hmmm you're right
If you want an equal game use symmetric maps with symmetric (=simular starting places) and the game will be very strategic. pure skill setting but fix the starting position to the symmetrical places
some symmetrical maps which could be suitable
https://www.warlight.net/Map/5319-Fractal-War
https://www.warlight.net/Map/8447-Round-Round
https://www.warlight.net/Map/6084-Sierpinski-Triangle
https://www.warlight.net/Map/6084-Sierpinski-Triangle

I played this one in a toernament, but I quit because it was really to boring
https://www.warlight.net/Map/7670-Road-Utopia

It is great to determine your skill in these games but be aware that these games could be boring

Symmetrical maps are not required for equal games. What is required is manual distribution: with manual starting picks, all things are equal, because the skill of the players' picks will determine the equality of the position he is given.

Edited 6/19/2015 21:01:46

Not even that- an extreme example would be a map that has 1-2 "good" picks (think of the poorly disguised lotteries where one bonus has 10000 armies). So the map itself has to be well-designed enough that luck in picking order doesn't matter.

Do something better with your time. :O

It's hard to find a better use of my time than programming + statistics.

I am still convinced that

     strategicness ~ width of ratings distribution in a population

and that this approach blows away all others on the basis of work involved vs. insight gained, and that it works especially well for templates used in seasonal ladder, because seasonal ladders are short.

Granted, I have not carefully read all of the other posts, mostly because I fail to see why you would do anything else, at least for the 1st iteration.

Well, it's a great method but it's also limited in that your width is going to be affected by other factors (like # of games). I've come to prefer the two-tailed binomial test since I definitely want to use it on more than just ladders.

Semice, I'll explain it later. Thanks to JSA, I now know what Warlight's API call results are formatted like, so I'm working on a piece of software (hopefully with a graphical interface, but I get lazy sometimes) and I'll explain all the analytic stuff in the documentation there.

But both the bias rating (now hidden) and the (two-tailed) p-value are calculated live on the CSL spreadsheet so you can see what the data looks like here: http://tinyurl.com/csldata. "CSL Czech Republic 1v1" might have some 'splainin' to do.

This thread (especially Corvus, MOTD, TeddyFSB, and JSA's contributions) I especially appreciate as it allows me to figure out what methods to use.

Also, there's an edit button under your username on a forum post. Use it if you want to make updates.

Edited 6/20/2015 07:17:01

bump. Very nice thread

I am really confused about the way this thread went. I am baffled so many people are interested in this topic overall and at the same time I am very suspicious about many, many posts here.

First, regarding the general idea about template numerical "strategicness measurement" based on over/underdog elo ratings does not make much sense to me since the elo ratings you're using are based on games that were played on that template already. If you had access to some magical real values of some general warlight skill elo, that'd be possible. On that topic I'd heavily support Teddy's post, if you'd ever want to really test strategicness of many templates, you'd need multiple ladders for a big enough sample with the same elo settings, the bigger the rating gap between first and last would be, the more strategy there'd be. Warlight atm does not have nearly enough players nor ladders to consitute such an experient.

Ok, now off to some more weird posts:

Even hundreds of years later opinions differ still in matter if chess is strategic or psychological game. One should not dvelve into quantitative and qualitative analysis without eliminating first its prejudice.

Please tell me, who atm thinks that chess is not strategic.

There is probably no universal definition of strategy

Please look up game theory for definitions of strategies and strategic games. Warlight is indeed a strategic game and you can very effectively incorporate existing models to help you improve your Warlight understanding. Also it'll show you that you breaking up strategy into 2 segments is not necessary, it'll all fall under the same thing.

is EU 4x5 0% WR just as good as EU 4x4 0% SR?

No, but almost.

Is Rise of Rome too big to be a good 1v1 map?Is it a good 2v2 map then?

Yes and no.

Chess is in the end not a game of skill (nor of strategy). We have computers which have inherently no skill and no intelligence now beating world champions.

