I remember playing DnD as a teenager. There was a lot of dirty jokes, mindless monster slaying, and arguing about rules.
The height of humour for some of the gaming groups I was part of looked like this:
"You are all in a tavern, and a stranger comes up to you to give you a quest."
"Wait, screw that, are there any girls in the tavern? I ask them if they want to see my LONGsword. Get it!? HAHAHA!"
Typical teenage boy behaviour, basically. Thankfully we mostly grew out of it.
We grew out of the sexist behaviour and terrible pickup lines, I mean. We still slay monsters mindlessly and argue about the rules all the time. That is just how you play!
Recently Pinkie Pie told me she wanted to play DnD with her friends. Fine enough, I think. Running a game for 13 year olds ought to be easy as anything. Due to hilarious failure at communication though, several of the would be gamers showed up at my place not even knowing that we were going to be playing a roleplaying game at all. Still, they were eager enough to try it out.
They came up with names for their characters that weren't quite what I had hoped. One character was called "School Bell" because school bells are what kids hate most, amirite? Another was called Select because that is the kid's online handle. A third was named after an anime character. None paid any attention whatsoever to the naming conventions each race has, nor did they attempt to build something that felt real. Every decision was just an attempt to get the other kids to giggle.
I wanted to yell "These names are awful! What are you, 13?"
But they *are* 13. So that doesn't work so well as an insult.
Notably Pinkie Pie came up with a perfectly good name, one that fit with the lore behind her character's race and background.
We ended up playing for an hour and a half, then the kids got bored and wanted to do other things. They came back 2 days later, but again it only lasted an hour before they quit. I don't think this is going to stick. Pinkie Pie likes it, but the others aren't particularly into it.
So my first foray into gaming for my daughter and her friends was ... mediocre. They had some laughs, but in the end they just weren't that into it. Which is a fair result, I suppose, pretty much right down the middle in terms of the possibilities.
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Too much of a thing that once might have been good
DnD has lots of mechanics that are holdovers from previous editions, some of which are good. Some... not so good.
I have been thinking about the mechanic where monsters are resistant to non magical weapons. In old DnD this would have been total immunity, which is a really nutty ability. It has a place in stories, no doubt, as 'oh no, we can't hurt the werewolf with our regular weapons, we have to find something better!' is a fine place for a story to go. I like that source, that idea. A few monsters have special powers that require special solutions. I dig it.
But lately there are way too many copies of this ability lying around. We have mostly fought our way through Gardmore Abbey and it was often a frustrating experience. In modern editions monsters aren't totally immune to nonmagical weapons, instead they are simply take half damage instead. While that is safer from a balance perspective, it isn't a good mechanic.
Magic weapons are already good. Making anyone without a magic weapon suck a lot of the time isn't making the story work - they don't usually have an option to get a magic weapon. If they did, they would already have gotten it! All this does is make the people without magic weapons feel stupid, and people with magic weapons feel powerful.
You can have lots of powerful monster abilities that totally wreck certain characters. That is valid! But if half of the fights involved huge AOE silences the spellcasters would rightfully be grumpy. Do it occasionally, and it becomes something to work around. Do it constantly, and they just feel like they chose the wrong class.
Weapon resistance is an example of this done wrong. Many of the fights in this module offered a variety of targets, all of which were weapon resistant. No strategy there, the characters without magic just suck. If you had a fight where some enemies are resistant and others aren't, that at least has some play. The characters without magic weapons can focus on the enemies they can affect. But when you toss weapon resistance around like crazy and don't give any opportunity to work around it you are just kicking the people who are already down, because they are weapon wielders who don't have magic weapons already.
As you might have guessed, I was one of the two characters without a magic weapon. The guy who got a magic weapon right away pounded through all the weapon resistant monsters with glee, while the other two of us sucked. Overall my character was still extremely powerful, don't get me wrong. Crossbow specialists are ridiculous. But the weapon resistant mechanic is not a way to cope with that, especially when it hits other characters too, making them weak. Get rid of this stupid mechanic, and nerf crossbow specialist somehow, that seems like a good compromise to me.
I am happy with some weapon resistance, especially when there is some counterplay available, or when it is a plot point. But making it commonplace means it isn't exciting, it isn't surprising, it is just a way to keep down the people who are already weaker.
I have been thinking about the mechanic where monsters are resistant to non magical weapons. In old DnD this would have been total immunity, which is a really nutty ability. It has a place in stories, no doubt, as 'oh no, we can't hurt the werewolf with our regular weapons, we have to find something better!' is a fine place for a story to go. I like that source, that idea. A few monsters have special powers that require special solutions. I dig it.
But lately there are way too many copies of this ability lying around. We have mostly fought our way through Gardmore Abbey and it was often a frustrating experience. In modern editions monsters aren't totally immune to nonmagical weapons, instead they are simply take half damage instead. While that is safer from a balance perspective, it isn't a good mechanic.
Magic weapons are already good. Making anyone without a magic weapon suck a lot of the time isn't making the story work - they don't usually have an option to get a magic weapon. If they did, they would already have gotten it! All this does is make the people without magic weapons feel stupid, and people with magic weapons feel powerful.
You can have lots of powerful monster abilities that totally wreck certain characters. That is valid! But if half of the fights involved huge AOE silences the spellcasters would rightfully be grumpy. Do it occasionally, and it becomes something to work around. Do it constantly, and they just feel like they chose the wrong class.
Weapon resistance is an example of this done wrong. Many of the fights in this module offered a variety of targets, all of which were weapon resistant. No strategy there, the characters without magic just suck. If you had a fight where some enemies are resistant and others aren't, that at least has some play. The characters without magic weapons can focus on the enemies they can affect. But when you toss weapon resistance around like crazy and don't give any opportunity to work around it you are just kicking the people who are already down, because they are weapon wielders who don't have magic weapons already.
As you might have guessed, I was one of the two characters without a magic weapon. The guy who got a magic weapon right away pounded through all the weapon resistant monsters with glee, while the other two of us sucked. Overall my character was still extremely powerful, don't get me wrong. Crossbow specialists are ridiculous. But the weapon resistant mechanic is not a way to cope with that, especially when it hits other characters too, making them weak. Get rid of this stupid mechanic, and nerf crossbow specialist somehow, that seems like a good compromise to me.
I am happy with some weapon resistance, especially when there is some counterplay available, or when it is a plot point. But making it commonplace means it isn't exciting, it isn't surprising, it is just a way to keep down the people who are already weaker.
Tuesday, December 3, 2019
ICBA
ICBA usually means I Can't Be Assed. Today though, I will suggest a new interpretation - InterContinenal Ballistic Arrows. In Civ 6 archers can fire enormous distances, far enough that it strains any sense of immersion for me. Even firing into an adjacent hex is a huge stretch since a hex is somewhere between 100 and 1000 kilometers wide, but at least that would require them being on the same landmass. However, as it stands archers can fire 2 hexes, often shooting over bodies of water as large as Lake Superior or the English Channel.
It just feels wrong to me to have an archer in London deciding to bombard a target in northern France.
I can usually overlook silliness like this. After all, this is a game where the Eiffel Tower takes up a full hex, and requires you to plow under thousands of square kilometers of land to accommodate it. Scale is ... inexact in Civ 6.
But I don't like the way archers operate mechanically either. The AI isn't good at figuring them out, and every time I go against it I am on the same plan. Make a pile of archers, declare war, let their enormous army pour into my territory, mow them down with archers for a dozen turns while I make melee units, then rush into their territory when they are out of units and crush them.
When I am attacking the AI I mostly just laugh at their units while I rotate out blockers to heal, and keep pouring on the damage with archers. When *they* get archers though... ugh. I lose units constantly, because any time I get into their territory they rush archers up to me and tear apart my lines. When I encounter their archers in neutral territory they aren't good at protecting them so I can beat them up, but when I am on the attack it is a nightmare.
I don't like that the default solution to difficulty is to give the AI tons of units and then you just kill them all with ranged units.
My plan to fix both this immersion and technical problem is to give all ranged units a range of 1. Nobody gets to have ICBAs. If you want to shoot 2 hexes, wait until you get balloons and artillery in the WW1 era, where longer shots from your ranged units makes a lot of sense. Naturally this makes archers bad, so I compensated by raising the strength of ranged units of all types a little bit.
I tested this out a few times and I love the results. I can't just maul the AI with ranged units without thinking anymore. I still like building some of them to assault barbarian huts, defend cities, and peck away at fortified units, but they aren't the one size fits all solution. Archers against the AI in unmodded civ 6 is like using a baseball bat to fight a baby - it feels too powerful for the job. The new ranged units feel like a nerf hammer - still enough to beat the baby, but it feels like more of a fight.
The more critical component here though is that things *feel* a lot more sensible, especially in the early eras. You can't blast away at targets from absurd distances, Quadriremes are a lot more reasonable to build, and you actually have to get up in people's faces to fight. I like it on all fronts. It does lead to chokepoints being really hard to assault though, so you have to plan to lose some units beating through good defensive locations. I like that though, even when it costs me.
It just feels wrong to me to have an archer in London deciding to bombard a target in northern France.
I can usually overlook silliness like this. After all, this is a game where the Eiffel Tower takes up a full hex, and requires you to plow under thousands of square kilometers of land to accommodate it. Scale is ... inexact in Civ 6.
But I don't like the way archers operate mechanically either. The AI isn't good at figuring them out, and every time I go against it I am on the same plan. Make a pile of archers, declare war, let their enormous army pour into my territory, mow them down with archers for a dozen turns while I make melee units, then rush into their territory when they are out of units and crush them.
When I am attacking the AI I mostly just laugh at their units while I rotate out blockers to heal, and keep pouring on the damage with archers. When *they* get archers though... ugh. I lose units constantly, because any time I get into their territory they rush archers up to me and tear apart my lines. When I encounter their archers in neutral territory they aren't good at protecting them so I can beat them up, but when I am on the attack it is a nightmare.
I don't like that the default solution to difficulty is to give the AI tons of units and then you just kill them all with ranged units.
My plan to fix both this immersion and technical problem is to give all ranged units a range of 1. Nobody gets to have ICBAs. If you want to shoot 2 hexes, wait until you get balloons and artillery in the WW1 era, where longer shots from your ranged units makes a lot of sense. Naturally this makes archers bad, so I compensated by raising the strength of ranged units of all types a little bit.
I tested this out a few times and I love the results. I can't just maul the AI with ranged units without thinking anymore. I still like building some of them to assault barbarian huts, defend cities, and peck away at fortified units, but they aren't the one size fits all solution. Archers against the AI in unmodded civ 6 is like using a baseball bat to fight a baby - it feels too powerful for the job. The new ranged units feel like a nerf hammer - still enough to beat the baby, but it feels like more of a fight.
The more critical component here though is that things *feel* a lot more sensible, especially in the early eras. You can't blast away at targets from absurd distances, Quadriremes are a lot more reasonable to build, and you actually have to get up in people's faces to fight. I like it on all fronts. It does lead to chokepoints being really hard to assault though, so you have to plan to lose some units beating through good defensive locations. I like that though, even when it costs me.
Saturday, November 30, 2019
Fist to the head
Warrior monks are a staple of movies and stories. Spiritual folk who combine magical seeming powers with physical discipline beating people up with their fists are a thing a lot of people like. In Civ 6 the devs decided to put Monks into the game, which is a fine thing as far as I am concerned. I don't know about the realism of people fighting fist vs. firearms and winning, but it is fun so who cares?
But as usual there were some serious implementation problems. Two problems leapt out at me, once I began to look at Monks in Civ 6 - First, that they suck. You don't want them. Second, that you can't even get them if you wanted to.
The reason you can't get Monks is that they require a specific belief, and the AI is hardcoded to grab that belief first. The AI won't build Monks once it has that belief though, so you won't see Monks in action. It just takes that belief, reserving Monks for itself, then refuses to build any. It feels almost like some developer was desperate to spite another one. To put in those art assets and unique promotion trees and everything just to make sure that players don't ever get to see Monks in action... it is absurd.
You *can* build a wonder that gets you four Monks, but it comes up much later than Monks do otherwise so by the time you build it those Monks will be 20 Strength below other units and they will be weak and useless.
The reason Monks are terrible is that they have special rules. They are vaguely like melee units in cost and strength, but melee units can benefit from Great Generals, get bonuses vs. anticavalry, and can use battering rams. Monks get none of this. Monks also can't upgrade or be upgraded into, so they have weak promotion possibilities. Even if getting access to Monks was practical, you don't want them. This is extra sad because it means that the belief that gets you access to Monks is terrible compared to the other associated beliefs.
But I can fix this!
All I have to do is buff Monk Strength, which is easy, and trick the AI into not taking them so the player can have a chance.
First off I tried to swap the names of beliefs around to trick the AI into taking something else. This failed.
Then I tried to swap the modifiers around, thinking maybe they programmed the AI to look for a particular modifier. No good, the AI still takes Monks and still won't use them.
Then I tried to change what the modifiers did at the lowest possible level, but this also failed. The AI is hardcoded to look for the ability to get Monks, take it no matter what, and then refuse to make them. Seriously people, what the hell? Do you hate money?
But there is another solution: Give Monks to everyone who gets a religion! The belief that normally gets you Monks can give your Monks bonuses instead, so it still does a similar thing. This one actually worked, so now in my mod every religion gets Monks and they are stronger and thus worth building.
Unfortunately giving Monks bonuses proved complicated. The coding itself is trivial, but knowing exactly what stuff I have to insert into what tables is not at all clear, and my attempts to give Monks bonuses based on beliefs all failed.
So I went on the steam workshop, and looked up Monk mods thinking I could learn from them. I found a mod from someone who went through the exact line of reasoning I did, right from 'Monks suck and are too hard to get' to 'give all religions Monks and buff them from the belief'. This mod worked and was done already, so I gave up my attempts and just used it instead.
Yesterday was apparently a lesson in 'Before you do a job, see if someone else already did the same thing, but better.'
But as usual there were some serious implementation problems. Two problems leapt out at me, once I began to look at Monks in Civ 6 - First, that they suck. You don't want them. Second, that you can't even get them if you wanted to.
The reason you can't get Monks is that they require a specific belief, and the AI is hardcoded to grab that belief first. The AI won't build Monks once it has that belief though, so you won't see Monks in action. It just takes that belief, reserving Monks for itself, then refuses to build any. It feels almost like some developer was desperate to spite another one. To put in those art assets and unique promotion trees and everything just to make sure that players don't ever get to see Monks in action... it is absurd.
You *can* build a wonder that gets you four Monks, but it comes up much later than Monks do otherwise so by the time you build it those Monks will be 20 Strength below other units and they will be weak and useless.
The reason Monks are terrible is that they have special rules. They are vaguely like melee units in cost and strength, but melee units can benefit from Great Generals, get bonuses vs. anticavalry, and can use battering rams. Monks get none of this. Monks also can't upgrade or be upgraded into, so they have weak promotion possibilities. Even if getting access to Monks was practical, you don't want them. This is extra sad because it means that the belief that gets you access to Monks is terrible compared to the other associated beliefs.
But I can fix this!
All I have to do is buff Monk Strength, which is easy, and trick the AI into not taking them so the player can have a chance.
First off I tried to swap the names of beliefs around to trick the AI into taking something else. This failed.
Then I tried to swap the modifiers around, thinking maybe they programmed the AI to look for a particular modifier. No good, the AI still takes Monks and still won't use them.
