Last night my DnD campaign came to a screeching halt. My group wandered into a cave to clear out some stirges (bloodsucking flying critters the size of a hawk) and ended up in the middle of a lair of hobgoblins. Several of the hobgoblins were more powerful than any of the characters in the group and they had a dozen minions so they made short work of us. Normally when you die to hobgoblins it is by being stabbed many times but one of the hobgoblins was a terrifying spellcaster who Fireballed us to death.
There really wasn't anything we could do to win that fight aside from get lucky. They had more hit points than us, did more damage than us, and had home ground advantage. We could have all gone first and rolled like champions, but other than that we were just hosed. It feels pretty crappy to die that way because it wasn't like we were facing our final boss or even something that the plot had led us to worry about - it was just a random cave with random dudes who ended us all.
Of course there were things we could have done to try to make the fight easier ahead of time. Primarily we could have gotten a big advantage from using invisibility to scout the cave ahead of time, but I declined to do that. The problem with full scouting with invisible minions is that it is boring as hell for all players but one. I have regularly built characters who have stealthy scouting as a feature and while it is great fun to do it, it is garbage for the others on the team. Nothing says adventure like scrolling on your phone while someone else plays the game for an hour and you sit and wait for them to tell you all the cool stuff they found.
If I were playing intelligently or conservatively I would scout everything. No rush, take your time, get all the information first. Arrange ambushes, run away, classic guerrilla tactics. But the problem is that this takes time. It turns what could be a quick 3 round battle into a full session of maneuvering and it usually leaves half the group bored out of their minds.
Naked Man regularly asks me why I don't play the smart way. Why don't I use every tool at my disposal to win? The answer is that those plays make the game awful. It leaves all the players who want to just bash enemies sad and bored, and means that every single little thing we try to do takes hours and hours while I probe for angles and answers. The game isn't built for that, modules don't assume that, and honestly I don't want to play that.
Simply put, playing well just isn't much fun. So instead we rushed into a fight and got dead.
The only other thing we could have done is to let me power game the table. Some of the players are newer to the system and just aren't able to quickly find the most impactful line of play. There are people out there who can glance at a conflict and figure out exactly how one side wins or loses, and there are those who just don't see those points of leverage so they just do things that seem like they will help. I wanted to scream "KILL THE WIZARD" at the other players, but I refused to tell them what to do. People don't want someone always riding them, telling them how to play, so I shut my mouth and watched the group perish.
Sometimes that is just how it goes. No big deal really, because I can't bring myself to care that much about my character when I have such a reasonable expectation of them dying in the meatgrinder that is adventuring through modules. I did appreciate that we decided that the party is dead and the adventure is over though. If we did wipe in this situation and our plot armour saw us being resurrected or captured but alive or other similar nonsense I would lose all interest. When you can't fail, success isn't a particularly compelling thing to shoot for.
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Rough calls
I am back from the world boardgaming championships, towing a 2nd place plaque and many good stories. One of the best stories involves a complicated semi final table where we had to make tough choices about who to send on to the finals.
The setup: We are playing Vegas Showdown with 5 players. I am player 1. We finish the final turn of the game, with me buying an overpriced Lounge, hoping to hit Lounge Lizard and lock up a victory with my many Lounges. Players 2, 3, and 5 just Publicity, and Player 4 buys a Five Star Steakhouse with only 1 dollar remaining.
The card flip ends the game, giving 3 points per Restaurant, which is a disaster for me because I only have one Restaurant. I score up the game giving putting Player 2 at 46, myself and Player 5 at 47, Player 3 at 49, and Player 4 at 62. Crushing victory for P4, and we start to pack up.
Partway through packing up I realize that P4 has a Space Age Sportsbook on his board, and he does not have the prerequisite, so it is an illegal play. When I point out this he is genuinely shocked - he certainly didn't intend to cheat, but he played illegally and this has to be fixed somehow. We call the GM over and he stares at the boards trying to figure out what to do.
