FTA and 2(3) actions on first turn

[Xpander]

(09-10-2012 07:25 AM)Joggies Wrote:  If P1 for example does absolutely nothing (just passes), then P2 is in an identical position to as what P1 would have been except that the opposition now has 10 witpoints in the bank. If as P1 I can effectively choose to be P2 but with twice as many points, why would I ever choose to be P2?

The fact that most people don't pass their first turn as P1 just indicates there is an advantage in being player one IN ADDITION TO the bonus five witpoints.

Howdy Joggies!

I saw a few people saying this in various threads as proof of FTA...I'm not sure what this proves if anything. Let's just say for the sake of argument that someone did do this. P1 passes as you say and now P2 also passes. The game has now essentially been reset and both players start with 10 wits instead of 5. There you go, a counter strategy.

The first player (out of necessity) essentially is given initiative or control of the tempo or whatever you want to call it depending on what other games you play. Initiative is something that changes throughout the game depending on what the various players do. How the game flows is highly dependent on the map in this game. The fog of war adds even more ambiguity to this, because in a replay you can't see the fog (unless you use that one website), so it's very easy to generalize things. The players a lot of times base their decisions on incomplete information and past experience.

It's not entirely clear if going first is a quantifiable advantage, for the reasons above and others, that can be represented by a number of wits to balance the game. In fact, the only proven case of an obvious advantage has just been addressed. People have a tendency to perceive patterns and "obvious" facts where none exists. You only have to go to a casino to observe that one in practice. So I'm not sure what you mean by simple to prove as neither of us has proven anything. We're just sharing opinions here and all I'm saying is that it's not as cut and dry as some people make it sound...and while we're sharing opinions, let me share some more of mine below.

(09-10-2012 07:25 AM)Joggies Wrote:  As you can see, testing is not necessary on this. But if you like data, I think that fact that at higher level queue stacking is prevalent and normal players are only getting P1 about 20% of the time indicates that the best players have determined the answer to this decisively.

Let's just ignore the statement about queue stacking because I think it will take us off topic. As for testing, you couldn't be farther from the truth. This game, if anything, is a testament to insane amounts of testing (among other things) done in both the design and development phase. It's pretty much my reason to buy the game in the first place. When I first got my hands on the game, I was shocked it didn't have a single player mode and I didn't want to jump into League yet not knowing anything about it. I did some searching and found a podcast of what sounded like two Uber gamers (which later turned out to be Adam and Alex) talking about how they are now going for the new paradigm of touch based games as opposed to their previous strategy of making games around tilting and the iPhone's accelerometer, which I thought was hilarious because I'm a big nerd. Anyway, long story short, I was very impressed with what they had to say about turn based strategy gaming in general and how they balanced everything and what they thought was important...etc. I shelled out to buy the Uber Pack and got all my gamer buddies to do the same so we could play, only after that did I try League. Testing is key and it's pretty much the only way to get to the bottom of this problem.

One thing that will help is the great community that seems to have sprouted up around this game and I think they will make sure that issues with game balance are addressed quickly as they arise. Still, it's interesting to hear what other people think about this issue. For me it was just a curiosity. I didn't think it was a huge deal when I first started digging into it, haha!