PBEM Balance query

[ChuckBerger]

I see what you're saying, I guess I see it a bit differently. If both players know that the game design is set up to ensure that, the further one player gets ahead, the harder that player will have to push to keep ahead, then that is a neutral game design decision that doesn't preference one player or another at the outset. One side will still win, and that victory will be fair and will reflect in most cases the winner's better skill. Nothing unfair there.

The trouble with just "starting with a balanced game" is that, first of all, that's really really hard to do. There are any number of games on the Matrix site that are still trying to find the right "balance" years after release. It's in the nature of complex games like these.

The second is that you can have a "balanced" game that tends to end quickly, because the impact of early events is magnified to an unbeatable advantage, or a "balanced" game that tends to run full course, because there are mechanisms that keep the game on the rails. Both kinds of game can be balanced, in the sense of having the more skilled player generally winning. But I far prefer a balanced long-haul game to a balanced snowball game.

C

[WingedIncubus]

I'm going to side with MichaelT here.

I always compared DC:B to chess, as in any game with two opponents and a constant starting position. If one side is outclassed the best outcome then for the losing side becomes to to deny the opponent his Win and aim for a Draw. I would say that, even the German player was in fact losing the game for whatever circumstances.

The problem is, most players right now don't care for the Draw.

Rubberstretching the game to weaken the player in the lead in favour of the losing side so he might have a chance to "win" is gimping the game. There were so much the Soviets could do, anyway, at the pace they did.

[ChuckBerger]

Think of it like baseball, a game where teams play ten separate innings, then add up the score at the end. Each inning is a stand-alone phase in the game, performance in one inning doesn’t affect the next inning in a formal sense. It’s a fair, balanced game that mostly runs full course, with roughly matched teams. Sure, sometimes a team has a 10-0 lead in the 8th inning, and people start to go home, but by and large the game is still interesting all the way through. Not infrequently, it’s a cliffhanger in the tenth.

Now change baseball’s rules as follows: the team that scores more in the first inning, gets an automatic +1 run in the next inning, and so on. And that’s cumulative, so if a team wins 2 innings in a row, it gets a +2 in the following inning.

Let’s call this game snowbaseball.

Snowbaseball is still “fair” and “balanced”, in the sense that the rules are neutral and a more skilled team should win more often. But it’s not an interesting game, because a single run advantage in the first inning would often blossom into an unbeatable lead by about inning three. Of course, a turnaround would be possible, but there would be lots of games where people would head for the parking lot before inning five, because the end result is clear. Even if teams are evenly matched, most games will effectively be over way before the tenth inning.

Baseball is “fair”, “balanced” and “stable”. Snowbaseball is “fair”, “balanced” and “unstable”.

Baseball is a far better game than snowbaseball.

Right now, DC3 to me feels more like Snowbaseball than baseball. I really enjoy the first 3 innings, but then the game is over, and I haven’t even finished my first beer... I just want DC3 to be a little more like baseball, where the winning side has to play consistently well through ten innings, not just play well in the first and second, and coast from there to a foregone conclusion.

(Of course, it’s still the best wargame ever!)

[Michael T]

Well we agree to disagree, there is no problem in that.

To my mind it's more like a boxing match. The opponent could be smashed and knocked out very early. That is exciting and tense for both fighters. Or it could go the distance in a real slugfest. Which is equally enjoyable, a points decision. Or anything in between.

Hopefully the devs will find a solution to keep everyone happy [:)]

[FeurerKrieg]

Hopefully the devs will find a solution to keep everyone happy

Options are the key to this!

[WingedIncubus]

Now that 1.02g is live and official I can't wait to see what the Devs have in store to rebalance PBEM.

[Emx77]

ORIGINAL: Drakken

Now that 1.02g is live and official I can't wait to see what the Devs have in store to rebalance PBEM.

According to patch notes, nothing since last beta.

Anyway, what are key differences between solo play against AI and PBEM? Does AI have help with activation, rule exceptions etc.? I'm still struggling to beat Soviet AI on normal.

[c00per]

ORIGINAL: Michael T

If a player does well enough to gain an advantage he should keep it.