Then I tried to change what the modifiers did at the lowest possible level, but this also failed. The AI is hardcoded to look for the ability to get Monks, take it no matter what, and then refuse to make them. Seriously people, what the hell? Do you hate money?
But there is another solution: Give Monks to everyone who gets a religion! The belief that normally gets you Monks can give your Monks bonuses instead, so it still does a similar thing. This one actually worked, so now in my mod every religion gets Monks and they are stronger and thus worth building.
Unfortunately giving Monks bonuses proved complicated. The coding itself is trivial, but knowing exactly what stuff I have to insert into what tables is not at all clear, and my attempts to give Monks bonuses based on beliefs all failed.
So I went on the steam workshop, and looked up Monk mods thinking I could learn from them. I found a mod from someone who went through the exact line of reasoning I did, right from 'Monks suck and are too hard to get' to 'give all religions Monks and buff them from the belief'. This mod worked and was done already, so I gave up my attempts and just used it instead.
Yesterday was apparently a lesson in 'Before you do a job, see if someone else already did the same thing, but better.'
Monday, November 25, 2019
Whose bullshit reigns supreme?
In my last DnD session we had a showdown to see whose ridiculous bullshit abilities would carry the day. As you level up in the game you get more health, more attacks, and more damage. Those abilities aren't bullshit. Bullshit abilities are ones that let you defeat opponents by denying them any chance to act, and rendering their abilities and stats irrelevant.
For example, we went into a room that had a weird shadow spider thing in it. Its stats were based off of a shadow dragon, but it had at least one extremely important additional ability. Shadow dragons are CR 13, and this one was located in a deep dungeon so its extra powers related to being in shadow were all in effect. With us being level 9 it was extremely deadly, as it had a breath weapon AOE that hit for 60% of our health and the ability to hide for free on its turn and then run away so we couldn't target it.
All of this is nasty. We started up the fight, it went first, and it breathed on us, taking off 40% of the party's health. Then it zoomed back into its lair. We ran in but couldn't see it, so we summoned some bats to use their echolocation to hunt it down. I was impressed with its bullshit hiding ability, but we had a trick in mind: As soon as it appeared, one of us would cast insect plague, an AOE that does damage every round, and then I would cast a spherical wall of force around it. The plan was that it would sit there in the wall, unable to leave, and slowly die to the insects.
That is some bullshit right there. I am going to use that combo on other nasty creatures, have no doubt of that. We set up our combo and waited for it to die.
Except it had another whole level of bullshit. In addition to all the normal shadow dragon stuff, it got to plane shift at will. So every turn it can hide for free, move away, and then *teleport to another plane*. Then it can teleport back wherever it wants, whenever it wants. If it felt like it, it could just plane shift back as soon as its breath weapon was ready again and roast us. Of course, it plane shifted out of the Wall of Force, and fortunately it didn't come back right away because if it had we would have flat out died. What are we supposed to do against a monster that is never visible except during its turn, and can leave the fracking plane any time things go against it?
Level up our bullshit, obviously.
Our monk has the ability to stun monsters. He can fire off four stuns a round when need be, so when the shadow spider came back to finish the job an hour later, having conveniently given us time to rest and heal up, the monk went first, ran up to it, and stunned it over and over. It finally failed on the third try, so we got to spend a round unloading on it. On his next turn he stunned it again, and then again on his turn after that. Before it got even a single action we plowed through nearly 200 hit points even though it was resistant or immune to everything except psychic, radiant, and force damage.
I don't know about high level play against such creatures. It seems like a silly contest of looking up in the rulebook to see whose bullshit abilities trump whose and the loser doesn't get to do anything on their turn. Winning is its own kind of fun, clearly, but it doesn't actually feel that great to cast Magic Missile over and over against a helpless opponent until it finally keels over.
It also must feel absurd to be the GM and to have to stare down Insect Plague / Wall of Force or endless stuns. What is an enemy with powerful abilities but without teleportation supposed to do? Stand there and die, I guess.
Of course if you add 'plane shift at will' to a powerful monster, it ought to be considered several CR higher than listed to account for the extra power. I wonder if we will get experience for a standard CR 13, or a full and proper CR 15 reward? I learned a lot from that encounter, after all, since I cast a level 1 spell 3 times. But a bigger and badder target for that level 1 spell changes how much I learn about magic! (XP systems are stupid).
For example, we went into a room that had a weird shadow spider thing in it. Its stats were based off of a shadow dragon, but it had at least one extremely important additional ability. Shadow dragons are CR 13, and this one was located in a deep dungeon so its extra powers related to being in shadow were all in effect. With us being level 9 it was extremely deadly, as it had a breath weapon AOE that hit for 60% of our health and the ability to hide for free on its turn and then run away so we couldn't target it.
All of this is nasty. We started up the fight, it went first, and it breathed on us, taking off 40% of the party's health. Then it zoomed back into its lair. We ran in but couldn't see it, so we summoned some bats to use their echolocation to hunt it down. I was impressed with its bullshit hiding ability, but we had a trick in mind: As soon as it appeared, one of us would cast insect plague, an AOE that does damage every round, and then I would cast a spherical wall of force around it. The plan was that it would sit there in the wall, unable to leave, and slowly die to the insects.
That is some bullshit right there. I am going to use that combo on other nasty creatures, have no doubt of that. We set up our combo and waited for it to die.
Except it had another whole level of bullshit. In addition to all the normal shadow dragon stuff, it got to plane shift at will. So every turn it can hide for free, move away, and then *teleport to another plane*. Then it can teleport back wherever it wants, whenever it wants. If it felt like it, it could just plane shift back as soon as its breath weapon was ready again and roast us. Of course, it plane shifted out of the Wall of Force, and fortunately it didn't come back right away because if it had we would have flat out died. What are we supposed to do against a monster that is never visible except during its turn, and can leave the fracking plane any time things go against it?
Level up our bullshit, obviously.
Our monk has the ability to stun monsters. He can fire off four stuns a round when need be, so when the shadow spider came back to finish the job an hour later, having conveniently given us time to rest and heal up, the monk went first, ran up to it, and stunned it over and over. It finally failed on the third try, so we got to spend a round unloading on it. On his next turn he stunned it again, and then again on his turn after that. Before it got even a single action we plowed through nearly 200 hit points even though it was resistant or immune to everything except psychic, radiant, and force damage.
I don't know about high level play against such creatures. It seems like a silly contest of looking up in the rulebook to see whose bullshit abilities trump whose and the loser doesn't get to do anything on their turn. Winning is its own kind of fun, clearly, but it doesn't actually feel that great to cast Magic Missile over and over against a helpless opponent until it finally keels over.
It also must feel absurd to be the GM and to have to stare down Insect Plague / Wall of Force or endless stuns. What is an enemy with powerful abilities but without teleportation supposed to do? Stand there and die, I guess.
Of course if you add 'plane shift at will' to a powerful monster, it ought to be considered several CR higher than listed to account for the extra power. I wonder if we will get experience for a standard CR 13, or a full and proper CR 15 reward? I learned a lot from that encounter, after all, since I cast a level 1 spell 3 times. But a bigger and badder target for that level 1 spell changes how much I learn about magic! (XP systems are stupid).
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Run, a dragon!
In my DnD campaigns over the past few years we have run into a number of dragons. They have varied wildly in power from baby dragons at CR 4 to legendary dragons at CR 20. One thing that has been consistent though is that when you run into a dragon it is dangerous for you right then. Never have I been in a level 8 group that ran into a CR 4 dragon that we could just beat up easily, and I think this is because adventure designers make sure that every time you see a dragon it is set up to be a deadly opponent.
Other creatures aren't like this. When you are level 1 or 2 an ogre is a dangerous foe, capable of downing characters in a single hit. By the time you are level 8 you know that ogres are trivial and you can just blast away groups of them with AOE attacks or tear them apart with weapons if you want.
Dragons though, those aren't fixed in difficulty. Some are trivial, some are terrifying, and they are constantly positioned so that they are a deadly encounter for whatever level the party is at the time. I think sometimes adventure writers forget how weird this is. My character knows that they have grown dramatically in power. They know that previously challenging foes are easy to defeat now. And yet when we find out that the ruins we are investigating contain a dragon we are supposed to automatically be terrified. Even if we beat a dragon long ago, this new dragon is definitely something we should be worried about.
It feels strange because our characters know for sure that if we are level 10, there are dragons that we can beat up without worry, dragons that will be a serious challenge, and dragons that will kill us all without trying. Knowing 'there is a dragon!' tells us almost nothing about what challenge we will face. Except, of course, that we know that every dragon in an adventure will be a terrifying challenge, because that's how adventures are written.
What I really want to see is an adventure where the characters face a dragon that just isn't a challenge. Let something else take centre stage, and subvert expectations.
The actual fight against the dragon this week was an illustration of the issues with the way crossbow characters work in 5th edition. I am playing a crossbow specialist and my feats allow me to fire crossbow bolts in melee range without penalty, as well as shooting without any attention paid to cover. We had our two melee characters ready to fight the dragon, and I hid in the far corner of the room behind a pillar. I could easily blast at the dragon at full strength from there, weaving my bolts around obstacles. When the dragon flew across the room to bite me, I stood in its face shooting away anyhow.
When you build a crossbow character your numbers are good, no doubt, but the real issue with the build is how it doesn't care about the fight. I don't care about distance, terrain, obstacles, anything. As long as I can see an opponent, I pump huge damage into them. That is great from a 'be powerful' perspective, but it does have something lacking in the 'fights are interesting' perspective. I suppose is it still interesting for me to use cover and terrain against my enemies while ignoring it myself, but I think the game might be better if I didn't have all of these abilities to ignore the map.
Other creatures aren't like this. When you are level 1 or 2 an ogre is a dangerous foe, capable of downing characters in a single hit. By the time you are level 8 you know that ogres are trivial and you can just blast away groups of them with AOE attacks or tear them apart with weapons if you want.
Dragons though, those aren't fixed in difficulty. Some are trivial, some are terrifying, and they are constantly positioned so that they are a deadly encounter for whatever level the party is at the time. I think sometimes adventure writers forget how weird this is. My character knows that they have grown dramatically in power. They know that previously challenging foes are easy to defeat now. And yet when we find out that the ruins we are investigating contain a dragon we are supposed to automatically be terrified. Even if we beat a dragon long ago, this new dragon is definitely something we should be worried about.
It feels strange because our characters know for sure that if we are level 10, there are dragons that we can beat up without worry, dragons that will be a serious challenge, and dragons that will kill us all without trying. Knowing 'there is a dragon!' tells us almost nothing about what challenge we will face. Except, of course, that we know that every dragon in an adventure will be a terrifying challenge, because that's how adventures are written.
What I really want to see is an adventure where the characters face a dragon that just isn't a challenge. Let something else take centre stage, and subvert expectations.
The actual fight against the dragon this week was an illustration of the issues with the way crossbow characters work in 5th edition. I am playing a crossbow specialist and my feats allow me to fire crossbow bolts in melee range without penalty, as well as shooting without any attention paid to cover. We had our two melee characters ready to fight the dragon, and I hid in the far corner of the room behind a pillar. I could easily blast at the dragon at full strength from there, weaving my bolts around obstacles. When the dragon flew across the room to bite me, I stood in its face shooting away anyhow.
When you build a crossbow character your numbers are good, no doubt, but the real issue with the build is how it doesn't care about the fight. I don't care about distance, terrain, obstacles, anything. As long as I can see an opponent, I pump huge damage into them. That is great from a 'be powerful' perspective, but it does have something lacking in the 'fights are interesting' perspective. I suppose is it still interesting for me to use cover and terrain against my enemies while ignoring it myself, but I think the game might be better if I didn't have all of these abilities to ignore the map.
Saturday, November 9, 2019
Playing nice
I have been doing better in Through The Ages against the AI, and just got my best score today.
Barbarossa into Napoleon - I warred and warred and warred some more, resolving a culture war on all three opponents on my three final turns. Smash! I do not cooperate, I take what I want.
This week I tried that same sort of thing with Through The Ages. I wanted to see what the highest possible score you could get for a single player would be. Clearly the game has a lot of RNG so mathing out the perfect score would be a monumental effort - instead, I just wanted to try playing a 4 player game where the goal for all 4 players was to maximize player 1's score.
Think for a minute on what you think that score would be.
I thought for 15 minutes or so and came up with 2500 as my guess. The key difference in the game is that it would be *drastically* longer. You want as much time as possible to rack up as much culture as possible, so everyone mostly just takes the single end card each turn. Player 1 needs to corral all the culture at the end of the game, but that is easy to do by having all the other players make as much culture as they can and then declare culture wars on player 1. Since player 1 is the only one with any military, they can easily vacuum up all culture in the game.
I spent five hours running through a game in hotseat mode, where unfortunately I had to watch a recap of every turn before each player got to play, making this a tedious affair. Here was the result:
Just shy of 3000 culture. I screwed up my second to last turn though, and should have had over 3000. I forgot to scoop up a random tech, and it cost me. The other 3 players scored some on the final turn and collected some impacts, so even though they all zeroed out their culture on the final turn they still got quite a lot of points! I feel good about my 2500 estimate, as even though I was off by 500, I certainly got the ballpark right. The main reason I underestimated was that I assumed the players would take a total of 5 cards per turn between them, but by the time I got to the end game I realized that no extra cards were worth taking, even if the ordering was really annoying. Everyone just took whatever the last card was, no exceptions, and that extra game length gave me a lot more points that I had thought. The table was making ~150 culture a turn, so even a couple extra turns is a huge swing.
There were some things that I hadn't quite counted on. Captain Cook was an absolute monster, giving me 12 culture a turn for almost all of Ages 2 and 3. I also set up the game so that I could win some big wars over territory and science in the midgame, but that might not have been such a good idea. Player 1 got so many yellow cubes from colonies and had so much science production that winning those wars wasn't that great - the other players needed those cubes to maximize their own culture generation!
I ended up at 222 Strength, which is kind of hilarious, but I could have done it with much less. The other players had tons of turns to declare culture wars and hand me all their stuff. Also the game has some glitches and struggles when you do things like this - it turns out that culture numbers greater than 999 cause issues at times, and the displays for colonies and wonders start to be a problem when you have 11 colonies and 10 wonders. I also discovered that you absolutely have to maximize your civil actions, because when you have 9 wonders already in play you have to have 10 civil actions to take that last wonder! It was totally playable, but things occasionally looked ... a little weird.
I am sure that with better play and luck I could get a much higher score yet. I don't know if breaking 4000 is possible with a normal deck distribution, but I am sure if you could lay out the deck exactly the way you want you could get massively higher than that, surely as much as 5000 under ideal circumstances. Given the way hotseat games work with the app though, I am not looking forward to trying this a bunch of times. 5 hours of clicking through warnings about unused civil actions and corruption is not much fun.
Monday, November 4, 2019
Not quite Alpha
I have been playing a bunch of Through The Ages against AIs. I like playing against humans in theory, but in practice they spend time taking their turns, don't like it when I just wander away for an hour, and otherwise have needs.
AIs don't have needs! They play exactly when I want them to. So much more convenient than meat sacks.
The AI in TTA is quite good. I have been playing a bunch of Skyrim and Civ 6 lately, so I have been exposed to hilariously bad AIs, which may have lowered my standards some. Watching Civ 6 AIs send endless troops to their deaths and declare war on enemies they can't even reach doesn't fill me with a sense of awe, and laughing as I slowly whittle down Giants with my bow because they can't climb onto the rock I am standing on is no less silly.