Clearly the SASB has to be removed from P4's board. This isn't hard to calculate, and leaves P4 still on top. However, the SASB got P4 two dollars worth of income, and without that he couldn't have bought the Five Star Steakhouse. If he didn't buy the Steakhouse, then the game wouldn't necessarily have ended!
The GM is clearly completely unsure what to do. P4 is obviously unhappy about his own mistake, and insists that he shouldn't move on, no matter what the result of the recount. But who does move on then? P3 is in second if we don't recalculate any final turn scoring, so sending him onto the finals is a reasonable choice. But if we remove both of the problematic tiles from P4's board, then I get two more points on endgame scoring and end up at 49 points with a superior tiebreaker, so I would be up for advancement. On the other hand if we roll back to when the SASB was bought and cancel that purchase, then P5 would have scooped it up and then she jumps into the advancement seat instead.
Compounding the struggle is the fact that the GM's son is one of the people at the table! He was P2, and had no reasonable argument for his own advancement, but this sort of personal connection just makes sorting out these thorny issues even more difficult.
So what do you do as a GM when you have plausible arguments for four different players advancing from a table?
First thing you do of course is tell all the players that they are damn fools for not checking other people's boards and making sure people play legally. Then glare at them for putting you in such a challenging situation. (At least, this would be my first response.)
Thankfully the GM didn't have to make a concrete call to decide who won the game. The 5 players all agreed that P4 cheated (accidentally) and so he couldn't advance. Then we talked about how the game would have gone if he hadn't done that and generally agreed that P5 would have won it. All four of us voted to send her onward, and the GM seemed seriously relieved that he hadn't had to cope with picking a winner himself. That is the sort of thing that usually leads to hurt feelings and bitterness, and I know I wouldn't want to have to do that. He was a little surprised that we all approached it this way I think, but he was happy to take our vote as a final answer and P5 moved on to the final table.
I am so happy to report this. I wanted to move on myself certainly but I am quite confident that if the only change in the game is that I say 'yo dude, you can't even place that tile' then P5 beats all the rest of us handily. So I am comfortable with the result, and extremely pleased that everyone was able to get past this sort of situation without yelling or fussing or any sort of unpleasant behaviour. We had a fun game and everyone tried hard to win but didn't make anyone else's life difficult in order to get there - an ideal circumstance.
This is the best kind of experience. I got plenty of tough tables and enjoyed the opposition, but combining a tough table with people who believe that you first make sure everyone has fun and second try to win is the shining moment of the con for me.
The setup: We are playing Vegas Showdown with 5 players. I am player 1. We finish the final turn of the game, with me buying an overpriced Lounge, hoping to hit Lounge Lizard and lock up a victory with my many Lounges. Players 2, 3, and 5 just Publicity, and Player 4 buys a Five Star Steakhouse with only 1 dollar remaining.
The card flip ends the game, giving 3 points per Restaurant, which is a disaster for me because I only have one Restaurant. I score up the game giving putting Player 2 at 46, myself and Player 5 at 47, Player 3 at 49, and Player 4 at 62. Crushing victory for P4, and we start to pack up.
Partway through packing up I realize that P4 has a Space Age Sportsbook on his board, and he does not have the prerequisite, so it is an illegal play. When I point out this he is genuinely shocked - he certainly didn't intend to cheat, but he played illegally and this has to be fixed somehow. We call the GM over and he stares at the boards trying to figure out what to do.
Clearly the SASB has to be removed from P4's board. This isn't hard to calculate, and leaves P4 still on top. However, the SASB got P4 two dollars worth of income, and without that he couldn't have bought the Five Star Steakhouse. If he didn't buy the Steakhouse, then the game wouldn't necessarily have ended!
The GM is clearly completely unsure what to do. P4 is obviously unhappy about his own mistake, and insists that he shouldn't move on, no matter what the result of the recount. But who does move on then? P3 is in second if we don't recalculate any final turn scoring, so sending him onto the finals is a reasonable choice. But if we remove both of the problematic tiles from P4's board, then I get two more points on endgame scoring and end up at 49 points with a superior tiebreaker, so I would be up for advancement. On the other hand if we roll back to when the SASB was bought and cancel that purchase, then P5 would have scooped it up and then she jumps into the advancement seat instead.
