Duke,

As always I appreciate your attention to detail and your willingness to speak out on matters you feel strongly about. I tend to agree with you, it is the predominant strategy used for those who try to win games within the first 8-12 turns, or as you stated "the fastest surest path to victory." I disagree, however, that your other most salient point of your argument: "Frankly... you have to overlap picks," in that this makes things stale.

I enjoy the showmanship of players who can identify the best strategy and either block each other from it (overlap picks) or defy them completely by employing less superior strategy and beating them through shrewdness and cunning.

Also, I must add that I do not think it is predominant to the point that it is a problem. It is a good strategy to use against me (and perhaps you) because I am always looking for the counter pick and its a tough strategy to counter when successful, as you pointed out. In other words, a 9 income on turn 1 completely shatters me when I place all my income to rush on turn 0 and now am left with a 5 deployment and no way to get a bonus in my other two spots.

- One solution is to let it be and try to grind out a spreading battle:
http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer.aspx?GameID=1408545

- This is one of my latest games where I was concerned about him getting West Africa in one but decided that I would win so long as I was first to Brazil (N.A had no wastelands so I had better spreadability and could have also blockaded Iran if I was left alone in Asia). Also, Lungren was fortunate that Africa had no wastelands. In cases where North or South Africa have one the position is even less dominant. And I know that you'll say that I only won because I also took Central in 1, but thats precisely why I tend to agree that Lungren's picks was still the predominant strategy but he still needs to be fortunate on turn 0 and play a near perfect game to win.

For sake of conversation I have a few ideas that would address Duke's concerns but I am willing to bet that he is dead set against most of, or all of them, thus the problem with trying to satisfy the preferences of ~ 120 ladder participants, no less one person.

1) Bump the luck percentage to as high as 20%. I know Duke prefers 0% luck which is why I found his argument to be rather ironic upon first read.

2) Force people to pick game-counts in increments of two: people preferring to play in two games will always have one auto-distribution and one manual distribution game going one (people choosing four would get two of each). This just addresses the mundane/predictability of always playing in games whereas one feels compelled to overlap picks to prevent against a lopsided game.

3) Do not play with random Warlords.

4) Have it announced prior to each game who will be getting the first pick selection. This would invariably change the way players make their first 3-4 selections.

5) change the base income to four per turn (or maybe just set it to 4 for turn 0). This disables any scenario where someone can get a set on turn 0 except for rare exceptions where a 3-sets can be had.

6) Start player territories with 4 armies each instead of 5. This is similar to BP's #5.

I don't think that having algorithmic strategies is unfair really, I just think that games that are practically predetermined by the way the picks go tend to be won by the people that are dedicated enough to sink a lot of time and thought into their picks given the pattern of wastelands. In other words, not me :)

There can be no right and wrong or fair and unfair when both sides are playing by the same rules, but I would like to see ladder settings at some point that promote a game that is won more by tactics after the game has started than strategy beforehand.

I'm not sure how #1 would help matters except to possible make the superior player lose due to a fluke of luck.. I agree with the 16% luck ratio for the reasons we argued about previously.

#2, this wouldn't adequately solve the problem.. as you can easily draw out a 10 turn game for a month.. and if you're dedicated you can survive 16-20 turns in a heavy loss situation.. that means you could draw out your full distro games while racking up wins on manual picks..

#3, removing random warlords "namely I imagine, by implementing the built-in Warlords starting locations" would only create built strategies that would work more regularly and would cause the problem to be more based on repetitive strategies and not less...

#4, this would massively change where people make their picks.. I had had a thought on it earlier, but It's currently escaping me...

hmm... I had no idea that would happen lol ↑

devilnis, I partially like the idea of a scenario ladder with relatively even starting locations.. the only real problem is that something with set locations would end up being determined by strategies that after the first month or two will not be highly modified anymore..

I agree that a lot of games are decided by picks and counter-picks and the inherent luck. I also agree that - despite my being relatively new to the ladder - the repetitiveness is tiresome, and in fact has already made me cut down my number of ladder games to 1 at a time for now (I admit, my going on vacation soon might also have something to do with it).
Right now I much more enjoy the 2v2 ladder, because picks and counter-picks are less predictable there.
The ladder system needs more fine tuning. What I'd really like to see is more diversity in maps. Why to restrict it to one single map eludes me. Fizzer should outline the parameters he deems appropriate for ladder maps, and I bet a lot of people would come up with new maps that meet these criteria (including me).

Ladder map parameters could be such as (brackets show values for medium earth):
min/max number of territories ( 131 )
min/max number of bonuses ( 27 )
min/max number of territories per bonus ( 3-7 )
min/max value of bonus ( 3-6 )
min/max bonus value per territory in a bonus ( 0.60 [East Africa, North Africa]-0.86 [West China] )
min/max total value of all bonuses combined ( 96 )
min/max connections per bonus ( 3 [South Africa]-13 [West China] )
min/max connections per territory ( 2-7 )

Further requirements to fine-tune such a map might include:
relation of bonus value to ..
- .. number of territories of a bonus that border other bonuses
- .. number of territories within the bonus that can be attacked from other bonuses
- .. min/max number of turns required to complete bonus
- ..