Agree 100%.. Their is no social safety net huggy bear in war !

[willgamer]

ORIGINAL: Emir Agic

Anyway, what are key differences between solo play against AI and PBEM? Does AI have help with activation, rule exceptions etc.? I'm still struggling to beat Soviet AI on normal.

If I am interpreting the metrics at http://www.vrdesigns.nl/
correctly, a lot of people a struggling vs. the AI.

I think your questions deserve their own thread. [:)]

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: Emir Agic

ORIGINAL: Drakken

Now that 1.02g is live and official I can't wait to see what the Devs have in store to rebalance PBEM.

According to patch notes, nothing since last beta.

Anyway, what are key differences between solo play against AI and PBEM? Does AI have help with activation, rule exceptions etc.? I'm still struggling to beat Soviet AI on normal.

Soviet AI cheats pretty blatantly. It spams forts and garrisons all over the place at a rate no human player can. It's a much tougher game against the AI than against a human Soviet because having to deal with a major garrison in more or less every red dot city slows things down appreciably.

It's beatable, though. It was beatable in 1.01, and even more so now.

[lancer]

Hi,

AI balance is a very different topic and we've made a lot of adjustments in the 1.02 official update to ease the difficulty on normal AI settings for a German player.

The AI gets the roughly the same number of forts and garrisons as a human player would but it gets them at the start rather than incrementally during the game.

It's done this way to allow the AI some scope for long term planning.

PBEM game balance is being looked at currently, along with a number of other related items.

Keep in mind that it'll never be perfectly 'balanced' because of the potential disparity in Player skills but our aiming point is to achieve a measure of equality for similarly skilled opponents.

As this is just about impossible to quantify it'll boil down to an educated guess and may take a few iterations.

Bit trickier than it first looked so I'd expect it early next week.

Cheers,
Cameron

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: lancer

Hi,

AI balance is a very different topic and we've made a lot of adjustments in the 1.02 official update to ease the difficulty on normal AI settings for a German player.

The AI gets the roughly the same number of forts and garrisons as a human player would but it gets them at the start rather than incrementally during the game.

It's done this way to allow the AI some scope for long term planning.

PBEM game balance is being looked at currently, along with a number of other related items.

Keep in mind that it'll never be perfectly 'balanced' because of the potential disparity in Player skills but our aiming point is to achieve a measure of equality for similarly skilled opponents.

As this is just about impossible to quantify it'll boil down to an educated guess and may take a few iterations.

Bit trickier than it first looked so I'd expect it early next week.

Cheers,
Cameron

Yeah, no.

The human player has to pay for everything with PPs. That means very rarely more than 3 major garrison because of costs alone. That's a 30 PP expenditure right there for just the three major victory cities.

I started an AI game a couple of day ago. So far, major garrisons have appeared in (no particular order) Odessa, Minsk, Riga, Kiev, Leningrad, Talinn, Moscow, Karkhov, Rostov, etc. That is to say, every single possible location that could get a major garrison, got one, and for free.

That's leaving aside minor garrison, which appear more or less in every single possible location. Not a big deal but it does add up. A human player can never approach that kind of coverage, since he is limited to (at most) one garrison per turn, minus turns lost for paranoia.

The Soviet AI is much more robust than a human Soviet because of this.

As for forts, again, yeah no. "Incremental" my ass. Literally dozens of these pop up at the beginning of the game and by virtue of existing there slow down the game in a way no Soviet human could. Once again, "incremental" for a human means, at most, a single fort per turn minus turns lost for paranoia. The AI gets literally a several DOZEN forts from the getgo. Very few PBEM games go that distance, and the mere existence of such forts from the getgo tends to stretch games against the AI.

If you want to help the human Sov PBEM player, you could do worse than flat out steal all this and apply it so as to slow down the tempo.

Opportunity costs are a thing look it up. Doesn't exist for the AI.

[willgamer]

I just want to applaud Flaviusx as someone who plays both AI and human games and is thus able to offer a rather unique perspective on both.

His colorful writing is a plus that adds even more to reading his posts!

Thanks!