Please explain to me the reasoning behind this, I do not follow the trail of logic here.

The same goes for 0%SR games, they ultimately become measures of dedication rather than skill or strategy.

If you have no fog and no picking stage it might be true, however as a general statement it is far from true.

So I propose the following with regard to strategicality of settings:
- luck percentage doesn't matter, it just changes what you have to account for, and 0% is more likely to reward time spent than actual skill.
- Same for SR versus WR
- A small upset should not leave you screwed. E.g. opponent is lucky and gains a bonus first move and you do not. In a good strategic game, you should be able to recover from this and your greater skill be able to compensate for a bit of bad luck.

That shows a great deal of misunderstanding of how settings affect the game. In general it has been agreed by most good players that 0% vs other % discussion is long over and 0% is superior in all aspects. That is mostly, because in practical terms, regardless of luck % almost all the time, the same move will be optimal, because settings like 16%, 20% etc. will turn some attacks like 7vs4 from 100% to 90% and it is very, very rare that it's optimal to change your deployment just for that extra x%, not to mention games can be decided by luck factor alone (bad net income when ou're attacking the enemy for example). SR vs WR is an entirely different thing, because it really changes how strategy works. SR has been becoming more and more popular, because sometimes games in wr were only decided on 3v2 rolls, but very often those were the cases when it was not an optimal move and a player was forced to go for risky expansion route, which in long run will show. When it comes to luck% it is literally like throwing a coin every turn to see who'll get a free edge/disadvantage. If we're going for comparisons, we could analyse some 16% wr games since we have a decent sample for that and compare win rate with cumulative luck at the end of the game. With a big enough sample I'm interested in seeing a study like that.



Now, to comment on the fundamental question of the topic:

I'll repeat, if you ever want a numerical study, go for Teddy's suggestion, but I doubt you'll ever have any kind of relevant data for that anytime soon. Still, I don't think it is necessary to make such a high-level theoretical study for sth that can be broken down to a few key and more easy to understand components that have been already discussed before on the forum:
1) use 0% luck, there is no downside, try not to use other things than normal fog unless you have a good reason for it
2) get good at warlight so you understand the game mechanics regardless of template
3) have a basic idea for the template (1v1 or team game/map/1-2 cards at most if any)
4) check if your idea makes sense (map size in comparison to team size, some cards are game-breaking (again, back to point 2))
5) try to find a balance for the picking stage
6) test it out with good players
7) repeat points 5 and 6 untill you're satisfied with how you can control the game each time

That is basically it, so far for me it has worked well, I don't think I'll be changing that formula. So you get 2 short answers for the question at hand, the "real" answer is what Teddy said, the perfect strategic template would be the one that'd give the biggest rating range in the population, but in practical terms, it just means the level of game control you have. For me personally I like templates, where I can literally always trace my losses back to either a mistake I made or some sort of luck involvement during the picking stage, but that's mostly a personal preference. The better you are as a player, the better feel for the game you'll have and the easier it'll be for you to find balance for templates that you want to be strategic.

In the answers I've read so far, nobody mentioned the income/territories ratio of the bonuses.

I think maps in which all the bonuses with the same number of territories have the same ratio (maps that follow the rule i=t-1 or i=t-2) have a MUCH LOWER STRATEGIC VALUE than those in which there are bonuses with better and worse ratios.

This is why I think ME and China for 1v1 and Europe for 3v3 are probably the best maps I've tried so far, while other maps such as RoR are very poor under this point of view

Edited 6/22/2015 13:04:12

^ Seph, I'm wondering if you could give me a few maps that do this well and a few maps that do this badly.

I haven't read the topic thoroughly but saw a comment where Shyb talked about the amount of territories will increase strategic value. Consider fog luck then. You have 0 information where your opponent is, which would be likely on a large map. Now you have a couple dozen choices to make, but only a handful could result in a win in which case the others allow your opponent to reach your income first. A good map for a strategic game is big enough that information in pick phase is crucial, yet small enough that opponents reach each other rather quickly.

