MP: VS League

[DakaSha]

only that ugly if you cant prepare :P

and duals can be over in 15-20 turns or can go much longer. turns come in quick though compared to large scale games

[DakaSha]

i think something that would be important is that nations are decided 'simultaneously' to avoid the choosing of nations known (or thought...) to be extremely good against the first one chosen... and to avoid constant nation switches

this could be done in several ways... the first coming to mind is just pming a neutral (trustworthy) player the choices and him announcing it.

if both choose the same the choice is redone... and here something interesting happens.. kind of a rock paper scissors thing: either both choose the same again and its redone... one keeps the chosen nation and the other chooses a nation that IS considered good against the first chosen... or one player even chooses a nation considered good against the race considered good against the first. lol. im sure there was an easier way to put that :P

or of course both just choose two random other nations.

now this in a way goes against the whole point of not choosing a nation based on its strength against another but since it is controllable and in my eyes interesting and fun i think id like it.

[Squirrelloid]

I think both players should be randomly assigned a nation. This is a question about your skill at dominions, not your skills with nation X.

I wouldn't be opposed to announcing publicly which nations both players had been assigned before pretender design, but I honestly think it could be a lot of fun to hide that information until discovered in game.

Lets be honest, the only difference between this and a larger MP game is you know the other person is going to be at war with you immediately. If you can't defend a rush when you know its coming, you'd just be hosed in a larger game if one did come for you.

The advantage to hiding nations is that you might not know your opponent is going to have a good rush nation, but if he's rushing you he also doesn't know what he's going to run into. And a rush sort of presumes he knows where to go - if he rushes away from you not only has he failed to rush you, he's also weakened his position because he had to pay some opportunity costs to have a good rush.

[DakaSha]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

I think both players should be randomly assigned a nation. This is a question about your skill at dominions, not your skills with nation X.

i just cant agree on that.. for to many reasons. If one wants to choose random as their nation maybe but not forced

Lets be honest, the only difference between this and a larger MP game is you know the other person is going to be at war with you immediately. If you can't defend a rush when you know its coming, you'd just be hosed in a larger game if one did come for you.

uhm this isnt supposed to be training for a larger game... also your just kind of proving my point... you only know a rush is coming if you know the enemy nation (at least a powerful rush). and the BIG difference between this and a large game is that the rush would be fatal as you have nobody to help you out of the problem.. making planned defensive strategys based on the opponent more needed. basically as i said: if you JUST HAPPEN to select a nation/strategy that can rush your opponent without much room for failure because he had no way of knowing what to expect in the least then you di\d not win due to skill. you won due to luck

again in sports.. if you know your opposing team is good in offense then you will train your defense to handle the problem and also look to use the teams lack of defense as an oppurtunity

The advantage to hiding nations is that you might not know your opponent is going to have a good rush nation, but if he's rushing you he also doesn't know what he's going to run into. And a rush sort of presumes he knows where to go - if he rushes away from you not only has he failed to rush you, he's also weakened his position because he had to pay some opportunity costs to have a good rush.

we arnt playing 1vs1 on 200 province maps :P
any decent size maps for 1vs1 is either going to be small enough to have an idea where the enemy is or the map has preset starting locations

edit: and again that would be a matter of luck...



btw HOW do you even hide the nations the player start with? its shown on llamaserver...

[Dragar]

Interesting idea, I'd play.

In terms of nation strength (in particular early game) it's a clear issue, the normal answer is diplomacy which naturally vanishes in this system.

I propose a nation handicap system. This could either be subjectively determined by the playing group before starting; or we could have a dynamic system where each game won by a nation gives a minus 1 pretender design point for all future games, and the losing nation gains one. That should balance things out over time and provide a basis for comparison for future balance modding.

In terms of nation choice it's difficult.. either both secret or the highest ranked player (if we have a league)chooses first, giving the weaker player the advantage. That could be a good leveller.

The managed team league is also interesting, although combinations of strong players with strong nations will become devastating.

I'm sure rush strategies will be honed to a fine art if this proceeds

[DakaSha]

The handicap system is interesting. and the better player selecting first.

Just one thing though.. i get the feeling that waaaay to many players are quick to call a nation bad because they are not good at using it (instead of blaming themselves as usual).

Since most players arnt "pros" (if you want to call it that) most are going to call hard to use nations like machaka or ulm bad...

Baalz almost proves that these statements are false. some nations are just meant for higher grade players.

Ive also played a couple 1vs1 games and i have to say that if research is set to easy and the players are pretty even in terms of competitiveness then the game is not a early-game-rush-only thing.

But either way as lama said: tests will have to be done.

[DakaSha]

oh i misunderstood the handicap system.. i dont think i understand what you mean? also it cant be controlled which makes it kinda bad for any type of league play

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by DakaSha

i just cant agree on that.. for to many reasons. If one wants to choose random as their nation maybe but not forced.

I cover this is more detail below, but you'd rather rank someone who's amazing at one nation but sucks at all the others higher than someone who's good with most or all nations? Because that's what your proposed system will end up doing.

uhm this isnt supposed to be training for a larger game... also your just kind of proving my point... you only know a rush is coming if you know the enemy nation (at least a powerful rush). and the BIG difference between this and a large game is that the rush would be fatal as you have nobody to help you out of the problem.. making planned defensive strategys based on the opponent more needed. basically as i said: if you JUST HAPPEN to select a nation/strategy that can rush your opponent without much room for failure because he had no way of knowing what to expect in the least then you di\d not win due to skill. you won due to luck

again in sports.. if you know your opposing team is good in offense then you will train your defense to handle the problem and also look to use the teams lack of defense as an oppurtunity

I don't think professional sports is the relevant reference. I'd look at two things: Starcraft tournaments and CCG (notably Magic) tournaments.