TTA is vastly simpler to program than Civ 6 or Skyrim, no doubt. Navigating terrain is a huge thorny mess, so it should be no surprise that the simple integers of TTA are much easier to solve.
I seem to be able to crush the maximum difficulty AI consistently now, but I have managed to fail twice. The first failure was just a second place finish that happened because one AI managed to be the punching bag and the other two stole all of its culture before I could resolve my first war on culture. Some bad RNG on events in addition to poor military card draws left me unable to win.
The other time was far more clear: I got cocky and figured the AIs wouldn't beat me up for a round. I didn't have any military bonus cards, but I had a decent hand size. Surely they would respect the hand size, right? Instead of respecting me, they resolved two aggressions, blowing up my buildings and taking my rocks. Next turn they took my rocks again, killed a population, and declared a war over territory. I gracefully resigned, realizing that I had entered the death spiral from which nobody emerges intact.
So lesson learned there. The AIs will build military and kill you, if you let them. Don't let them. In fact, this trend is stark. In my games with humans the scores are often fairly high as some people go for massive culture generation. In my games with AIs though, the scores are miserably low. It is always a hardcore military race ended by massive wars on culture with whoever fell behind.
In fact, I have never yet built a library or theatre building. Two whole *types* of buildings, and none ever created by me. How can you afford such things? If you build them, violent people will show up, tear them down, and equip more violent people with the remains. My mind is filled with images of Knights armed with violins and armoured with pieces of bookshelves. Better to build your own violent people to tear down the libraries and theatres created by others than face such humiliation.
It makes leaders that focus on libraries and theatres seem silly. I look at them and laugh. Sure, I could get more culture if I had a huge culture engine. But how am I ever going to have a huge culture engine with all the ravening hordes at the gates?
When I first started playing this game Umbra told me about his Plan A: Get to 70+ military strength at the end of the game and drop a huge war on culture or two on the last two turns to crush people. This plan works, and I have been following it avidly. I feel like if I am going to play against great players I will have to have more things in my toolbox than this, but so far it feels like this is the way to beat the AIs consistently.
AIs don't have needs! They play exactly when I want them to. So much more convenient than meat sacks.
The AI in TTA is quite good. I have been playing a bunch of Skyrim and Civ 6 lately, so I have been exposed to hilariously bad AIs, which may have lowered my standards some. Watching Civ 6 AIs send endless troops to their deaths and declare war on enemies they can't even reach doesn't fill me with a sense of awe, and laughing as I slowly whittle down Giants with my bow because they can't climb onto the rock I am standing on is no less silly.
TTA is vastly simpler to program than Civ 6 or Skyrim, no doubt. Navigating terrain is a huge thorny mess, so it should be no surprise that the simple integers of TTA are much easier to solve.
I seem to be able to crush the maximum difficulty AI consistently now, but I have managed to fail twice. The first failure was just a second place finish that happened because one AI managed to be the punching bag and the other two stole all of its culture before I could resolve my first war on culture. Some bad RNG on events in addition to poor military card draws left me unable to win.
The other time was far more clear: I got cocky and figured the AIs wouldn't beat me up for a round. I didn't have any military bonus cards, but I had a decent hand size. Surely they would respect the hand size, right? Instead of respecting me, they resolved two aggressions, blowing up my buildings and taking my rocks. Next turn they took my rocks again, killed a population, and declared a war over territory. I gracefully resigned, realizing that I had entered the death spiral from which nobody emerges intact.
So lesson learned there. The AIs will build military and kill you, if you let them. Don't let them. In fact, this trend is stark. In my games with humans the scores are often fairly high as some people go for massive culture generation. In my games with AIs though, the scores are miserably low. It is always a hardcore military race ended by massive wars on culture with whoever fell behind.
In fact, I have never yet built a library or theatre building. Two whole *types* of buildings, and none ever created by me. How can you afford such things? If you build them, violent people will show up, tear them down, and equip more violent people with the remains. My mind is filled with images of Knights armed with violins and armoured with pieces of bookshelves. Better to build your own violent people to tear down the libraries and theatres created by others than face such humiliation.
It makes leaders that focus on libraries and theatres seem silly. I look at them and laugh. Sure, I could get more culture if I had a huge culture engine. But how am I ever going to have a huge culture engine with all the ravening hordes at the gates?
When I first started playing this game Umbra told me about his Plan A: Get to 70+ military strength at the end of the game and drop a huge war on culture or two on the last two turns to crush people. This plan works, and I have been following it avidly. I feel like if I am going to play against great players I will have to have more things in my toolbox than this, but so far it feels like this is the way to beat the AIs consistently.
Sunday, November 3, 2019
So much blood
Diablo 4 has been announced. Clearly at this point in the game creation pipeline we have to be careful, as Blizzard likely won't release it until 2021. Still, the cinematic trailer and gameplay videos are *gorgeous* and I am twitching with anticipation.
I was twitching with anticipation for D3 too though, and that had.... some serious flaws.
I think there is room for optimism though. D3 had some huge issues that were created by Blizzard trying to solve problems, and they realized that they went too far from their source material. The Auction House sounded like a good idea to me, because they were trying to eliminate the inconvience, spam, and scamming that were a constant in D2. A good goal, to be sure, but it ended up a game where the best way to progress a character was to sit on the AH all day farming gold, and then just buy whatever you needed. That did not work out.
D3 also had the issue of frequency of set and legendary drops. When it was first released sets were theoretically in the game, but after farming max level content for 100 hours I had found a single set piece. The timeline to actually assemble a set looked like it would be in the 2,000 hour range, and that is completely absurd. On the other hand, at this point in D3 you get your sets immediately and in huge quantity and you just farm them over and over looking for ideal stat rolls. Also those sets increase abilities by 2000%, which throws all game balance completely out the window. Both extremes are a huge problem.
It seems like Blizzard is aiming for something in between D2 and D3. They are going back to a skill tree and multiple ranks in skills, which sounds good, but their examples clearly show characters using a variety of abilities while fighting. D2 had the problem where characters would usually end up just using a single ability, and that gets pretty boring. D3 had the problem that characters had no permanent attributes, just a level that was shared across the account. In theory they could combine the best of both of those games and come out with something marvellous.
I know what I would do for D4. I would have a skill tree like D3, and limited ability to reroll or change point allocations. I would gate higher level abilities behind total points invested in a particular tree, so that putting points into lower level abilities still makes sense - you have to do that to unlock the higher level ones. D2's solution to this (passive skill benefits) was extremely limiting on builds, and D3's solution was to get rid of the skill trees completely and I don't like that much.
Between D2 and D3 lies a truly magificent game. One I would play the hell out of for years and years.
Blizzard can create a great cinematic, and they can make the game look pretty. By pretty, of course, I mean dark, bloody, brutal, gothic, and terrifying. But whether or not they can combine the pieces of those two games into something wonderful remains to be seen.
I should be cynical and hesitant by this point. I have been burned before. But hope springs eternal.
I was twitching with anticipation for D3 too though, and that had.... some serious flaws.
I think there is room for optimism though. D3 had some huge issues that were created by Blizzard trying to solve problems, and they realized that they went too far from their source material. The Auction House sounded like a good idea to me, because they were trying to eliminate the inconvience, spam, and scamming that were a constant in D2. A good goal, to be sure, but it ended up a game where the best way to progress a character was to sit on the AH all day farming gold, and then just buy whatever you needed. That did not work out.
D3 also had the issue of frequency of set and legendary drops. When it was first released sets were theoretically in the game, but after farming max level content for 100 hours I had found a single set piece. The timeline to actually assemble a set looked like it would be in the 2,000 hour range, and that is completely absurd. On the other hand, at this point in D3 you get your sets immediately and in huge quantity and you just farm them over and over looking for ideal stat rolls. Also those sets increase abilities by 2000%, which throws all game balance completely out the window. Both extremes are a huge problem.
It seems like Blizzard is aiming for something in between D2 and D3. They are going back to a skill tree and multiple ranks in skills, which sounds good, but their examples clearly show characters using a variety of abilities while fighting. D2 had the problem where characters would usually end up just using a single ability, and that gets pretty boring. D3 had the problem that characters had no permanent attributes, just a level that was shared across the account. In theory they could combine the best of both of those games and come out with something marvellous.
I know what I would do for D4. I would have a skill tree like D3, and limited ability to reroll or change point allocations. I would gate higher level abilities behind total points invested in a particular tree, so that putting points into lower level abilities still makes sense - you have to do that to unlock the higher level ones. D2's solution to this (passive skill benefits) was extremely limiting on builds, and D3's solution was to get rid of the skill trees completely and I don't like that much.
Between D2 and D3 lies a truly magificent game. One I would play the hell out of for years and years.
Blizzard can create a great cinematic, and they can make the game look pretty. By pretty, of course, I mean dark, bloody, brutal, gothic, and terrifying. But whether or not they can combine the pieces of those two games into something wonderful remains to be seen.
I should be cynical and hesitant by this point. I have been burned before. But hope springs eternal.
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Double team
I am in another season of Through The Ages on MeepleLeague. It doesn't seem like it is going so well. In one game I really boxed myself into a corner by relying on Stonehenge for early science. It gives a big burst of science at the start, and I didn't manage to get a good way to get science production, relying on the fixed amount Stonehenge gave me. Then I got pinned into a spot where I had enough science to play an Age 2 science tech, but I was falling behind in military too. If I catch up in military my science will take even longer to get online, but if I build science I might get beat up.
My situation was precarious. I had seven cards in hand, and 11 Strength. Two opponents had 18 Strength each. I had a couple of 4 Strength cards, so I figured I was safe for a single turn and I could go for science. After all, the first opponent that aggressions me has no chance, and they should know that. Are they really going to toss away resources just to set up the second opponent to wreck me and take all the profits?
Yes. Yes they are.
I ended up going the science gambling route and it was a catastrophe. I stopped the first aggression, but the second one blew up the science I had just built and also all my happiness. The first opponent, the one who I thought wouldn't hit me because why give the other leader a huge bonus, set me up for continual tragedy.
In retrospect I don't know if my gamble was right or not. It sure worked out badly, but that doesn't mean it was wrong to try. If I just plug away at Strength I am still behind, and I don't know how I am ever going to get my infrastructure caught up. If I am aiming for first place I think the gamble is right - assume that player 1 is greedy and won't toss resources for no purpose. But if I am aiming for 'not last' then my play was terrible.
I suppose this is the sort of spot where you have to know your opponents. Some people will be happy to have my stuff get wrecked because that eliminates one competitor, even if it doesn't help them directly. Some people don't want the other player to grab all my stuff and run away with the game.
In any case I scooped up Ghandi so it will be extremely costly for people to continue to beat me up and take all my stuff. I won't win, that much is sure, but maybe I can manage to squeeze out 'not last', and that is about all I can hope for when every single urban building I had was burned down in a single turn.
Lesson learned: You still have to get science production going, even if you happen to have a bunch of science sitting around.
Also, don't fall behind in strength. Culture is for suckers.
My situation was precarious. I had seven cards in hand, and 11 Strength. Two opponents had 18 Strength each. I had a couple of 4 Strength cards, so I figured I was safe for a single turn and I could go for science. After all, the first opponent that aggressions me has no chance, and they should know that. Are they really going to toss away resources just to set up the second opponent to wreck me and take all the profits?
Yes. Yes they are.
I ended up going the science gambling route and it was a catastrophe. I stopped the first aggression, but the second one blew up the science I had just built and also all my happiness. The first opponent, the one who I thought wouldn't hit me because why give the other leader a huge bonus, set me up for continual tragedy.
In retrospect I don't know if my gamble was right or not. It sure worked out badly, but that doesn't mean it was wrong to try. If I just plug away at Strength I am still behind, and I don't know how I am ever going to get my infrastructure caught up. If I am aiming for first place I think the gamble is right - assume that player 1 is greedy and won't toss resources for no purpose. But if I am aiming for 'not last' then my play was terrible.
I suppose this is the sort of spot where you have to know your opponents. Some people will be happy to have my stuff get wrecked because that eliminates one competitor, even if it doesn't help them directly. Some people don't want the other player to grab all my stuff and run away with the game.
In any case I scooped up Ghandi so it will be extremely costly for people to continue to beat me up and take all my stuff. I won't win, that much is sure, but maybe I can manage to squeeze out 'not last', and that is about all I can hope for when every single urban building I had was burned down in a single turn.
Lesson learned: You still have to get science production going, even if you happen to have a bunch of science sitting around.
Also, don't fall behind in strength. Culture is for suckers.
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Flap flap
Wingspan is a new game I just ran into last night. It was the sort of game that I needed to play a second time right away because I had to know if my thoughts about strategy were correct. This is a good sign.
The easiest comparison I have to it is Terraforming Mars. However, I think Wingspan actually does it better, and that is saying a lot since I have been playing a ton of TM and I want to play more. The main points of comparison are that they are both engine building games with a mix of group and solitaire elements, and they both have extremely strong thematic elements that speak to a lot of research.
Wingspan is a game about running a bird sanctuary. You collect types of birds, and then have to put them in your sanctuary by collecting food that they like. Each bird has a bunch of different attributes that interact with point generation but they also have a special ability of some sort, and these special abilities form your engine. You can set it up so you have specific actions that are extremely powerful, and then use them to generate a ton of points.
The cards are beautiful and show great attention to scientific detail. Birds have habitats, nest types, wingspans, and other attributes to keep them unique, and the pictures and flavour text really bring it all in. It also does a great job making the mechanics fit the theme, which I appreciate. I think the numbers in the game are quite well done too, as we consistently ended up building engines that did powerful stuff, but the game ended just a touch before we could do everything we wanted to. There was always a sense of urgency and desperation on the last few turns trying to squeeze out every last point, and I quite liked that.
There were a couple of issues. The first is the readability of text and icons. Black text on dark brown is tough to read at a distance, and the icons are small. There was a lot of people picking up bird cards and staring at them to make out what the card did and its attributes. While I do like the pictures of the birds on the cards, I would really appreciate the designers shrinking the pictures by 30% and increasing the size of the font and icons to help people see the cards from further away.
The second issue was a balance issue. Most of the cards work equally at any number of players. They do stuff on your turn, so whether it is 2p or 5p is irrelevant. However, there are a few cards that do stuff on your opponent's turns, so when there are a lot of players those cards are extremely powerful. Certain ones seemed completely crazy powerful in large games, especially when dropped on turn 1. A normal good card might generate 5 resources over the course of a game, and you would be happy to play that card. One of these 'on opponent's turn' cards could handily generate 15 resources over a game, and that seems completely out of line.
I like the theme of these cards, and I am sure there is a player count where they are completely fine. Unfortunately if you play with a lot of players the game looks like it will hugely favour the person who gets one of these power cards in their opening hand. I am not so much a fan of that.
Still, this balance concern is just a fact of life in games like this. Just as a TM player can choose Interplanetary Cinematics and drop down Advanced Alloys, Aquifer Pumping, Nuclear Power, and Strip Mine on their first turn and waltz to victory, some bird draws in Wingspan are a huge engine right out of the gate.
Wingspan is a ton of fun. I am sure bird enthusiasts will enjoy the flavour, and even someone like me who pays no attention to that stuff generally can enjoy how well the fluff is baked into the crunch. Also I can't stress enough how important it is that the engine building have an appropriate investment and payoff timeline in this sort of game and Wingspan does that to perfection. There might not be a lot of variance in the general way the game plays out, but there are tons of small decisions and little tweaks you can make that will be different each time, so I suspect this game has a lot of plays in it for me.
