Balance Question and Concern

[happygeek]

Due to time restraints and still generally being a newbie, I have yet to engage in MP, so my knowledge of this comes mostly from my extensive readings of these forums here. By no means exhaustive, I still feel that I have at least a general idea of what to do in an MP situation. And yet I am still hesitant -- not merely due to time restraints and my own feelings of inadequacy. But also, because of the following reason, which I am purposefully overplaying in the hopes of starting a robust critical discussion.

With one big exception, I like SP. (The exception being that the AI cannot hope to compete.) I like SP also because I can play and have fun with my little nations. I feel that this may not be the case if I jump into MP -- because in MP, I see that there are a few (and sadly, only a few) things which always get mentioned as included in any game. ("Tarts", for example.)

Normally, I would call a strategy game (relatively) "broken" if it were to contain elements which *must* be integrated into your strategy in competetive play -- because any option or choice which is a "no-brainer" or whose non-inclusion hampers any other choice / option is not a real option at all.

So I am wondering if I am misunderstanding all of these discussions. If (competetive) MP play is all about controlling more of these few elements than the other people have, wouldn't that make the game dangerously close to being broken? Please show me what I am not understanding. Alternatively, I would also be interested in learning if there is a sub-community dedicated to non-competetive MP, where people will not be dissapointed if less-than-optimized strategies are played for fun's sake. (I am almost certain that, unlike, say, the majority of the Warcraft III community, nobody will scream "You F**kng noob! LOL!" at me for doing something unorthodox in an MP game, but the point is that (1) some orthodoxy, something orthodox exists and can be named as such, and (2) in MP the expectations of the players are high, perhaps due to the amount of commitment a game of Dom3 takes -- compared, at the very least, to a game of Warcraft III.))

I realize that I have not formulated my worries very well; sorry.

Thank you in advance for your constructive responses.

[Squirrelloid]

"Normally, I would call a strategy game (relatively) "broken" if it were to contain elements which *must* be integrated into your strategy in competetive play"

I think your definition is a little flawed. You could interpret that to be 'strategies which must be countered' - something that every strategy game has. Now, its been a *long* time since i've played Magic, but ever since just after the Black Summer you knew there were always going to be Sligh decks at every tournament, and so you had to integrate their presence into your decks strategy - either by having a way to deal with it immediately, or being able to sideboard effectively against it. Otherwise if you encountered one, you lost.

Certainly you always need to be able to counter Tarts by the time the endgame comes around, because someone might make a play for them. I wouldn't say you *have* to play tarts - there are other viable end game strategies.

Now, the set of endgame strategies seems to be fairly small. At the same time, the game doesn't necessarily need to go to the endgame either - tempo is part of the strategy. If you turtle its (at least partially) your own fault the game got to 'endgame'. Win faster, or at least try to. Also, you can identify nations likely to go for one of the degenerate strategies and kill them early, or convince others to kill them early. Engage in wars with the sole purpose of burning a rivals resources so they don't have them to use later. (Gems don't grow on trees... ok, some of them do... but mostly...)

[Sombre]

There are casual multiplayer games fairly often. People don't tend to get shouted at for trying out new strats in general forum games, either. I wouldn't worry about it.

I never use strats I find restrictive or boring and I have a good time playing dom3 mp.

[Micah]

I'm not so sure I agree with your basic premise...A game can have a lot of depth in terms of successfully managing resources, as opposed to selecting which resources to pursue.

For example, I don't think that anyone would say that Warcraft is a broken game because it forces you to buy harvester units to go gather gold and lumber. It's a mandatory strategy, but there's plenty of wiggle room to decide how much investment you put into your harvesters vs your offense vs your defense vs your tech-tree development. All of these elements are essential to almost any strategy in the game of Warcraft.

In Dominions the late game will sooner or later converge on tartarians, but you can determine their research priority and how many gems to devote to them versus other uses of D gems. Most successful late-game strategies will include at least SOME usage of tartarians, but th exact proportions are left up to the player. They're kind of the cap-stone of the Dominions "tech tree" since they require a bunch of research in different paths to summon in appreciable quantities (Normally conj 9 to cast them, cons 6 for boosters, enchant 8 for liches and thaum 5 to cast Gift of Reason.) Since they're the top unit it does kind of make sense that they appear in the end game.

Hopefully this helps...If you want to narrow down your question some more I might be able to address it a bit better. =)

[happygeek]

Your counterexample, Micah, with the harvesters in Warcraft, was enlightening. That makes sense, and I believe that you are right, I believe my premise is now faulty and that I had been jumping to conclusions. In my late-game SP games, I had not been employing tartarians, and that was good fun -- I suppose I was looking for a way to understand if fun (unorthodox) and success (MP) were disjunctive. Thank you.

[Sombre]

Just to re-emphasise the point: Not all games have to go to the relatively predictable lategame. Games with less players on a smaller map, those with victory conditions that can be reached in midgame etc are not hugely common, but if you create one you'll almost always be able to get players for it.

