pearls and 100 fetishes with most nations .
But an opponent might have on turn 80 100 provinces and thus getting 200-300 natural gem income . And he gets far more gold then you with your 25-40 provinces you will likely have .
And he can hoard a little also .
50 clams are easy to do for any nation .

And then there are the numerous counters to clamhoarders . Flames from the sky , Wrath of God , Armaggedon , Burden of Time etc. etc. .

Clamhoarding is really not an issue . It does not guarantee you the win instead you are likely to lose . Still i like clamhoarding but it is damn dangerous cause you are extremely vulnerable for 30-50 turns .

[alexti]

Zooko said:
I've just finished another two-vs-two game, "starts with C vs. ends with heim", and I am now convinced that most of the alleged "balance issues" and "micromanagement problems" in Dominions 2 do not occur in formats where there is proper incentive to make war.

I totally agree with that, but not with all of your reasoning...

Zooko said:
In an "all vs. all" format, if you make war on a neighbor before you have gained a substantial strategic advantage, you will almost certainly lose the game.

Not necessarily. As a criterion for the good war I use my ability to have positive territory gains without expending too much resources. Usually, the winning combination is plenty of small bands that are better than enemy's small bands plus some ability to defend your own forts (pretty good solution to that is to have sturdy forts - like castles). Often you don't need to defeat the enemy, it's enough to just take territory from him.

Zooko said:You might succeed at conquering your neighbor, but even if you do the other players who spent their resources conquering independents, researching, hoaring, and summoning will easily conquer you since you spent some of your resources making war.

See my previous point, the idea of good war is to get balance benefits of conquest from the war with the war expenses.

Zooko said:
So in an "all vs. all" game, most good players will wisely spend 50 or 100 turns making Non-Aggression Pacts with their immediate neighbors, conquering independents, researching, and so forth. This leads directly to the alleged "balance" and "micromanagement" issues, because in those games the number of provinces, armies, clams, and research levels becomes high.

I would certainly disagree. In almost every game I've played (I'm just being cautous, it's probably in every game I've played) the winner was somebody who was aggressive and successful early on. Of course, it's wise to made treaties with some of your immediate neighbours, however you need to leave somebody as a victim of your aggression.

Now I'll offer my ideas of the reasons why the late game tends to bog down. Sometime in the mid-game, maybe starting from turn 35-45, storming castles becomes impractical, because people are getting access to various tools like murdering winter, wrathful sky, rain of stones, ghost riders etc... Even if you were successful in the early game and have significantly more resources than the enemy, it's still very hard and costly to storm forts: you don't have enough gems to forge protection to your mages, the enemy knows your SCs and have counters to them, and simple mass of regular troops doesn't work at that stage either. Of course, you can still conquer the enemy, but the cost of that becomes prohibitive, especially in comparison to those who stay at peace. Instead, it's much better to start hoarding at that stage using all your superior resources to feed your hoarding machine. This effectively allows you to grow much faster than through the conquest.

Typically, my victories in long games went like: aggressive expansion early on, defeating or squeezing badly one or two neighbours, start hoarding as soon as enemies research mass destruction spells. At the same time use small armies to control uncastled provinces (and take more of such from enemies). But not trying to go for decisive battles. Later in the game when hoarding will start to pay off, conquer enemies with overwhelming forces. This works quite well, but the part after the initial wars is not much fun. I've met few hoarders (those who were hoarding from the beginning) and they stood no chance. They're much weaker by mid-game (when I'd start to hoard) and they still have less gem income from their provinces and generators combined than you'd have from your conquered lands.

I think that the key to keep the game dynamic is to make conquering forts easier in the mid-late game.

Zooko said:
I'm not sure, but I believe that in a typical "all vs. all" game with good players, by the end-game everyone has achieved research level 9 in some or all of the schools that they care about. Is that true?

I think so. More than likely it will be 9 in every level.

Zooko said:
In a "proper incentive for war" format, such as a format with exactly two teams (one vs. one, two vs. two, etc.), then this is just not an issue. The Ascension War is a hot war from the beginning, and the game is over long before the micromanagement becomes boring or the spell casting becomes unbalanced.

I agree that this kind of formats tend to produce more dynamic and enjoyable games with minimal micromanagement. Typical "all vs all" games are also fun and they are different, but I somewhat dislike their micromanagement/fun ratio.

Zooko said:This theory of mine is consistent with Kristoffer's comment on this bulletin board to the effect that he has never played a game that went as long as the games that are discussed in the "balance" threads.

My theory is that Kristoffer and Johan have already made Dominions 2 well-balanced for games that don't go too long.

The way to play games that don't go too long is to play a format in which there is proper incentive to make war.

I agree on that. Though in long "all vs all" game Dom-2 is still very well balanced, that's just amount of micromanagement hurts too much.