Balanced Dice

Soo, I think the balanced dice should be made the default, since it's not being played with that much at all. Thoughts?

When creating a game for serious players, I try to always choose balanced dice and this seems to be acceptable to most. However the players that like the thrill & excitement of the unknown outcome, prefer to have standard dice. We've all failed in attack due to their randomness and all got a massive advantage also due to their randomness, but for players that accept that the outcome should be a bit more predictable and strategically calculated, the balanced dice offer a nice strategic game. That said, I prefer it the way it is, where standard dice are the default setting and balanced dice are an option.

I'm a bit critic about balanced dice, I might spend thousands of words to explain why. To be concise I will just say that I don't deny to play games with balanced dice but I still prefer standard dice. I don't think it's logical to make balanced the default.

This is the reason why I think balanced dice should be the default: I mainly play to enjoy myself. Personally the two things that frustrate me most are (1) suiciders and (2) losing an attack I really should have won. Now (2) is something you can't really solve, as solving it would take away chance and that would pretty much ruin the game. Balanced dice however do not take away chance or it's impact, they just make it a bit more predictable, and even though I will still lose things I should've won, it'll happen less often. That's a good thing. This is not just theory, just words. I have played a set of [url=http://www.dominating12.com/forum/?cmd=topic&id=2409]Best of five[/url] games, and I've really been enjoying them. Even though these games are pretty luck dependend (1 team vs 1 team) there was a lot of skill involved. I think that was mainly because there were good players, it wasn't just 1 game and because of the balanced dice. These are the reasons why one could not like balanced dice (note anyone can still just pick them) - You might lose a bit ot thrill. I wonder though whether these are just words or if you really experienced it in a game. I doubt it. - People might like it if the person before it loses something he should have won and therefore we can now win. Personally I appreciete a good move and don't want them to miss it. And I don't really enjoy it if someone wins because some bad dice (or move) handed it over to him gift wrapped. Not even if I win myself. - It moves away a bit from the original risk game. Well, so do using other maps, or gametypes. We have the chained fortification as default, that's not so in the original board game either, but it improves on it. Same for this one (IMO). It's also not really practical to use a 130 sided die in a board game. - We don't really know how it works or what the odds are. Well, true, this topic doesn't describe it that well, but then nobody ever asked how it works right? I will try to analyse them (both mathematically and ex[erimentally) and publish the code in the rewrite.

I have played 39 games with balanced dice, not many but i will say my opinion. First of all let me say that i usually like to play 2p, 2v2 teams, 5-6p games. In 5-6p games (or multiplayer games in general) i dont consiser that standard dice is bad, we all have seen bad dices and won/lost because of them but in most games it doesnt play a crucial part, if 1 in 10 or 15 games is decided by dice that is ok with me. I consider that i have to attack with as many soldiers the defender has and i know that usually it works, sometimes when i attack 50 against 50 i may lose 50 killing 45 or lose 45 killing 50. I like that this is random. When you plan a move killng 4-5 players in a row you have to consider this in your strategy and have a backup plan to stop if it goes wrong. If we use balanced dice when you attack 50 against 50 you know you will almost always win and lose about 45 troops (the numbers are random) When you plan to kill 4-5 players in a row and you know that in big numbers you always have the advantage because the dice is not real it takes something away from the game, i understand that you can make calculations better but killng 4-5 in a row and having always good dice is just not real. In 2p games the dices are sometimes awful... both standard and balanced. They are the same dices as in multiplayer games, but in 2p games when i cant kill 1 troop if i attack with 5 and not take a card or break a region i may lose the game, in a multiplayer game it means you just doesnt get a card 1 round or the opponent holds the region, it doesnt decide the game. Team games are more like 2p games, dice is important, but i dont see a difference between standard and balanced. If you see Mattys best of five series the dices are what you usually see in a 2p or 2v2 game with standard dice. Even if in 2p games they are almost the same from my experience i think standard is slighty more random. So for cocnlusion... I think the bad dices influence the game more in 2p games and not in multiplayer. Since the balanced dice doesnt affect (or solves the problem if you want) in 2p games but takes away the randomness in multiplayer games i dont see a reason to prefer them.

I don't think making standard or balanced dice default should make much difference. I mean, players that like better one of the options will just create his games with that option, especially when it gets better known, the same way as some users can use unlimited fortification or advanced cards by default in their games. The only clear difference I can see by defaulting balanced against standard is that most likely newbs (and not so newbs) won't be able to complain that much about how bad their dice went. But on the same side, it's much less likely for new players to switch to standard dice after playing 100s of balanced games given human psychology, and probably having lost some games because of dice. I think balanced as default would relegate standard much more than standard relegates balanced (which I would say is growing in popularity), and because of that I believe that standard should be default.

Since the majority of players will not read this posts and say their opinion you could set balanced dice as default for a trial period of 2-3 months and see if the players like it.

The way I see it, dice can come with pie and punch and people will still complain about them;)

I agree. Dice complainers will complain even more if they get bad rolls with balanced dice. I also agree with all Antonis' description above. Balanced dice don't change the average result they just reduce the variation. It will reduce the variability of games and decrease the emotion of the uncertain: what is a risky move becomes a safe move. I think they are suitable for tournament games where the winner is decided in one game. And also 2p games even if the effect is minimal. Anyway I believe there are more games decided by cards than games decided by dice. But nobody complains the bad cards and they accept to lose for them like it is normal. But dice... dice not! They pretend the dice to always give the average outcome, but in reality average outcomes are rare, pretending that from dice it's pure ignorance. I played thousands of games here and dice have been always doing their job "honestly" giving random results as it is expected to be. And with the experience I learned how to play and now I know what is a "reasonable" safety range when I plan my moves. I can't see anything bad in balanced dice as I can't see anything bad in standard dice. Then the option is already in place since everybody can chose what (s)he likes better. I am just saying I feel it is wrong to put balanced as default, but basically it won't change that much for me. [spoiler=How balanced dice work]I played few games with balanced dice but I know how they work from Vexer's description somewhere in this forum. If somebody is not aware I can tell it with my words: 1 - Balanced dice only apply in case of [u]3 dice Vs 2 dice[/u]. 2 - [u]The attacker advantage is kept at 54%.[/u] Personally I call it 1.08 ratio: in 100 rolls you kill 108 troops (in average). 100 rolls mean 200 troops removed from the board, if the defender loses 108 the attacker loses 92. Then 108/200 = 54% (attacker advantage) and 92/200 = 46% (defender disvantage). Well they are different ways to say the same thing. 3 - Every single roll has 3 possible outcomes: defender loses two (37.17%) or attacker loses two (29.26%) or they both lose one (33.58%). [u]Balanced dice double the chance of both players losing one troop.[/u] Then rather than 33.58% it will be 67.16%.[/spoiler]

I didn't publish the algorithm for balanced dice because I didn't want other sites to copy it. I put a lot of work into it. With both standard dice and balanced dice the attacker wins about 54% of the time. Here's the breakdown: Defender loses two - Balanced: 20.36% of the time, Standard: 37.17% Attacker loses two - Balanced: 12.24% of the time. Standard: 29.26% Each loses one - Balanced: 67.40% of the time. Standard: 33.58%

Well, thanks Vexer. Forgive my criticism, but well, everybody has his own idea, as long as the option is there and we all can chose then we all are happy. I didn't notice your explanation on Balanced Dice just at the previous page, anyway with the exact percentages is even better and lighter. There's the risk of someone coping the idea, sure; many things can be copied, but I believe it's hard to beat the D12 appeal.