On Randomness and Game Longevity

[Higher Game]

I'll check out the mod, Sauron. I've lately been thinking of how randomness makes thundersticks so unique, and how non-randomness would affect them. I think the best way to manage high damage, low attack units in a non-random mod would be to give them lower hit points, so bringing them out would be risky. They would basically be mages with pierce damage.

Of course, then there's the troll issue. They have massive damage in low attacks, so they also have a high chance of wiping out a single unit instantly, but high defense is part of their character as well. In non-randomness, perhaps lowering their hits points and upping their regen rate would fix it. That way, bringing them out for extended smashing would be highly risky, but they could still manage short stints if they retreat soon so they can heal up. Other units would have more hit points, for longer defense, and there's the obvious issue that defense often happens in villages anyway, rendering regeneration moot.

This would mirror the real game trolls well. High damage, good at temporary defense at tough terrain, but not so great as front-line soldiers defending villages and open battlefields.

[Sauron]

(...)
WIth 10 units over 20 turns, you easily make more than 100 attacks. Not to count retaliation on the enemy's turn.

often, especially on small map first attacks makes the game won/lost, no 100 attacks involved.

{2}If you assume all your attacks miss it makes no sense at all to do any offensive moves!!! So if you base your attack on making ANY damage, an have 6,25% chance it does 0 damage you can say you had a bad luck. Denying this makes no sense.

I strongly disagree. Risk management is part of the strategy too.
Having a strategy based only on the action of one unit without any backup plan is a bad strategy usually. And usually missing everything with one unit is not always a disaster since you usually also have other units to make some damage.

Risk management is part of strategy, IF risk is at MANAGEABLE LEVEL. Sometimes it is not. Every strategy end in end involves actions of single units. AND IF these actions go in most unlikely way even best planner ends up in at least non-optimal position. I bet you lost some battles just due to the fact your attack got totally messed up by RNG and part of your units got exposed.
Remember in most cases if you attack the target unit is exposed on limited target of hexes, so every failed attack screens the target from you (not the case in e.g. civilization). So your "other units can make some damage" does not answer the problem.

You know there is two parts in a good strategy : attack and defense. If and attack fails it doesn't necessarily mean you lost the war.
The fact you cannot manage risk in your strategy doesn't mean that everyone is unable to do this.

Everyone is able to manage risk WITHIN SOME CONSTRAINTS.

Now a question: how many games did you play, where you arranged your units in a way that allowed to attack you without exposing units on weak defense terrain?

Yes some units are usually vulnerable, but you can still limit the risk with some other units, so you don't turn a failed attack into a disaster.

Hmmm, exposure, even small can easily pivot game.

[Soliton]

(...)
WIth 10 units over 20 turns, you easily make more than 100 attacks. Not to count retaliation on the enemy's turn.

often, especially on small map first attacks makes the game won/lost, no 100 attacks involved.

Often in this thread people make arbitrary statements about wesnoth making it look like it's an obvious well-known fact, while it's really just a (wild) guess usually without any kind of evidence or argumentation to back it up. There are more hilarious (or sad) examples in the posts of Higher Game. I guess that's to be expected though.

[Assasin]

peoples, can't we just say that Wesnoth is fun and be done with all of this?

[Sauron]

often, especially on small map first attacks makes the game won/lost, no 100 attacks involved.

Often in this thread people make arbitrary statements about wesnoth making it look like it's an obvious well-known fact, while it's really just a (wild) guess usually without any kind of evidence or argumentation to back it up. There are more hilarious (or sad) examples in the posts of Higher Game. I guess that's to be expected though.

Grrr, you know very well that on small map with small amount of units (I mean SMALL as half size of den of onis) what I wrote is obvious. As an evidence I might post some games with dopeygskunk I played recently but I doubt it is necessary at all.

I have a strange feeling that this thread is heading fast towards lockedness.

[Soliton]

Often in this thread people make arbitrary statements about wesnoth making it look like it's an obvious well-known fact, while it's really just a (wild) guess usually without any kind of evidence or argumentation to back it up. There are more hilarious (or sad) examples in the posts of Higher Game. I guess that's to be expected though.

Grrr, you know very well that on small map with small amount of units (I mean SMALL as half size of den of onis) what I wrote is obvious.

