No mirror option

[sidzej]

Personally I hate mirrors - they are killing fantasy element of the game in my opinion. It's like killing your brothers and sisters. Some people of course like them, but i think most people (like me) also hate them.

To avoid geting a mirror game when selecting random faction i would recomend to do a "no mirror" checkbox option in game lobby. It could work in the way that when someone took random faction, he/she can't get a faction that other players already has in this game - of course in Default era for 7 or more players it would be imposible, so it would olny work for max 6 players maps.

[thespaceinvader]

I don't see why they should kill the fantasy element of the game at all... Civil wars happen. Heck, it's in the race background of the Orcs that they in-fight between tribes like crazy.

[Turuk]

Not to mention, I'm pretty sure the elves had their own split, and we all know humans love to fight each other. Dwarves could easily get slighted over who stepped on the other's beard.

As to evil races, since when do they need an excuse to fight each other? It's in their nature.

[Dave]

I think this is a good idea, though I think it should only generally work for games of <= 4 sides.

[zookeeper]

Funnily enough, this could actually be done in WML as a custom era, you could make a prestart event that checks for random-faction collisions and sets new factions for the sides as needed.

[bert1]

I think it's a fantastic idea. I only wish I had thought of it first.

[sidzej]

Well... almost all can be done in WML, so why to keep releasing new developers and stable versions when unit balancing, map changes, new graphics, changing campaigns can be made in custom eras?

[Zachron]

I think it is a good idea to prevent random factions from being the same, but having faction choices locked out because someone else has already chose it is just silly. Multiplayer games aren't particularly designed to make sense in the metaplot anyway.

That being said It's a good option, I just won't play a game that uses it. Irdya's history is written in the blood of civil wars. We could however reconfigure the random generator in a manner that ensures as many factions as possible are in play(Fill by randomly choosing a faction not in play, then randomly choosing a faction with only one in play for players past the 6th), but I think the feature should only take what is randomly chosen into account.

[Jozrael]

This isn't to lock out a faction, but to prevent them from being chosen randomly.

[PingPangQui]

I think this is a good idea, though I think it should only generally work for games of <= 4 sides.

An alternative would be to have a "Set maximum faction diversity" option or a "Set faction diversity" option activating "a faction diversity slider". The slider could work like this:

If set lowest: Everyone gets the same faction.
If set highest: Maximum diversity will be achieved.

The diversity could be calculated according to the "alternative Simpson Index" (pseudocode):

Code: Select all

sum <- 0
from i=1 to number_of_factions
begin 
  sum <- sum + (relative_frequency_of_faction[i])^2
end
diversity <- 1 / sum

Thus diversity would lie between 1 and the number of faction. However, this would only be the case if the number of players is equal or a factor of the number of factions. Thus the maxium diversity lies usually somewhat below the number of factions. For 1 to 5 players (default era) the maximum diversity is simply the number of players. For more players this is somewhat more complicated to calculate. Maybe someone else has a clue regarding a simple equation to calculate maximum diversity with number of players/sides and number of factions as input.

EDIT: Ok I think it all comes down to the following four equations.

Code: Select all

D = 1 / ( z*(x/P)^2 + (F-z)*(y/P)^2 )
y = floor(P/F)
z = P - y*F
x = y + 1

Whereas: P - number of players/sides, F - number of factions, D - maximum diversity. Following basic math rules I finnally got the following.

Code: Select all

y = floor(P/F)
D = P^2 / ((-F*y + 2*P - F)*y + P)