Compounding the struggle is the fact that the GM's son is one of the people at the table! He was P2, and had no reasonable argument for his own advancement, but this sort of personal connection just makes sorting out these thorny issues even more difficult.
So what do you do as a GM when you have plausible arguments for four different players advancing from a table?
First thing you do of course is tell all the players that they are damn fools for not checking other people's boards and making sure people play legally. Then glare at them for putting you in such a challenging situation. (At least, this would be my first response.)
Thankfully the GM didn't have to make a concrete call to decide who won the game. The 5 players all agreed that P4 cheated (accidentally) and so he couldn't advance. Then we talked about how the game would have gone if he hadn't done that and generally agreed that P5 would have won it. All four of us voted to send her onward, and the GM seemed seriously relieved that he hadn't had to cope with picking a winner himself. That is the sort of thing that usually leads to hurt feelings and bitterness, and I know I wouldn't want to have to do that. He was a little surprised that we all approached it this way I think, but he was happy to take our vote as a final answer and P5 moved on to the final table.
I am so happy to report this. I wanted to move on myself certainly but I am quite confident that if the only change in the game is that I say 'yo dude, you can't even place that tile' then P5 beats all the rest of us handily. So I am comfortable with the result, and extremely pleased that everyone was able to get past this sort of situation without yelling or fussing or any sort of unpleasant behaviour. We had a fun game and everyone tried hard to win but didn't make anyone else's life difficult in order to get there - an ideal circumstance.
This is the best kind of experience. I got plenty of tough tables and enjoyed the opposition, but combining a tough table with people who believe that you first make sure everyone has fun and second try to win is the shining moment of the con for me.
Thursday, July 4, 2019
Be rational
I have been working on balance for policies in Civ 6 and I have concluded that there is one particular outlier that I need to address somehow - Rationalism.
Rationalism:
Increase the Science output of your Campus buildings by 50% if the adjacency bonus of the district is at least +3. Increase it by 50% more if the city has population 10 or more.
There are three other cards that do similar things for the Holy Site, Theatre Square, and Commercial Hub.
I find myself virtually always running Rationalism to boost my science and mostly ignoring the other three cards. I think this is a bad sign - you want policies to be powerful, but if there is one you auto pick every time then something is amiss.
The core thing that goes on is that the Rationalism card boosts science more than the Theatre Square card boosts culture, or the Commercial Hub card boosts gold. There are lots of sources of culture in the game that aren't affected by cards, such as Great Works and Wonders. Plus if you have a ton of culture going you actually don't need to boost your culture more - you really want to boost your tourism! If you already have a truckload of high adjacency Theatre Squares your culture is probably already plenty high. More of it is better than nothing, but your utility drops off quick. Commercial Hubs mostly give you gold via enabling trade routes and those aren't boosted by the card, so that card is bad. Also getting the adjacency of +4 to qualify for the Commercial Hub bonus is rough.
The Holy Site card is good. Nearly all your faith comes from Holy Site buildings, so it is a huge bonus. It, like science, is hard to get other ways, so the card does something powerful. But unless you are going for a religious victory there isn't much point in stacking faith, so this card is a really powerful one that only comes up in limited circumstances - I am fine with that.
Because science nearly all comes from Campus buildings the Rationalism card is simply too big a science multiplier. This is also why Campuses themselves are good - you simply can't get any reasonable amount of science in any other way. No matter what victory condition you are aiming for it makes sense to have more science - it gives you better units, more buildings, better yields, everything. And the cap is really high, such that getting ever more science is pretty much always good, in a way that other resources don't quite match.
Unfortunately I don't have a clean way to change this. Other cards at similar places in the tree do things like adding 2-3 science per Campus, or similarly affecting other districts. Rationalism can easily be pumping out ~4 science per district at that point, and it can get so much higher as your cities grow and it rockets to the moon when you start pumping out Research Labs in the late game. I could just hard nerf Rationalism to give 4 science to every university, for example, which would ruin the symmetry of the cards but would certainly fix the necessity of having it. It would also take away the fun minigame of trying to get all your Campuses to +3 adjacency to get the big Rationalism boost. I can't decide if I like that or not. Unless I change all the four cards it will be ... kludgy.