The easiest comparison I have to it is Terraforming Mars. However, I think Wingspan actually does it better, and that is saying a lot since I have been playing a ton of TM and I want to play more. The main points of comparison are that they are both engine building games with a mix of group and solitaire elements, and they both have extremely strong thematic elements that speak to a lot of research.
Wingspan is a game about running a bird sanctuary. You collect types of birds, and then have to put them in your sanctuary by collecting food that they like. Each bird has a bunch of different attributes that interact with point generation but they also have a special ability of some sort, and these special abilities form your engine. You can set it up so you have specific actions that are extremely powerful, and then use them to generate a ton of points.
The cards are beautiful and show great attention to scientific detail. Birds have habitats, nest types, wingspans, and other attributes to keep them unique, and the pictures and flavour text really bring it all in. It also does a great job making the mechanics fit the theme, which I appreciate. I think the numbers in the game are quite well done too, as we consistently ended up building engines that did powerful stuff, but the game ended just a touch before we could do everything we wanted to. There was always a sense of urgency and desperation on the last few turns trying to squeeze out every last point, and I quite liked that.
There were a couple of issues. The first is the readability of text and icons. Black text on dark brown is tough to read at a distance, and the icons are small. There was a lot of people picking up bird cards and staring at them to make out what the card did and its attributes. While I do like the pictures of the birds on the cards, I would really appreciate the designers shrinking the pictures by 30% and increasing the size of the font and icons to help people see the cards from further away.
The second issue was a balance issue. Most of the cards work equally at any number of players. They do stuff on your turn, so whether it is 2p or 5p is irrelevant. However, there are a few cards that do stuff on your opponent's turns, so when there are a lot of players those cards are extremely powerful. Certain ones seemed completely crazy powerful in large games, especially when dropped on turn 1. A normal good card might generate 5 resources over the course of a game, and you would be happy to play that card. One of these 'on opponent's turn' cards could handily generate 15 resources over a game, and that seems completely out of line.
I like the theme of these cards, and I am sure there is a player count where they are completely fine. Unfortunately if you play with a lot of players the game looks like it will hugely favour the person who gets one of these power cards in their opening hand. I am not so much a fan of that.
Still, this balance concern is just a fact of life in games like this. Just as a TM player can choose Interplanetary Cinematics and drop down Advanced Alloys, Aquifer Pumping, Nuclear Power, and Strip Mine on their first turn and waltz to victory, some bird draws in Wingspan are a huge engine right out of the gate.
Wingspan is a ton of fun. I am sure bird enthusiasts will enjoy the flavour, and even someone like me who pays no attention to that stuff generally can enjoy how well the fluff is baked into the crunch. Also I can't stress enough how important it is that the engine building have an appropriate investment and payoff timeline in this sort of game and Wingspan does that to perfection. There might not be a lot of variance in the general way the game plays out, but there are tons of small decisions and little tweaks you can make that will be different each time, so I suspect this game has a lot of plays in it for me.
Sunday, October 13, 2019
End it all now
Some wins are better than others. Today I won a game in my online Thurn and Taxis league because one of my opponents decided to end the game despite being solidly in last place. I spent a lot of time thinking about my final turn because I saw that position coming. The player in last was so far behind that even closing the final route and claiming their seven carriage put them last by a big margin. In theory there might be some set of events that gets them out of last place if the game keeps going, but it seemed far fetched.
I had the chance to close my route and get a solid lead, which locks in my victory if the person in last ends the game. If the person in last decides to keep the game going, this almost certainly gets me second place instead, because I don't get to do anything useful on the following turns and someone else does.
If I keep my route open, I have a shot at first place if the game continues, but this gives someone playing after me the chance to close a crappy route, and then they get first place instead if the person in last ends the game.
I find these kinds of calculations really frustrating. Sometimes it is just something like 'Is this opponent going to gamble to try to advance, and make a crazy play for first?' which isn't great, but isn't so terrible. At least I can try to figure all that out. But how should I play against someone who is totally screwed, but has maybe 1/1000 chance of getting out of last if they keep the game going? Are they the sort who never gives up, and never surrenders? Or are they the sort of person who values their time and who won't continue a game that is obviously over? That is the sort of calculation I can't do anything with in terms of game theory.
In the end I decided that the person in last was so far behind they were just going to end the game and be done with it. I closed my route, got a few points, and the game did indeed end. I don't feel great about it though. Knowing that I locked in the victory because someone decided it wasn't worth trying anymore isn't quite the glorious victory march I had envisioned.
But I do want to advance, so I guess I will take what I can get. :) I have a first and two seconds now, so advancing is totally plausible. I usually end up needing three first place finishes to advance in these things though, so I am not all that optimistic. (I figure most of the time two firsts and two seconds should do it, but I have been beaten with two firsts and two seconds most of the time I have gotten there, whatever the odds are.)
I am curious what other people think of the etiquette of ending games when you guarantee yourself last place. How much of a chance of improving that position do you need in order to stick in a game? Personally my answer is anything greater than zero - I won't give in until there is truly no way out. How do you behave in that situation?
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Broken swings
Even though regular work on my game FMB ended years ago, every so often I have occasion to revisit it and look at my work with fresh eyes. Recently I made some changes to get rid of a particular strategy that was both a little too good and also not terribly interesting. The key card I had to deal with was
Demonic Rune
Cost: 2
Every attack you make this turn gets a +2 bonus.
Simple enough effect, and really powerful. Attacks are resolved by generating a random number from -2 to +3, and with only 6 possible results a +2 bonus is enormous. On a normal turn you get to make 4-5 attacks, which gives you a total +8 to +10 bonus. A 2 cost card should give you about +9, so this is totally fair and reasonable.
The problem is that many other cards grant extra attacks. For example, the two below.
Berserk
Cost: 0
One of your units makes an additional attack this turn.
Chain Lightning
Cost: 2
Make a Strength 2 attack against 3 different units.
Both cards are perfectly fine and fair on their own, but if you save up cards and bust out these two in combination with Demonic Rune then you have a *huge* swing turn. I don't mind swing turns, in fact letting people set those up is a big part of the fun, but this swing turn has some problems. First, it is way too big. It can easily kill 80% of the opponent's army in a single turn. Second, there isn't anything an opponent can do to stop you, or to play around it. You save up a pile of cards, and on any given you turn you can just blow up their entire army. Lastly, it doesn't interact in cool ways with the board or unit positioning. If you get to do something really powerful, it should depend a lot on board state and previous choices. Unfortunately, this works the same way every time.
Berserk and Chain Lightning are good, no alterations needed there. It is Demonic Rune and its global buff that needs to go. I figured I should try to make the card interact with the particular way I set up the game's components, and I came up with an idea. Those random numbers generated to resolve attacks range from -2 to +3, so the game has a deck of 24 cards for each player with 4 copies of each result in it. You 'roll' a result by drawing a card, and reshuffle the deck when it runs out. This setup keeps individual rolls random, but this makes sure you don't just roll a bunch of low numbers and lose. The new version of Demonic Rune uses this.
Demonic Rune
Cost: 2
Shuffle up to 4 cards from your discard pile back into your attack roll deck.
The idea here is that you can always just use this card to get a bunch of +3s in your deck if you want. However, you can also wait until your deck is completely empty and then stack it full of +3 results. This way you can know for certain that you hit on 4 consecutive attacks, which can be really useful just for planning, and interacts in powerful ways with certain other effects.
Hopefully this change makes the way people use cards feel better. I like the huge variety in the deck, and I didn't enjoy how much the game revolved around just getting as many attacks as possible in a single turn and blowing everything up. There are so many cards that tinker with positioning, speed, and unit capabilities that it was kind of sad to watch them all fall by the wayside in pursuit of pure murder.
Demonic Rune
Cost: 2
Every attack you make this turn gets a +2 bonus.
Simple enough effect, and really powerful. Attacks are resolved by generating a random number from -2 to +3, and with only 6 possible results a +2 bonus is enormous. On a normal turn you get to make 4-5 attacks, which gives you a total +8 to +10 bonus. A 2 cost card should give you about +9, so this is totally fair and reasonable.
The problem is that many other cards grant extra attacks. For example, the two below.
Berserk
Cost: 0
One of your units makes an additional attack this turn.
Chain Lightning
Cost: 2
Make a Strength 2 attack against 3 different units.
Both cards are perfectly fine and fair on their own, but if you save up cards and bust out these two in combination with Demonic Rune then you have a *huge* swing turn. I don't mind swing turns, in fact letting people set those up is a big part of the fun, but this swing turn has some problems. First, it is way too big. It can easily kill 80% of the opponent's army in a single turn. Second, there isn't anything an opponent can do to stop you, or to play around it. You save up a pile of cards, and on any given you turn you can just blow up their entire army. Lastly, it doesn't interact in cool ways with the board or unit positioning. If you get to do something really powerful, it should depend a lot on board state and previous choices. Unfortunately, this works the same way every time.
Berserk and Chain Lightning are good, no alterations needed there. It is Demonic Rune and its global buff that needs to go. I figured I should try to make the card interact with the particular way I set up the game's components, and I came up with an idea. Those random numbers generated to resolve attacks range from -2 to +3, so the game has a deck of 24 cards for each player with 4 copies of each result in it. You 'roll' a result by drawing a card, and reshuffle the deck when it runs out. This setup keeps individual rolls random, but this makes sure you don't just roll a bunch of low numbers and lose. The new version of Demonic Rune uses this.
Demonic Rune
Cost: 2
Shuffle up to 4 cards from your discard pile back into your attack roll deck.
The idea here is that you can always just use this card to get a bunch of +3s in your deck if you want. However, you can also wait until your deck is completely empty and then stack it full of +3 results. This way you can know for certain that you hit on 4 consecutive attacks, which can be really useful just for planning, and interacts in powerful ways with certain other effects.
Hopefully this change makes the way people use cards feel better. I like the huge variety in the deck, and I didn't enjoy how much the game revolved around just getting as many attacks as possible in a single turn and blowing everything up. There are so many cards that tinker with positioning, speed, and unit capabilities that it was kind of sad to watch them all fall by the wayside in pursuit of pure murder.
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
A dragon
My DnD group has a dilemma. We have been clearing out Gardmore Abbey, slowing wading through hordes of zombies, gnolls, minotaurs, and demons. The current dungeon is finally clear, with one notable exception: A dragon.
The other inhabitants of the dungeon told us that the dragon is terrifying and they would never try to attack it, but that doesn't actually tell us a lot about whether or not we can just walk in there and beat it up.
Trouble is, unlike many monsters in DnD, dragons have a vast range of power. If I am going up against a lich, I know that it is bad news unless we are level ~13 or so. If we are fighting a gnoll, I am not worried, even if we are all level 1. But a dragon? It could be a baby, easy for our level 6 party to wipe out. It could be a serious challenge. It could also be so powerful it kills us all on its first action. No way to know!
In fact, we have had all three types of dragons in my campaigns with Naked Man. One dragon that ran away after it took a single bowshot for 3 damage, one that was a tough fight at level 4, and one that could have ravaged an entire country if it felt like it. In all cases though, it was a dragon... and we had to guess whether or not we can take it on.
I wonder if the people who wrote this module thought about this. Did they intend for 'its a dragon' to terrify us so we give up immediately? Did they figure we would just walk in and brawl it, thinking of it as a fair and reasonable encounter? I have no idea what they intended! I suspect they thought that 'its a dragon' would give us a sense of the challenge of the beast, but it sure left us without a clue.
So now we have to decide if we will be sneaky and try to steal from the dragon, walk in and try to negotiate with it, or go with my favourite - ambush it and kill it before it kills us. In this module we have ended up fighting every single monster to the death, so I see little reason to imagine that this pattern will suddenly change. If we are going to fight it to the death, might as well start the fight with a surprise round, right?
The other inhabitants of the dungeon told us that the dragon is terrifying and they would never try to attack it, but that doesn't actually tell us a lot about whether or not we can just walk in there and beat it up.
Trouble is, unlike many monsters in DnD, dragons have a vast range of power. If I am going up against a lich, I know that it is bad news unless we are level ~13 or so. If we are fighting a gnoll, I am not worried, even if we are all level 1. But a dragon? It could be a baby, easy for our level 6 party to wipe out. It could be a serious challenge. It could also be so powerful it kills us all on its first action. No way to know!
In fact, we have had all three types of dragons in my campaigns with Naked Man. One dragon that ran away after it took a single bowshot for 3 damage, one that was a tough fight at level 4, and one that could have ravaged an entire country if it felt like it. In all cases though, it was a dragon... and we had to guess whether or not we can take it on.
I wonder if the people who wrote this module thought about this. Did they intend for 'its a dragon' to terrify us so we give up immediately? Did they figure we would just walk in and brawl it, thinking of it as a fair and reasonable encounter? I have no idea what they intended! I suspect they thought that 'its a dragon' would give us a sense of the challenge of the beast, but it sure left us without a clue.
So now we have to decide if we will be sneaky and try to steal from the dragon, walk in and try to negotiate with it, or go with my favourite - ambush it and kill it before it kills us. In this module we have ended up fighting every single monster to the death, so I see little reason to imagine that this pattern will suddenly change. If we are going to fight it to the death, might as well start the fight with a surprise round, right?
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
A proper ending
Two weeks ago we had a DnD session where my group, GMed by Naked Man, wrapped up a couple of big plot lines that we have been pursuing for some time. We had gotten ourselves into a series of gladitorial combats for prizes and fame, with our longtime rivals destined to meet us in the finals. These rivals have been around since the first session our group played 2 years ago, and we were looking forward to finally wiping the smirks off of their faces.
It was never going to be as simple as that, though. The evil cultists had a plan to unleash a horrible undead monstrosity on the people watching the event and cover the world in darkness. As good drama demands, just as we finally had our rivals on the ropes and victory was assured, the undead beastie smashed into the arena, ready to eat everything in sight. We joined forces with our battered rivals in a desperate bid to stop the monster.
Our bard had a strange ability, granted to him some time ago, where he could draw on the life forces of people around him to empower his spells. Seeing as we were surrounded by thousands of spectators he used this opportunity to see just how magnificent a scene he could create, and draw mightily from the thousands of people in the arena to Fireball the undead beast.
The GM announced "The Fireball does 8 extra damage."
That was not quite the splash we had all hoped for, needless to say. We slew the undead monster, and then turned to our rivals to finish what we had started... or at least to claim victory. They laughed, told us it was obviously a tie, and walked off the field. "See you next year!"
Again we were struck with a sense of disappointment. After all that buildup, the competition is just over, and that entire story arc ends with "See you next year."
That is the sort of ending that makes a player not bother being invested in a story, no doubt.
(This where all the people that say "Dude, your GM sucks!" in response to my blog posts get to feel vindicated.)
But the next day we got an email from Naked Man saying that he was dissatisfied with the way everything happened and he wanted to redo the fight from the moment of the big Fireball. There was some resistance to this, and although I don't love retconning things, I really wanted a better resolution so I signed on.
The next session we began again where the bard drew on thousands of people to empower his Fireball, and a gigantic, continuing inferno appeared in the middle of the battlefield. The undead monster promptly died, and within the fire we saw a portal open to the Elemental Plane of Fire. The fire started to increase in size, and it became clear our bard had accidentally torn a hole in the world that was expanding!
Now *that* is the kind of result I was hoping for!
