Dominions Nations Evaluations ;)

[Gandalf Parker]

That makes me feel better. Anytime a discussion pops up here where various experts proclaim some nations worth or worthlessness I get concerned. But luckily, it tends to actually average out that no matter how strong the opinions are that fly around, the saving grace is that they dont seem to agree with each other.

I am still amazed at how rare that is. Ive been gaming for decades and on internet for as long as its been internet. I can remember many many games where 1 month to 1 year was just about the whole life of the game because some ultimate strategy was developed and posted. Or great games that I found out about too late because by the time I got there the expert players had their tactics so down perfect that you couldnt last long enough in a game to learn the game.

Call me a fanboi if you want but any game that can keep me trying new things years after its release is well worth it.

[triqui]

Gandalf Parker said:
That makes me feel better. Anytime a discussion pops up here where various experts proclaim some nations worth or worthlessness I get concerned. But luckily, it tends to actually average out that no matter how strong the opinions are that fly around, the saving grace is that they dont seem to agree with each other.

However, the "winning thread" shows an "evidence" (if you can call "proof" to such low number of data to make an statistic). There are "first class" and "second class" nations. There is not a "absolute and clear winner" (Except for the admitedly superior Ermor and Ryleh in LA). But some nations get 4 wins, while some others havent won once. Some nations are stronger (or "easier to play and win with" if you preffer) than some others.

Which is not a bad thing, by the way. I used to play a Table Top game named Empire in Arms, about Napoleonic Wars. It was not its intention to create "balanced" nations: France was MUCH better than Otoman Empire. This is not chess, where everybody has exactly same army (and even in chess, whites win much more than black). However, that should not delude ourselves to say that every nation "is balanced out". Some people has been saying so since 3.0. However, each patch some unit get a cost increase (like jaguar warriors), which is a proof that the developers think it was too powerful, while some others get a price reduction (as Onis) or some "nation love" like MA ulm, which is a proof that developers perceived it as weaker than average.

Probably some of the nations that people claim now that "are balanced" will get a nerf or buff in next, or a future, patch. This will discredit the affirmation that it was balanced.

[thejeff]

Well, the problem with relying on a list of games won to determine balance issues is that there are so many other factors - player skill, alliances, location and neighbors, size of game, simple luck, etc - that even blatantly more powerful nations don't always win and our sample size simply isn't large enough to be significant for anything but the most overpowered nations.
If one nation has won twice out of 20 games is it twice as powerful as a nation that has only won once? Or even twice as likely to win?

[Gandalf Parker]

Good points. And this is the MultiPlayer notes which only reflects part of what the game is.

Some of my favorite nations probably rate low in wins but I love them because they are more FUN to play (at least in solo games). Or because, in MP games they are excellent as allies so that can be a selling point for me. I tend to do better as an ally than in trying to conquer the world.

[Tifone]

Gandalf Parker said:
Call me a fanboi if you want...

FANBOY!!
FANBOY FANBOY FANBOY!!!

Joking, you're true. 2 games unplayable for new players were i.e. starcraft and warcraft. lots of game gurus destroying you in a matter of seconds, you just weren't able to understand what to do. Oh well, at least those weren't my kind of games, I have yet to realize how to enjoy a game in which i have to control every single worker, every singl building, every single unit, every single active ability of every single unit... what the hell am I?? That's not being a general, that's being crazy!!! No fun for me there.

Surely an expert player of dom3 can destroy me easily. But the strange thing is that it would not frustrate me. Really. I have yet to try an MP game, but seeing the tactics of experts would just amaze me. That's the main reason for me not complaining about unbalanced nations - I can choose them for flavour and well, if the game went bad, it went this way Maybe even because while a warcraft is just a matter of numbers (time, damage dealt per second and lots of other things), well in dom3 there are lots of numbers too, you can study them and put on a great strategy, but you can even send them all to hell and just enjoy the theme of your, and your enemies', nations. ^_^

[Amhazair]

thejeff said:
Well, the problem with relying on a list of games won to determine balance issues is that there are so many other factors - player skill, alliances, location and neighbors, size of game, simple luck, etc - that even blatantly more powerful nations don't always win and our sample size simply isn't large enough to be significant for anything but the most overpowered nations.
If one nation has won twice out of 20 games is it twice as powerful as a nation that has only won once? Or even twice as likely to win?

Aye. That's actually what I meant by my previous post. There are nations without a win yet, but is that significant if there's only ~30 games total played in the era, many of which won't have had all or even nearly all nations in them, regardless of all those other factors? Marverni is widely regarded as one of the weaker nations in MP, and yet they have 2 wins, putting them squarely in the middle. Is this significant? Or pure coincidence? Around the time when everyone was claiming Helheim was overpowered they hadn't recorded a single win yet - which some people thought intresting. Yet a short time later there suddenly were 3 Helheim wins in a short time, putting them near the top. I doubt it was because Helheim suddenly got stronger. (In fact it was just after Helheim got significantly weaker, though all 3 those games were started before the nerfs. )

Basically, all what Thejeff says.

[JimMorrison]

Herode said:
Now, your first 3 ratings (early/mid/late game power) can be computed without a poll. If the hosts agreed to deliver some stats on the games they are hosting at defined schedules (let's say turns 25/50/75 or whatever to be tuned by experienced domguys after the initial settings of the game), then you could collect amounts of empirical and objective data.

Also, it could be very interesting if you were able to mix this with additional data about the players themselves (basically, how many MP did they play before the current one as a measure of their experience). Though informations about players themselves may be more difficult to obtain, it should be straightforward to collect the data for or all games running with stats on (provided the hosts collaborate, of course).

Actually I think that would reflect more on the 5th rating, than anything. Multiplayer Usability. But even then, there are so many other factors - most of the people that I've seen eliminated early in MP games stated that either a) they did something really stupid or experimental with their build, or b) they were just minding their own business and (insert nation here) dual blessed troops landed on their capital with no warning.

[Wrana]

Oh well, at least those weren't my kind of games, I have yet to realize how to enjoy a game in which i have to control every single worker, every singl building, every single unit, every single active ability of every single unit... what the hell am I?? That's not being a general, that's being crazy!!! No fun for me there.

Agree wholeheartedly. Micromanagement can be fun, but in small dosage. And furthermore, games such as you mention often compress time to the point where whole cities are built in minutes, which is crazier still...
Considering using wins' numbers - there are generally two facts which make these non-relevant: first, that we have too little numbers for meaningful statistics here; second, that we have no controlled environment for such statistics. They can be used, as I said, to weight players' opinions against, but that's all...

[Tifone]

JimMorrison said:
a) they did something really stupid or experimental with their build, or b) they were just minding their own business and (insert nation here) dual blessed troops landed on their capital with no warning.

I can sense a disturbance in the Force I feel that one or another or even both of these possibilities will likely happen to me in my first 10/12 MP games Destiny or plain intuition?

[Herode]

Considering using wins' numbers - there are generally two facts which make these non-relevant: first, that we have too little numbers for meaningful statistics here; second, that we have no controlled environment for such statistics. They can be used, as I said, to weight players' opinions against, but that's all...

Agreed. That's why I suggest to use full stats and not only wins' numbers. I mean : being second, third, last one, eradicated on turn 20 or still alive on turn 75 also means something, doesn't it ? Of course, only numbers of stat files could give a reliable idea and this idea will not be context sensitive (unless proper data collection & processing). But neither are the ratings we are giving to Jim. These numbers, once compiled, will "just" be rough statistical evaluations.