It is certainly true that the AI isn't adept at maximizing Rationalism, and it needs to be to win. It definitely tries to get big cities and high adjacency bonuses but you have to specifically hunt for +3 and 10 in particular if you want to max returns, and you have to slot Rationalism in the first place, and they will only do so randomly.
Initially Rationalism didn't require high adjacency or high population. This led players to slot Rationalism, then just slam down Campuses in tiny cities absolutely everywhere without worrying about adjacency. I think what the designers were trying to do when they changed to this latest version is make players care about adjacency and to grow bigger cities. That worked. Unfortunately it didn't fix the fundamental problem that the card is just so good you have to build your entire game around it nearly every time.
Rationalism:
Increase the Science output of your Campus buildings by 50% if the adjacency bonus of the district is at least +3. Increase it by 50% more if the city has population 10 or more.
There are three other cards that do similar things for the Holy Site, Theatre Square, and Commercial Hub.
I find myself virtually always running Rationalism to boost my science and mostly ignoring the other three cards. I think this is a bad sign - you want policies to be powerful, but if there is one you auto pick every time then something is amiss.
The core thing that goes on is that the Rationalism card boosts science more than the Theatre Square card boosts culture, or the Commercial Hub card boosts gold. There are lots of sources of culture in the game that aren't affected by cards, such as Great Works and Wonders. Plus if you have a ton of culture going you actually don't need to boost your culture more - you really want to boost your tourism! If you already have a truckload of high adjacency Theatre Squares your culture is probably already plenty high. More of it is better than nothing, but your utility drops off quick. Commercial Hubs mostly give you gold via enabling trade routes and those aren't boosted by the card, so that card is bad. Also getting the adjacency of +4 to qualify for the Commercial Hub bonus is rough.
The Holy Site card is good. Nearly all your faith comes from Holy Site buildings, so it is a huge bonus. It, like science, is hard to get other ways, so the card does something powerful. But unless you are going for a religious victory there isn't much point in stacking faith, so this card is a really powerful one that only comes up in limited circumstances - I am fine with that.
Because science nearly all comes from Campus buildings the Rationalism card is simply too big a science multiplier. This is also why Campuses themselves are good - you simply can't get any reasonable amount of science in any other way. No matter what victory condition you are aiming for it makes sense to have more science - it gives you better units, more buildings, better yields, everything. And the cap is really high, such that getting ever more science is pretty much always good, in a way that other resources don't quite match.
Unfortunately I don't have a clean way to change this. Other cards at similar places in the tree do things like adding 2-3 science per Campus, or similarly affecting other districts. Rationalism can easily be pumping out ~4 science per district at that point, and it can get so much higher as your cities grow and it rockets to the moon when you start pumping out Research Labs in the late game. I could just hard nerf Rationalism to give 4 science to every university, for example, which would ruin the symmetry of the cards but would certainly fix the necessity of having it. It would also take away the fun minigame of trying to get all your Campuses to +3 adjacency to get the big Rationalism boost. I can't decide if I like that or not. Unless I change all the four cards it will be ... kludgy.
It is certainly true that the AI isn't adept at maximizing Rationalism, and it needs to be to win. It definitely tries to get big cities and high adjacency bonuses but you have to specifically hunt for +3 and 10 in particular if you want to max returns, and you have to slot Rationalism in the first place, and they will only do so randomly.
Initially Rationalism didn't require high adjacency or high population. This led players to slot Rationalism, then just slam down Campuses in tiny cities absolutely everywhere without worrying about adjacency. I think what the designers were trying to do when they changed to this latest version is make players care about adjacency and to grow bigger cities. That worked. Unfortunately it didn't fix the fundamental problem that the card is just so good you have to build your entire game around it nearly every time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)