I hucked Dispel Magics at the conflagration trying to hold it back, but I could only make a dent in it. Our bard sang at it desperately trying to undo the damage. A powerful entity of some sort showed up to help him, because it thought that this might well destroy the world. Fire elementals began to wander through the portal and we had to try to drive them back in while also closing the portal and preventing the apocalypse.
Our rivals ran away like cowards and left us to save everyone.
Finally we stopped the expansion of the fire, dealt with the elementals, and stopped to catch our breath. Those of us with healing magic tried to help all of the injured people, while my character Levitated around the arena shooting fire at things and yelling about being the champion.
Since our opponents had left the arena without anyone being declared the victor, it seemed clear that we had claim to having won the tournament, so we grabbed our giant pile of gold for winning and stormed out to the taverns where I spent my time telling everyone about the cowardice and incompetence of those recently considered our rivals.
An epic ending, in every sense.
The finale of this arc went from letdown to celebration. We figured things out, saved the town, saved the world from our saving of the town, and finally got to stick it to those jackasses once and for all.
(This where all the people that say "Dude, your GM rocks!" in response to my blog posts get to feel vindicated.)
I don't normally look to retcon stuff like that. Just roll with it, even if it kills everyone. However, this was a bit of retconning that I totally approve of. It is hard to instantly figure out what the best thing to do is, and it is sweet to be able to make it happen when you do come up with the proper comeback late at night.
And now my endless taunting of our rivals might even set up a later meeting with them. I do so like to give old enemies a chance to come back and take another shot at us.
Monday, September 23, 2019
A classroom on a mountain peak
In Civ 6 the way you advance your scientific understanding is to live near huge mountain ranges with lots of geothermal vents nearby.
This makes no damn sense.
Lots of things in games make no sense, so that isn't necessarily a problem. However, it also feels silly and bizarre, and *that* is a problem.
The way you make most of your science in Civ 6 is to plant down Campus districts. In human history you find the greatest centres of knowledge and innovation by looking at places with large amounts of trade and people. Big cities, basically. However, Civ 6 Campus districts get huge adjacency bonuses from geothermal vents, mountains, and in the latest patch, reefs. They want to emphasize that you can learn things by examining natural features, sure, but it feels awkward.
Holy Sites also want to be near mountains, but this feels right. You don't situate your religious and spiritual places in the middle of a city in a flood plain, you put them near amazing natural wonders and majestic mountains, the better to impress people. Feels good.
But Campuses? They should want to be next to all the people doing all the things, the better to gather all the knowledge.
I suspect that when the designers were building the game they wanted to avoid mountains being terrible. A good way to do this was to make it so that Holy Sites and Campuses got big bonuses for being near mountains, so the fact that mountains are unworkable tiles would be made up for by big science or faith generation. For Holy Sites this totally worked, not so for Campuses. As patches have progressed they have added more and more science adjacency bonuses to Campuses and this has warped the game in strange ways. There is basically no way to get big science aside from Campuses, and all the other ways of getting science are extremely weak, so Campuses are needed everywhere.
In my most recent game my first city had a +4 Campus adjacency, and my next two cities had +6 and +5 adjacency locations due to mountains and geothermal vents. These numbers are enormous, as most other districts in that era would be sitting at adjacencies of 0-2. I shredded the science tree, and it made the game feel terrible because I couldn't build anything before it was already obsolete.
Campuses are too good, the adjacency bonuses are too large, and it all feels silly. I want to make baseline science generation a bit better and Campuses a bit weaker, and I want to make Campus adjacencies more sensible.
I have a few options. The first one I came up with is to remove or reduce most of the current adjacencies and just make Campus adjacencies much worse. I would trash the adjacencies for mountains and reduce the bonuses from geothermal vents and reefs to +1 instead of +2. (Reducing mountains to a 1 per 2 adjacency isn't possible for technical reasons.) This would push Campus locations towards city centres and reduce normal adjacencies to 0-2 in the early game, rising to 3 in really good locations with a lot of infrastructure.
The way to make Campuses want to be in big urban areas is to replace all of their current adjacency bonuses with a full adjacency bonus from all districts. Right now they get a 1 per 2 rate on districts, but I can easily up the rate to 1 per 1, which would mean that every city could have a good Campus regardless of location - all you have to do is build your other districts beside it and you are good to go. 3 adjacency bonus would be no problem in every developed city. This feels sensible to me from a immersion perspective, but does mean that you basically don't care about terrain because the optimal science strategy is to simply put cities close together and build huge globs of districts with campuses in the middle. This is a change to Campuses, but not a nerf - they still get really powerful, though you can't yahtzee quite so hard in the early game.
That second option feels thematically good, but doesn't address the power level of Campuses. The first option reduces overall science output in the game dramatically, so it needs to be offset by a small increase in the base science rate from population. I think I like the lower power version better. It is fun to build huge numbers, but the game is warped by just how huge those numbers are, and other districts don't get that like at all, at least not without significant planning and investment.
And finally I will be able to stop feeling silly when I rush to plant a centre of learning in the middle of the wild, surrounded by rough, unusable terrain.
This makes no damn sense.
Lots of things in games make no sense, so that isn't necessarily a problem. However, it also feels silly and bizarre, and *that* is a problem.
The way you make most of your science in Civ 6 is to plant down Campus districts. In human history you find the greatest centres of knowledge and innovation by looking at places with large amounts of trade and people. Big cities, basically. However, Civ 6 Campus districts get huge adjacency bonuses from geothermal vents, mountains, and in the latest patch, reefs. They want to emphasize that you can learn things by examining natural features, sure, but it feels awkward.
Holy Sites also want to be near mountains, but this feels right. You don't situate your religious and spiritual places in the middle of a city in a flood plain, you put them near amazing natural wonders and majestic mountains, the better to impress people. Feels good.
But Campuses? They should want to be next to all the people doing all the things, the better to gather all the knowledge.
I suspect that when the designers were building the game they wanted to avoid mountains being terrible. A good way to do this was to make it so that Holy Sites and Campuses got big bonuses for being near mountains, so the fact that mountains are unworkable tiles would be made up for by big science or faith generation. For Holy Sites this totally worked, not so for Campuses. As patches have progressed they have added more and more science adjacency bonuses to Campuses and this has warped the game in strange ways. There is basically no way to get big science aside from Campuses, and all the other ways of getting science are extremely weak, so Campuses are needed everywhere.
In my most recent game my first city had a +4 Campus adjacency, and my next two cities had +6 and +5 adjacency locations due to mountains and geothermal vents. These numbers are enormous, as most other districts in that era would be sitting at adjacencies of 0-2. I shredded the science tree, and it made the game feel terrible because I couldn't build anything before it was already obsolete.
Campuses are too good, the adjacency bonuses are too large, and it all feels silly. I want to make baseline science generation a bit better and Campuses a bit weaker, and I want to make Campus adjacencies more sensible.
I have a few options. The first one I came up with is to remove or reduce most of the current adjacencies and just make Campus adjacencies much worse. I would trash the adjacencies for mountains and reduce the bonuses from geothermal vents and reefs to +1 instead of +2. (Reducing mountains to a 1 per 2 adjacency isn't possible for technical reasons.) This would push Campus locations towards city centres and reduce normal adjacencies to 0-2 in the early game, rising to 3 in really good locations with a lot of infrastructure.
The way to make Campuses want to be in big urban areas is to replace all of their current adjacency bonuses with a full adjacency bonus from all districts. Right now they get a 1 per 2 rate on districts, but I can easily up the rate to 1 per 1, which would mean that every city could have a good Campus regardless of location - all you have to do is build your other districts beside it and you are good to go. 3 adjacency bonus would be no problem in every developed city. This feels sensible to me from a immersion perspective, but does mean that you basically don't care about terrain because the optimal science strategy is to simply put cities close together and build huge globs of districts with campuses in the middle. This is a change to Campuses, but not a nerf - they still get really powerful, though you can't yahtzee quite so hard in the early game.
That second option feels thematically good, but doesn't address the power level of Campuses. The first option reduces overall science output in the game dramatically, so it needs to be offset by a small increase in the base science rate from population. I think I like the lower power version better. It is fun to build huge numbers, but the game is warped by just how huge those numbers are, and other districts don't get that like at all, at least not without significant planning and investment.
And finally I will be able to stop feeling silly when I rush to plant a centre of learning in the middle of the wild, surrounded by rough, unusable terrain.
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
Greeneries
I played 2p Terraforming Mars against The Flautist again today. Her quest to defeat me is not complete - I won by a whopping 28 points, 63 to 91. One of the things that I leveraged to cash in that victory is the Standard Technology card which makes all of my standard projects cost 3 less. I bought a lot of greeneries via standard projects, something like 8 of them, and this got me to the Gardener and Terraformer milestones.
One of the key parts of my strategy was ignoring cards. Once you have Standard Technology buying standard project greeneries is extremely efficient, costing 20 bucks while netting you an income, 3 points, and between 0 and 10 bucks worth of stuff from the board - probably averaging out to around 6. That income is worth 4, so you end up paying 10 bucks for 3 points. That is fantastic, far better than pretty much all the cards in the game, particularly since it gets you to Gardener quickly.
Of course you don't get that third point from your greeneries for free. You have to have a city, and cities are worthless on their own. If you look at standard project cities they cost 25, of which 4 pays for the income bump you get. That remaining 21 bucks gets you roughly 6 bucks worth of stuff, same as a greenery does, so you end up down roughly 15 bucks. Basically if you have a standard city beside 3 greeneries it is a good buy, but otherwise it is weak. If you have standard technology out, a city is pretty reasonable even if only next to 2 greeneries. However, if you credit those third points from greeneries to the city instead, greeneries start to look a lot more fair. 2 points for 10 bucks is reasonable, but not special.
These are only approximations, of course. You can't get a giant swath of huge placement bonuses for a city and all six greeneries around it. The board just doesn't end up working that way. However, if you try that 7 hex plan and get 8 total plants from your placements, you end up paying a grand total of 125 bucks to get an income (4 bucks), 6 TR (54 bucks), and 12 points (60 bucks) Total = 118 bucks. That is a strong rate of return, and you have low exposure to hate cards in the process.
After seeing how effective my standard project heavy strategy was I did some more math. Plant production in TM usually costs about 12 bucks each. You can get much better rates, but only on cards with harsh restrictions that usually mean they are only out for a turn or two. Since cards in TM are built with a 25% per turn ROI, this means that each plant costs roughly 3 bucks. But for 23 bucks you can just get a Greenery standard project immediately! You would have to output 24 bucks worth of cards to get a similar return.
The most compelling reason to do the standard project to my mind is that you can avoid getting blown up by meteors and other cards that munch on plant production. Having predictable plants coming in just sets you up to get ruined multiple different ways, but there are few ways to punish someone for having a lot of cash.
Other standard projects don't work out this way. Cards that produce oceans usually do so for ~14 bucks, so standard project ocean is weak since it costs 18. Cards that produce power do so for ~7 bucks, which is far cheaper than the 11 the standard one costs. Strangely if you want to most things in the game the standard project is much weaker, except for greeneries where it is just as strong if not stronger than the cards that aim to do the same thing.
Standard projects are not all that well balanced, it turns out. Greeneries cost 5 bucks more than an ocean, and they give you 1 more point. Quite fair, except that greeneries get you milestones and oceans do not. Cities are useless until there are a lot of greeneries, then they become good. Temperature increases are 4 bucks cheaper than an ocean, but they don't give you bonus stuff, so really they are a couple bucks too pricey. 12 would be more appropriate than the 14 they cost now.
The thing that stands out to me is that plant production is just crap. You don't get a better rate of return buying production than you do buying standard projects, and the production opens you up to both plant destruction cards like meteors and plant production hate cards like animals. Standard project greeneries are the way to go, and when you happen to have Credicor as your corp or Standard Technology as a card it is even better.
I think I need to test this more thoroughly, and in my next game I want to play a corp with high starting money and build tons of greeneries via standard projects. Teractor would be ideal, as they have tons of cash and no particular rules about how to spend it.
One of the key parts of my strategy was ignoring cards. Once you have Standard Technology buying standard project greeneries is extremely efficient, costing 20 bucks while netting you an income, 3 points, and between 0 and 10 bucks worth of stuff from the board - probably averaging out to around 6. That income is worth 4, so you end up paying 10 bucks for 3 points. That is fantastic, far better than pretty much all the cards in the game, particularly since it gets you to Gardener quickly.
Of course you don't get that third point from your greeneries for free. You have to have a city, and cities are worthless on their own. If you look at standard project cities they cost 25, of which 4 pays for the income bump you get. That remaining 21 bucks gets you roughly 6 bucks worth of stuff, same as a greenery does, so you end up down roughly 15 bucks. Basically if you have a standard city beside 3 greeneries it is a good buy, but otherwise it is weak. If you have standard technology out, a city is pretty reasonable even if only next to 2 greeneries. However, if you credit those third points from greeneries to the city instead, greeneries start to look a lot more fair. 2 points for 10 bucks is reasonable, but not special.
These are only approximations, of course. You can't get a giant swath of huge placement bonuses for a city and all six greeneries around it. The board just doesn't end up working that way. However, if you try that 7 hex plan and get 8 total plants from your placements, you end up paying a grand total of 125 bucks to get an income (4 bucks), 6 TR (54 bucks), and 12 points (60 bucks) Total = 118 bucks. That is a strong rate of return, and you have low exposure to hate cards in the process.
After seeing how effective my standard project heavy strategy was I did some more math. Plant production in TM usually costs about 12 bucks each. You can get much better rates, but only on cards with harsh restrictions that usually mean they are only out for a turn or two. Since cards in TM are built with a 25% per turn ROI, this means that each plant costs roughly 3 bucks. But for 23 bucks you can just get a Greenery standard project immediately! You would have to output 24 bucks worth of cards to get a similar return.
The most compelling reason to do the standard project to my mind is that you can avoid getting blown up by meteors and other cards that munch on plant production. Having predictable plants coming in just sets you up to get ruined multiple different ways, but there are few ways to punish someone for having a lot of cash.
Other standard projects don't work out this way. Cards that produce oceans usually do so for ~14 bucks, so standard project ocean is weak since it costs 18. Cards that produce power do so for ~7 bucks, which is far cheaper than the 11 the standard one costs. Strangely if you want to most things in the game the standard project is much weaker, except for greeneries where it is just as strong if not stronger than the cards that aim to do the same thing.
Standard projects are not all that well balanced, it turns out. Greeneries cost 5 bucks more than an ocean, and they give you 1 more point. Quite fair, except that greeneries get you milestones and oceans do not. Cities are useless until there are a lot of greeneries, then they become good. Temperature increases are 4 bucks cheaper than an ocean, but they don't give you bonus stuff, so really they are a couple bucks too pricey. 12 would be more appropriate than the 14 they cost now.
The thing that stands out to me is that plant production is just crap. You don't get a better rate of return buying production than you do buying standard projects, and the production opens you up to both plant destruction cards like meteors and plant production hate cards like animals. Standard project greeneries are the way to go, and when you happen to have Credicor as your corp or Standard Technology as a card it is even better.
I think I need to test this more thoroughly, and in my next game I want to play a corp with high starting money and build tons of greeneries via standard projects. Teractor would be ideal, as they have tons of cash and no particular rules about how to spend it.
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
I am not a bank
When people were teaching me how to play Through The Ages, (TTA) they told me that one of the key things in the game is making sure you keep up with military. Being not-last is crucial, but even if you are safely above the last place in military there is a huge benefit to more military - you can beat up the person in last and take their stuff.