A set of say 5 different maps would bring much more variety to the ladder.
Some ideas for how to determine which map gets played:
Prior to each ladder game, players would get to vote on the maps they would like to play. Each player can have 2 votes and has to pick 2 of the 5 maps. You have to place 2 votes and you cannot put both votes on the same map.
If after the voting is done exactly one map gets 2 votes, that map is played.
If two maps get 2 votes, one of them gets chosen randomly.
If no map gets 2 votes, then the 5th map is played which got no vote at all.

</end of wishlist>

small correction:

*min/max connections per bonus ( 3 [South Africa]-13 [West China] )*

must be:

*min/max connections per bonus ( 4 [Greenland, Antarctica, Australia, South Africa]-19 [West China] )*

Perrin:

In response to your critique:

1) I for one do not mind the luck component in games. If a 1 takes a 1 and leads to victory I am frustrated but accept it when it happens against me, and I am over the moon (albeit feel a bit sheepish) when it goes my way. There should be no hard rule that says an infantry unit cannot kill a calvary (metaphorical, of course, of the shock most feel when a 1 takes out a 1). Its rare enough but I don't think players should micromanage to the point where these rare victories never happen. Again, as it applies to increasing the luck it just means that the person stretching himself thin, doing three 3 v 2 attacks on turn 0, absorbs more risk then the person doing the counter-picking.
- As for that point that luck takes less skill out of the game, I disagree wholeheartedly. I think it takes more skill, i.e. creating ways to think outside the box to get around this, such as attacking a 2 neutral with two separate 2s (something I never saw done until PapaSmurf and Ruthless starting doing it in team games back in the day; I know do a similar thing (attacking a 1 with to separate 2s in 75% games, as I find this rarely fails and so often a 2 v 1 attack fails). Anyway, a bit of a rant but I wanted to defend my viewpoint :)

2) Good point. It could be taken advantage of or manipulated rather easily (both ways). I just still carry fond memories of Eitz's random start tournaments. The cream usually rose to the top (so I don't think it is completely based on luck who wins) and they were a ton of fun to try and come up with a winning strategy based on what you were dealt and where your blind spots were.
- @Eitz: About time you started another one!!

3) Yeah I thought the same but there is no reason that different templates cannot be created where the Warlords are fixed yet where 9 income starts are prohibited. There must be a slew of potentials. And besides, the wastelands do freshen things up too.

4) If you end up remembering I'd appreciate reading how you think this will change the way people pick.

Haha, surprisingly you're not the first person to say that to me BP. I just find the fact rather disheartening that I've personally gone 0-4 in the last 2 double elim random tourneys I've made. To satiate the general public, I will get another one going in the near future here.

BP

In regards to auto distro starts.. I personally find them much more 'enjoyable' then manual selection, primarily because of the mass of importance that is put on territory selection... but you can easily gain a massive sway over a much better player with auto picks that neither of you can predict and he cannot manage to overcome..

example.

http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer.aspx?GameID=1398773

I know this is Poland Big and not Earth, but I had a massive advantage purely because of the auto picks...

I find I cannot reliably credit auto distribution games to bragging rights "in most cases" so find it unsuitable for the ladder, personally

Luck always averages out over time, more and more perfectly as the sample size grows. As long as the ladder is in effect for long enough, auto distro will do nothing to skew the eventual rankings, there will just be a bit more volatility at the start of the ladder season.

but that would mean that really we would need to have series' instead of single games between players because you may have 0% cumulative luck over 20 games.. but if 10 games are average luck "+/-5%" and 5 games are both bad luck and good luck.. and you happen to get bad luck against a good player and good luck against players you could easily beat without it.. your overall results would be skewed 'despite' overall average cumulative luck..

The matchmaking system would compensate for that - as your ranking skewed down, you'd get matched against easier and easier players and you'd drift back up, and any match where you got the shaft on luck would eventually get countered by one where the luck went the other way.. The longer the season, the more accurate the standings would be, luck has nothing to do with it in the end. Not that I don't kinda like the idea of having a ladder where you played a series against each match :)

I disagree, if you get bad luck in the first game against say Impaller, you'd be classified as a very poor player, and your subsequent matches would be against relatively poor players and it would require, especially at the beginning, a greater amount of good luck to counteract one or two games of bad luck against good players.. the same sort of difficulty that was encountered early on in the current ladders, but you'd be further distorting it with increased luck..

I agree with a large enough sample that luck would even out in the end.. but you'd need to provide a large sample compared to every other player, which is ofc' why I mentioned the series idea since It would be impractical to judge someone and modify their rating/skill on one game when it could be determined purely by luck

In my understanding, since it's an Elo system that reacts to not only the games that you yourself won or lost, but also to the games that your opponents in those finished games win or lose after the fact, then this is untrue - Yes as you lose right off the bat to a good player, your rating will take a big hit, but that hit will diminish by itself as the good players win more games and increase their ratings.

