About luck and 2-player games

Hi again!

It is a bit frustrating to many players in 1vs1 games to see how it comes already lost from the beginning, as the result is too strongly determinated by the drop and the roll of the dice.
In my opinion, it would be a nice idea to reshuffle the troops whenever the original drop is way too favourable for any player (for example, forcing all the starting positions to have equal number of territories for each player)

I don't know exactly which could be the optimar way, but I feel it would work out well to offer a feature of this kind (at least as an option)

The problem of the dice is a little more complicated, because even if balanced dice can be a little bit of a help, they don't completely fix the issue.

Thanks for your attention!

So how would you decide that a starting position is too favourable? If you would re-roll every time one player thinks it's unfair, the game would almost never start. If you both have to agree, that is probably not very likely to happen either. And just letting a computer magically figure out if a drop is favourable is also very difficult. What would the solution be?

We do have some ideas to balance two player games, but there are some complexities we would have to solve to have that, and there are more pressing features we want to implement first.

No, it's not up to the players to decide if the position is favourable or not, it must be done automatically. It's not that hard to make a computer figure it out. Simply counting how many troops does each player get on the first turn, and if it's not equal, reshuffle, would be a good starting point. Also detecting if all territories in a region belong to the same player(neutral can't be that hard to code.

The point I want to make is that we don't need it to be perfect to be worth it., We only need it to be better than having nothing.

Personally I think it would take away a bit of the randomness that makes the game fun, but you are right that the suggested things do not sound too difficult to implement. Still would require some work to make the concept of re-rolling starting positions work, but it might be worthwhile. I would include this as a "balanced starting positions" option in the game creation. We could argue whether it should be on or off by default. It might even make sense to have it on for 2 player games and off for 3+ player games, but that is already too complicated.

What do other people think about having this as an option? Should it be on or off by default?

If you have it, on by default for all player numbers.
But before you even think about adding this, imagine what will happen on a big map with many small regions and 9 players.... forever reroll.

My thoughts exactly.

But I would see this work for 2p games since setup (and sometimes, who goes first) plays such a big part.

Make it a heuristic and it make it a bit less strict every time you reroll. At some point it will tip over.

I would only include the option for 2p games, but there are other factors that will just as easily decide the outcome from the drop...
If both players are to receive 12 territories each on a particular sized map, the first to act will get their 4 extra troops then attack (7 v 3) the opponents territory (anywhere) putting them on 3 reinforcements for their turn, already placing the opponent behind in the chances of success before they have played their first turn.
In Same Time games, this is not a problem, both will get 4 extra to start and can level the game.

You are right about your point, that extra troop is an advantage. Now imagine a spot where a player can easily defend a region from the beginning fo the game....

There is an old idea to help with this issue which I think is superior but it never got implemented.

Going first is an advantage and so is a good drop. In a 2 player game it would be ideal if neither player got both. The solution is that the player who is randomly selected to go first can either choose to go first or choose which drop he wants. If he chooses to go first then the other player chooses between 2 drops.

When the game starts the territories are dividing 3 ways. 1 set has black territory circles, 1 set has white and 1 grey. Whichever player gets to select their drop would choose between the white or black circles.

I'm aware of the suggestion, but it is incredibly complex to implement. The code always assumes that territories are assigned to players and neutral, and then we aren't talking about implement the frontend process. I think we can have much more positive impact by spending that time on other things, the more "quick wins" so to speak.

The other alternative that was mentioned a while back was, 1v1 with automatic rematch with the opposite drop and turn order.
So each player has to play in the other players shoes...
Not just fair, but an insight into how much was skill and how much was luck of the drop and turn order.

There is a chance that a player can win from both positions and they deserve the kudos if they do!
To encourage players to use this setting you could give an extra 5 points if they win both games?
This would make 1v1 viable for high ranked players that stand to lose a lot of points in 1v1 games and so avoid them.

Maybe you get coins for playing both, but you have to win both to get the rank increase? I like this idea...and there would not be a third tie breaker game. Win both, get the bounty, win one and it is a draw.

I like the idea, but it is quite difficult to implement. What if one player leaves the game before they are invited to a rematch. We'd have to come up with quite a clever UI to make sure this all works out, and I am wondering whether this is really the best way to spend our effort