The person that falls behind and gets continually pounded is the bank, and if other people are raiding the bank, you want to be raiding the bank too. You won't win if people are resolving huge wars on the person in last and you just try to build infrastructure the normal way. Get a piece of the action!
I was worried in my league games that I would be the bank. I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I didn't know what the cards did, I was confused about many of the basic rules, and I kept on making errors for both of those reasons.
Turns out, I wasn't the bank. I ended up with a 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 4th showing, which is pretty great for having gone in with only a sketchy sense of the rules. I feel like I earned that result, because I really screwed up the game where I came 4th, (discarding wonders that are almost finished is bad!) and I quite liked my play in the game I won. It was a tight finish with me only coming out ahead by 2 points, but it felt good.
One of those 2nd places was a gong show though. I declared an early war against a player 6 military behind me. I calculated that he could only gain 4 on his turn, so I was going to steal a yellow token from him. Then Napoleon flipped off the top, and this allowed him to jump to 2 military ahead of me and I lost a yellow token instead. Whoops! That player then proceeded to rush massively ahead of everyone else in military and ruthlessly beat us all up for the rest of the game. I managed to hold onto 2nd place because after pillaging and warring us all into submission he finished it off with two huge wars for culture and stripped 50 points away from the last two players, but left me alone.
Without those two gigantic wars our point spread is something like 120-140, a tight game indeed. With those wars though, the winner crushed us by 110, and I beat the other two players by ~50. It looks like I secured 2nd by virtue of looking weak and harmless, not even worth warring with.
Note to self: Don't declare early wars unless you are really, really sure you aren't going to lose them.
I quite like TTA. The flavour is solid, and the gameplay is a fun puzzle. Some parts of it do feel strange though, like the numbers don't quite work. Mostly I am referring to the Age 3 civil technologies. I was looking at each of them trying to figure out the ROI on them, and they all looked mighty suspicious. You only get about 5 turns in Age 3, and building one of the Age 3 civil techs costs ~10 science, takes 2 actions, and this gives you the opportunity to spend 6 rocks and 1 action to upgrade a worker from age 1 to age 3. If I imagine that I upgrade 2 workers, and that an action can be spent for 2 rocks, this means I need to spend 10 science and 20 rocks to get 6 production per turn. I need the full 5 turns just to break even! If I get that tech down a turn or two after age 3 starts, I can never recoup the cost.
Sure, if I have actions / rocks / science that is worthless then I may want to turn them into something better, but generally it just seems like a terrible investment. I suppose if you desperately need food for example and you are stuck on the age A farm and you have lots of science and rocks then age 3 food could be good, but that seems pretty narrow.
I could improve my rate of return by upgrading 4 workers instead of 2, but then I am making 20 rocks / science / whatever per turn. That much of any one thing seems tough to use effectively, and even so I am still taking 4 turns to recoup costs. I can't see how I get all that done in the first round of age 3 anyway, so it seems like a losing proposition.
What I really like is the age 1 techs. They don't cost that much science, they stay out a long time, and they are an enormous advantage over age A. I am pretty happy to take all age 1 techs, quite frankly, and use all my science later on to buy things like Military Theory and Air Forces, as well as at least one type of age 3 military unit. I can't expect to actually get all of that of course, but my game plan involves getting 1 tech for rocks, food, science, and happy and only getting those techs from age 1 and 2. At age 3, I care about military and culture. The age 3 civic techs are a waste from what I can see.
However, I have only played 7 games in total, so I probably don't know anything. Can anyone with more experience tell me where I am wrong on this?
The person that falls behind and gets continually pounded is the bank, and if other people are raiding the bank, you want to be raiding the bank too. You won't win if people are resolving huge wars on the person in last and you just try to build infrastructure the normal way. Get a piece of the action!
I was worried in my league games that I would be the bank. I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I didn't know what the cards did, I was confused about many of the basic rules, and I kept on making errors for both of those reasons.
Turns out, I wasn't the bank. I ended up with a 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 4th showing, which is pretty great for having gone in with only a sketchy sense of the rules. I feel like I earned that result, because I really screwed up the game where I came 4th, (discarding wonders that are almost finished is bad!) and I quite liked my play in the game I won. It was a tight finish with me only coming out ahead by 2 points, but it felt good.
One of those 2nd places was a gong show though. I declared an early war against a player 6 military behind me. I calculated that he could only gain 4 on his turn, so I was going to steal a yellow token from him. Then Napoleon flipped off the top, and this allowed him to jump to 2 military ahead of me and I lost a yellow token instead. Whoops! That player then proceeded to rush massively ahead of everyone else in military and ruthlessly beat us all up for the rest of the game. I managed to hold onto 2nd place because after pillaging and warring us all into submission he finished it off with two huge wars for culture and stripped 50 points away from the last two players, but left me alone.
Without those two gigantic wars our point spread is something like 120-140, a tight game indeed. With those wars though, the winner crushed us by 110, and I beat the other two players by ~50. It looks like I secured 2nd by virtue of looking weak and harmless, not even worth warring with.
Note to self: Don't declare early wars unless you are really, really sure you aren't going to lose them.
I quite like TTA. The flavour is solid, and the gameplay is a fun puzzle. Some parts of it do feel strange though, like the numbers don't quite work. Mostly I am referring to the Age 3 civil technologies. I was looking at each of them trying to figure out the ROI on them, and they all looked mighty suspicious. You only get about 5 turns in Age 3, and building one of the Age 3 civil techs costs ~10 science, takes 2 actions, and this gives you the opportunity to spend 6 rocks and 1 action to upgrade a worker from age 1 to age 3. If I imagine that I upgrade 2 workers, and that an action can be spent for 2 rocks, this means I need to spend 10 science and 20 rocks to get 6 production per turn. I need the full 5 turns just to break even! If I get that tech down a turn or two after age 3 starts, I can never recoup the cost.
Sure, if I have actions / rocks / science that is worthless then I may want to turn them into something better, but generally it just seems like a terrible investment. I suppose if you desperately need food for example and you are stuck on the age A farm and you have lots of science and rocks then age 3 food could be good, but that seems pretty narrow.
I could improve my rate of return by upgrading 4 workers instead of 2, but then I am making 20 rocks / science / whatever per turn. That much of any one thing seems tough to use effectively, and even so I am still taking 4 turns to recoup costs. I can't see how I get all that done in the first round of age 3 anyway, so it seems like a losing proposition.
What I really like is the age 1 techs. They don't cost that much science, they stay out a long time, and they are an enormous advantage over age A. I am pretty happy to take all age 1 techs, quite frankly, and use all my science later on to buy things like Military Theory and Air Forces, as well as at least one type of age 3 military unit. I can't expect to actually get all of that of course, but my game plan involves getting 1 tech for rocks, food, science, and happy and only getting those techs from age 1 and 2. At age 3, I care about military and culture. The age 3 civic techs are a waste from what I can see.
However, I have only played 7 games in total, so I probably don't know anything. Can anyone with more experience tell me where I am wrong on this?
Monday, September 9, 2019
Deep underground, for reasons of profit
Last week I played a game of Castles of Mad King Ludwig with some friends including Naked Man. I went hard into basement rooms and came out the victor by a substantial margin, largely on the back of 2 key things. First, I had ridiculous cards. I got the first stairway and ended up building all 6 basement rooms using 4 stairs in total. This set me up perfectly for the basement card for 12, stairs card for 8, completed rooms for 7, and 450 rooms for 6.
The second thing that won me the game was me getting the basement room that likes basement rooms, and then rescoring it when I closed it as my sixth basement room. That part was kind of funny, actually, as nobody else saw that as a possibility. Many players, most even, seem to get stuck on the idea that when you score a basement completion you simply take another turn. That is often good, but it isn't anywhere near automatic. Taking another turn often involves getting 7 points for 2 bucks or so, and that is often worse than 5 pure points, 10 bucks, or rescoring the basement room itself. Heck, even a Hail Mary for a bonus card or a blue room dig can be the best play at times.
The surprise came on the final turn of the game when I was master builder and everybody else bought the most expensive stuff from me, leaving me with a collection of mediocre tiles worth about 5 points each. Nobody expected me to buy a hallway and rescore my basement that loves basements... but doing so got me 14 points in total so it was automatic. Didn't matter to me what was left on the board, nothing was going to be as strong as that, especially for only 3 bucks!
Naked Man spent much of the early game insulting my basement investment, talking about how lots of basement rooms is bad. After all, all but one of them give bonuses to upstairs rooms, so you really want two basement rooms that match your upstairs really nicely, in an ideal world. Getting a ton of basements generally means each one is only worth 4 points or so, and that is quite weak. I agree with this principle in general. I like having a stairs available so nobody can pin me on basements, but I don't generally want to get more than two basement tiles.
However, when you have the basement card, and intend on rescoring the basement that loves basements... that +6 points / tile really changes the math a LOT.
Also I was extremely pleased to crush Naked Man with basements after he spent so much time telling me how terrible they were. I was sitting to his left, no less, and he still couldn't stop me. Or at the very least he did not choose to stop me - he could have taken the critical tile from me, but it would have cost him 8 bucks and would have only been worth 3 points to him. Still, doing so would have dropped my final score by something like 19 points overall, which is a pretty crushing blow. It would have given him the victory, I think.
The lesson here is firstly that yes, most of the time lots of basements isn't great. Secondly, if you close basements, do not just automatically take another turn. Regularly this is worse than other options. Thirdly, if you happen to talk to Naked Man, ask him how he managed to lose to someone employing a massive basement board, given how bad basements are. I am sure his reply will be entertaining.
The second thing that won me the game was me getting the basement room that likes basement rooms, and then rescoring it when I closed it as my sixth basement room. That part was kind of funny, actually, as nobody else saw that as a possibility. Many players, most even, seem to get stuck on the idea that when you score a basement completion you simply take another turn. That is often good, but it isn't anywhere near automatic. Taking another turn often involves getting 7 points for 2 bucks or so, and that is often worse than 5 pure points, 10 bucks, or rescoring the basement room itself. Heck, even a Hail Mary for a bonus card or a blue room dig can be the best play at times.
The surprise came on the final turn of the game when I was master builder and everybody else bought the most expensive stuff from me, leaving me with a collection of mediocre tiles worth about 5 points each. Nobody expected me to buy a hallway and rescore my basement that loves basements... but doing so got me 14 points in total so it was automatic. Didn't matter to me what was left on the board, nothing was going to be as strong as that, especially for only 3 bucks!
Naked Man spent much of the early game insulting my basement investment, talking about how lots of basement rooms is bad. After all, all but one of them give bonuses to upstairs rooms, so you really want two basement rooms that match your upstairs really nicely, in an ideal world. Getting a ton of basements generally means each one is only worth 4 points or so, and that is quite weak. I agree with this principle in general. I like having a stairs available so nobody can pin me on basements, but I don't generally want to get more than two basement tiles.
However, when you have the basement card, and intend on rescoring the basement that loves basements... that +6 points / tile really changes the math a LOT.
Also I was extremely pleased to crush Naked Man with basements after he spent so much time telling me how terrible they were. I was sitting to his left, no less, and he still couldn't stop me. Or at the very least he did not choose to stop me - he could have taken the critical tile from me, but it would have cost him 8 bucks and would have only been worth 3 points to him. Still, doing so would have dropped my final score by something like 19 points overall, which is a pretty crushing blow. It would have given him the victory, I think.
The lesson here is firstly that yes, most of the time lots of basements isn't great. Secondly, if you close basements, do not just automatically take another turn. Regularly this is worse than other options. Thirdly, if you happen to talk to Naked Man, ask him how he managed to lose to someone employing a massive basement board, given how bad basements are. I am sure his reply will be entertaining.
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
44 stranded plants
Last night I played Terraforming Mars with The Flautist. She is on a quest to beat me at the game, as I have taken victory in all of our five plays so far. Last night was not her night as I won the game 133-114. A high scoring game, no doubt, and one that broke a couple of records in my experience.
First off the game ended on turn 16. I have never seen a game go that long, and it happened because I built a modest heat engine and she didn't build one at all. Oxygen ran out rapidly due to Steelworks and Ecoline, and oceans followed. However, heat sat there ticking up once per turn and we continued to pour our money into buying cities and greeneries.
The Flautist was definitely way ahead in the early going because she grabbed 2 Milestones (Gardener and Terraformer) and had many Greeneries out. I built an engine producing a ton of steel and titanium and eventually my engine got enough cards in play to rush past her early lead.
Bizarrely we ran out of room on the board to play all those greeneries and cities we were buying as standard projects. On the final turn nobody could legally place a greenery and we had 18 plant production between us so we ended the game with 44 unused plants. I have in the past seen a single four player game where someone couldn't place a greenery on the final turn, but I have never seen anything like this is terms of wasted opportunities. 5 greeneries unable to come down!
The game had a lot of fascinating choices. At turn 10 it looked like it was going to end really quickly, but the lack of heat cards meant that if it was to end soon, somebody was going to have to buy ~9 standard projects to finish it off. That would have left all kinds of juicy opportunities for the other player to place key cities and greeneries, so neither of us could afford to end the game fast - we just had to play it out. This lead to a lot of tricky choices about city placement - how do you decide how many cities to play? Slamming down tons of cities with no greeneries seems nuts, but if you get all the best placements by doing so and the game takes forever it could be fantastic.
It ended up that we spent 4 turns or so just placing cities and surrounding them with green while throwing away all the cards because they were junk. I certainly haven't seen that dynamic before.
In any case my respect for TM as a 2 player game is still growing. The game can play out so many different ways that there is a huge amount of skill and practice required to be excellent, and I like that.
First off the game ended on turn 16. I have never seen a game go that long, and it happened because I built a modest heat engine and she didn't build one at all. Oxygen ran out rapidly due to Steelworks and Ecoline, and oceans followed. However, heat sat there ticking up once per turn and we continued to pour our money into buying cities and greeneries.
The Flautist was definitely way ahead in the early going because she grabbed 2 Milestones (Gardener and Terraformer) and had many Greeneries out. I built an engine producing a ton of steel and titanium and eventually my engine got enough cards in play to rush past her early lead.
Bizarrely we ran out of room on the board to play all those greeneries and cities we were buying as standard projects. On the final turn nobody could legally place a greenery and we had 18 plant production between us so we ended the game with 44 unused plants. I have in the past seen a single four player game where someone couldn't place a greenery on the final turn, but I have never seen anything like this is terms of wasted opportunities. 5 greeneries unable to come down!
The game had a lot of fascinating choices. At turn 10 it looked like it was going to end really quickly, but the lack of heat cards meant that if it was to end soon, somebody was going to have to buy ~9 standard projects to finish it off. That would have left all kinds of juicy opportunities for the other player to place key cities and greeneries, so neither of us could afford to end the game fast - we just had to play it out. This lead to a lot of tricky choices about city placement - how do you decide how many cities to play? Slamming down tons of cities with no greeneries seems nuts, but if you get all the best placements by doing so and the game takes forever it could be fantastic.
It ended up that we spent 4 turns or so just placing cities and surrounding them with green while throwing away all the cards because they were junk. I certainly haven't seen that dynamic before.
In any case my respect for TM as a 2 player game is still growing. The game can play out so many different ways that there is a huge amount of skill and practice required to be excellent, and I like that.