A 4 player 50 province map isn't going to get stuck in lategame in all probability.

Neither is one where you lose if your pretender dies and have to take an awake pretender.

[Gregstrom]

As an example, Crusaders (VP win condition) just ended before turn 55. It was a very entertaining game, and not a Tart in sight.

[Bo Jangles]

Happygeek, I'm in a similar situation to you in many ways (haven't played multiplayer, really like the single player experience, worried how much fun MP would be), and I've also spent a lot of time reading around the forums to figure out if Multiplayer would be fun for me. If it'll be any help to you, here's what I've personally concluded:

While there are certain tactics that see lots of use in late-game multiplayer, I feel that they aren't as specified as you may think. Rather than late-game players focusing on Tarts, for example, think of it more as late-game players employing SuperCombatants. It's not that Tartarians are required to be successful in the late game. Rather, the amount of magic and strategies in the late game grow to the point that players need to have SuperCombatants to act as all-purpose offensive and defensive units, when it's too difficult to build an army of units, commanders, and mages to account for everything that could be thrown at you. It's much easier to make one unit that can deal with most things pretty well, because making an entire army that can do so would be very wasteful.

Now, the simple fact of the matter is that Tartarians are pretty darn good bases on which to build SuperCombatants, but they're far from the only option. Golems are pretty common SC choices, as are the various Angels and Demons. I wouldn't think of it so much as "I *must* use Tartarians to be competitive." Rather, I'd think of it as "In the late game it's very easy for people to make big, strong units that can destroy whole armies single-handed if I'm not prepared for them." It's a rock-paper-scissors sort of thing, and the foundation of all strategy games. There are strategies and counter-strategies to them. The weakness of SCs is that no matter how well you prepare them, they'll always have *some* shortcoming, some facet that isn't perfect, and you can make anti-SuperCombatant thugs to capitalize on those deficiencies. And then your opponent will figure out ways to beat those thugs, then you'll figure out ways to beat that, and so on and so on. It's the same for every strategy in Dominions, there are who-knows how many strategies you can pursue, and then there are who-knows how many strategies to counter those strategies.

But anyways, back to your (and my) concern that every late-game period in Dominions 3 might be the same. Have you read through Baalz's guides? Here's a link to a topic with all his guides if you haven't seen them. They're pretty enlightening in general, and he addresses a lot of the common late-game tactics as they apply to whatever nation he's writing about and will introduce nation-specific strategies that break the norm for you to emulate and build on. For example, I can't think of a single Baalz guide that doesn't detail one of the nation's specific units that makes a great, and often *superior*, option for a Super-Combatant to the typical "build-lots-of-tarts" tactic. His Bandar Log and MA Ulm guides come to mind, where he describes how Ruddras and Iron Angels make great SCs, or his EA Caelum guide that shows how Eagle Kings can be used from turn 2 to the last turn of the game to counter and defeat anything your enemy can come up with.

So, again, try not to think of things in narrow terms. That's what I did at first too and it really discouraged me from giving MP a try. I still haven't gotten into a multiplayer game, but now that I'm thinking about Dominions 3 in a "there's infinite ideas, and I'm in this to have fun" rather than "I-must-use-these-common-tactics-to-win" mindset I really can't wait to give it a try

And I wouldn't worry about the other players being rude, I just can't see people who play this game having that sort of mind-set. Could be wrong, but at the very least everyone on these forums seems pretty nice <_<

[Gandalf Parker]

Part of the impression of "broken" can often IMHO be chalked up to the people in a given discussion all playing the same game. It is possible (though still not majorly so) to develop absolute strategies. But often you will see that there are many IFs involved. Such as, "this will win you the game" IF you are playing with a certain number of players, and certain game settings, with certain mods, on a certain map size, with certain nations/spells/items modified or banned. If just the map size for example is much larger or smaller then the strategies effect is often much less. The same with any of the other factors. The game supports a fairly extreme range in choices for just about everything so "fixing" any of those permanently in the game would amount to fixing it only for that group and messing it up for the others.

Many of the MP games have fallen into the "medium" range on all of those things which does allow for some lively discussions on how to keep those games from becoming predictable.


Gandalf Parker
--
I make my apologies here for any apparent slight made toward the
Incredible Relay Coalition.
(Hey! Come on. You know Im only half serious.)

[Fantomen]

Hey Happygeek, don´t hesitate to get into MP. The community is VERY friendly, noob games are set up regularily (or set it up yourself, it´s easy with Llamaserver.net), and don´t worry about the endgame balance issues until you´ve seen one.

Also, while I consider myself a competitive player, I have yet to win a MP game. Considering how many players each game has, say average 12, and how long time it takes to finish one. You can statistically play for years without winning even if you´re on par with other players in skill. My point being that it is fun to lose also. Roleplaying, plotting, testing ideas. Not to mention that winning just ONE war against an equal or better player is a game in itself!

I think the endgame whining is (a bit) exaggerated, the games I played so far my success have been more dependant on diplomacy, luck and early establishment of resources.