As obvious as that you mean "rediculous small maps" when you say "small maps".

As an evidence I might post some games with dopeygskunk I played recently but I doubt it is necessary at all.

I do think it is if you really want to illustrate your point to someone that obviously doesn't get all the things that are obvious to you.

[Tomsik]

Grrr, you know very well that on small map with small amount of units (I mean SMALL as half size of den of onis) what I wrote is obvious.

Well, if you play rumbles...

[Dave]

Grrr, you know very well that on small map with small amount of units (I mean SMALL as half size of den of onis) what I wrote is obvious.

I'm sure one could also easily demonstrate that a chess variant played on a 5x5 board with a subset of the pieces would also be very shallow.....

[Higher Game]

I was just in a match where I had 380 as my expected damage inflicted, and 270 as the real thing. My opponent got at least 2 promotions due to my terribly bad luck. I think the whole promotion system increases the importance of luck in the game. Not only does he get a powerful new unit, but his injured dwarf fighter with 2 hit points becomes a steelclad with 52.

Of course, if he didn't get his hit points back, he becomes an easy 16 experience for me. The idea of restored hit points isn't bad, but maybe it should be changed to where only NEW hit points are given, not a full restore. So, that dwarf fighter would have become a steelclad with 14 hit points.

The fact that it's possible to lose like this at all proves that Wesnoth is not a pure test of skill, since I was more skilled than my opponent, and I still lost the match.

[Gus]

since I was more skilled than my opponent, and I still lost the match.

mind giving us a proof of that statement? so that it doesn't remain an _empty_ statement.

[JW]

Wesnoth is not a pure test of skill

Well duh. You do know what random numbers are, right? I mean, you've had maybe a math class in school or something, right? You do have to go to school in your hometown community, correct?

[Sombra]

The fact that it's possible to lose like this at all proves that Wesnoth is not a pure test of skill, since I was more skilled than my opponent, and I still lost the match.

Kind of bold statement. I share your opinion that Wesnoth is not a "pure " test of skill . Still I think enough skill is involved to label players "bad" or "good" players.

Are you playing under the name of "Higher Game" on the multiplayer server of 1.11? After such a statement I believe that many players would like to test your skill.

[Dave]

The fact that it's possible to lose like this at all proves that Wesnoth is not a pure test of skill, since I was more skilled than my opponent, and I still lost the match.

I think this illustrates one of the nice things about Wesnoth.....people like you can lose, but your fragile ego survives, because you can convince yourself that you are actually more skilled than your opponent and it's the game's fault you lost.

David

[Doc Paterson]

The fact that it's possible to lose like this at all proves that Wesnoth is not a pure test of skill, since I was more skilled than my opponent, and I still lost the match.

I think this illustrates one of the nice things about Wesnoth.....people like you can lose, but your fragile ego survives, because you can convince yourself that you are actually more skilled than your opponent and it's the game's fault you lost.

David

I nominate this quote from Dave as a candidate for Quote of the Year.

[Jetrel]

Right now wesnoth calculates an expected value for each player's actions, giving a readout of how much damage the player has dealt, and how much they "should have" dealt.

One possible venue for making wesnoth more "fair" would be to use the above not as a mere readout, but as an influence on the actual events in the game. That is to say; through the EV calculation, we can quantify that a player is having bad luck, and if their EV gets too disparate (perhaps more than 100 points off), they could be given better-than-normal luck until their EV is matched (or we reach some desired range, like "within 50 pts of EV").

(As for specifics, this would be done separately to both damage dealt and received; whichever one was off would get modified. If both a player and their opponent were "blessed" in this way, it would cancel out. Both of these things would allow this to work in >2 player settings. The specific modification would probably be to apply a multiplicative bonus to the CTH, or on defense, to the "chance to be missed". Probably in the 30-50% ballpark.)



When a person is playing well below EV, the game is literally being unfair to them. It's an accepted part of wesnoth gameplay, but that doesn't mean it's fair or good, it simply means that it's currently on this side of tolerable. Some people have posited that it can ruin whole games that a person is playing.

I think that making a change like this would preserve the good quality of randomness on a small scale, and help to more quickly even things out on a large scale. Statistically, things will even out as the length of the game approaches infinity, but that's not fast enough. We need something to give it a kick in the seat of the pants, and I think this would do the job.