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Human is overpowered
Humans are ridiculous. We have the entire world dominated. Dogs live where we want, when we want. And yet here we have signs calling for dogs to be nerfed, as if they aren't underpowered already.
Drives me crazy to see humans who won't admit how much dogs need a buff. I am playing human myself, and I can see how overpowered humans are - they win every major tournament, any time a solitary dog gets a win they overreact and lose their minds.
Don't listen to nonsense signs in grocery stores. Buff dogs!
Monday, August 26, 2019
The fewer the better
Yesterday I played a lot of games. Two of those games were Terraforming Mars, one 3p game and one 5p game. The 5p game had the distinction of being the fastest game of TM I have ever seen - 6 turns. It makes sense that the game would be quick with 5 players, and it is good that it didn't go 12 turns or something because with 5 people that would take way too long to play out. Unfortunately when a game of TM lasts only 6 turns it is a stupid game in many ways.
TM has lots of cards, most of which generate income of some sort or other. The cards are balanced such that they pay for themselves after four rounds, roughly speaking. This works well in a 9 turn game where you transition from generating income and engine building into point generation about halfway through the game. It is terrible when the game lasts 6 turns because income cards played on turn 2 only just pay for themselves, so you really only build an engine on turn 1. After that, just get points. You can have a fun game where you just hunt for points, but when most of the deck is built around the idea of building an engine it feels silly.
Certainly in the game I played that went only 6 turns the shortness of the game made a lot of plays look ridiculous. For example, on round 4 someone dropped down a microbes card that generates a point every 3 turns. She played it the instant it was legal and only got a single point out of it, paying 16 bucks for the privilege. That is worse than a standard project! About half of the plays in the game were of this nature, setting up income when everyone really should have just been doing standard project Greenery over and over, occasionally interspersed with cities.
We were using the Colonies expansion and this made things even sillier looking given the 6 turns. Of the 7 colonies in play, only 4 were ever used, and each of those was only used once. The idea of placing a colony in order to generate income when people visited it was laughable, and the cards that generated trade fleets and better trading were worthless from the start. Of course this also increased the percentage of blank cards in the deck, pushing people further towards standard projects.
I built a big engine on turn 1 and then spent the rest of the game throwing meteors all over the place. I bought a couple of cities, some standard projects, the Terraformer milestone, an award, and won the game comfortably. I enjoyed the game, but it did feel silly that I just tossed nearly all the cards I drew after turn 2 in the trash because there wasn't any point in cards anymore. I kept only 3 cards in the second half of the game - a city, a card to generate massive income to snag Banker (didn't end up using it), and an income card that I regretted buying moments after paying for it. The rest were all rubbish.
What it all adds up to is TM is a bad 5 player game. The 2 player version is my favourite by far, in large part because of how swingy the hate cards are when you have 3 players. If you get targetted it often feels like you lose just because you happened to look threatening, not because of any play choices. With 2 or 3 players you have time to build a big engine, use the deck, and only throw away your cards at the end of the game. I like that style a lot more, and it feels like the game was built to be played that way.
Unfortunately at WBC there are a lot of games that are much better competitive games at 2 or 3 players rather than 4. TM is one of them. However, few of these games can manage to hold heats with so few players per table because there aren't enough copies of the games to go around. It is unfortunate, but it is a practical limit that I can't see a good way around.
TM has lots of cards, most of which generate income of some sort or other. The cards are balanced such that they pay for themselves after four rounds, roughly speaking. This works well in a 9 turn game where you transition from generating income and engine building into point generation about halfway through the game. It is terrible when the game lasts 6 turns because income cards played on turn 2 only just pay for themselves, so you really only build an engine on turn 1. After that, just get points. You can have a fun game where you just hunt for points, but when most of the deck is built around the idea of building an engine it feels silly.
Certainly in the game I played that went only 6 turns the shortness of the game made a lot of plays look ridiculous. For example, on round 4 someone dropped down a microbes card that generates a point every 3 turns. She played it the instant it was legal and only got a single point out of it, paying 16 bucks for the privilege. That is worse than a standard project! About half of the plays in the game were of this nature, setting up income when everyone really should have just been doing standard project Greenery over and over, occasionally interspersed with cities.
We were using the Colonies expansion and this made things even sillier looking given the 6 turns. Of the 7 colonies in play, only 4 were ever used, and each of those was only used once. The idea of placing a colony in order to generate income when people visited it was laughable, and the cards that generated trade fleets and better trading were worthless from the start. Of course this also increased the percentage of blank cards in the deck, pushing people further towards standard projects.
I built a big engine on turn 1 and then spent the rest of the game throwing meteors all over the place. I bought a couple of cities, some standard projects, the Terraformer milestone, an award, and won the game comfortably. I enjoyed the game, but it did feel silly that I just tossed nearly all the cards I drew after turn 2 in the trash because there wasn't any point in cards anymore. I kept only 3 cards in the second half of the game - a city, a card to generate massive income to snag Banker (didn't end up using it), and an income card that I regretted buying moments after paying for it. The rest were all rubbish.
What it all adds up to is TM is a bad 5 player game. The 2 player version is my favourite by far, in large part because of how swingy the hate cards are when you have 3 players. If you get targetted it often feels like you lose just because you happened to look threatening, not because of any play choices. With 2 or 3 players you have time to build a big engine, use the deck, and only throw away your cards at the end of the game. I like that style a lot more, and it feels like the game was built to be played that way.
Unfortunately at WBC there are a lot of games that are much better competitive games at 2 or 3 players rather than 4. TM is one of them. However, few of these games can manage to hold heats with so few players per table because there aren't enough copies of the games to go around. It is unfortunate, but it is a practical limit that I can't see a good way around.
Saturday, August 24, 2019
It sucks being strong
My new DnD campaign started last night with a stark reminder that being strong is the worst.
Given the raw choice between being strong and weak, you might as well be strong, but that isn't how the game works. Generally if you care about being strong at all you have the choice of being strong, wearing heavy armour and using big weapons, or you can be quick and use light weapons and light armour. This sounds like a reasonable tradeoff, but the real issue is all the extra benefits of being a Dexterity character instead of a Strength character. Dex characters get to be stealthy, go first in combat, and have excellent ranged weapons. Str characters get to be noisy, go last in combat, and have pathetic ranged weapons.
This is why I keep on building Dex based characters. I hate being stuck with my thumb up my butt while the rest of the party has fun. If I can't sneak, and I can't do ranged attacks, and I have no other powerful abilities, I just stand there like a brick until we need to do the frontal assault plan. Yuck.
Our party consists of a Dex fighter using a crossbow (me), a Dex rogue, a wizard, and Str based paladin.
The first mission we were on was a scouting mission. We could have fought things, but the enemy was extremely strong so frontal assault was right out. As such, me and the rogue scouted, the wizard helped by making us invisible with magic, and the paladin sat there like a lump. After much scouting and information gathering occurred, we went back to town and got our reward. The paladin, having done literally nothing, collected his 1/4 share of the loot.
Next in line was a more serious scouting mission to the heart of enemy territory. The only sensible thing to do was to leave the paladin behind and have the rest of us do everything. We needed to be quiet and avoid detection, so a clanking clomping tank was not useful.
I insisted that we had to take the paladin with us. Not because it was a good idea, but only because it would be crappy to be sidelined for the entire adventure just because your character is only good at one thing.
We got into enemy territory with our clanking friend in tow, and finally got ourselves into a fight. Huzzah, a place where a Str character isn't just a liability!
Hah, just kidding. The enemies could fly, so the Str character sat there like an idiot. He threw a couple of javelins for trivial damage and was sad. Eventually the enemies beat him unconscious. I, on the other hand, playing a character using the good stat, blasted damage into the enemies from range. I rolled horribly, and even though I only needed an 11 or greater on a d20 to hit I still missed 15 of my first 16 shots. The rest of the party was so weak at range though the fight kept on going and I eventually did about 2/3 of the total damage to take the enemies down.
It must have felt pretty terrible to be that Str character. He built his character the way the book said to, and that build made him a liability for scouting, and a one trick pony in combat. He is good at slugging his way through tons of melee enemies, but a Dex character would be just as good at that but also effective at range with a bow and stealthy and go first!
DnD really needs to shake this nonsense. Dex is just too good for everything and there is no reason for it. Why is it that Dex makes you go first in combat? Why not Intelligence, or Wisdom? Why isn't heavy armour better? Dex characters get to be quick and sneaky - they should at least be squishier to compensate. If a Str character was actually really tough and tanky then while they would still be only good for one thing, at least they would be good for that thing.
It isn't like my friend did something crazy to be bad. He did the default build, did it quite reasonably, and it sure *feels* like a Paladin with high Strength, Constitution, and Charisma should be good. It just isn't, and that is a failure of game design, not character building.
This is something I have taken as a lesson when building Heroes By Trade. If a thing looks like it obviously should be good, make it good! Back in DnD 3.5 I remember laughing about how if a person said "I will make a fighter! I will have high strength, and hit things with a sword" they would be basically worthless. Someone with a bizarre combination of prestige classes and feats from expansion books would be five times as powerful. I made it a point that there should be ways to optimize, but reasonable choices like the fighter above should be solid - at least 80% as good as a perfectly optimized character.
DnD 5th is much better this way, because at least the Str fighter is solid in combat. It isn't good enough though. Dex is just the better choice, and that isn't the way the game should be.
Given the raw choice between being strong and weak, you might as well be strong, but that isn't how the game works. Generally if you care about being strong at all you have the choice of being strong, wearing heavy armour and using big weapons, or you can be quick and use light weapons and light armour. This sounds like a reasonable tradeoff, but the real issue is all the extra benefits of being a Dexterity character instead of a Strength character. Dex characters get to be stealthy, go first in combat, and have excellent ranged weapons. Str characters get to be noisy, go last in combat, and have pathetic ranged weapons.
This is why I keep on building Dex based characters. I hate being stuck with my thumb up my butt while the rest of the party has fun. If I can't sneak, and I can't do ranged attacks, and I have no other powerful abilities, I just stand there like a brick until we need to do the frontal assault plan. Yuck.
Our party consists of a Dex fighter using a crossbow (me), a Dex rogue, a wizard, and Str based paladin.
The first mission we were on was a scouting mission. We could have fought things, but the enemy was extremely strong so frontal assault was right out. As such, me and the rogue scouted, the wizard helped by making us invisible with magic, and the paladin sat there like a lump. After much scouting and information gathering occurred, we went back to town and got our reward. The paladin, having done literally nothing, collected his 1/4 share of the loot.
Next in line was a more serious scouting mission to the heart of enemy territory. The only sensible thing to do was to leave the paladin behind and have the rest of us do everything. We needed to be quiet and avoid detection, so a clanking clomping tank was not useful.
I insisted that we had to take the paladin with us. Not because it was a good idea, but only because it would be crappy to be sidelined for the entire adventure just because your character is only good at one thing.
We got into enemy territory with our clanking friend in tow, and finally got ourselves into a fight. Huzzah, a place where a Str character isn't just a liability!
Hah, just kidding. The enemies could fly, so the Str character sat there like an idiot. He threw a couple of javelins for trivial damage and was sad. Eventually the enemies beat him unconscious. I, on the other hand, playing a character using the good stat, blasted damage into the enemies from range. I rolled horribly, and even though I only needed an 11 or greater on a d20 to hit I still missed 15 of my first 16 shots. The rest of the party was so weak at range though the fight kept on going and I eventually did about 2/3 of the total damage to take the enemies down.
It must have felt pretty terrible to be that Str character. He built his character the way the book said to, and that build made him a liability for scouting, and a one trick pony in combat. He is good at slugging his way through tons of melee enemies, but a Dex character would be just as good at that but also effective at range with a bow and stealthy and go first!
DnD really needs to shake this nonsense. Dex is just too good for everything and there is no reason for it. Why is it that Dex makes you go first in combat? Why not Intelligence, or Wisdom? Why isn't heavy armour better? Dex characters get to be quick and sneaky - they should at least be squishier to compensate. If a Str character was actually really tough and tanky then while they would still be only good for one thing, at least they would be good for that thing.
It isn't like my friend did something crazy to be bad. He did the default build, did it quite reasonably, and it sure *feels* like a Paladin with high Strength, Constitution, and Charisma should be good. It just isn't, and that is a failure of game design, not character building.
This is something I have taken as a lesson when building Heroes By Trade. If a thing looks like it obviously should be good, make it good! Back in DnD 3.5 I remember laughing about how if a person said "I will make a fighter! I will have high strength, and hit things with a sword" they would be basically worthless. Someone with a bizarre combination of prestige classes and feats from expansion books would be five times as powerful. I made it a point that there should be ways to optimize, but reasonable choices like the fighter above should be solid - at least 80% as good as a perfectly optimized character.
DnD 5th is much better this way, because at least the Str fighter is solid in combat. It isn't good enough though. Dex is just the better choice, and that isn't the way the game should be.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
I can see
I am building a new character for my DnD campaign with Naked Man. Our last group got wiped out by a particularly devastating hobgoblin spellcaster so we are starting fresh. I decided to go with a crossbow specialist to try out the Crossbow Expert feat, and fighter seemed like the best class to do that with. I had in mind a character who was a military engineer who loved to build and tinker with things, as this seemed to fit with crossbow usage nicely.
The real choice was what race I would play. I defaulted to human thematically, but I wasn't sure I should do that because being human is often a huge liability in modules. You always end up in dungeon crawls, and dungeon crawls really punish people who can't see in the dark. Sometimes you have a spellcaster who can cover that sort of thing with Light spells, but even then it means that the enemies can spot your group from far away, stealth is nearly impossible, and anything that knocks out that light also knocks out your character.
If you don't have a spellcaster to provide a Light spell things get even worse - somebody has to hold a torch, and often there is nobody who can do that easily. Torches also have problems with running out of fuel, getting wet, or being knocked away down a hole.
Many times I have groaned as I realized we had a human in our group and so we would have to keep track of light sources and fuel and all that other nonsense that goes along with it.
I find the whole thing so ridiculous. I looked through the monster manual and in the first 50 monsters 45 of them can see in the dark. The great majority of player characters can see in the dark too. Why is it that everybody can see in the dark?!?
The answer of course is that back in the day DnD was just endless dungeon crawls. You can't put monsters in a dungeon where they are blind, so they all need darkvision, ridiculous as that sounds. They aren't going to be sitting down there completely blind, nor are they going to have enormous mounds of torches to burn while they wait to be slaughtered by murder hobos. Everything has to be able to see in the dark to make the dungeon thing workable.
Except for humans, of course, because we actually know that humans can't see in the dark. We can launch fireballs and survive falling in pits of acid, but see in the dark? No way!
Thankfully when Naked Man rolled up some magic items we would have available to our characters some goggles that grant darkvision were among them. I grabbed those right away both because it seemed fantastic to avoid the whole blindness thing, and also because magic goggles seemed a perfect thematic fit for my character.
I just shake my head looking at all of it. The legacy elements of the old school DnD games continue to echo on down to our current games and there is nothing I can do to stem that flood of silliness.
I suppose I should be careful about getting up too high on my horse though. I am playing a character that can shoot a crossbow five times in six seconds, and that is just as absurd as any of the blindness / darkvision nonsense.
The real choice was what race I would play. I defaulted to human thematically, but I wasn't sure I should do that because being human is often a huge liability in modules. You always end up in dungeon crawls, and dungeon crawls really punish people who can't see in the dark. Sometimes you have a spellcaster who can cover that sort of thing with Light spells, but even then it means that the enemies can spot your group from far away, stealth is nearly impossible, and anything that knocks out that light also knocks out your character.