That's the whole point of Elo, it reacts not just to your own games but also to a constantly updated accounting of the strength of the players you've faced. In the end the aggregation of your own performance and that of your opponents will result in a very good representation of your relative skill levels. Since everyone has the same risk in any given iteration of having good or bad luck, more iterations smooths out the relative rankings and renders the luck virtually irrelevant in terms of its ability to mask people's true skill. There's some jags here and there because of the fact that older games expire from the ratings, yielding ranking volatility that is related to something OTHER than skill (namely the rather random timing of when you finish your games) but if that were taken out of the picture I guarantee that over time the rankings would become less and less volatile as people found their natural place in the ladder.

Well this thread got highjacked a bit. Using two picks to go for a 1st move +4 bonus is effective. If you can counterpick it in 1 -- than it's not really an issue. Just spend a pick doing so and you'll be in good shape. If there is no viable adjacent counter-pick than you overlap picks.

I suppose the big change for me is even lookign at this picking strategy at all. I'm used to picking based on other factors (ease of bonuses, good expansion possibilities, bonus defense, maybe a coutnerpick, etc.). I have not been looking for a first turn +4,then assuming my opp would prioritize it and then thinking about how to counter it. It's just not how most of the people I play regularly make their picks.

Which is probably why it's worked so well. Few of the old guard players focus on countering that strategy when they make their picks. Generally speaking it was a beginners strategy that almost always failed on the big map. Players would go for Causacus or africa for the quick bonuses but would end up losign to an opp who spread picks and had safe bonuses when the concentrated bonuses where busted. It's different on this map because it's often over too fast for the safe bonus to matter.

I suggest when you analyze a board to decide where to make your picks, you make looking for available first turn +4s a priority and expend a pick countering it. I still think spread + pick is better, but if you fail to pick up the threat and counter it you'll lose games.

I skimmed most of this thread, but I thought I'd comment on it.

Placing 2 picks adjacent to get a turn 1 4 value bonus and then having 1 pick elsewhere on the map to attack your opponent is a strategy that people have been using since the beginning of the ladder. For the most part, it was players who didn't play as much on old earth--more the "new guard" at the time, rather than the old guard--who went for this strategy game and game again. I lost to it a bunch of times early on.

I started using this strategy occasionally myself, but I'm generally a very conservative player and I wouldn't risk it if I thought there was a decent chance of just getting blown out by a counterpick. So most of the time I stuck with the old school tactic of spread picks, and picking spots that interact favorably with where you expect your opponent to go.

-------

The main issue I see with this strategy, from a "fun" perspective, is that it breeds a lot of games where the game is basically decided one way or another on the first turn of the game. If my opponent went for the turn 1 4-bonus and got it, they generally won. If they didn't get it, they almost always lost. It adds in a lot of variance and luck to the game that I didn't care much for.

Before going on vacation, I was getting pretty frustrated with the random luck element of the game anyway, so that might be biasing my opinion somewhat. I'd rather lose from my own mistakes than lose because my opponent successfully made 4 3x2 attacks on turn 1, or because I failed to do that myself, or what have you. Not everyone is the same, but for me at least, I can learn from and improve from a mistake I made. There's nothing to learn when the game is decided on the first turn of the game by luck.

-------

Finally: I want to apologize to anyone I'm currently in a game with as well as everyone who is waiting on Impaller v. The World game. When I went on vacation I thought it was going to just be a week. However, my vacation coincided with the lease on my apartment ending, so I was forced to pack up everything I owned and move out. I am currently in the process of finding a new apartment with my future roommates. Additionally, I've been rattling off a string of good finishes lately in tournaments for a competitive card game I play called Magic, which has been funding my ability to travel for even more tournaments. That has been eating up a lot of my time, and I have extended my vacation a few times.

Between the card tournaments, apartment searching, and traveling, Warlight fell steeply in the priority chain. Additionally, I was burning out on the game and drastically needed a break from it. Anyway, I think we have finally found a place to live, and I should be back to playing early next week.

I'll be back, and I'll be hungry to reclaim the spot on the ladder I lost when I went on vacation.

@ The Impaller: Magic rox, but it drains so much time at the top level. I had to quit it 10 years ago but I miss the days of World Championship and Nationals and traveling to GP's etc. Keep up your winnings!

On topic, I think the best idea so far is reducing the starting armies by 1. (4 instead of 5) No need to change too many things at once imho.

Maybe host a tourney with this change and collect feedback from the players.

Chaos, It's already in progress..

http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer.aspx?TournamentID=1377

Imp -- couldn't have said it better. That's my point in a nutshell. Minor quibble thoguh -- it's only 3 3x2 attacks 1st turn -- the other one is a 4x2 :)

I had no idea Magic was still being played. Best of luck in your games and your apt. hunt.