In Starcraft you have the option of selecting your race (and letting everyone know what you're playing) or randoming (and hiding that information at game start). I don't know what the average decision by professional starcraft players is, but its at least an interesting strategic choice.

In Magic you have no idea what deck anyone is playing until you sit down and start playing. And this is in an environment where some deck archetypes do hose other deck archetypes (at least it used to be - its been 10 years since i competed). You try to gauge the metagame, play an archetype you think will get screwed the least and screw others the most, and try to sideboard against archetypes that truly screw you in games 2 and (hopefully) 3.

Even closer to the situation I advocate, Magic has formats where your deck composition is somewhat random. Ie, sealed and draft. These are honestly the most fun competitive magic formats to play. Not only do you have no idea what decks you'll run into, but you don't even know what your deck will be until you get to the tournament.

If we want to go with a more 'classic' analogy, you don't get to specify 'white' or 'black' in chess. Its determined randomly.

Or we could go with Warhammer, a game many elements of dominions 3 were explicitly modelled on, in which you have no idea what your opponent is going to be playing going in.

Basically, hiding your opponent's 'team' until the game begins and you've made all the pre-game decisions you're going to make is *typical* of most 1v1 competitions. Forcing you to random only makes things more fun, afaict, when playing in a format which allows that to occur.

It also helps truly rank players by their skill, because then the people who are good at every nation rank higher than the person who is awesome with one nation but never even played any other one. If someone won 100% of their games as white in chess and 30% of their games as black, would you think it fair to only rank them by their white games?

---------------

Finally, you're playing against the other *player*, who you do know going in. Players develop styles and preferences for different strategies. By knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the *player* you can make a guess as to how he'll likely try to play the game, even absent any information on which nation he receives. (It may be he's a player who loves a bless strategy but gets handed a bad bless nation, so he does something different because he has to. But your preconditioned expectation is he will use a bless strategy if possible and you should at least plan on potentially having to deal with it.)

I mean, just because you know your opponent in a football game has a great defense and decent running game doesn't mean he won't try mostly passing if you have great running defense but bad passing defense. And you just might be Dallas playing the Packers in Greenbay during a snowstorm - something you couldn't have predicted at all which dramatically favors Greenbay. All you know going in is the strength(s) of the *player(s)*, not the conditions under which the game will happen.

we arnt playing 1vs1 on 200 province maps :P
any decent size maps for 1vs1 is either going to be small enough to have an idea where the enemy is or the map has preset starting locations

edit: and again that would be a matter of luck...

I think playing with enough provinces that your starting location isn't obvious is necessary. Otherwise rushes will dominate all gameplay. Similarly, preset starting locations are an *awful* idea.

btw HOW do you even hide the nations the player start with? its shown on llamaserver...

I'm sure the code which displays by nation could easily be caused to display by player name, or even just say 'player 1' and 'player 2'. Heck, all you'd have to do is have a quick mod script which you copied the relevant nation/army info into that named the nations 'Player 1' and 'Player 2' and the llamaserver code as its currently implemented would work great. Its not like you need data on any nation except the two being played, although you would have to upload the relevant mod for every game, so there are advantages to convincing someone to rework the llamaserver code for use with this style of game (say as an option in creating new games).

[Dragar]

What I meant was that at the beginning all nations have the same number of pretender points. Each completed game shifts starting points for new games up or down 1 depending on who won.

Control is definitely an issue - I'm not sure the best way to handle that. I'm sure it would be possible though, perhaps with too much admin intervention required.

Without some sort of handicap, playing a league where people will naturally want to do well, I think we'd get serious over-representation of the more powerful nations.

Another option would be to split the nations into tiers that only fight each other. So within EA there would be three tiers, perhaps:

Tier 1 - niefels, sauro, mictlan, lanka, hinnom

Tier 2 - vanheim, abysia, ermor..

Tier 3 - kailasa, yomi, marverni ..

This would keep duels relatively fair, albeit restrictive of variety

Note that I think players should be limited to 1 duel at a time (within the league) so that we don't get a vast gap in numbers of games played by different players.

[DakaSha]

sorry but basically i find most of that mute simply because this is when it comes down to it supposed to be fun... and i think most players have fun when they play races they like and feel like playing and less fun when playing races they dont like (or simply dont want to play). your just forcing restrictions on decisions. if i think of an awesome pythium strategy then i want to use it. and not wait 18 games until i randomly get them

still:

again your just contradicting yourself. you use starcraft as an example (i seriously do not know why) but you ignore the fact that some players are ranked high due to their specialization with a single race.

whats wrong with being ranked high due to using a single race? i DONT WANT to play with MA ulm as i find them boring (for now). but my only way to be considered a good player is by exceling at them to the point of being able to pay them on the flip of a coin... no. that would just ruin the game for me because its no fun.

the chess analogy is uhm... yeah...

I can decide on play according to my player much better if i know his race then if i "know" his playing style (which is quite far fetched in a game this complex). decent players arnt going to go for a bless when the nation doesnt warrant it. unless they want to throw you off guard. again this would only be possible if both nations were known from the get go.

i also stated early in the thread that stats on players would be nice (how often a player wins with a specific race).. so if you think somebody sucks because they dont like a nation you can point the finger then (which i too would do.. but id respect their choice 100%).

If races were unknown until encountering them (as in wesnoth) id be somewhat more accepting of forced random nations... but only somewhat.

smallish maps are a must. hands down

i cant see whats wrong with letting the player decide if he goes random. (which you use as an example)

id even say whats the problem with two seperate ladders? im just not going to manage the random one as i would this one. you could do that and all would be well :P