If you don't have a spellcaster to provide a Light spell things get even worse - somebody has to hold a torch, and often there is nobody who can do that easily. Torches also have problems with running out of fuel, getting wet, or being knocked away down a hole.
Many times I have groaned as I realized we had a human in our group and so we would have to keep track of light sources and fuel and all that other nonsense that goes along with it.
I find the whole thing so ridiculous. I looked through the monster manual and in the first 50 monsters 45 of them can see in the dark. The great majority of player characters can see in the dark too. Why is it that everybody can see in the dark?!?
The answer of course is that back in the day DnD was just endless dungeon crawls. You can't put monsters in a dungeon where they are blind, so they all need darkvision, ridiculous as that sounds. They aren't going to be sitting down there completely blind, nor are they going to have enormous mounds of torches to burn while they wait to be slaughtered by murder hobos. Everything has to be able to see in the dark to make the dungeon thing workable.
Except for humans, of course, because we actually know that humans can't see in the dark. We can launch fireballs and survive falling in pits of acid, but see in the dark? No way!
Thankfully when Naked Man rolled up some magic items we would have available to our characters some goggles that grant darkvision were among them. I grabbed those right away both because it seemed fantastic to avoid the whole blindness thing, and also because magic goggles seemed a perfect thematic fit for my character.
I just shake my head looking at all of it. The legacy elements of the old school DnD games continue to echo on down to our current games and there is nothing I can do to stem that flood of silliness.
I suppose I should be careful about getting up too high on my horse though. I am playing a character that can shoot a crossbow five times in six seconds, and that is just as absurd as any of the blindness / darkvision nonsense.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
I need tedium
At WBC this year a couple gamer buddies of mine taught me Through The Ages. I didn't actually play a game though, just learned the rules. They sold me on getting the app, and when I got home I played through it a couple of times.
That game is THICK. It took me hours to play through even against only a couple of AIs who never hesitate or think.
I learned that I can beat the Training AI on my first run through, and the level 1 AI on my second game. I also learned that playing online for my first games has some real issues.
When you play in person you actually have to move all the bits around. That is annoying for sure, especially with all the bits that TTA has, but moving those bits gets you accustomed to how all the bits are supposed to move. You actually know the rules! When you play online for your first game all kinds of rules are handled by the machine and you never end up learning them.
For example, in my second game I was in a spot where I seemed sure to lose. I just didn't have enough points to beat one of the AIs. I durdled through my last turn, playing as many things as possible for fun, and then noticed that I was ahead instead of behind. Juh?
It turns out I got a bunch of points for just playing out my cards. I didn't know that was a rule, and had to try to figure out what the rule was by replaying my cards slowly and watching my point total shift. I still don't know the rule properly... I got 3 points for some cards, but I don't know if that is 3 points for an Age 3 card, or 3 points for any cards, or what else it might be. If I was playing in person I would have actually watched players moving tokens around and been able to ask what was up. Against the AI though, it managed to happen in the background without me noticing.
I need to sit down with some experienced players and actually shove all those stupid tokens around a time or two so I can actually figure out what the heck is going on in that game. Tedious counting and positioning, here I come!
Also, I need to play a bazillion times. Every turn I was up against some problem of my own creation - not enough workers, and 1 food short of being able to make another one. Too many rocks, and not enough places to spend them. Not enough rocks, and a wonder that is going to blow up when the age changes. I kept on making errors that cost me small amounts of stuff, and it is clear that I am going to need to play one hundred times to be competent at the game.
I can *feel* how bad I am. I can see all the ways a good player would crush me, but I can't see them until I have already screwed everything up. There are some games where I can see further, plan better, and my instincts work, and this one is going to take a long time to get there.
There is a league where I can play TTA but I haven't signed up. I would just end up being the bank, the player with a bad army who everyone beats up to steal resources and points. No point in playing there until I can be vaguely competent, I think. Once I can beat the hardest AIs consistently I will be ready to face actual human opposition.
That game is THICK. It took me hours to play through even against only a couple of AIs who never hesitate or think.
I learned that I can beat the Training AI on my first run through, and the level 1 AI on my second game. I also learned that playing online for my first games has some real issues.
When you play in person you actually have to move all the bits around. That is annoying for sure, especially with all the bits that TTA has, but moving those bits gets you accustomed to how all the bits are supposed to move. You actually know the rules! When you play online for your first game all kinds of rules are handled by the machine and you never end up learning them.
For example, in my second game I was in a spot where I seemed sure to lose. I just didn't have enough points to beat one of the AIs. I durdled through my last turn, playing as many things as possible for fun, and then noticed that I was ahead instead of behind. Juh?
It turns out I got a bunch of points for just playing out my cards. I didn't know that was a rule, and had to try to figure out what the rule was by replaying my cards slowly and watching my point total shift. I still don't know the rule properly... I got 3 points for some cards, but I don't know if that is 3 points for an Age 3 card, or 3 points for any cards, or what else it might be. If I was playing in person I would have actually watched players moving tokens around and been able to ask what was up. Against the AI though, it managed to happen in the background without me noticing.
I need to sit down with some experienced players and actually shove all those stupid tokens around a time or two so I can actually figure out what the heck is going on in that game. Tedious counting and positioning, here I come!
Also, I need to play a bazillion times. Every turn I was up against some problem of my own creation - not enough workers, and 1 food short of being able to make another one. Too many rocks, and not enough places to spend them. Not enough rocks, and a wonder that is going to blow up when the age changes. I kept on making errors that cost me small amounts of stuff, and it is clear that I am going to need to play one hundred times to be competent at the game.
I can *feel* how bad I am. I can see all the ways a good player would crush me, but I can't see them until I have already screwed everything up. There are some games where I can see further, plan better, and my instincts work, and this one is going to take a long time to get there.
There is a league where I can play TTA but I haven't signed up. I would just end up being the bank, the player with a bad army who everyone beats up to steal resources and points. No point in playing there until I can be vaguely competent, I think. Once I can beat the hardest AIs consistently I will be ready to face actual human opposition.
Thursday, August 8, 2019
Old school chaos
When I come up north to visit my family I usually end up at a game night at my brother's place. This week was no exception, and last night we ended up playing a five player game of Magic. I haven't played Magic much in the past 15 years at least, so I had to shake off the rust.
I remember playing in high school, where some of our games were the standard 1v1 game, but many were just silly group games. The most extreme of these was a 100 person tournament where we all played a game with custom rules simultaneously. After half an hour or so the tournament director announced that somebody had won by taking infinite turns, so we gave them the grand prize, kicked them out of the tournament, and kept playing. I ended up getting beat out of the tournament on the back of an incorrect GM call after outlasting about 60 players.
This five player game reminded me of those old times. One player declared that he didn't know the game well, so he was just going to draft to try to screw with other people. Partway through the first game I had a 8/10 creature in play that made a fresh 2/2 every turn and blew up a permanent of my choice every turn. Nobody else had anything in play but land. This is obviously fantastic, but in a five player game somebody is going to have an answer.... except that the random guy played Armageddon, destroying all the lands in the game. I quickly killed the random guy and one other person and was declared the victor.
Random guy seemed extremely pleased, because his plan of screwing with people had come to fruition. I felt unfulfilled with my victory.
I guess this is what I should have expected. Group games where you can directly go after people always devolve into dogpiling or kingmaking, that is just the nature of the thing. Nothing I can do about that.
While I enjoyed the game night overall, this certainly reminds me why I have shifted away from playing group Magic when we have a bunch of people together. These days I like my games to reward skill a lot more than luck and political posturing. You can make a good political game (Diplomacy says hi) but Magic isn't it.
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Crushing lefty's dreams
Below is a picture of my final board at the final table of the world boardgaming championships Castles of Mad King Ludwig tournament.
I am not that happy with this board. My bonus cards got me 14 points which is about right for 3 cards but I had to work hard to get those points, taking tiles I otherwise wasn't that happy about. I also didn't time the ending of the game all that well and had to put my 300 elbow blue room on just to finish up my purple room instead of planting something better there. With one more turn in the game my position is drastically better as I can get an additional 4 points for the blue room and probably another 4 points for whatever red / green room I used to finish off the purple. Still, I got second overall in the tournament, so I can't complain too hard about it.
The most interesting point in the entire game to my mind was on turn 1. I was fourth chair (Fourth chair is awful in CoMKL, and next year I hope we are on a bidding system for seating) and Drummo was in first chair. The flop contained the basement that likes basements, a 300 blue room, and a bunch of random stuff. The blue room is relevant because both of the blue room favours were out, so blues were extremely high value.
Drummo arranged the tiles with the basement in 1, four reasonable rooms in the 2, 4, 6, 8 slots, and the blue room at 10. First player bought a stairs, second player bought the room at 4, I bought the circular green room at 2, and Drummo was faced with a decision. His purchases at 6 and 8 were bad, so realistically he was either buying a stairs for 3 or paying 10 for the blue room. This decision was critical because player two was the only one in stairs, and the corridor square footage and completed rooms favours were out, heavily favouring basement play. If Drummo buys the blue room, player two gets the basement that likes basements for free on his master builder turn, and also gets to stockpile a ton of cash. This puts him in a dominating position. If Drummo buys stairs then Drummo has position in terms of buying basement rooms ahead of the others stairs and has more cash on hand to run through the next 3 turns.
Drummo bought the big blue room for 10. Player two happily put the basement at 1 buck on his master builder, got it, and proceeded to win the game in part by dominating the completed rooms and corridor square footage favours. Drummo came last.
I am pretty sure that this was the key play that set up that victory. Now, player two played a tight game throughout, and I don't want to take away from that. But getting that basement room for free and making sure he had a big bankroll right from the outset was crucial to his dominance. Drummo also had cash problems throughout the game, and I think these were exacerbated by him blowing too much of his stack on turn one. The blue room he got ended up being worth 11 points, but buying 11 endgame points for 10 bucks on the first turn seems too aggressive to me. Plus there is the argument that you need to be defensive and prevent any one player from getting too great a deal. This is something I focus on hard in CoMKL, more so than other players I think.
We were talking afterwards about the play and defensive play in general. Someone said that if I really wanted somebody to take the defensive stairs I should have done it myself. This is reasonable as a general rule, but I don't know that it applied here. I was fourth chair, so other players expecting me to be the one to give up value for defence seems unreasonable. Plus Drummo was in the ideal spot to defensive stairs, him being directly before the other stairs. Moreover, he lacked other good value options. He wasn't giving up a great buy to defend, just foregoing what I see as a sketchy purchase for 40% of his stack.
In general you can't just refuse to defend and always expect the last person in last to do the defending. People won't put up with that sort of leverage being applied if they are good. On the other hand you probably should expect defensive play if the player in question has no other good options.
At any rate this game really reinforced the value of position in CoMKL. Playing after me is not ideal because I am going to play defensively. I will guess your cards held (made 3 guesses during the final match and was correct on all 3) and work hard to prevent you getting the tiles you want. But some players lean far more towards offence rather than defence and playing after them will get you deals now and again.
In the end the game itself was a great experience. I am friends with all three other players at the table and having a final table with three strong gamers in a game I love where everyone has a good time is a far more positive experience than merely winning. It doesn't hurt that Drummo and I were trashtalking the entire time and I crushed his hopes and dreams along the way. He claimed that since I didn't win the game I can't really crow about my victory... but I submit that I beat him and the player to his left won, which thoroughly cements my claim of superiority at CoMKL. If lefty wins, you should have done something about that!
Maybe next year I will finally get my 1st place trophy at that game. Eventually a final table has to work out for me!
I am not that happy with this board. My bonus cards got me 14 points which is about right for 3 cards but I had to work hard to get those points, taking tiles I otherwise wasn't that happy about. I also didn't time the ending of the game all that well and had to put my 300 elbow blue room on just to finish up my purple room instead of planting something better there. With one more turn in the game my position is drastically better as I can get an additional 4 points for the blue room and probably another 4 points for whatever red / green room I used to finish off the purple. Still, I got second overall in the tournament, so I can't complain too hard about it.
The most interesting point in the entire game to my mind was on turn 1. I was fourth chair (Fourth chair is awful in CoMKL, and next year I hope we are on a bidding system for seating) and Drummo was in first chair. The flop contained the basement that likes basements, a 300 blue room, and a bunch of random stuff. The blue room is relevant because both of the blue room favours were out, so blues were extremely high value.
Drummo arranged the tiles with the basement in 1, four reasonable rooms in the 2, 4, 6, 8 slots, and the blue room at 10. First player bought a stairs, second player bought the room at 4, I bought the circular green room at 2, and Drummo was faced with a decision. His purchases at 6 and 8 were bad, so realistically he was either buying a stairs for 3 or paying 10 for the blue room. This decision was critical because player two was the only one in stairs, and the corridor square footage and completed rooms favours were out, heavily favouring basement play. If Drummo buys the blue room, player two gets the basement that likes basements for free on his master builder turn, and also gets to stockpile a ton of cash. This puts him in a dominating position. If Drummo buys stairs then Drummo has position in terms of buying basement rooms ahead of the others stairs and has more cash on hand to run through the next 3 turns.
Drummo bought the big blue room for 10. Player two happily put the basement at 1 buck on his master builder, got it, and proceeded to win the game in part by dominating the completed rooms and corridor square footage favours. Drummo came last.
I am pretty sure that this was the key play that set up that victory. Now, player two played a tight game throughout, and I don't want to take away from that. But getting that basement room for free and making sure he had a big bankroll right from the outset was crucial to his dominance. Drummo also had cash problems throughout the game, and I think these were exacerbated by him blowing too much of his stack on turn one. The blue room he got ended up being worth 11 points, but buying 11 endgame points for 10 bucks on the first turn seems too aggressive to me. Plus there is the argument that you need to be defensive and prevent any one player from getting too great a deal. This is something I focus on hard in CoMKL, more so than other players I think.
We were talking afterwards about the play and defensive play in general. Someone said that if I really wanted somebody to take the defensive stairs I should have done it myself. This is reasonable as a general rule, but I don't know that it applied here. I was fourth chair, so other players expecting me to be the one to give up value for defence seems unreasonable. Plus Drummo was in the ideal spot to defensive stairs, him being directly before the other stairs. Moreover, he lacked other good value options. He wasn't giving up a great buy to defend, just foregoing what I see as a sketchy purchase for 40% of his stack.
In general you can't just refuse to defend and always expect the last person in last to do the defending. People won't put up with that sort of leverage being applied if they are good. On the other hand you probably should expect defensive play if the player in question has no other good options.
At any rate this game really reinforced the value of position in CoMKL. Playing after me is not ideal because I am going to play defensively. I will guess your cards held (made 3 guesses during the final match and was correct on all 3) and work hard to prevent you getting the tiles you want. But some players lean far more towards offence rather than defence and playing after them will get you deals now and again.
In the end the game itself was a great experience. I am friends with all three other players at the table and having a final table with three strong gamers in a game I love where everyone has a good time is a far more positive experience than merely winning. It doesn't hurt that Drummo and I were trashtalking the entire time and I crushed his hopes and dreams along the way. He claimed that since I didn't win the game I can't really crow about my victory... but I submit that I beat him and the player to his left won, which thoroughly cements my claim of superiority at CoMKL. If lefty wins, you should have done something about that!
Maybe next year I will finally get my 1st place trophy at that game. Eventually a final table has to work out for me!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)