Seems I need to clarify my statements.

- Chess is a game where, if you have enough time and computing power, you can work out the perfect game. That requires no skill, just time and computing power. A very simple example is tic-tac-toe. A "skilled" player will beat an "unskilled" player every time. But anybody can work out all the possibilities for the perfect game, it just takes the effort to do so, which leaves the game uninteresting. The same goes for chess: If you have enough time and computing power, it is ultimately an uninteresting game (and there is no strategy involved). Same goes for 0% SR games (ignoring how picks affect things). Try 0% SR on Silly Isles, for example.

- By the definition starting this thread, a strategic game is one where the more skilled player has a greater probability to win the game, in proportion to the skill difference. That holds true whatever the luck percentage applied to the game, the difference will only affect the variance around the mean probability, not the "strategicness" of the game. So for 0%SR you have practically no variance, i.e. the one with the greater skill (or more computing power available) will always win (again ignoring the effect of picks which possibly introduce some randomness). With 100% luck WR, the variance is much larger, there are big chances for an upset by luck, but the the probability of the more skilled player winning can still be proportionate to the difference in skill.

Ultimately, the chess-like games end up being the field of people who exclusively do nothing but play chess and it becomes uninteresting for those who do not want to invest the time to play outside their own playing level. While a game like backgammon can remain interesting for very diverse populations. Backgammon is still a strategic game, because the more skilled player will win proportionately more games, but the underdog still feels he has a chance.

@tobe:

In human competitions in the chess world, computer AI are banned (with very bad consequences if used), and both players are given a set amount of time to calculate during the game. Therefore, both players have equal amount of time and no advantage in computing power, refuting your argument [edit] that chess is not a game of skill [/edit].

Edited 6/23/2015 21:08:45

@Fallen Angel

You could memorize Chess, and all possible variations. Thus you could bring the computer analysis with you to the game. No actual skill in chess required. Oh, sure you would need a superhuman brain to do so but the point is still valid.

FIY: The best chess players knows the first 20-30 moves in most openings, that is 40-60 half moves. They have also memorized several common endgames and the middle game. When it comes to cheating, banning computers are easier said then done. There have been incidents in the past year were a player was strongly suspected of cheating, but no evidence was found. This was at top level chess.

You could memorize Chess, and all possible variations. Thus you could bring the computer analysis with you to the game. No actual skill in chess required. Oh, sure you would need a superhuman brain to do so but the point is still valid.

How is a logical impossibility at all relevant to a discussion of skill? I defy you to study the world championship matches and top-level tournaments. Tell me, if no skill is required, then why is it that Magnus Carlsen slaughtered Anand two WC cycles in a row?

Edited 6/23/2015 21:52:42

in chess ONLY skill is required, and the skill in chess IS being able to foresee X turns ahead in a given amount of time without a machine doing it for you. Also a wide set of valid openings has been studied because there would be just too many possibilities to take into account in the first turns

what tobe and tbest say just doesn't make sense, I would like to hear what do they define as "skill"

and the skill in chess IS being able to foresee X turns ahead in a given amount of time without a machine doing it for you

This is another misconception, but a less grievous one. :)

For the record, you can get by in chess without having to look more than a move or two ahead, in most cases. Obviously in some complicated lines you'll need to be able to plan things out move by move (ex. piece a takes b, leaving c vulnerable next move etc), but you can 'see' long-term just by describing positions in your head and deciding how a move will change the position; most games, you don't need to calculate 15 moves deep to determine that a move is good.

that's what i meant, of course it is not needed to think more than a couple turns ahead in most cases (it also derives from experience); but in some cases you need to think many more turns than that to figure out which move gives the best long-term outcome: so the more you're able to compute, the better chances you have to find the best move.

This is exactly how chess AIs work, and that's why they have become so strong together with processors computing power