Question on game balance in this setup

Innocence · #1 May 30th, 2008, 07:00 AM

5 players on a random medium map - only 1 sea-nation.

All other things being equal, is this going to be a wildly unbalanced game?

Micah · #2 May 30th, 2008, 07:05 AM

With 5 players and 1 water nation you'll want to make sure that around 1/5th or less of the provinces are water provs to keep things balanced. That way everyone can (theoretically) get the same amount of provinces without killing a neighbor.

Aezeal · #3 May 30th, 2008, 07:28 AM

a bit less than 1/5 I'd say: the sea nation shouldn't be able to turtle&research with 1/5 of the provinces.

Fal · #4 May 30th, 2008, 07:32 AM

Agree with Aezeal.

Maraxus · #5 May 30th, 2008, 07:37 AM

(A bit) More than 1/5 is not too unbalancing, too.

While the water nation is unlikely to be the first to die, it will also have a hard time winning, once the first two land nations fall and the remaining two have 1/2 of the land mass each.

JimMorrison · #6 May 30th, 2008, 07:44 AM

Indeed, turtling doesn't necessarily help if win conditions are <80% conquest.

Loren · #7 May 30th, 2008, 11:15 PM

Quote:

Maraxus said:
(A bit) More than 1/5 is not too unbalancing, too.

While the water nation is unlikely to be the first to die, it will also have a hard time winning, once the first two land nations fall and the remaining two have 1/2 of the land mass each.

Yeah. I'm rather new to MP, I'm playing a water nation. I've kicked one land nation out of the water, there's one other water nation that even if I took it out I couldn't hope to win. There's no way I could hope to build an adequate force on land.

Innocence · #8 May 30th, 2008, 07:46 AM

Quote:

Micah said:With 5 players and 1 water nation you'll want to make sure that around 1/5th or less of the provinces are water provs to keep things balanced.

So that rules out random maps?

Aezeal · #9 May 30th, 2008, 07:53 AM

I disagree with Maraxus.. you can easily take a few land provinces in addition to the seas, usually an awake SC pretender does just that. Then you can NAP... and stop nap once you feel the need to get more involved... the turtling isn't manditory till end game... the sea nation just has more options, will probably choose his opponents (noone would declare on the sea nation just for the 2 land provs it has and then keep your eyes on the sea all the game expecting an attack, you declare on a seanation when you are ready to go into the seas with all your might and kill them). Being in the seas has advantages and you should have less than 1/5 sea provinces.. maybe even as low as 1/10 to FORCE them out of the seas.

Karlem · #10 May 30th, 2008, 09:05 AM

Seems that you are biased a little bit now Aezeal

Been aquatic is an advantage but has a price. Armour of aquatic units is usually quite bad, UW recruitable mages are scarce and magic diversity is hard to achieve. Land nations say things like "You are aquatic, going out of land is declaring war" and such.

So 1/5th should be more or less the right number fro 5 players.